Knights Templar Sue the Pope

pdragon04 writes "According to The Register, "the Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France..."." I wonder what a holy grail goes for with 700 years of compound interest.

Comments

I had to look it up

[sm62704]

So now you don't have to.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers), were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders.[3] The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages. It was founded in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096, its original purpose to ensure the safety of the many Christians who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem after its conquest.

Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles quartered by a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.[4] Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking,[5][6] and building many fortifications throughout the Mediterranean and the Holy Land.

The Templars' success was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded. Rumors about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created mistrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, began pressuring Pope Clement V to take action against the Order. In 1307, many of the Order's members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake.[7] In 1312, Pope Clement, under continuing pressure from King Philip, disbanded the Order. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the societal infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the "Templar" name alive into the modern day.

I fail to see how this is nerdy, but I do appreciate the humor of someone suing the pope.

Re:statute of limitations?

[doug]

True, but the murder charges would be against individuals in France (not Spain) who are dead. Anyhow, that is criminal, and I was thinking this was a civil suit.

Re:The Vatican has no cash!

[benwiggy]

The funny thing is that the Vatican probably has billions in capital at its disposal. I always got a kick out of the pope ruling a small nation-state in Europe (with its own currency, mind you) telling me to be more like Jesus.

Actually, the Vatican made a loss last tax year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7501486.stm

And this would be the same Jesus who said:
For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. Sounds like a charitable guy.

Re:statute of limitations?

[KillerBob]

As informative as your post is, I think it qualifies for a "Whoosh".

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gldlyTjXk9A

Re:Umm... hello, respect to the Holy Clergy?

[tinkerghost]

If the Knights Templars are so holy, shouldn't they swear obedience to the Pope or something just as jesuits do?

They did, and the Pope & the king of France conspired to kill them all & seize their lands on the charges of heresy, satanism, and a few other rather unpleasant things. Betrayals don't foster respect. If the record is to be believed, it was a raw money/power grab.

Re:Yes the Vatican Is So Pure & Holy

[Lurker2288]

If the Bible (or at least, the Gospels) are the word of Jesus, and it's his word that good Christians are supposed to be following, then the fact that he says "pray in private" would seem to suggest that Jesus doesn't want you to get together in a big building once a week to say your prayers in front of everybody else. Seems pretty straightforward to me...

Not so fast.

[pragma_x]

http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/oct_2006/pagan_graves_in_vatican_basement.html

To be fair, you completely misrepresent this article that you linked. The aforementioned "pagan relics stored beneath the Vatican" is nothing more than a new archeological site. It's not some cache of pagan artifacts gathered from past crusades/missions or some such.

If you read the article you'll see that it is a ancient Roman necropolis that was discovered recently, quite by accident*, during the construction of a new parking garage for the Vatican. It even has the rather tongue-in-cheek name "Necropolis of the Parking Garage" ("Necropoli dell'Autoparco").

The fact the burial customs used were clearly non-christian/Catholic, is the only reason why the site is labeled as a Pagan site. Also, it is dated to around 23 B.C.-14 A.D, which dates it just before Christianity as a whole.

The Vatican even plans to open the site to the public. This quote best sums up how the Vatican feels on the matter:

"Everyone always thinks that if it's not about pure Christianity, the Vatican isn't interested," says Cristina Gennaccari, an archaeologist with the Vatican Museums. "But there are many pagan aspects of all things modern, and when it comes to archeology, especially religious archeology, there is really no room for distinction."

(* This kind of stuff happens all the time in Rome. It just so happens that the Vatican isn't in the habit of digging so deep.)

Re:The Vatican has no cash!

[KillerBob]

And this would be the same Jesus who said:
For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. Sounds like a charitable guy.

Y'know... I've never really liked it when people use the word "ye" to mean "you"... it means "the". And it's actually supposed to be pronounced that way, too... The letter 'y' in that place replaces a thorn, and started doing so with the introduction of moving type. It does so because the French-made printing presses didn't have that letter in their character set, because it's of Anglo-Saxon origin, not Latin, and so the letter Y was used in its place. Over time, the letter simply fell out of use in the English alphabet, and was replaced with the combonation "th", which had started appearing about 100 years earlier.

Off topic, I know. But *shrugs*

Re:What about the native americans?

[Grant_Watson]

If this lawsuit succeeds the native americans could only sue the catholic church for slander and defamation eg: saying they had no souls and could be slaughtered like animals or however manifest destiny is justified.

As a Protesant, I can't recall ever having read anything about Rome doing *any* of that. From the papal bull Sublimus Dei of 1537:

We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

Re:What about the native americans?

[alexgieg]

If this lawsuit succeeds the native americans could only sue the catholic church for slander and defamation eg: saying they had no souls and could be slaughtered like animals or however manifest destiny is justified.

Except the Catholic Church never did either of those things. They're urban legends.

About your first allegation, it suffices to say that there's no point in converting something that has no soul. Besides, the Catholic Catechism teaches that everything that self-moves possesses a soul, and among those, everything that moves by virtue of reason to be human, body shape or color not being requirements. (Yes, Catholicism is "aliens ready" since the Middle Ages.) Case in point: the most important Catholic theologian for the first 1200 years of Western Church history, Saint Augustine, was black.

As for your second point, back in the beginning of the discoveries, you already had important Catholic theologians, such as Francisco de Vitoria, one of the creators of modern international law, writing extensively against the European subjugation of the New World. European crowned princes, of course, did it anyway. Politicians are the same, no matter whether they're in a monarchy or in a democracy.

Good reasons to criticize the Church do exists, but these two surely aren't listed among them.

Re:Yes the Vatican Is So Pure & Holy

[HeronBlademaster]

You seem to have missed the part in the Bible where Jesus prayed, in front of everybody, as an example of how to pray. He also prayed in the garden of Gethsemane in front of his apostles.

Prayer in front of others is only wrong if you're doing it so other people see you praying - similarly, Christ said that those who fast and act like they're fasting so others know they're fasting already have their reward. Praying in front of others is fine if your only intention is to pray, that is, if you do not do it for the praise of man.

Re:Yes the Vatican Is So Pure & Holy

[alexgieg]

Well, if Jesus is God, then he owns the whole Universe and beyond. Can't be richer than that, can he?

Anyway, if you go beyond the Gospels into Acts, you'll see the apostles made such a money-less community. The problem is, it didn't last. At the end, they had to ask Paul to go around get donations from the churches abroad, what he did. Morals: being poor is good and all, provided you have someone from whom to ask money once poorness' ugly side shows up.

Oh, and by the way: the land the Church owned in Europe up to the 18th century were usually reserved for usage by the landless or anyone under persecution of angry Feudal lords. When those Church lands were appropriated by the many greed governments around, they got distributed among nobles, bourgeois and other close friends of said governments. That's when being a poor European landless peasant really became a problem (for the peasant).

In short: actual History is more complicated than our cherished oversimplifications would prefer it to be.

Re:What about the native americans?

[Doctor Faustus]

Quakers != Baptists. Different breed of nut job.
I think that was more about the Puritans than the Quakers. And while the Quakers I know tend to be on the flakey side (much like the Wiccans), they're perfectly pleasant and don't proselytize; I think that would disqualify them from the "nutjob" label.

Re:What about the native americans?

[pmonks]

Try 1788 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_fleet/). What year did Georgia gain independence?

Re:What about the native americans?

[bwhaley]

Hmm, I beg to differ. While certainly the initial population of the American colonies was voluntary, convicts were indeed sent in later years. From NPR:

"In 1718, the British Parliament passed the Transportation Act, under which England began sending its imprisoned convicts to be sold as indentured servants in the American colonies. While the law provoked outrage among many colonists -- Benjamin Franklin equated it to packing up North American rattlesnakes and sending them all to England -- the influx of ex-convicts provided cheap and immediate labor for many planters and merchants. After 1718, approximately 60,000 convicts, dubbed "the King's passengers," were sent from England to America. Ninety percent of them stayed in Maryland and Virginia. Although some returned to England once their servitude was over, many remained and began their new lives in the colonies."

This data also appears in the excellent, "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson.

Re:What about the native americans?

[Red Flayer]

The Crown financed a lot of expeditions to the Americas. We're not sure of the motivations of all settlers, but it is known that many settlers chose to come to the Americas instead of a deadly prison sentence.

Whether you want to consider press-ganged individuals and criminals fleeing certain death in floating prisons on the Thames "volunteers", that's your choice. Religious pilgrims were a minority of American settlers -- they get a lot of attention in history classes due to the "justness" of their cause.

Perhaps instead of taking a high-school or community-college level history class, you should take some real history classes, or read some real history books. What you were taught in public school (especially regarding history) is often a lot of propaganda... and is almost always incomplete.

Re:What about the native americans?

[MBGMorden]

What year did Georgia gain independence?

Is that rhetorical?

If you were serious, their declared independence (along with the rest of the rebelling American colonies) was 1776 and recognized was 1783.

Re:What about the native americans?

[STrinity]

A) The Templars were a military-religious organization, not an ethnic or racial group, and as such destroying them wasn't genocide any more than destroying the Ku Klux Klan or Skull and Bones society would be.

B) The pogrom was localized in France, and the Pope only went along with it reluctantly, mostly because King Philip threatened war if he didn't. Templars in other parts of Europe escaped alive, and were even allowed to join rival organizations.