2007 In Review

It was another year of controversy over mysteries relating to historical manuscripts.
In the spring, Holy Blood Holy Grail co-authors Leigh and Baigent lost the appeal on their copyright-infringement claim over The Da Vinci Code, leaving them with a huge legal bill. (See “DVC Plagiarism V Copyright Verdict, The Problem Continues.”) Leigh became ill and died later in the year. (See “Death Of A Genteel Bohemian”)
The original Da Vinci himself was in the news throughout the year, though we should call him Leonardo – the artist’s name being one more thing Dan Brown got wrong.
A 16 billion pixel-resolution image of Leonardo's The Last Supper was posted on the Web. So, while the painting itself deteriorates, anyone could study this high-res snapshot (checking out Brown’s Mary Magdalene theory, one suspects).
Also, a “mirror image” version of the painting was posted on the Web by an Italian “information technologist and amateur scholar”. This superimposition of the original with a reversed version was to demonstrate his theory “a figure on Christ's left appears to be cradling a baby in its arms” and “two figures on either end of the long table appear to become knights.” Despite putting this on 4 different domains ( www.leonardodavinci.tv, www.codicedavinci.tv, www.cenacolo.biz and www.leonardo2007.com), there were so many hits (over 15 million on one day), the site crashed.
A Parisian engineer developed a new scanning process that could see through the various layers of the Mona Lisa, TDVC’s focus on it causing record visitor numbers to the Louvre - despite its possibly not being the original (See “Will The Real Mona Lisa Please Stand Up?”) Using a 22-gigabyte digital photo shot in the Louvre, colour filters revealed previously invisible details.
Two Glasgow solicitors were charged with conspiracy to rob and extort money following the 2003 theft from Drumlanrig Castle by two men posing as tourists of a Leonardo-copy painting. Worth £25m, this showed the Madonna with the infant Jesus and a crucifixion relic.
In December came the news that Leonardo's main manuscript codex, the 1200-sheet Codex Atlanticus, is being eaten away by mould due to improper storage and demands by visiting scholars for access.
The British Library announced in September it too is “going digital,” digitising over 100,000 mainly 19th Century books and newspapers which will be accessible (at least via university website portals) with text fully searchable (via Microsoft's Live Search Books engine). They also make available online codices such as Beowulf.
The new Beowulf film drew attention to a work that was in fact a lucky and mysterious survival survival of a single copy of an Old English codex (“The Beowulf Codex Mystery”).
The prize for most humorous academic thesis of the year must go to the theory mediaeval manuscripts were made from recycled underwear rags (see “Why Early Books Wear So Well”). We also looked at how a single copy of a codex could have implications for history in the strange tale of “The Man In The Cloth Mask.”
The flow of ‘alternative Christianity’ books continued. (Recently I went into Borders to the 'alternative' section and can attest to this continuing proliferation; I also got a promo email from them announcing they had the perfect Xmas gift: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, with a tie-in ‘God Delusion’ themed Xmas card. No mention of the counter-blast The Dawkins Delusion by Alister & Joanna McGrath.) The Archbishop of Canterbury commented at Easter on how traditional Christian Easter is complicated in a multicultural society which has read The Da Vinci Code. (See The Not So Christian Year?)
There were also orthodox rebuttals like Biblical studies professor April Deconick’s The Thirteenth Apostle: What The Gospel Of Judas Really Says, saying the National Geographic’s first English translation of the Gospel Of Judas last year (see “The Judas Codex”) got it all wrong: the long-lost 3rd-century Coptic codex was in fact “a gospel parody about a "demon" Judas written by a particular group of Gnostic Christians.” (“I found a Judas more demonic than any Judas I know in any other piece of early Christian literature," said Connick.) The Pope also wrote a, shall we say quite orthodox, book, Jesus Of Nazareth (though jokers claimed parts of it were really Holy Ghost written).
A new, overnight holy-relics controversy was summed up by headline "I've Found The Coffin Of Jesus, Says Film Director" (See “Some Not So New Bones Of Contention”).
Among the more controversial works was a new paperback of Patrice Chaplin’s City Of Secrets, the author complaining of attempts to interfere with it, by planting false photos on her. (See “The Grail Mystery Takes A New Turn”.) This added something of a paradigm shift to the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, which seemed to be winding down after over 30 years. It added a new (Spanish) angle on the mystery and introduced a sinister-sounding new cult to the public, the La Sang death cult, an offshoot of a strict penitential movement (shades of Opus Dei). The associated ancient sect the Ebionites based in the Jewish Quarter of the Spanish city of Gironne south of Rennes le Chateau were said to be interested in pursuit of the "real grail" - a portal to other dimensions, using rituals based on the Kabbalah.
The penitential organisations are supposedly also the guardians of the new sought-after ritual cult objects the Arma Christi, the instruments of Crucifixion – hammer, nails, etc. The mystery even has a clues-in-the-painting aspect, with van Eyck’s panel painting The Just Judges. (The title is claimed to refer to James The Just, a judge who may have been Jesus’s intended successor.)
The 700th anniversary of the fall of the Knights Templar occurred in October, and while the Vatican did not provide the apology requested by the English neo-Templars (see Knights Templar Redux?) represented by Tim Acheson, it did announce at this time it was publishing an expensive facsimile edition of its own investigation, concluding that the Templars were not guilty of the charges brought by the French king in 1307.
Books on Rosslyn and its alleged Templar connections continued – some pro, some anti. According to my website stats, a feature I did on the area around Rosslyn also was in the top-ten most requested webpages across all my sites, even though it deals with the pre-Templar era. (See “Exploring Beyond Rosslyn - The Celtic Kingdom Of Gododdin”)
A Templar feature I did earlier this year based on some local-history research, On The Trail Of England’s Last Templar, also remained in the top ten. And an illustration I did for this feature, a detail scanned in from a mediaeval woodcut, showing a novitiate being given his monastic tonsure, has proved the most popular image I’ve ever put up, available via Google Images from another site that used it. (You’re welcome.)
The “Blake 250” celebrations came and went, still with no answer to the question I posed earlier (see Blake At 250 – The Unsolved Mystery) re where he got the inspiration for his poem now called Jerusalem, which alludes to the so-called Holy Legend before other known sources.
Normally the Holy Legend is linked to Cornwall’s early tin trade (Joseph of Arimatheia as a tin trader), which we explored this summer after I was able to make a return visit there (See “Revisiting Cornwall’s Legendary World Heritage Coast.” ).
An unexpected tie-in to the Holy Legend appeared with an archaeologist’s claim an old description of Stonehenge was really based on a lost description by Greek explorer Pytheas, reinforcing an argument for Christianity arriving in England via the classical ‘tin-trade’ route. (See “Pytheas And The Lost City Of Apollo” ).
I suppose we should conclude with a note about Dan Brown, as his work has done so much to get people interested in the field. His claim the background to his novel TDVC is factual may not be right, but it gets people reading nonfiction books, which hopefully gets them thinking for themselves.
Not a word of Dan Brown’s projected TDVC sequel was submitted to the publishers, so publication had to be pushed back to next year. The only news is it may not be called The Solomon Key after all, which will dismay all the writers and publishers who have been putting out books with title like A Guide To The Solomon Key. Supposedly it concerns how 18th-C Freemasons set up America and Washington DC on a Masonic plan.
Brown did announce he was collaborating on a book with an ex R-C Archbishop from Zambia, about exorcism. At first glance, this seemed a way of mending fences with churchgoing readers for next time. But it turned out ex-Archbishop Milingo is something of a renegade, calling for the Pope to allow married priests after being disciplined for marrying a Korean bride selected for him by Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed Korean messiah who heads the Unification Church, which Milingo had joined. He also claimed the Catholic Church ‘has devil worshippers in it.’
Despite the non-appearance of a “DVC-2” book, a followup “Robert Langdon” film was announced by Sony, again starring Tom Hanks and his trendy-but-ageing-academic mullet haircut. This is not to be a new screen story, but was advertised as a “prequel.” (See “The Da Vinci Code Sequel, Or Prequel”) This is to based on Angels & Demons, an earlier Brown thriller in what is called the “Vatican conspiracy” subgenre, except here the Vatican is the victim of a bomb conspiracy which can only be prevented by running a course of clues (shades of Die Hard II). The DVC film box-office by this time had proved to be mainly non-domestic, with $540.7 million in overseas revenues outweighing a domestic take of $217.5 million. However this too was put on hold when in November the Writers Guild Of America announced impending strike action (ongoing as I write). Apparently the script needed a lot more work - which I can well believe. §

Knights Templar Redux?

The mass roundup of the Knights Templar and seizing of their property happened exactly 700 years ago today, on October 13th, 1307 – to some, the original unlucky Friday the 13th. It may not seem that long, for the Templars are usually characterised by modern writers as having survived - as a secret order guarding the secret of the Grail, perhaps evolving into the Freemasons (which has a Templar degree). The ghost of this officially long-defunct order seems in fact to be getting stronger, as if we are witnessing the Order being reborn - growing in strength again, like something out of an MR James ghost story, becoming ever more manifest. Perhaps “Templar redux” would be a better way of putting it. 'Redux', from the Latin reducere is defined as meaning 'brought back, revived or restored' - though the root meaning is from the same words found in dux, leader, and education, literally a “leading out.” This is a phenomenon I’ve noticed growing over the past several years, while investigating a ghostly Templar 'survival' mystery local to my home ground here on the south coast of England. Interestingly, the photo [below], of the 1900s grave-find of a large, well-built “warrior“ at Christchurch Priory, of the local grave-find of this possible ‘last English Templar’ was sold as a postcard, I was told, exactly a century ago, in 1907 – the previous, or 600th , such Templar-downfall anniversary. (The reality inevitably proved a bit more complicated when I investigated. See my earlier blog post ‘Here Lies England’s Last Templar?’ and the linked illustrated feature I put together on my researches, On The Trail Of England’s Last Templar.)
To commemorate the 700th anniversary of the Templars’ downfall, the Vatican is releasing, on the 25th, the documents regarding the findings of its own investigation of the time into the accusations of blasphemy, perversion, and so on, made by the king of France. The Vatican says it hopes the issue of its manuscript facsimile edition of Processus Contra Templarios will correct many of the myths about the Templars. Reportedly, the document absolved the Templars of heresy, but it was never promulgated due to pressure from the much-feared king of France. (Although this will not be generally accessible, this month the online library Project Gutenberg also released, in 2 volumes, free downloadable versions of the standard account used by historians of the French Templar trials, edited by Jules Michelet in 1841, Le procès des Templiers, or “Trial Of The Templars”. (Click to download Volume I and Volume II). Note that although the title is in French, the text is in Latin, reducing the possibility for the text being mangled or censored during translation into French.)
The newspaper coverage of the anniversary naturally focuses on this Vatican press release about their upcoming book, but ignores the odd back story to this, dating from November 2004. At that time, the national press reported the Vatican had received a demand for an apology to be made in time for the 700th anniversary of the Templars’ mass arrest, “for the torture and murder of our leadership”. This demand was sent from a PO Box in Hertford (just outside London), from a Templar "Council of Chaplains” who claimed to be acting “for and on behalf of “the Grand Master of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon Grand Preceptory.” This uses the original historic full formal name of the Templars, as opposed to various neo-Templar groups, which use variants. (These advertise for members on the web, and in the sort of magazines which also advertise ceremonial swords, like Fortean Times.)
The letter implied a more official approach to bring back the original Order. This may have alarmed the Vatican, for they reacted, first by making official enquiries about the group and then contacting them directly. The Times’ Religion Correspondent Ruth Gledhill reported the Vatican was giving ‘serious consideration’ to an apology. (The Hertford Templars may have been encouraged in their plan by the fact there had already been Papal apologies for the Inquisition, the Crusades, anti-Semitism, the persecution of Galileo, etc.) The local paper, the Hertford Mercury, suddenly found its articles being read all round the world. The press identified, as the Templar contact person, Tim Acheson, described by the Mercury as ‘Templar Tim Acheson, who is descended from the Scottish Acheson family that has established Templar links’ and who had grown up in the local manorial hall said to be linked to Templar tunnels. Soon it was claimed there was a maze of tunnels around Hertford Castle, some being sealed off since their use as Cold War official shelters. Acheson also claimed, "Hertford's labyrinth could in fact provide the final proof that the Templars disappeared underground - both literally and metaphorically." He suggested the Holy Grail might be hidden down there.
It was the mention of secret Templar tunnels, with its sacred-treasure-hunt undertones, that kept the story going in the press. Hertford is not far from Temple Dinsley, the English Templars’ key preceptory, and there is speculation this was where any surviving English Templar treasures would be buried. The preceptory itself is long gone, but there have been hopes of discovering some nearby site like Royston Cave, an underground cell under a crossroads, where “Templar” graffiti-style sketches had been found. Much of the tunnel speculation came from the local newspaper-run online forum.
One forum member who kept posting about tunnels was ‘TVA’, who was soon accused of being the same person as Tim V Acheson, trying to stir up interest, which he denied. Acheson said he had a twin brother, Ben, who was also quoted in the press, but forum posters said it was funny how you never saw “the Templar twins” together. TVA was also accused of being the same shadowy figure who acted as intermediary to set up an interview, for Sky One’s Conspiracy series, with a member of the Hertford branch of the Illuminati. (In the event, the Iluminati spokesman got “cold feet” and never appeared on air). TVA denied this but had posted inside information about the making of the programme. Acheson listed himself as a journalist and independent researcher, writing for an online ‘conspiracy-news’ publication called The Insider. (Its onsite metatags describe it as about “Conspiracy Theory News: New World Order, Conspiracy Theories, News, Government, Secret Societies, Freemasons, Extraterrestrials, War... News and reports on serious current Conspiracy Theories, including the New World Order, Freemasons, extraterrestrials, religion, and secret societies“). A whois lookup on the Insider.org web domain shows it registered to Tim Acheson, of United Lodge, Ware (the adjoining town to Hertford). His posts evidently quoted his own Insider articles as news. Fortean Times magazine also did a feature on Acheson and the tunnels, with a photo showing him standing guard with a ceremonial sword and white gloves, in the manner of a “tyler” who stands outside Masonic ceremonies. (Later, the editor posted a comment online saying “I do hope this doesn't come back to bite us on the ass.")
The local Templars were evidently looking for lost treasure, and there was more press coverage when they were refused permission by a local landowner to dig, the letter of refusal somehow finding its way into the press. There were also veiled threats flying around regarding “outsiders” exploring the tunnels, which Ben Acheson claimed were being used for secret meetings by local Templars and Illuminati (described here as “a shadowy and powerful group said to be bent on world domination and boasting President George W Bush among its members”. The Illuminati are of course the villains in The Da Vinci Code followup film now being made, Angels And Demons, where they enact revenge on the Vatican. Like the Neo-Templars, the Illuminati have their own websites, which reported the Hertford tunnels mystery, cf here.) When members of the organisation Subterranea Britannica, described as ‘archaeologists, geologists and historians based at the University of London’, proposed exploring the tunnels, there was (to quote the Mercury) ‘a threat from a sinister secret society based in Hertford, which warned people not to delve deeper into the town’s subterranean secrets’. One threat posted on the online forum by ‘Retiarius’ (a Latin name for a type of gladiator) said “Those responsible had no business publicising any of the Templar tunnels, disused or otherwise.” Another said “Hertfordshire Mercury Explorers: UPON THE EARTH/ IS FOR THE LIVING / BELOW THE EARTH / IS FOR THE DEAD / DO NOT GO UNDERGROUND / IT IS DANGEROUS”. Commented the Mercury, “the message sent a shiver through the spine of Templar twins Ben and Tim Acheson, who exposed the secret tunnels to the Mercury. But Ben said: “As long as we’re responding to emails and calls, and unless there is blood on my sword, or my brother’s sword, I think you can safely assume that we have not been ‘dealt with’ yet.” It was suggested parts of the tunnel network were booby-trapped, as if it were some Nazi lair in the ruins of 1945 Germany. In fact a connection with the Nazis was suggested: Acheson said he and Ben were grandsons of an MI5 man who went into Hitler’s bunker and recovered certain secret documents.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who senses all this is building up to something, but what exactly? A book publicizing the finding of the long-lost Holy Grail under Hertford Castle? A ‘coming out’ of the original Templar order after 700 years underground?

Here Lies England’s Last Templar?

Today, the standard explanation (reproduced in The Da Vinci Code) why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky is that this was the date the Knights Templar were rounded up with papal authorisation in 1307, tortured into confessing heresy and blasphemy, their unrepentant leaders killed by various means. There is a related alternative explanation to do with Judas being the 13th disciple and Christ being arrested on a Friday, setting up parallels with the Templars’ last leader, Jacques de Molay, as ‘the Second Messiah’, the argument being made that his torture consisted of being crucified to mock the fact he had said his Order could absolve sins. (Knight & Lomas’s 1998 book The Second Messiah: Templars, The Turin Shroud And The Great Secret Of Freemasonry also argues the Turin Shroud is an artefact of this, preserved by family friends.) Though the fatal roundup occurred in October of 1307, this year the day-date combination of Friday the 13th falls now, at the end of Easter week. This year is the 700th anniversary of the Templars’ downfall, and so this seems as good a time as any to look at an event that has achieved ‘mythic’ status in more ways than one.
Books on the Templars tend to refer to Jacques de Molay as ‘the last Templar’ – indeed there are at least two books with that as a title. The idea is the Order died with him when he was executed after 7 years captivity, in 1314. He had been kept alive for interrogation purposes, so that he could make a public endorsement of the confession he had made under torture. (Instead he retracted his confession, causing him to be at once roasted alive.) Many other Templars of course did not last that long, the effects of torture shortening their lives. Other were left maimed or crippled, in no shape to carry on the Order in disguise. Some are recorded as having died prematurely after their mistreatment, such as the head of the English order, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Recent books insist some escaped to fight their enemies, but there’s no record of any named Templars doing so – the ‘survival hypothesis’ seems a back-formation to support the Roslyn-as-Templar-chapel scenario. Now, a case study in English local history has come up with a named and historically attested Templar who seems to have survived until around 1350, when he was buried in an unusual tomb [see photo]. As it’s an even more complicated story than usual for this subject area, I’ve covered it on a separate page:
‘On The Trail Of England’s Last Templar’ [read feature]