The history of the Templars begins with their formation in Jerusalem in 1119 and ends with their destruction two centuries later in France. But in another sense it goes back three thousand years to the Ophel Hill and continues into the future. The secrecy of the Templars, their hybrid nature as monks with swords, the exotic worlds that they encompassed, their romance and sudden fall, and the mysteries left unanswered by the disappearance of their archives, have enlarged them in the popular imagination where they survive and flourish. Powerful associations with such places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple Mount have extended the spiritual dimensions of the order and added layers of history, legend and myth. Romantics and Freemasons, charlatans and lunatics, radicals and reactionaries, Christians, Jews and Muslims, have all contributed to the story.
Just as the search for holy relics in the Middle Ages turned up the most unlikely objects in the most convenient places, so each new pseudo-history or fanciful novel follows the money and adds new places, events and notions to the myth-so that Scotland and the French Revolution are already well established as playing a part, and America is being developed. An imminent leap from Rosslyn to Washington DC via Rhode Island, Salt Lake City and New Haven would not be surprising.
In Umberto Fee’s Foucault’s Pendulum some publisher’s editors are thinking up a new series of books to appeal to academics, cultists and conspiracy theorists, something ‘in these dark times to offer someone a faith, a glimpse into the beyond’, and make a little money. One suggests that they take a few dozen notions and feed them into a computer, ‘for example, the Templars fled to Scotland, ortho Corpus Hermeticum arrived in Florence in 1460’, and add ‘a few connective phrases like “It’s obvious that” and “This proves that’”. And so they begin at random: ‘Joseph of Arimathea carries the Grail into France’ ‘According to Templar Tradition, Godefroy de Bouillon founded the Grand Priory of Zion in Jerusalem’ ‘Debussy was a Rosicrucian’ ‘Minnie Mouse is Mickey’s fiancee’. No! They must not overdo it, an editor warns, but the first replies, ‘We must overdo it. If we admit that in the whole universe there is even a single fact that does not reveal a mystery, then we violate hermetic thought.’ ‘That’s true’, says another. ‘Minnie’s in. And, if you’ll allow me. I’ll add a fundamental axiom: The Templars have something to do with everything.’
World History
