Knights templar

[Marcus Caelius]

If a secret is a secret, how do you know that the secret exists???

 

If it's a Government secret, everybody knows that it exists.

[caldrail]

The bigger question to my mind is just what other "lost" documents from Medieval history (and possibly Antiquity) are conveniently concealed within the Vatican archive, just waiting for some Pope to "discover" them when the time is right.

 

Maybe we need to send in UN inspectors.

 

You honestly think they'd find anything? Not that it matters, America and Britain would send in troops anyway to keep the peace between seperatist archivists and hopefully do a deal on vatican oil

[Gladius Hispaniensis]

The Knights Templar was a religious military order like others in the medieval world. It all stems from Pope Urban II, who received a letter in 1097 from Emperor Alexius of Byzantium asking for some military help against the turks who had invaded section s of the eastern empire and occupied jerusalem

Caldrail, sorry for the off-topic comment but Jerusalem was actually occupied by the Fatimid Arabs during the First Crusade, not by the Turks. It is amazing how often this little bit of data gets overlooked during discussions of that era.

It is interesting that the turks did not persecute christians at this time, but having a christian site occupied by saracens of a heathen faith was too much

Are you sure about that? The Pope used a lot of persecution horror stories from Christian pilgrims in order to whip up support for his pet project. Even granted the possibility of exaggeration there, I wouldn't cavalierly dismiss the possibility that there was some persecution. The Fatimids on the whole were very tolerant (except for one phase in their history) but the Turks were rather new to the Islamic faith and had also relatively recently undergone a transition from a crude, nomadic life. I would be willing to entertain the possibility of over-zealous Turks mistreating Christian pilgrims, even if, as I said before, the latter may be using a lot of embellishment and exaggeration.

[caldrail]

Its my understanding that prior to the first crusade, the christians and non-christians got along perfectly well. There's a remanant of this still existing. There's a christian church in Jerusalem whose caretakers are a moslem family who retain this job by tradition.

 

I might not have been absolutely correct, but again, its my understanding that there were turks in Jerusalem at that time (friendly ones too).

 

What caused all the upset was that Emperor Alexius of Byzantium was having trouble with turks on his borders. He wrote a letter to the pope (Urban II or Gregory, but both had a hand in what happened) asking for military assistance. The Popes of this time were busy creating a pan-european christian superstate. They had sidelined and excommunicated national leaders to this end, and the religious hold over common people in the late eleventh century was frightening. Now the pope decided that it would be a good thing, having been given this excuse by Alexius, to call for a crusade to free Jerusalem from non-christian domination (if indeed that was actually happening). Entire villages upped sticks and migrated east. The three main leaders of the first crusade had more worldly ideas about what to achieve in the holy lands, they in turn were using the pope as an excuse for grabbing wealth and land, plus the glory of leading the campaign to free the holy city. I'm not aware of any anti-christian activity in the holy lands at that time, although there would be (understandably given the atrocious behaviour of the crusaders).