Iconoclasm: The Religious Problem with Figurative Art

The religious ban on figurative art starts with the Aten cult in Ancient Egypt. The old gods were swept away by the Pharaoh Akhenaten's radical decree. A monotheistic cult was introduced, the deity of which could only be symbolized by the sun disk- sometimes with radiating rays terminating with human hands. Images of other gods were destroyed during this period, one of the earliest known examples of iconoclasm. The cult of Aten was soon repudiated, and for a long time was totally forgotten. The pagan gods of Egypt would ultimately have their images effaced by iconoclastic followers of another monotheistic deity, the God of Abraham. This same God was supposed to have blighted Egypt with plagues in order to secure the release of his Chosen People, at the time of Moses. In the course of the Exodus from Egypt to the promise land, God delivered instructions to Moses, face to face, we are told, making it clear, among other things, that he did not wish to be given a face.

The Old Testament records two quite different versions of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue, the first found at Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, and the second at Exodus 34, 11-27. Both versions, however, prioritize a ban on idols and graven images. The Deuteronomy version insists that the chosen people are forbidden to make 'any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth.' This was intended primarily as a stricture against idolatry (it goes on to forbid bowing down to these images) but it could be taken as forbidding any kind of figurative art in any context. Other parts of the Torah require the chosen people to impose their laws on their servants and travellers in their midst, and threaten death by stoning to those who break the commandments.

The Old Testament refers to there being cherubim figures on the Ark (wherein the ten commandments were kept). It also refers to Moses elevating a bronze serpent as a precaution against snake bites (Numbers 21:7-9) and later mentions bull figures in the Temple of Solomon. These incongruities aside, however, ancient Judaism seems to have retained a horror of idolatry and to have identified figurative art closely with this perceived sin. The Jewish King Hezekiah, indeed, inaugurated Iconoclasm within his domain and is credited with destroying the brazen serpent.

The New Testament does not repeat the ban on images. (According to Jesus, the only commandments were to love God and to love one's neighbour). The old attitude against images seems to have been passed to early Christianity, however. Dogmatic opposition to idolatry and refusal to partake in state-sponsored cults is a recurring theme in the early Christian story, and for centuries there is an absence of representative Christian art. (Jesus was originally represented by the Chi-Rho monogram- XP- or by the abstracted fish symbol). St Paul's attack on the cult of Artemis at Ephesus is recorded in the New Testament. There, makers of figures of the goddess, whose trade depended on pilgrims to the goddess's shrine, stood to lose out if Paul's condemnation of the practice gained headway, and rioted against the new preaching. A desire for images of the divine eventually overcame strict observance of scripture. In time it would become quite usual for Christian pilgrims to buy souvenir figures of the Christian saints and martyrs they came to revere at various shrines. Churches would be filled with images and carvings of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and other saints, even of God the Father, represented as an old man with a white beard, either as part of the Holy Trinity or in the context of the creation. Saints were sometime portrayed in the act of destroying pagan idols (and with not a hint of irony).

There were two major internal reactions against religious art in Christian history leading to widespread destruction. The first occurred in the Eastern Christian empire of Byzantium. The use of painted icons had become an important part or religious devotion in Eastern Orthodoxy (only three-dimensional forms were shunned). The practice of icon veneration came to be condemned in the aftermath of Islamic military victories over the Christian empire. The loss of Egypt, Syria and the Holy Land prompted much soul-searching in the Byzantine Empire, which was reduced to the Balkans and parts of what-is-now Turkey. It was observed that God seemed to favour the Muslims, whose faith made religious images taboo. Emperor Leo III forbade religious pictures in AD726, ushering in the age of Byzantine iconoclasm. There were various other theological arguments relating to to the merits or otherwise of representing Jesus. Feelings ran high on either sides of the divide. Violence was done both to those who destroyed icons and who persisted in creating them. The use and honouring of icons was justified and the practice was reaffirmed in AD 787 at the second council of Nicaea. Since then figurative art has retained a prominent place in Eastern Orthodoxy. Much of it, however, was destroyed or obliterated after the Muslim Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine churches were converted into mosques.

In Western Christendom, meanwhile, religious art was consistently upheld and promoted by the Roman Church. Paintings, statues, stained glass windows and decorative reliquaries proliferated. Pope Gregory the Great justified religious images as 'books for the illiterate', but it wasn't long before these images became more than instructive material, turning into objects of devotion in their own right. The practice was criticised throughout the middle ages, for example by heretical groups such as the Cathars and Lollards, but there wasn't widespread destruction of religious artworks until the Protestant Reformation.

Religious art also became a source of contention during the Crusades. The crusaders (sometimes with Byzantine co-operation) produced much sacred imagery. Jewish visitors to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron considered these pictures profane intrusions. Saladin, on re-conquest of Jerusalem, took a similar view, and made a point of purging the Christian imagery that had been introduced to the mosques on Temple Mount, when he restored them to Islam. Crosses were torn down and statues smashed. The Christian cause made headway in the Iberian Peninsula as it waned in the East. As former Churches were stripped bare and turned into Mosques in Palestine, Greece and Cyprus, former Mosques in southern Spain were filled with sanguinary crucifixes and richly becrowned Madonnas.

The iconoclastic process began in England with the break from Rome under Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. Here Catholicism became a persecuted and hunted faith. Monuments such as the shrine of St Thomas Becket were smashed. Protestantism was more vigorously enforced during the reign of Edward VI, when many churches were stripped of images by Royal decree. There was a brief reversal of the situation under Mary I, which came to a halt with the accession of Elizabeth I. The royal arms was to take pride of place in churches where once carved crucifixes on rood screens and medieval doom murals had presided. Religious art made another brief come-back with the reforms under Charles I and Archbishop Laud, but was stamped out again under Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. Zealous Parliamentarian commissions toured the counties obliterating any remaining Catholic images in the parish churches.

The Church of England took a softer line on the matter from the Restoration period, and statues of saints made a prominent comeback on the Wren's St Paul's Cathedral, rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666. 'Low Church' Anglicans and dissenting protestants continued to take a dim view of religious imagery. The 'High Church' Oxford Movement, the Catholic emancipation and the Gothic revival of the 19th century, however, saw the production of much new figurative religious art.

In Europe, there was widespread iconoclasm in the Protestant North, where monasteries, saintly cults and pilgrimages were likewise suppressed. The Catholic counter-reformation, however, affirmed the place of sacred art and the veneration of the saints. The Council of Trent affirmed the validity of images. Being mere representations of holy individuals, the devotion being paid to the image was actually being paid to the saint in question. The Council, however, ruled that no fripperies or impious details should be included in paintings, nor should there be 'beauty exciting to lust'. A little later the Italian artist Paolo Veronese had a run in with the Inquisition when his painting of the Last Supper failed to conform to the sober requirements. Spanish conquests in the New World, meanwhile, brought those lands into the Catholic fold. The bloodthirsty gods of the Aztecs, Maya and Incas were done away with, their statues destroyed and Catholic churches raised over their pyramid temples, sharing the fate of the pagan Gods of Egypt, Greece and Rome.

There is also a secular tradition of attacking religious art, especially in places where the religion in question came to be politically associated with a reactionary regime overthrown in a violent revolution. Examples of this are found in the history of France, Russia, Spain and China, although in most case the roots of religion held firm. In Western Europe a primarily secular mindset prevails, coupled with an appreciation of religious art, still culturally relevant and cherished although very often divorced from its original devotional context.

In all three Abrahamic traditions there has been a tension concerning the legitimacy of the use of figurative religious art. In some cases an avoidance of the representational has led to the development of beautiful and abstract forms of decoration, such as the intricate designs and ornate calligraphy adorning many Islamic manuscripts. The intolerance of idolatry encouraged by scripture, however, has often led the religious to acts of vandalism, presuming the right not only to destroy their own heritage but that of other cultures. Islam began with iconoclasm, the purging of the Ka'ba in Mecca of all but the black stone. Religious iconoclasm has most recently been associated with Taliban hard-liners in Afghanistan, who destroyed the giant rock carvings of Buddha that had stood for 1800 years in Bamiyan. This was part of a general purge of pre-Islamic artefacts. It is hard to grasp the mentality of people who would take torches or sledgehammers or explosives to unique and beautiful works of art. Over the centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims have done this very thing believing it to be the will of God. The same God, that is to say, as the art was often created to honour in the first place.

St George at Little Kimble.

Today is a nice day and it is St George's Day, England's patron saint. In All-Saints Little Kimble near here there are some medieval wall paintings, including an archetypal St George, looking just like a crusader knight. In the background is the princess whom George chivalrously rescued from the dragon, according to the tale which is recounted in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend includes the detail of the lottery held to determine which maiden would be the dragon's next sacrifice).

The paintings in Little Kimble date back to the early fourteenth century. The princess behind George holds a thread, a possible reference to the portion of the story account in which after George's victory the tamed dragon is lead through the streets by the princess's girdle (before meeting an end that would not satisfy modern conservationists).

It is strange how St George took on the image of a crusader, or more specifically a Templar, with his white mantle and red cross. Even after the suppression amid spurious accusations the image clearly maintained pious and heroic overtones. The semi-mythical saint was originally more famous in the Byzantine East, and grew in popularity as a result of the Crusades. (George was originally supposed to be a Roman soldier and Christian martyr, born in Lydda in the Holy Land.) Little Kimble Church is slightly later than the era of the Templars, yet bears an architectural similarity to the Order's church at Temple, Midlothian, far to the north, which is now ruinous.

The Hellfire Caves, West Wycombe

I went to the Dashwood Mausoleum and the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe a couple of weeks ago. The weather was a bit stormy at the time, so it was more than usually atmospheric, if rather slippery on the way up to the monument. The hexagonal Dashwood Mausoleum and the Golden-Ball topped church stand on the hill overlooking West Wycombe Park. Further down, another folly, resembling the facade of an abbey, rises above the entrance to the caves, which wind into the hill.

Due to the inclement weather, I had the whole place to myself. My dog insisted on coming, which was unfortunate for him as he had to wait tied up outside the caves, (unfortunate also for the back of the car). The caves in question were once the meeting the notorious Hellfire Club. They consist of deep artificial passages with Gothic arches, and various chambers and cells carved out of the chalky rock. Very spooky, echoing to the crunch of one's footsteps on the gravelly floor, sending the imagination into overdrive about the dark doings that may have gone on there during the heyday of Hellfire Club in the mid eighteenth-century. The Club was a founded by the roguish aristocrat Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781). At its meetings, the 'great and good', including members of the government of the day, indulged in debauchery, tomfoolery and blasphemous ritual, along with local wenches.

The Club mockingly styled itself after a religious Order. Its other titles were the Friars of St Francis of Wycombe (1708-1781), the Monks of Medmenham and the Order of the Knights of West Wycombe. The females who attended were called nuns, but vows of chastity were hardly the order of the day. The club met first in a former Cistercian abbey at Medmenham and then in the caves. It is said Dashwood he has the caves dug out in order to provide work for unemployed tenants. This, however, strikes me as an attempt, on the part of more recent Dashwoods, to put a positive gloss on his motives of their notorious ancestor. Sir Francis was a prankster and apparently a dabbler in the occult. When in Rome, he reputedly sprang on the faithful at prayer in the darkened Sistine Chapel, during the Good Friday Mass, whipping left and right. He was encouraged to continue on his travels without delay. His other grand tours took him to Turkey and Russia, making a splash everywhere he went. (He retained a taste for Turkish costumes).


The club adopted from Francois Rabelais' Thelema the motto Fay ce que voudras (Do what thou will), which would become also the motto of Aleister Crowley. Sir Francis Dashwood was also an MP and many powerful men were part of the club. He was also said to have been a Jacobite, and an initiate of Rosicrucianism and of Freemasonry. The Hellfire club was primarily an excuse for theatrical tomfoolery and possibly blackmail, but it may also have absorbed elements of the Templarist mysticism that was starting to surround Masonic circles in Europe. (Coincidentally the medieval Templars had possessed land at Wycombe.)

Another prominent member of the secret society was the Earl of Sandwich, who apparently received a shock when another member unleashed a baboon at him, which the earl mistook for the actual Devil, come to claim his soul. The artist Hogarth was also said to be involved, as was the political radical John Wilkes. Even Benjamin Franklin dropped by... Naturally there is a lot of talk about the caves being associated with the occult and the supernatural, but I didn't see any ghosts when I was there. The passages culminate in a chamber called the Inner Temple, reached after crossing the River Styx, now containing some slightly dodgy modern waxworks of Dashwood and his carousing cohorts.

Baghras Castle

The castle of Baghras in what is now South Eastern Turkey, was one of the first major fortresses donated to the Templars in the Latin East. They renamed it Castle Gaston and greatly extended it. It lay within the Crusader principality of Antioch, in the mountainous Amanus Marches. It guarded the strategic Belen Pass, on the road between Aleppo and Antioch and the ports of Alexandretta and Port Bonne. The castle was built on a high, rocky crag, and from there the Templars could control the border with Armenian Cilicia.
The Templars lost the castle to Saladin in 1188, and it was subsequently occupied by Armenian King Leo. The Templars took it back in about 1216, in alliance with Bohemond IV of Antioch, though it seems the Hospitallers sided with the Armenians against the Templars at this time. In the 1230s, the Templar garrison withstood a siege by the Muslim army of Aleppo.
The Catalan Rule of the Templars (a set or military regulations) contains various case studies for how breaches of Templar discipline have been dealt with. One of these accounts (in clause 180) sheds light on how Baghras was finally lost to the Mameluks (a Muslim warrior caste, based in Egypt, who were called 'Islam's Templars' by one Arab chronicler).

The loss of Baghras happened soon after the fall of Antioch to the Mameluk Sultan Baybars in 1268. When the Mameluks were marching on the northern Principality, the Templar Brother Geraut de Saucet, Preceptor of Antioch, based in Baghras, knew that the castle had inadequate provisions to make much of a defence. He appealed to Thomas Berard, the Grand Master, 'for the love of God to send supplies and reinforcements'. No reply was forthcoming and the garrison grew nervous about the prospect of encountering Baybars in their parlous state. One of them, Gins de Belin, turned traitor. He mounted his horse while the others were eating and rode to deliver the castle keys to the Sultan. Meanwhile the rest of the garrison decided that they could not defend the castle and so decided to destroy its contents before withdrawing to la Roche Guillaume, farther north. This as it happened was exactly what the Grand Master issue orders for them to do, but they went ahead with the evacuation before the orders arrived. Subsequently the garrison were charged at Chapter with abandoning the caste without permission. Geraut de Saucet and his brethren faced expulsion from the Order, but argued that as they had correctly anticipated the Grand Master’s command, they should escape punishment. (If they had waited for the order to come they might have died waiting.) The Chapter at Acre decided that under the circumstances the deserters of Baghras should be allowed to retain their Templar mantles.
The ruins of Baghras may still be seen. A steep winding track leads up to the massive walls of the lower bailey. There is a gaping hole in the courtyard resulting from the collapse of part of the ceiling of the great vaulted undercroft.



A Turkish friend of mine, a distinguished surgeon, visited Baghras in August 2008, and I am in his debt for the photos included here. He was told by the local villagers that the Templars used slave labour in the construction of the castle. Evidently the knights are not well remembered. He also mentioned the presence of sinister tunnels leading below the ruins. Apparently not long ago some local boys were playing in the ruins ; two, aged aged 15 and 13, went into these tunnels and were never seen again.

'Two of them said to the other two that they will enter the tunnles. They all were in second floor. And they leaved from second floor. Two of them were in second floor still... then... they waited... but nobody came back. Then they went to village maybe their friends came back to village... but no... they were lost.'

'This story (the slave labour) was told to me by local villagers. I dont know more... but I saw deep tunnels, tunnel entrances... but not their exits. It was very terrible... There are 2 buildngs also one of them is a bath... villagers said me that soldiers in here dont permit to good foreign people before they get a good shower. But they said me that maybe this bath buildng was built by seljuks...not templars.'

William of Tyre, short bio.

William of Tyre (c. 1130 - c. 1185) (c) Gordon Napier, 2007

William of Tyre was a cleric and statesman in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. He also wrote one of the best-known chronicles of the crusades. Born in Jerusalem, he completed his education in Europe, studying theology in Paris, mathematics and classics in Orleans and law in Bologna. Returning to the Holy Land in 1165, William became canon of Acre, then archdeacon of Tyre, and soon became a courtier and diplomat for King Amalric I (r. 1162-74). He played a part in negotiating an alliance with Byzantium, which would lead to the preparation of combined military operations against Egypt.
William was appointed tutor to Baldwin, King Amalric’s only son (Baldwin IV, r. 1174-85). To his distress, he was the first to diagnose the prince’s leprosy, when Baldwin cut himself while playing and felt no pain. Meanwhile William rose to become chancellor of the kingdom and archbishop of Tyre. He attended the Third Lateran Council in 1179. However he lost out on becoming patriarch of Jerusalem, an honour that went to Heraclius, archbishop of Caesarea.
Still serving as chancellor and archbishop, William began writing a multi-volume chronicle, later called the History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea . For the early sections, he was indebted to earlier chroniclers . Influenced by Albert of Aachen, he made Peter the Hermit pivotal in the narrative. Despite William’s diplomatic involvement with Constantinople, meanwhile, he seldom demonstrated any great regard for the Byzantines, and labelled the Emperor Alexios I Comnenus a ‘false and disloyal Greek.’ The First Crusaders had triumphed without Byzantine assistance because God deemed the Greeks unworthy of the task of liberating the Holy Places. Even so William seems to have been pro-Byzantine when it came to the realpolitik of his day.
Predictably he had little good to say about his contemporary Heraclius. He was also critical of the Military Orders, recording the Templars’ killing of an Assassin envoy and ascribing base motives for it. He presented King Baldwin favourably, but criticized Guy de Lusignan, and expressed some foreboding for the kingdom, already overshadowed as it was by Saladin. William favoured Raymond of Tripoli in the political struggle then in process. Like Raymond, William knew Arabic, and additionally wrote a history of Islam, though this does not survive.
William continued in his ecclesiastical role, investing bishops and taking the funeral of William of Montferrat (the first husband of the princess Sibylla). He was succeeded as chancellor of Jerusalem by Peter, archdeacon of Lydda (mentioned in May 1185), and as archbishop by Joscius (first mentioned as archbishop of Tyre on 26 October 1156). Allegedly William was excommunicated by Heraclius towards the end of his life, and died while journeying to Rome to appeal. Later accounts have William being poisoned by Heraclius. It is mentioned that William died on 29 September, but there is no source for the year. Given that there is no evidence for him being removed from office during his lifetime, the year 1184 is a possibility, though 1185 is more usually given.


Bibliography
Edbury, P. W. & Rowe, J. G., William of Tyre: Historian of the Lain East (Cambridge, 1988)
Jotitschy, A. Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow, 2004)
Oldenberg, Z. The Crusades (New York, 1966)
Tyerman, C. The Invention of the Crusades (London, 1998)

Sojourn in Scotland (2006) part 2

Account of Aug. 2006 visit, part 2. After Rosslyn we returned to Abbotsford, situated on the banks of the river Tweed. It was built, or rather greatly extended and renamed, by the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott. Its exterior is a dramatic composition of towers and turrets. Some of the features of its interior, including musician angels on its ceilings, are based on carvings from Rosslyn Chapel. Abbotsford contains also a great library, and a collection of arms and armour, both medieval and Napoleonic. There are other quaint and curious objects, from the crucifix of Mary, Queen of Scots to a cast of the skull of Robert the Bruce. The house evokes Scott’s medieval novels, such as Ivanhoe, where the Templars feature as villains. Scott had a nostalgia for the age of Chivalry, as his eccentric house demonstrates.
A group of German tourists were being shown about the house by a passionate guide, but some of his enthusiasm seemed to be lost in translation. Scott was a popular writer, and also amassed a great library of his own, thousands of books on history and folklore surround his study. He does not seem to have esteemed the historical Knights Templar, perhaps being prejudiced against Catholic institutions (one volume I spotted on his shelves had an un-PC title something like ‘A History of Papist Treason’). Scott’s wife was a Protestant French Huguenot. Scott’s descendants later converted to Catholicism, curiously, and the house contains a quaint Catholic chapel with an altar showing Christ’s ancestry, stemming from a Jesse tree, and with a graceful statue of the Madonna behind it. Intriguingly, set into the house’s garden wall, among other antiquities, is part of a medieval grave slab with the stepped base of a Calvary cross. This design, as we have seen, was favoured by the Templars for their graves.

Finally that day we went to Melrose, famous for its Abbey. (Melrose is a pleasant and attractive town with decent pubs, and is a nice place to stay.) Melrose Abbey was one of the earliest Cistercian foundations in Scotland. It survives in magnificent ruins. Melrose was donated to the white monks by King David I, who also invited the Templars into the kingdom. (An older, Celtic Christian monastery of Melrose had existed nearby since c. 650, and was associated with St Cuthbert.) The first Cistercian brethren arrived from Rievaulx, Yorkshire, in 1136, and founded the new Melrose (the former one having fallen into obscurity). Waltheof, the King’s stepson, became one of the first Abbots. His body was reputed never to have decayed, and he was afterwards revered as a saint. Melrose, meanwhile, became the centre of an extensive estate.

Most of the standing ruins of the present Melrose Abbey postdate an attack on the Abbey by the soldiers of Richard II of England in about 1385. A contrite Richard sponsored the rebuilding work, which carried on for over a century. The decoration, is (in places) reminiscent of that of near-contemporary Rosslyn Chapel, but is executed with greater restraint and refinement. Melrose’s nave contained side chapels and two choirs, the monks choir nearest the Altar, and the screened off lay brethren’s choir behind. The Abbey is reputedly the burial place of the heart of King Robert the Bruce. Numerous grave slabs have also been found at Melrose, including some carved with the sword and elongated Calvary cross often associated with Templar burials. Other interesting features of the Abbey include more carvings of musician angels, and, rather unharmoniously, a gargoyle of a pig playing the bagpipes. Fittingly, that day, there was a pipe band competition on in the town, and while on top of the Abbey we were treated to the sight and sound of the massed bands parading past, through the town, up the hill. It was quintessentially Scottish.

The next day we went to Edinburgh. The Scott Memorial- that great Gothic rocket, was an impressive sight, as was the Castle, which has statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce flanking its gatehouse. Also of interest was the National Gallery of Scotland, with its many art treasures. These included a bevy of antique beauties, Titians’s Venus, Canova’s sublime Three Graces, Boticelli’s Madonna and Sargent’s Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. There was also a bust of the great man, Sir Walter Scott, and a handsome portrait of one of the Sinclair dynasty in military finery. There were also a series of paintings by Nicolas Poussin, an artist spuriously linked to the Priory of Sion/Holy Grail conspiracy. These included a Last Supper, and a scene of Mary Magdalene anointing Christ’s feet. The St John figure from the Last Supper did indeed look effeminate (much like the figure in Leonardo da Vinci’s better known take on the subject, but he was also identifiable in the same painting where Mary Magdalene was present in her own right, pouring cold water, perhaps, on the theory advanced by the likes of Lynn Picknett and Dan Brown. Still, these were engrossing and haunting works. In each a golden vessel featured, calling to mind the Grail.
Edinburgh had a vibrant air, the festival being on, and there being bohemian crowds milling about, as well as interesting stands and street entertainers. Particularly good were a band consisting of a bagpiper and three drummers, bashing and blasting out primal rhythms. We also walked down towards Hollyrood Palace and Abbey, unfortunately having to pass the new Scottish Parliament, which is a scar on the otherwise handsome face of the city, and which cannot be pulled down too soon.
We then returned to Melrose, finding a beautiful stretch of river nearby. The following day we set off south, and on the way to our respective homes, stopped at Hexham, Northumbria, to have a look at the Abbey, which gave a clue to what a ruin like Melrose or Whitby might have originally looked like. Hexham was originally a Benedictine monastery and then became an Augustinian Priory (the crypt dates to AD 674, testimony to the fact that Christianity had a long history in Britain while Islam was only coming into being in Arabia). The choir is primarily twelfth century (with a Victoian East End), while the transepts are thirteenth century work. The nave was rebuilt in 1908. Set into the walls are historic stones including fragments of apparently Templar grave slabs. One shows a shield with a Croix Pattée, above a broadsword. Another, a miniature grave slab like that at Rosslyn, carved with a cross with a stepped base, lay in a chantry aisle. (It was near a tomb carved with curious, dwarf-like and ghoulish figures. One was almost Aztec, with skulls carved at the sides of its head).

Also on show in Hexham Abbey is a luminous Anglo-Saxon chalice, probably excavated from a priestly grave, which again called to mind the Holy Grail. So in the end, in a modest way, this sojourn had started to feel something like a Grail quest. At various turns with strange regularity had appeared these Templar (or Templar-like) stones. The symbol of the stepped cross had meaning to the Templars- it was their marker, a sign both of death and of hope for salvation and resurrection.

Sojourn in Scotland (2006) part 1

Sojourn in Scotland:
A visit to some Templar and Medieval Locations in the Border Regions
By Gordon Napier, 2006

In June (2006) I returned to Temple Church, London, the circular-naved church at the centre of the headquarters of the Knights Templar in England, this time busier than usual on account of its having become, thanks to Dan Brown (and this year to Ron Howard), part of The Da Vinci Code trail. Living fairly near London, I have been privileged to have this site within easy reach. The Templars’ history in Britain began when the founder of the Order, Hugues de Payens, crossed the channel from Normandy where he had met Henry I, to raise support for the new brotherhood in England. Hugues had established the fraternity in Crusader Jerusalem, around a decade before, with the support of the Crusader King Baldwin II, and of the Latin Patriarch Warmund. Soon after coming to England, Hugues was invited north by David I of Scotland, and it was in Scotland, at a place called Balantradoch (Stead of the Warriors) that the Templars received one of their first properties in Europe. The year was 1127. I visited the site 879 years later.
Hugues had laid the foundations for the Order of the Temple in the British Isles where it would endure for two centuries, sending men, money and produce to support the defence of the Holy Land. The Templars become part of the landscape, as well as part of the political establishment. In England at least, the Templars were suppressed in 1307, Edward II having been compelled to move against the brethren by Pope Clement V (puppet of Philip the Fair, King of France). Scotland at the time was ruled by King Robert the Bruce. Robert was an excommunicant on account of having murdered a rival in a church. It is possible, many believe, that a quantity of refugee Templars- from Britain and perhaps from France- found sanctuary under Robert and supported his struggle for an independent Scotland. It is said that the Order may have survived in secret; that the Templars merged with or evolved into Freemasons and eventually deposited their treasure in Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian; or at least encoded their secret knowledge in the mysterious carvings covering the building. This is an idea I first came across over a decade ago, and though I since came to have doubts, I had also long desired to visit this chapel, to see if I could detect any Templar presence there, or glean some insight. If Rosslyn is a Templar building it is the last. As it happens, Rosslyn Chapel is a mere five miles from the ruined Templar church of what was the Order’s earliest Preceptory- that of Temple, formerly Balantradoch. If the stories are true then this stretch of countryside is where the Templars’ history in Europe came full circle.
In August 2006 the opportunity arose to visit this part of Scotland, and to spend some time exploring these sites, and a few other places that would also prove of interest and relevance to the story of the Templars, and perhaps of the Grail. I was accompanied by my father, who also takes an interest in matters historical. It happened that we crossed the border on August 19 as dawn was breaking, and the hills and evergreens were enveloped in a hazy golden light which added enchantment to that picturesque landscape.
At about six in the morning we passed the sign to Abbotsford, and decided to park up and have a look. Abbotsford appeared, a romantic sight, its towers and turrets set against the distant hills, pale purple in the morning light. Walter Scott, who built this place, seemed to have conjured something out of one of his romantic novels (he was indeed known as the Wizard of the North). We would return here later. The next destination, meanwhile, was the village of Temple (Balantradoch). The ruin of the Templar church is in a secluded spot. The best way to find it is to ask a bearded old local.
Balantradoch was the Templars’ first and most significant Preceptory in Scotland. It is situated near the River Esk, in a particularly lush spot. The river’s rushing waters can be heard through the trees from the ruined church that remains. Today, aside from the church, little remains of the once extensive Preceptory besides an archway in an adjacent field, near the village. The ruined church is atmospheric in its un-restored state. The church is oblong in plan with steep gabled ends with mullioned windows, now lacking glazing or a roof overhead. The stones seem to give off a plaintive air. Features within the ruin include a niche for a tomb effigy and a piscina. The graves surrounding indicate that the church continued to serve the village for many centuries after the suppression of the Order of the Temple, and it only fell into ruins in the nineteenth century when a new parish church was built nearby. Some of the graves around the ruin seem to contain Masonic symbols. The square and compass are visible on one close to the church. Others show the skull and crossbones, a memento mori (reminder of mortality).

The next stop was Roslin, and Rosslyn Chapel, where we arrived at about 7.30. Down what passed for the main street in the tiny village of Roslin, I noticed the gate of what was presumably the local Masonic Lodge, with the square and compass containing a letter ‘G’ silhouetted above it. The surrounding location was very pleasant and the Rosslyn Chapel itself seemed bigger than one might expect, although its modern, barn-like protective casing, the metal roof and the scaffolding surrounding the structure, rather diminishes it aesthetically. We arrived at the chapel just as some gentlemen, smartly suited in black, with red and white cloaks folded over their arms, some carrying swords, were sneaking out surreptitiously past some of the international tourists who had already arrived. A clergyman also passed by and down the hill, his black cope billowing out behind him like batman’s cape, as my father observed. Entering the chapel the air was still thick with the candle smoke from the ceremony recently performed by these neo-Templars.
Roslin has an air of enchantment about it, there is no denying. It feels something like a mini-Cathedral, its rich surfaces belying its relatively modest scale. The building style is highly ornate, almost grotto like. It is far removed from the Perpendicular style which was prevailing elsewhere in Britain and if anything resembles the Portuguese ‘Manueline’ style, which it slightly predates. (This rich style was preferred by the Order of Christ- the Templars successors in Portugal).

William St Clair, Lord of Roslin and Prince of Orkney, began building Rosslyn Chapel in 1446, as a collegiate chapel where retained priests would perform masses for the benefit of his soul. The chapel, dedicated to Saint Matthew, seems to be only one wing of an envisaged cruciform building, for unfinished transepts extend from the east wall. (It was hurriedly finished on a less ambitious scale by Oliver St Clair, William’s son, who evidently didn’t want to spend all his inheritance on it). It is believed that William St Clair employed foreign as well as local craftsmen on his chapel. The chapel has an unusual barrel vaulted roof and flying buttresses surround its exterior.
Knowing of its fame, one cannot help but gravitate towards one of the pillars, more ornate than the rest, that which has come to be called the Apprentice Pillar, and to be placed at the centre of so many conspiracy theories. In the same corner of the Chapel is the stairway leading down to the crypt or sacristy, where there are carvings of angels and of St Peter in the corbels and a skeleton with a scythe on a plinth (called the King of Terrors).

In the Chapel proper, the carvings include musician angels, an upside down angel bound in rope (Lucifer falling from heaven, perhaps), numerous ‘Green Man’ heads, a horned Moses, a knight with an apparent passenger on his horse (which some see as a version of the Templars’ two riders motif) dragons and a devil. I also noticed a unique carving of a skull with foliage growing from its mouth, a green-man skull. My father also spotted what looked like an eye staring down from the foliage carved above the Lady Chapel. Rosslyn may contain secrets and mysteries but it is unclear whether it ever had anything to do with the historical Knights Templar, who were suppressed 136 years before the chapel was founded.
There is a small grave slab in Rosslyn carved with the name ‘William de St Cler’. Adjacent to the name is a floriated cross with a long stem and a stepped base, and on the other side is a sword. Below is a more modern inscription ‘William de St. Clair Knight Templar’. The grave is of a type used by the Templars but there is nothing to say that the William St Clair in question (he of 1297-1330) was affiliated with the Order. The slab evidently predates the building that houses it.
On the exterior of the building, near the lower frame of the window on the south west corner, is a carving claimed by some to resemble the First Degree ritual of Freemasonry. There are two figures, the one behind appearing to hold the end of a noose around the other’s neck. Some have discerned a blindfold, too, but the carving is really too eroded to tell. The chapel suffered somewhat during the Reformation and the Civil War, and for a time lay derelict. It was later restored as a place of worship. It then suffered from weathering, tampering, and shoddy restoration, for example in the 1950s when the interior was painted with a grey concrete paste, which was supposed to help protect the carvings. All it did, in fact, was to obscure their fine details, and to trap moisture in the stones- which subsequently became saturated and rotten. The ‘barn’ is a modern attempt to allow the chapel to dry out. The consolation is that it allows visitors to walk around a platform and to get a closer look at the upper parts of the chapel, as well as a better view of the verdant and lovely surrounding area. One can also see where certain parts of the chapel were bodged, when it was rushed to be completed. This is also apparent on the inside, in the Lady Chapel behind the altar, where the arches do not meet the wall properly but hang in space. From a structural standpoint this makes no sense, and can only be a mistake- the end wall seems to be a foot too far out! Elaborate stone projections have been put in place to mask the misaligned springing points.

The final unexpected sight at Rosslyn was a Italian bishop in his black and purple finery. He seemed to be in the company of some of the neo-Templars spotted previously. The specialist guide with the group including the (now dressed-down) Templars was heard to say something about the ‘genaeology of Christ’, while the official guide avoided committing himself to any theory of the speculative bloodline of Chist/Holy Grail/Templar kind, thankfully. The shop, meanwhile, was fully stocked with books exploiting the Da Vinci Code bandwagon.

The Turin Shroud and the Templars

Revision of an earlier article. 

 Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Christ three days after the Crucifixion. According to John's gospel, she found the stone removed from the tomb's entrance, and rushed to fetch the disciples Peter and John. So they ran both together: and that other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulcher. And he stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloth lying, yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen cloth lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in that other disciple… and he saw and believed. John, 20, 4 to 8. 

 A shroud relic has been housed in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, since 1578. It has long been venerated as the burial cloth of Christ. It appears to be imprinted with his image, bearing the marks of torture and crucifixion. To many the shroud is a disturbing and fascinating object, with an air of mystery that captures the imagination. But could the shroud have genuinely supernatural origins? Could some charge of divine energy have burnt this image onto the material, at the moment of Christ's Resurrection? Did the disciples find this relic in the empty tomb, and pass it down to be held in reverence through the ages? In 1988, with the Church's permission, a small sample of the Turin Shroud was removed for scientific tests. The results of the radiocarbon dating placed the shroud between AD 1260 and 1390, indicating that the relic was a medieval fabrication.

The white linen shroud measures 14 ft 6 inches by 3 ft 7 inches. It bears the image of a man, 6ft tall and well built, with long hair and a short beard. The faint image is a yellowish brown in colour. It shows the full length of the man's body; front and back, as if the long, narrow cloth had been folded over his head. There is, however, an absence of 'globing' the distortions that would have resulted if the shroud had wrapped around a real 3d body- supposing that this was what caused the discolouring.) Moreover one would expect a burial should to be wrapped around a body, rather than folded over one. Even if the acids, blood etc on the body did leave discolour the cloth with which it came into contact, it would hardly make for a recognizable print of a man. 

 Since the carbon dating, various theorists have tried to account for how an object with such markings could have been created in the Middle Ages. The shroud came to light in the mid 14th century, when Geoffrey de Charney, a French noble, had it exhibited in Lirey. Doubts about the relic's authenticity are nothing new. In 1389 the Bishop of Troyes denounced the shroud as a fake, which he alleged was painted in about 1355. The shroud, however, does not seem to be a painting in the traditional sense. There are no brush-marks, and no pigments are in evidence in the context of the image. Neither are there any medieval artistic stylisation.

  The shroud survived into the modern age, and was first photographed in 1898. When the photographer, Seconda Pia, developed the pictures, a revelation resulted. The photographic negative showed the shroud with a perfect, three-dimensional positive image. The shroud itself is therefore a perfect negative. There is no precedent for a medieval artist painting such a thing. 

 The South African Art Historian Dr Nicholas Allen suggested that the shroud itself is in fact an early form of photograph; made by soaking the sheet in silver sulphate solution to make the fabric light sensitive. Of necessity, a body (or a painting of one) would have been suspended before the sheet (twice in order to get both views) to achieve this, with lenses positioned between. This set up would have needed to be left for several days, while the surface reacted with ultra-violet rays. This seems hardly a satisfactory explanation for the shroud, though. There are no other examples of medieval photography. 

 Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas in their book 'The Hiram Key' propound the notion that the Knights Templar were both the heirs to the ancient Essene sect and the forerunners of the Freemasons. They wrote that the Templars revived an Essene ritual involving symbolic resurrection of the dead, and incorporated it into their secret initiation rites. Props used in the ceremony included a shroud, skull and bones. Guillaume de Paris, the Grand Inquisitor, swooped on the Paris Temple in 1307, to arrest the Templars there (his master, King Philip IV, having decided to suppress the Templars on charges of unholy worship). Knight and Lomas speculated that the Inquisitor and his men found the shroud the Templars used in the rite, in a Templar shrine filled 'with anti-Christian ornamentation: pyramids with eyes at their centre, a star studded roof and the square and compass…' Concluding that Jacques de Molay, must be a terrible heretic indeed, the Inquisitor tortured the Grand Master there and then in his own dungeons. The Inquisitor had his men crucify de Molay, and thus secured the Grand Master's confession, then he wrapped de Molay in the shroud. This was the real, forgotten origin of the Turin Shroud, or so Knight and Lomas argued. 

 Knight and Lomas' flight of fancy is without evidential support. There was no such occult decoration in the Paris Temple, and the only questionable item uncovered by the arresting agents appears to have been a female skull in a reliquary, not that the keeping of such relics was unusual at the time. There is no evidence that Jacques de Molay was ever crucified. He may have suffered some maltreatment before he first confessed, but if he had been crucified it would surely have provoked widespread outrage. When he made his final declaration of Templar innocence of heresy, he said that those who confessed had done so through fear of torture. If he (or any other Templar) had been crucified, then de Molay would surely have included this detail in his last defiant speech. Any theory claiming that the Turin Shroud ever touched the body of a real crucified man, moreover, has to surmount the globing distortion problem- there should be some! 

 Nonetheless, it is possible there was some Templar connection to the Turin Shroud. In 1357, as noted, the relic was in the possession of a noble called Geoffrey de Charney. Another, earlier Geoffrey de Charney had been the Templar Preceptor of Normandy. He was arrested alongside de Molay in 1307, and like him confessed to heresy. In 1314, when De Molay publicly retracted his confession, Geoffrey de Charney showed solidarity; and was burned with him at the stake by a vengeful King Philip IV on an island on the Seine. If the Geoffrey de Charney who was in possession of the Shroud in 1357 was a relative of the Preceptor of Normandy, his namesake, immolated in 1314, then a Templar connection seems a tennable proposition. 

 The Crusaders were zealously devoted to a large fragment of the 'True Cross', which they found in Jerusalem, and lost at the battle of Hattin in 1185. Other supposed relics from the Passion of Christ were important to Medieval Catholics too. The Veil of Veronica, for example, was a relic reputedly marked with the face of Jesus, after she wiped his face with it on the path to Golgotha. There was a contender for the Holy Lance of Longinus (that pierced Jesus' side) at Constantinople, while another Holy Lance was unearthed by the knights of the First Crusade at Antioch. Louis IX of France, meanwhile, would own a contenders for the Crown of Thorns (bought from a cash-strapped Latin Emperor of Constantinople- Byzantium having fallen to French Crusaders and Venetians in 1204). There were various places boasting Holy Nails, too. That some relics were faked seems obvious. 

 After the mid 14th century, the history of the Turin Shroud is well recorded. It emerged in 1357, and it was taken to Chambéry some time after 1453. In 1578 it was taken to its present home. At various times it has been shown publicly, during religious festivals, inspiring a frenzy of adoration from pilgrims. In 1610 it was exhibited in Turin and Vercelli, to mark the Beatification of Carlo Borromeo. It visited Torrione castle where Giovanni Battista Della Rovere depicted it in fresco, held by Duke Almedo IX of Savoy, and the Blessed Carlo Borromeo, with the Black Virgin of Opora between them. (The same artist painted a 'Descent from the Cross' showing Christ being enshrouded.) 

 Some evidence has been presented supposedly indicating that the relic existed before the 1350s. There is a small manuscript in Budapest (known as the Pray Codex), dating to the 1190s. A crude illustration shows Christ being taken down from the cross and placed in a shroud. The dead Chris is shown naked with arms crossed at the wrists and thumbs hidden, just as the figure in the shroud is. (This pose of the suffering Christ was replicated in Byzantine iconography of a type known as the Man of Sorrows). Below the burial scene is a depiction of the 'three Maries' encountering the angel and finding the shroud in the empty tomb. It has been claimed that the shroud in the lower illustration features a distinctive detail: a group of four small round holes in an 'L' formation. The same group of holes may be seen in the Turin Shroud (and also on a drawing of the shroud in Liege, Belgium, dating to 1516, predating the fire that burned additional holes into the fabric). Closer examination, however, reveals that the lower illustration in the Pray Manuscript may not in fact show the burial cloth but the dislodged slab covering the tomb of Christ. This becomes clear comparing the illustration with other iconography of the same scene. (The shroud is not the long oblong shape, as some have thought, but a small crumpled thing in the middle). 

 It has been said that if the shroud was faked between 1260 and 1390, then the forger must have been some genius; able to produce handiwork that withstands space age forensic scrutiny. Scientific tests by the STURP started in 1978 and supposedly concluded that the image on the shroud was probably made by contact with a body. They also identified a supposed stain of human blood on the fabric. Other scientists found the shroud to contain limestone dust seemingly from Palestine and pollens possibly from that region and also from Turkey. Recent examination of the shroud, prior to it's being hermetically sealed in a special container, revealed a tiny seam in the weave of the linen. This feature was similar to a seam found in a cloth excavated from Masada, a mountain fortress in the Holy Land that fell to the Romans in AD70 effectively marking the end of the Jewish Revolt. Apparently no such stitching has been found in the medieval era. Another notable feature is the fact that the wounds from nails of crucifixion, evident in the shroud image, pierce the man's wrists and ankles rather than his palms and feet. Some believe this better reflects the crucifixion method practiced by the Romans. 

 If the shroud was not forged for Geoffrey de Charney, in the 1530s, then how his family came by the object is a mystery. In 1453, the Duke of Savoy obtained the relic. His heirs moved it to a chapel in Chambéry in Southern France. Whilst there, the shroud was damaged in a fire in 1532, and was lucky to survive. The silver plate on the reliquary in which it was stored began to melt, and molten silver dripped through the folded shroud leaving rough, triangular holes with blackened edges. Faint water stains on the shroud do not correspond with these, though, so clearly had nothing to do with extinguishing the fire. It seems from the positions of the water marks that, in an earlier period, the shroud was folded up a different way, and possibly stored in a tall clay jar (similar to those in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found), which collected water at the base. Some have been tempted to interpret this as additional evidence of a first-century origin for the relic. 

 The sample of the shroud analysed in 1988 was cut from one of the corners. Another theory, that could make the shroud older than the carbon dating indicates, has it that the sampled section was contaminated. A repair around the 16th century saw the linen fabric being spliced with cotton. Only testing on samples from other areas of the shroud can clear this matter up. Additional support for an earlier date for the Shroud of Turin, meanwhile, is supposed to come from a less famous relic in Northern Spain. Oviedo Cathedral houses a wooden chest covered in silver, called the Arca Santa. It contains various reputed holy relics, including an object called the the Sudarium Domini. The Sudaruim is a humble, bloodstained rag. It is held to be the napkin cloth that was wrapped around Christ's head after his body was taken from the cross and before it was entombed. Unlike the Turin Shroud, the Sudarium appears to have an documented attestation in late antiquity. It was first mentioned in 570 AD, in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Early Christians took away for safety in AD644, at the time of a Persians invasion under Chosreos II. They took it to Alexandria, and then to Spain. It was moved north from Toledo, in 718, to Oviedo, ahead of the Muslim advance. The ancient wooden ark was given silver plating with Romanesque ornamentation. 

Tests on the blood on the Sudarium have revealed it to be of the same rare AB type as the blood found on the Turin Shroud. Investigators have also postulated that the patterns of blood on the Sudarium correspond to wounds evident on the figure in the shroud, although how this can be reliable or scientific given the thorny issue of globing is for them to explain. The pollen found in the Sudarium confirms its documented wanderings, through Egypt and Spain. The pollens identified in the Turin Shroud hint at a different story. Pollens from Turkey may have arrived via later contamination, but could indicate that the shroud itself was once in that region. Some identify it with a Byzantine relic, much famed in past times, called the Mandylion. This seems doubtful, however, for the Mandylion cloth was supposedly marked only with the face of Christ- it was supposedly the Veil of St Veronica. It was recorded as being in Edessa in the 500s AD. The face in the shroud does resemble various copies of the lost Mandylion, the face that informed the popular image of Jesus. 

The Mandylion was taken to Constantinople in 944, and probably looted from there after 1204, when the French knights of the Fourth Crusade sacked the city. They and the Venetians looted much treasure, including religious relics. According to a letter written by Theodore Ducas Angelos to Pope Innocent III in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, the loot included 'most sacred of all the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death and before his resurrection' Theodore hinted that the Shroud had been taken to Athens. 

The Templars were not recorded as being militarily active in the Fourth Crusade. Many regarded as scandalous when the Crusaders diverted towards Byzantium. The Pope himself was originally furious. As Helen Nicholson has discovered, there was at least one Templar in the retinue of the Crusade's leader and later 'Latin Emperor of Constantinople' Baldwin of Flanders. This Templar, Brother Barozzi, acted as a messenger between Baldwin and the Pope. He was charged at one stage with delivering gifts including plundered relics to the Pope, no doubt to mollify Innocent's anger and to buy his endorsement of the regime change. Barozzi also received gifts on behalf of the Templars- indicating if nothing else that the Templars were not averse to the idea of laying their hands on formerly Byzantine relics and treasures. These did not include the Shroud, in this instance and at any rate, and Barozzi was robbed of these treasures by Genoese merchants. 

 Some speculate that the Mandylion fell into the Templars hands, and inspired the rumours that they worshipped an idol in the form of a head. The head painted on a board, found half a century ago in Templecombe in the South West of England (where there was a Templar Preceptory) bears a resemblance to the Mandylion, and indeed to the head of the shroud. The Templars and Hospitallers both associated themselves with the Holy Sepulchre, and both acted as escorts to the 'True Cross' when it was carried abroad. Both also escorted a vial of Christ's Blood from the Holy Land to England in the 1250s, so clearly both took an interest in relics of the Passion. 

 There is additional evidence of the Knights Templar possessing the shroud. The Templars' secrecy rendered them vulnerable to accusations of heresy. The order, as we have seen, was suppressed in the 1300s and the brethren subjected to a widespread heresy trial. Confession were secured, often through torture by Inquisitors and royal agents, and were recorded by clerical notaries. The confessions described depraved induction rituals and the adoration of idols. Vatican researcher Barbara Frale has recently discovered another confession that stands apart and seems to support the idea that the Templars possessed the Holy Shroud itself. The deposition was that a French Templar named Arnaut Sabbatiere (or Sabatier), describing his initiation, which had taken place in 1287: "(I was) shown a long piece of linen on which was impressed the figure of a man and told to worship it, kissing the feet three times," said the document. ( Telegraph, 6 April 2009 see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5113711/Knights-Templar-worshipped-the-Turin-Shroud.html ) 

 If the Templars had indeed possessed this self-same relic, it is curious that they did not advertise it in order to draw pilgrims. Still, theirs was a clandestine brotherhood, and it cannot be ruled out that they were secretly the guardians of the shroud. Not everyone was so ready to exploit the Holy Relics they possessed. Some relics were indeed guarded tacitly. The Templars may have obtained the shroud from Athens. If the story of it being there is not true, though, then it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the Templars found the shroud during their sojourn in Jerusalem. Others propose that they inherited it from the heretical Cathars, who may have inherited it from Gnostic Christians in the near east. There were stories of the last Cathars smuggling a great treasure away from their stronghold at Montsegur in 1244, before embracing martyrdom at the hands of their Catholic persecutors. Certainly the shroud found its way to France by some means if it was not created there. 

 There are those who think that the Shroud of Turin should be tested again, to see if it can be induced to give up more of its secrets. I find myself more sceptical about its earlier origins than I was before, having been persuaded that the Pray manuscript is not valid as supporting evidence. Any suggestions that the shroud's image is the result of contact with a human body, would have to account for the the lack of warping. I originally concluded my essay saying that perhaps the shroud should be left alone to preserve its mystery, but am now of the opinion that further scientific analysis and historical study is needed to determine its origins. Taking into account the testimony uncovered by Barbara Frale, it is clearly more than idle speculation to think that the object may have passed through the hands of the Knights Templar.

Moses and Ancient Egypt

It has been speculated (that the biblical prophet Moses could have had links to Atenism, the monotheistic solar cult introduced to (and imposed upon) the Ancient Egyptians by the maverick Pharaoh Akhenaten (died c. 1336 BC). One famous individual to advance this theory was psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud, in an essay of 1939. This theory makes Atenism the precusrosr of Jewish and ultimately Christian monotheis. Sometimes Moses' God is called Adonai, which, as it was claimed, may be a related word to Aten/Aton. This linguisitc association does not seem wuthstand scrutiny, but other connections have been made besides. There are, for example, similarities between the Biblical Psalm 104 and the so-called 'great hymn to Aten' This hymn, attributed to the heretic king, was inscribed in a tomb near Akhenaten's short lived capital Akhetaten (modern Tel-El Amarna).
The tomb in question was the original tomb of Ay, the Grand Visier, who ultimately succeeded as Pharaoh and who turned his back on Atenism (after the brief reigns of Semkhare and Tutankhamen). Ay was succeeded as king by Horemhab, the general of the army. Horemhab totally erased the cult of Aten. If there was a pharaoh who expelled the Hebrews he is a likely candidate. (This expulsion may have coincided with the Thera eruption, fall out from which could explain the plagues of Egypt- it's a compelling theory anyway and one explored well by Graham Phillips among others). Some have even supported the claim that Moses and Akhenaten were one and the same. This hypothesis seems highly unlikely. Surely if a former king became a prophet it would have been recorded somewhere. Moses could, however, have been a priest of Aten fleeing Horemhab's persecution.

The idea of the Ark of the Covenant, which Moses introduced, does not seem to me to be reconcilable with what we know of Atenism or any form of solar worship. It is more like a shrine for an ancient Egyptian idol, with poles for carrying in procession. This seems to tap into an older Egyptian tradition- although in the Ark's case the conventional statue was replaced by the stone tablets of the law. Moses does not seem to have completely practiced the monotheism he supposedly preached. The 'cherubim' on the Ark have their precedents in the winged Egyptian goddesses Isis and Nepthys, and another part of the Bible Moses (Numbers 21: 4-9) seems to instruct his followers to venerate a brazen statue of a serpent, as a protection against snake bites. This is hard to reconcile with the commandments against idolatry or the making of graven images; or the outrage with which Moses reacted to the worship of the golden calf! Maybe, in the latter case, he was not so concerned with idolatry in itself, but in the people engaging in religious practices which he himself did not control.

This is largely speculation, and there is no definitive archaeological evidence for the Biblical exodus from Egypt. The first known mention of the tribe of Israel occurs on the Merneptah Stele. This is a stone inscribed in heiroglyphs during the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah in the early 1200s BC, commemorating the Pharaoh's victories in the Levant. Merneptah was the fourth king of the 19th dynasty, which succeeded after Horemhab (the last of the 18th). Mermeptah's inscription mentions Israel in the following context:

'Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer (Gaza) seized, Yanoam made nonexistent; Israel is wasted, bare of seed.'

If Israel's exodus from Egypt was a relatively recent happening then the tribe might well be expected to be found in the border region of Ashkelon and Gaza. (It is also apparent from the language that 'Israel' here refers to a people rather than a territory). If this is to be squared with the Bible, however, then the tribe can't have been quite as wasted as the Egyptians made out. It may be noted that there is no Egyptian mention of the Israelites as escaped slaves, and at any rate this impression is difficult to square with other parts of scripture. (The received 'Ten Commandments', for example, seem to be addressing slave-owners as much as escaped slaves.)

Robert the Monk and the Council of Clermont

Robert of Reims, also known as Robert the Monk, was one of the Benedictine brethren at the monastery of St-Rémi in Reims. He was the author of an influential history of the First Crusade. Robert's narrative, which Christopher Tyerman judges 'heavily Francocentric' was based on the Gesta Francorum, and seems to have been the most widely read of the various accounts of the crusade that circulated in the decades following the capture of Jerusalem. The section most often quoted from Robert's account is the rendition of the speech of Urban II at Clermont, which officially set the expedition in motion.

Few biographical details are known concerning Robert. Tyerman calls him a 'failed abbot and popular historian', writing some time before 1108. In his preamble to his history, Robert stated that Bernard, his abbot, had called him to set down his account of the campaign. Bernard had obtained a history of the crusade, which was deemed unsatisfactory on various levels. This manuscript was evidently the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, an Latin account written in around 1101 by an unnamed crusader close to Bohemond of Taranto. It seems Robert's superior considered the Gesta Francorum to be flawed in its composition and incomplete in its scope, failing, for example, to fully cover the Council of Clermont, which (from an ecclesiastical perspective) was a defining moment. Robert stated that he was personally present at the famous council.

Robert considered the capture of the Jerusalem to be the most marvellous happening since the resurrection of Christ. Part of his purpose in writing seems to have been to show the significance of the Council of Clermont as the launch pad for the venture. He began his account with the council. He did not mention how Jerusalem was lost to the Muslims in the first place, but reported Pope Urban's stories of Turkish outrages- their slaughtering and torturing Eastern Christians and (what seemed even more offensive against the sensibilities of the day) profaning altars. Robert's account of Urban's speech is the most inflammatory of the versions that survive, and may be a distortion. However it is easy to imagine how these wild allegations of Turkish crimes instilled in the audience a sense of collective injury as Christians and a desire for vengeance.

Robert had Urban appealing to the pride of the Frankish warrior caste, portraying them as a new chosen people, and praising their glory in arms and greatness of spirit. He also had the Pope painting an enticing picture of the Holy Land, full of riches, flowing with milk and honey, and ripe for the taking. Another part of Robert's account of the address concentrates on the allure of Jerusalem, the Holy City. Jerusalem is personified almost as a damsel in distress, who 'begs and craves to be fee, and prays endlessly for you to come to her aid'. The message thus appealed to the audience on a number of levels- to their vengefulness, piety, vanity, covetousness, chivalrous impulses and sense of racial manifest destiny. No wonder, as Robert reported, they were moved to shouts of 'God wills it!'

Delacroix's Crusaders

(Originally posted on my art blog)
I thought I might blog about ... Delacroix's famous painting 'Taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders', also called 'The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople'. The painting was exhibited in the 1841 Salon. I have a special interest in the subject-matter of this one, being interested both in medieval Crusade history and in the Romantic movement.

The painting depicts a generic scene in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, in 1204. The Historian Sir Steven Runciman wrote in the 1930s that there 'never was a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.' The Crusades had been launched, in the first place, partly in the name of bolstering the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire against the Turkish threat. Just over a century later, an army of Crusaders captured and plundered the Byzantine capital- the Queen of Cities- the greatest metropolis in Christendom, and subjugated the people they were supposed to defend. The knights of the Fourth Crusade had ostensibly set out to recover the Holy City of Jerusalem (won for Christendom by their First Crusade ancestors, but lost to Saladin in the 1170s, and still in Muslim hands despite the best efforts of Richard I and the Third Crusade). The original strategy was to have been an attack on Egypt to weaken the Muslim power and to secure the return of Jerusalem. However the Crusaders first fell into debt to the Venetians and then became embroiled in a dynastic feud among the Byzantine royal house. The outcome of all this was the diversion of the Crusade and the capture and colonization of Constantinople. Famous relics and treasures were looted or lost as a result of the capture, and destructive fires raged. One of the Frankish Barons, Baldwin of Flanders, was duly crowned the first Emperor of a new Latin territory. This territory was not destined to prosper, and only distracted from the cause of the Crusades. The episode caused lasting resentment of the west by the Greek Christians. Though the Greeks temporarily recovered Constantinople they would never regain their previous strength or glory. The Fourth Crusade therefore contributed the final collapse of Eastern Christendom, which may account for the harsh verdict from Byzantine-admirer Runciman.
Delacroix's depiction of the scene is somewhat more ambiguous in its verdict. This is understandable given his nationality, and the fact that the Fourth Crusade was a largely French affair. His crusaders, in their theatrical panoply, and with their streaming banners, are undeniably triumphant in the scene- but, with their grim, shadowed faces, hardly seen heroic. The viewer's sympathy is with the frightened and desolate Greek citizens; much as it is in Massacre of Chios- an 1824 painting of a contemporary event, revealing of the artist's pro-Hellenism. As with this picture there is an almost sensual approach to the depicting of the female victims of the violence, which was also part of the Romantic/Orientalist approach, again evident in Delacroix's Sardanapolus. Sardanapolus is another piece of Byronic inspiration (where the dying despot looks on as his concubines- and his horses- are put to the sword). These death orgies are not exactly comfortable viewing, and yet they contain moving beauty as well as eroticism, and inspire pity. The combination of opulence, languor, drama, suffering and tragedy was a hallmark of Delacroix. The voluptuousness is also present in the Constantinople piece (for example the bare-backed woman mourning over the body of another female in the foreground), but the over-riding sense is of bitterness. The painting evokes a bitter episode, and therefore has to be a little repulsive. It may be remarked that the behaviour of the Crusaders in Constantinople was no worse than their forebears behaviour on the first Crusade, such as the massacres in Antioch and Jerusalem. The fact that the Fourth Crusade culminated in a great betrayal and an assault on fellow-Christians, however, somehow makes it stand out for its ignominy. As befits its subject, Delacroix's painting leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth.