Royston Cave under threat

I was alarmed to read about here about the deteriorating state of Royston Cave, even if it's link to the Templars may be more debatable that many sources make out. (I personally think the case for a Templar connection is quite strong, even if it was just a temporary place of incarceration for Templar prisoners being transported to trial.)

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.