The Trial of the Knights Templar

"The quarrel between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair of France involved many long-standing disputes between the medieval Church and the State." A French civil servant called Guillaume de Nogaret enlisted the help of a small private army attempted to arrest and seize the pope in Italy. "The intention was to take him back to France to face trial by a French-controlled Church Council, but this part of the plan miscarried. Boniface was after a few days freed by a counter-stoke of his supporters, although only a few weeks later he died, a defeated and disgraced man (12 October 1303).. His attackers were automatically excommunicated under canon law..." "Although sanctions against the French king himself were soon lifted, the popes refused to lift the excommunication against Guillaume de Nogaret, the king's chief minister...On the French side [the government] build up a huge dossier against the dead pope, representing him as a heretic, an unbeliever, a simoniac, and also as a magician and the patron of sorcerers. This most emphatically magical accusations were that Boniface had familiar converse with demons, whom he constantly called to his assistance and sometimes worshipped."

"It was to be one of the great ironies of the Templar trials that the minister who was mainly in charge of their prosecution [Guillaume de Nogaret] was for the whole duration of the trials lying under the formal ban of the Church." - Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians

"G. Legman, in The Guilt of the Templars, a composite work by five distinguished English academicians, says the Templars did not practice homosexuality faute de mieux but as a formal dedication, betrayed by the ritual nudity required at their secret initiation..." - Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks

"Much has been made of the supposed obscenity of the Templar initiation and of the kissing that formed part of it. In fact it differed very little from the everyday practice of the time whereby the bond between lord and vassal was affirmed by the ceremony of homage. Here the vassal knelt, placed his clasped hands within those of his master, and declared: 'Lord, I become your man', and took an oath of fealty. The lord then raised him to his feet and bestowed on him a ceremonial kiss. The vassal was thenceforth bound 'to love what his lord loved and to loathe when he loathed, and never by word or deed do aught that could grieve him'." - Noel Curer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail

"Of all the charges levelled against the Templars, the most serious were those of blasphemy and heresy, - of denying, trampling and spitting on the cross." - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"These are the articles on which inquiry should be made against the Order of the Knighthood of the Temple. Firstly that, although they declared that the Order had been solemnly established and approved by the Apostolic See, nevertheless in the reception of the brothers of the said Order, and at some time after, there were preserved and performed by the brothers those things which follow: Namely that each in his reception, or at some time after, or as soon as a fit occasion could be found for the reception, denied Christ, sometimes Christ crucified, sometimes Jesus, and sometimes God, and sometimes the Holy Virgin, and sometimes all the saints of God, led and advised by those who received him. - Item, [that] the brothers as a whole did this. - Item, that the majority [of them did this]. Item, that [they did this] also sometimes after the reception. Item, that the receptors said and taught those whom they were receiving, that Christ, or sometimes Jesus, or sometimes Christ crucified, is not the true God. Item, that they told those whom they received that he was a false prophet. Item, that he had not suffered nor was he crucified for the redemption of the human race, but on account of his sins. Item, that neither the receptors nor those being received had a hope of achieving salvation through Jesus, and they said this, or the equivalent or similar, to those whom they received. Item, that they made those whom they received spit on a cross, or on a representation or sculpture of the cross and an image of Christ, although sometimes those who were being received spat next [to it]. Item, that they sometimes ordered that this cross be trampled underfoot. Item, that brothers who had been received sometimes trampled on the cross. Item, that sometimes they urinated and trampled, and caused others to urinate, on this cross, and several times they did this on Good Friday. Item, that some of them, on that same day or another of Holy Week, were accustomed to assemble for the aforesaid trampling and urination." - The Articles of the Accusations