Tea at Trianon: Secrets of the Templars

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Secrets of the Templars

From Medievalists:

Introduction: The eighty-eight charges against the Templars which were used as the basis of interrogations in the proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, 1309 – 11, included the charge that admissions into the Order were secret, and that only brothers of the order were present.

Item xxxvj’ q[uo]d recepciones fratrum suo[rum] clamdestine fiebant.
Item xxxvij’ q[uo]d nullis presentib[us] nisi fratrib[us] dicti ordinis.

Outside the British Isles, there is some evidence that outsiders could attend Templar admission ceremonies. Often cited is the example of the German Templar, was arrested and interrogated within France, who stated that in Germany honest, respectable outsiders could attend. However, within the British Isles, all the Templars testified that only Templars attended receptiones, although some qualified their statements. But was this true? The evidence actually given by the Templars and non-Templars suggests that some of them had attended admission ceremonies before becoming full members of the Order. (Read more.)