Vatican and the Templars

Umberto Eco's line that you can tell if someone is mad "by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars" has heen given added weight by Da Vinci Code mania. According to Dan Brown's novel, the Templars' suppression in 1308 was the result of connivance between the Pope, Clement V, and the King of France, Philip IV. Last week, facsimiles of documents relating to that process, rediscovered in 2001 in the Vatican Secret Archives, went on show, and on sale. They contain the Chinon parchment, a transcription of a secret trial of the Order in which a team of papal inquisitors in fact absolved the knights, accepting their explanation that rituals such as spitting on the Cross were enacted as preparation for potential capture hy Muslim enemies (though the Templars had left Syria and Palestine in 1291). The facsimiles can only reinforce the impression that, as reported in the TLS in 2004, "the Templars were destroyed not because they held any special secrets or treasure but because th ey were rich, inflexible, naively led and vulnerable". A limited edition of 799 copies is published by the Venetian press Scrinium, priced at €5,990 (an 800th copy has been reserved for the current Pope).