An earlier version of this text appears as an article appears in Templar History Magazine Vol. 3- Number 1,

Issue No. 9, ISSN 1499-213 For back issues, please see www.templarhistory.com

'Mary Magdalen' by A.F.A. Sandys, c. 1860.

There is a widespread belief that the Knights Templar and the Cathars had a similar world-view. What is undeniable is that they shared the fate of being denounced as heretics, and violently attacked by secular and ecclesiastical ecclesiastical authorities of France. They were subjected to arest, interrogatio and torture by the Inquisition and in the cases of a number, executed by burning at the stake. Some have claimed that, because of some shared Gnostic heritage, the Order of the Temple offered shelter to fugitive Cathars during the Papal persecution of the sect, which commenced a century before the Templars themselves faced destruction. The Templars in the meantime are supposed to have embraced or reaffirmed many Cathar doctrines. The two 'heretical' groups are supposed to have been united additionally by reverence for a particular female saint, Mary Magdalene, and by having some special insight concerning her relationship with Jesus.

One of the functions of religion is to answer fundamental existential questions. Primarily, it must account for the darkness, death and pain in the world, how these things can afflict humanity if there exists a loving God. God, being good, cannot be responsible for the presence of evil, so there has to be another force, an enemy of mankind, a Devil. But if God is the creator of all things and Almighty, how can he permit this Devil to exist? The branch of early Christianity that became Roman Catholicism reasoned that God must have been permitting the Devil's existence in order to test people's faith; and to punish the souls of the wicked in a ghastly afterlife in Hell. An alternative faction explained things differently. They drew on an age-old Zoroastrian idea of two cosmic forces- light and darkness- locked in an endless struggle. Influenced by Orphism and Manichaeanism, the belief developed that the material world was the dominion of the evil principal- the false god or demiurgue. There was no hell other than this created world. This reality was a prison for the soul. The soul was part of an angel, created by the good God, but tempted by the Devil into a human body. The soul, itself, belonged to the domain of light and yearned to return there. In that purely spiritual paradise was to be found the original and true God, who transcends creation.

The former (Catholic) view gained ascendancy and was recognised as orthodoxy by the ruling classes. However, due to the influence of St Augustine of Hippo, previously an associate of a Manichaean sect, a tendency to link the flesh and worldliness with the Devil crept into the Catholic mainstream. This was later evident in the Rule drawn up for a Catholic Order of warrior monks. (This was a radical new organisation, made possible in part by another Augustinian doctrine, about it being permissible for Christians to fight and kill in defence of the Faith). The Rule sought to impose a sombre and austere way of life on these men- the Knights Templar.

You who renounce your own wills… serving the Sovereign King (God) with horses and arms, for the salvation of your souls… strive everywhere to hear matins… God is with you if you promise to despise the Deceitful world in perpetual love of God and scorn the temptations of the body.
(The Primitive Rule of the Templars, translated by J Upton Ward (Clause 9, p. 21)

The Templars were founded to defend pilgrims and the frontiers of the territory taken by the First Crusade, and were based on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Their primary backer, the Cistercian Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, secured their recognition as an arm of the Church at the Council of Troyes in 1128/9. He also saw that these warriors would observe monastic regulations, living celibately and without personal property. The Templars grew quickly, as idealistic knights joined and as pious aristocrats donated estates to them. They matured as a fighting force during the Second Crusade, of 1147-9. Although the Crusade achieved little, the courage and discipline of these knights in white won renown. Soon after, the monastic Order of the Hospital of Saint John likewise began to recruit knights. It evolved into a rival Military Order. Both these Orders were the most consistently effective fighters in the wars against the Muslim powers.
The 1140s also saw the establishment of a convent of Benedictine nuns at Bethany, near Jerusalem. It was patronised by Queen Melisende, the half-Armenian daughter of Baldwin II. Her younger sister Yoveta eventually became abbess of the convent. Bethany was best known for the tomb from which Christ had raised Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha back to life. A nearby church marked the spot where Mary of Bethany had anointed Christ. The Catholic Church identified Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, while the Greek Orthodox Church identified two different women. The disagreement caused some argument. The Latin Bishop of Laodicea, Gerard of Nazareth, wrote a polemic supporting the Western tradition. This supported a cult of Mary Magdalene that flourished in Bethany. However there is some suggestion that at least one Templar, identified by Gerard as Sala, disagreed with the conflation. Whatever the case, devotion to Mary Magdalene, and Easter processions between Bethany and the Holy Sepulchre flourished in the Crusader Kingdom until that state's near obliteration by the forces of Saladin.

Poor and divided leadership propelled the Christian side to defeat at the battle of Hattin in 1187. Afterwards the victorious Sultan, made the Templar and Hospitaller prisoners choose between conversion to Islam or death. They all refused to convert and were beheaded en-masse by the Sufis accompanying the Islamic army. After this, Saladin swept through the Crusader state and soon Jerusalem was in his hands. *The convent at Bethany was also destroyed at this time). The Military Orders resurged, though, and played an active role in the Third Crusade, especially at the battle of Arsuf. They might have followed up this victory by retaking Jerusalem, but reckoned that they had insufficient men to hold the Holy City afterwards.

Another religious movement, known to history as the Cathar heresy, was taking root in Southern France at this time. Doctrinally close to the original Gnostics, the Cathars were similar to the Templars in their scorn of worldly things and their obsession with chastity. They differed from them in that they did not reflect the misogyny of the Catholic establishment, and allowed women, too, to be ordained as spiritual leaders, or Perfecti. They seem to have preached that no violence was just, that social rank was irrelevant, and that worldliness was sinful. They believed in reincarnation so practiced vegetarianism. Their one sacrament was the consolamentum, which cut off elite believers from the material world. Perfecti lived austerely, hoping that by denying the world in this life they would escape the cycle of reincarnation and reach paradise when they died. They lived on the charity of Credentes, or Cathar believers. The Cathars had affiliates in the Balkans and the Byzantine Empire, known as Bogomils. In 1167 Bogomil delegates attended a Cathar Council in the Languedoc town of St Felix de Carman, near Toulouse. Presided over by their high priest Niquinta, the council established the dualist doctrines of the Cathar counter-church, and that these doctrines were irreconcilable with Catholicism.

Cathar beliefs were recorded by Inquisitors, like the later Bernardo Gui, who would endeavour to eradicate these same beliefs. Cathars denied the physical resurrection of Christ, and some of them considered that he had been of pure spirit- how else could he escape the taint of being part of the Devil's imperfect world? They rejected the Old Testament, but had their own sacred writings, perhaps even having some familiarity with the Gnostic Gospels, (which Catholicism had endeavoured to suppress and which were formerly presumed lost). Naturally the Cathars also rejected the authority of the Pope and his Bishops. They saw no value in confessing to a priest who may be himself a sinner, and who had power 'neither to loose nor bind'. The water Catholic priests used in baptism could not sanctify, argued the Cathars, because it was of corrupt matter (part of the world that the Devil had made). The host of the Eucharist could not contain the blood and body of Christ, as 'it passes through the body and comes to a vile end which, they say, could not happen if God were in it'. Moreover it was, for Cathars, anathema to worship the cross, as 'no-one would adore the gallows on which a father, relative or friend were hung.' As such subversive ideas spread, they become a threat to ecclesiastical authority in the region. When worldly Papal Legates were dispatched as preachers, to win back the souls of Languedoc for Catholicism, they had the opposite of the desired effect.

Pope Innocent III ordered Count Raymond VI of Toulouse to persecute the Cathars in his district. 'The ingrained corruption of abominable heresy does not cease to breed monstrous offspring… Let us… enforce correction of this vile breed of people… Ulcers which do not respond to treatment must be cut with the knife.' Peter de Castelnau, the Papal Legate, echoed these demands. Raymond did not cooperate, though, and found himself excommunicated. In 1208 Innocent III called a crusade, to quash Catharism, prompted by Castelnau's murder. He promised spiritual indulgences to knights, mostly from Northern France, who came south to attack the heretics and those who harboured them. For many knights this was a much easier proposition than going all the way to Palestine. Back in 1099, Jerusalem had been won for Christendom by an army under Raymond IV de St Gilles, count of Toulouse. Now Northern Crusaders descended to attack the land of his namesake. This campaign became known as the Albigensian Crusade, after the town of Albi, one of the hotbeds of Catharism. The Templars and Hospitallers, also well established in the Languedoc, were torn in their allegiances, now, between the Pope and their historical patrons. They opted to try to preserve their neutrality.

It must have been difficult, as this turned out to be a total war. To forestall his own fate, Raymond VI initially made a show of penitence, actually joining the Crusade and directing it against his former ally, Raymond-Roger Trencavel, viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne. When the 'Crusaders' stormed the city of Beziers, the new Papal Legate, the Abbot Arnold Amaury of Citeaux, reputedly told his troops 'kill them all, God will know his own!' A rash sortie by the defenders left a gate of the city undefended, and the rabble of the northern army was able to surge through and hold it open. As the streets filled with blood, many of the people fled to a church in the upper town, which was dedicated to Mary Magdalene. The crusaders trapped them there and slaughtered them. (The chronicles say 7,000 people died, though the church could only have contained about 1,000.) In one morning the town was wiped out. Altogether some 20,000 people, 'regardless of age and sex' as the Abbot proudly informed the Pope, were killed. This terrible massacre was the first of the 'crusade', and occurred on July 22, Saint Mary Magdalene's day, 1209. The crusaders went on to attack Carcassonne, imprisoning its lord the Viscount Raymond-Roger Trencavel when he came out to nnegotiate after a brave resistance against the northern might. The city soon fell into the crusaders' hands, and deprived of their possessions the people were driven out. The next major target was Miverne, which fell to the Crusaders exactly a year after Beziers. Arnold Amaury marked Mary Magdalene's day with the first mass burning of living Cathars.

There was a popular cult of Saint Mary Magdalene in southern France. Mary Magdalene had been one of Christ's followers, (out of whom he had cast seven devils). According to the Canonical Gospels, she was present at the Crucifixion, and the tomb of Christ, and took the news the missing body to the disciples. John's Gospel additionally has her as the first to encounter the risen Christ, after she lingered in the garden weeping. Because of her role as messenger Mary Magdalene was afforded the title of apostola apostolorum. The early Gnostics has also revered the saint, and their writings portrayed her as a member of Christ's inner circle. They believed Christ's spirit appeared to her, after the Crucifixion, to reveal to her deeper spiritual truths. Moreover, many Gnostic Christians found in her a refreshing foil to the patriarchal and hierarchical religion constructed by Peter, Paul and later Church Fathers like Saint Jerome. Gnostics believed that Mary comprehended Christ's teaching better than any other, being one of the closest people to him. According to one of the Gnostic apocrypha, the Gospel of Philip, she was called the companion of the Saviour.

…But Christ loved her more than all the other disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The saviour answered and told them 'Why do I not love you like her?'

The Catholic Church, however, downplayed her preaching role. It would not do to elevate a female too highly (except for the Virgin mother of Christ). Magdalene was portrayed as a penitent whore. (After the crucifixion, according to the medieval myth, she came and to southern France, living out her days as a hermit. Her relics were discovered in Provence by a monk and removed to Vezelay Abbey in Burgundy.) Mary's redemption by divine grace made her a symbol of God's forgiveness of sinners. In so far as this she may have appealed to the Templars, many of whom, in their own way, had turned their backs on sinful lives to follow Christ. There is no evidence for any especial reverence for her within the Order, though. Their Latin Rule doesn't mention her except in a list of saints feast days to be observed (clause 75), and is as about as unfriendly towards females as any other tract that can be found:

The company of women is a dangerous thing, for by it the old Devil has led many from the straight path to paradise. Henceforth let not ladies be admitted as sisters to the House of the Temple… that the flower of chastity is always maintained among you.
(Rule of the Templars, trans. J. Upton-Ward, clause 70, p. 36).

The author of the Rule saw women as dangerous temptresses and expressly associated them with the Devil. There may have been isolated examples of women 'giving themselves' to the Order to live according to its constitution, there may even have been nunneries, but this founding principal was hardly any encouragement for this. Women saints venerated by the Order included virgin martyrs like Catherine of Alexandria. Nonetheless for them female saints occupied a heavenly realm and were removed from real women, who were best avoided, as clause 71 of the rule made clear. Unlike Christ who had suffered a sinful woman to anoint him, the Templars were to have no contact, nor even to look at women, and not to kiss even their closest female relatives.

The Cathars were equally wary of the temptations of the flesh, but were without the institutional misogyny of the Catholic mainstream. Cathars allowed females to receive the consolamentum and to act as preaching Perfecti. This was part of their heresy in the eyes of the Catholics. They also seem to have had their own ideas concering Mary Magdalene. Many, including gypsies and poor people around the Languedoc, revered this saint, and believed the legend (fostered by Vezelay from the 1030s onwards) that she came there. She fled Palestine, and landed at Marseilles with Martha and Lazarus, and preached to the pagan inhabitants. Like the Gnostics before them, the Cathars elevated her above the other apostles. They may even have regarded her as the widow of Jesus. The anti-Cathar propagandists Ermegaud de Beziers and Durand de la Huesca (founder of the Order of Poor Catholics, which preached against the Perfecti while mirroring their asceticism) wrote that the Cathars secretly taught that Mary Magdalene was the wife or concubine of Christ; and also that she was the woman 'taken in adultery' who Christ had saved from the Jews who wanted to stone her. Reynaldus in his 'annales' stated that this was so of Cathar beliefs, but that they thought that Mary Magdalene had been the concubine of the man Jesus, who was a bad man. The real, good Christ had only existed as pure spirit in the mind of St Paul!

From this allegation has arisen something of a conspiracy theory: It has it that knowledge of Christ's alleged relationship with Mary (and perhaps proof thereof) passed from the Cathars to the Knights Templar. It was to remove the threat of this great secret, potentially damaging as it supposedly was to the Church, that the Catholic establishment suppressed the Templars, a century after the Albigensian Crusade. (The theory probably has a particular appeal to those with a latent penchant for goddess worship). Many authors have additionally speculated that Mary Magdalene was herself of royal blood, or a priestess of some Isis/Ishtar cult, and that the Cathars and Templars regarded her almost as the embodiment of the feminine aspect of the divine and the personification of holy wisdom (Sophia to the Gnostics). Part of the theory also has Mary and Jesus founding a dynasty, which fused with the Merovingian line, and which continued in secret into the middle ages and beyond. This theory is hard to reconcile with the Cathars hostility to the idea of marriage and procreation, which entrapped new souls in the wicked world. It also seems fatuous to cast Godfrey de Bouillon as the descendant of the Davidic/Magdalenian/Merovingian bloodline and the Templars as that supposed bloodline's secret guardians, given a/ that de Bouillon's ancestors were staunch advocates of Papal authority and b/ that the Templars had a turbulent relationship with Godfrey's successors as King of Jerusalem, and always looked to the Papacy as their protector. (The said conspiracy theory, on the other hand, casts Rome as the great persecutor of Christ's supposed descendants.)

It must be remembered that Mary Magdalene was a legitimate saint also for Catholics, and there was nothing inherently heretical in venerating her. Her supposed relics had been claimed by the Benedictine Monks of Vezelay in Burgundy, Central France. The cult was in evidence there from the mid eleventh century. The abbey claimed that the relics had been brought there centuries before by a monk who had retrieved them from their original shrine near Aix in Provence, where Mary had supposedly been lain to rest after spending 30 years living as a hermit in a remote cave called la Sainte Baume. Vezelay became was a great Catholic pilgrimage centre in the Crusading era, its new church being commenced in the same year as the launching of the First Crusade. Later the armies of the Second and Third Crusades had been mustered in Vezelay. Mary Magdalene, then, could also be presented as a patron saint for Crusaders. (Crusading itself was widely regarded as a penitential exercise for its participants). It is somewhat surprising, therefore, how little evidence there is of Mary Magdalen's cult within the Order of the Temple.

Later, at their own heresy trials, the Templars were accused of believing that Preceptors could forgive sins, even though they were not ordained priests. This is the one accusation that was probably true- though it resulted from confusion rather than wilful heresy. This was the only charge the English Templars were ever convicted for, and once they recanted about it they were absolved and welcomed back into the Church (most going on to live quietly, scattered in various monasteries and subsisting on meagre pensions). In one of the Continental trials, a Neapolitan Templar named Galcerand de Teusum (who had admitted denying Christ, probably under torture) testified that lay absolution was also practiced (the prosecution tried to imply that this was to stop the Church and the outside world learning of the Order's wicked secrets). De Teusum reported that the Preceptor officiating would say 'I pray God that he will pardon your sins as he pardoned... Saint Mary Magdalene, and the thief who was put on the cross'. This, it seems, is the only mention of Mary Magdalene from the trials, and does not betray any excessive reverence for her. It reflects the orthodox view of her as a symbol of God's forgiveness. The prosecution made out, incidentally, that the phrase 'the thief who was on the cross' expressed the Templars' secret contempt for Jesus, but it could have just referred the penitent one of the two criminals who were crucified alongside Him. (The man who Christ told that he would be with Him in Heaven).

The Templars, though neutral, in fact seemed to err on the side of the northern 'crusaders' during the Albigensian wars, while their rivals the Knights Hospitaller, though neutral, did the opposite. The Hospitallers were closely tied to the branch of the house of St-Gilles in the Holy land, and remained loyal to Raymond VI in Toulouse. Count Raymond's alliance with the Crusaders did not last. The war degenerated into a territorial dispute, with Simon de Montfort, the ruthless leader of the Catholic armies, leading the attack on Raymond's land for his own aggrandisement. (De Montfort's army would kill King Pedro of Aragon who came to Raymond's aid. Ironically Pedro had become something of a Christian hero a year previously, as victor over the Moors at Navas de Tolosa).

While De Montfort besieged Toulouse, the Hospitallers even made Raymond an associate of their brotherhood, perhaps hoping to convince other Catholics to stay loyal to him too. The Templars, by contrast, were less supportive. When Raymond had his brother Baldwin hanged for treason, the Templars took down his body and gave it proper Catholic burial. The Preceptor of la Villedieu, meanwhile, protected the Catholic Bishop of Toulouse at his establishment. When he caught wind of a supposed Cathar plot against the Bishop, he had the suspected plotters beaten and expelled from the Preceptory. Meanwhile Simon de Montfort would stay at the Templar house in Montpellier while campaigning against the Cathars in 1215. The Templars may have been grudging hosts, but even so, this hardly suggests strong Cathar sympathies. De Montfort's armies ravaged the region year on year, but failed to quash doctrinal dissent completely. Later Louis VIII of France led a second crusade into the region. He aspired more to impose Capetian supremacy over Toulouse than to uphold the Catholic faith. Templars were among his retinue, although they did not participate in the slaughter.

The military actions were failing to uproot Catharism, so the Church tried another tact. Prior to the Albigensian Crusade the Pope had charged a Spanish Monk, Domingo de Guzman, with founding the Order of Friars Preachers, to counter the message of the Perfecti. Domingo died in 1221 and was soon canonised as Saint Dominic. Pope Gregory IX (1227-41) charged the Dominican Order with conducting the Inquisition, to root out and punish dissenters. Its main purpose was to obtain a confession from someone denounced as a heretic. Suspects would be imprisoned and their property confiscated, to be shared out with local nobility and those who had denounced the suspect. This policy encouraged local rulers to co-operate and ordinary people actively to inform on neighbours. (The system was wide open to abuse. It was also a system loaded against the defendant, who was allowed no advocate and against whom even criminals could give anonymous testimony.)

The presence of the Inquisitors and their myrmidons in the places they visited was much resented by the inhabitants; but they soon created a climate of fear that secured popular collaboration. Those who failed to assist the Inquisition were vulnerable to charges of abetting heresy. Torture was only officially sanctioned in their inquiries in 1252, in Pope Innocent IV's bull Ad Extripanda, but one imagines it was utilised long before. Favourite tools of these interrogator-monks were the rack and the strappado. The latter involved tying a suspects hands behind their back and hoisting them up over a beam or pulley on a chain attached to the wrists, before letting them fall in a series of agonising jolts. Other techniques included the application of flames to the soles of the feet with a movable iron screen to regulate heat intensity, and miscellaneous clamps, vices and screws to crush extremities or prise open orifices.

Heresy suspects, and those who had sheltered them would be rounded up, interrogated, tried, and when convicted, (as was invariably the case) handed to the secular arm for punishment. Under Gregory IX's statutes of 1231, those who confessed would face life imprisonment, while relapsed or recalcitrant heretics would face public burning. True Cathars, it seems, went joyfully into the flames, trusting that death would release their spirits from the snare of this material hell. The Inquisition thus effectively wiped out the Cathar Heresy, though it left a legacy of bitter resentment towards the Catholic Church in the Languedoc. What better way to destroy genuine faith, after all, than to enforce conformity to religious doctrines through terror?

Several defamatory rumours had become attached to the Cathars before the Albigensian war. These included the supposed Cathar belief that the begetting of children was sinful (procreation, for them, meant condemning another angelic soul in a vile material body). They therefore condemned marriage and encouraged sexual practices that would not result in conception. Whether this actually happened or not, Cathars confessed to Sodomy under Inquisition torture and it became accepted that heretics in general were guilty of it. The Inquisition also believed that the Cathars worshipped Satan in the form of a cat, and spat on the cross to show their contempt for the Crucified Christ. (Still wilder tales, - such as suggestions of incestuous orgies, child sacrifice and cannibalism- had also long been used to besmirch various heretical movements. Many of these details coalesced later into the Inquisition's conception of the Sabbat or Black Mass. In the witch hunting era, the Inquisition and its Protestant counterparts would use torture to gain confessions of attending such ghastly rites; this travesty continued well into the early modern period).

The Inquisition spread elsewhere, taking its demonological ideas and sewing the seeds of paranoia. An Inquisitor called Conrad of Magdeberg, for example, caused much trouble in the Rhineland, accusing all and sundry of worshipping a huge black cat. Conrad was eventually murdered on the road by an exasperated Franciscan monk, probably acting at the behest of local nobles who the Inquisitor had begun to trouble. Ultimately the Inquisition became a large bureaucracy, though, reigning in mavericks like Conrad. In France it was retained as part of the state's terror apparatus. The Grand Inquisitor, Guillaume de Paris, was also the personal confessor to King Philip IV (Philip the Fair). By this time (the early 1300s) the Inquisition was at risk of becoming a victim of it's own success, and could not justify its existence unless new threats to God's church could be found for it to act against. The King, meanwhile, was fearful about threats to his absolute authority. The Templars had also lost their purpose- with the loss of the Holy Land. They remained as an uncomfortable reminder of the neglected cause of Jerusalem. They also had amasses great land throughout France and beyond, and wealth that would go a long way to solving Philip IV's financial problems. Moreover, they had helped rebel barons depose a King in Cyprus, might they not one day try the same in the West? These were reasons enough for Philip to arrest them, to accuse them of heresy and to unleash the Inquisition against them.

Philip IV and his chief minister, Guillaume de Nogaret drew up a list of accusations. According to these accusations, the Templars made neophytes spit on the cross at their initiation ceremonies and renounce Christ. They worshipped a cat or a severed head (and wore chord belts that had touched the head) they gave indecent kisses and practiced ritualised sodomy. They disbelieved the Sacraments, they sought gain for their Order by illicit means, and Preceptors who were not ordained Priests heard confessions and gave absolution within the Order.

There were three factors in favour of the King and de Nogaret that enabled them to pull off their conspiracy to destroy the Templars. The first was the persistence of the rumours regarding the Cathars, most of which could be reflected in the accusations against the Templars, which would link the two groups in peoples minds. The second was the Inquisition still being in place. Their refined interrogation and torture technique meant that they could elicit confessions to almost anything from almost anyone. The third was the present weakness of the Papacy. Pope Clement V was all but a puppet of Philip IV. Clement V's predecessor Boniface VIII had been a zealous advocate of Papal Supremacy, which had led to a power struggle with Philip IV. It had come to a dramatic climax in 1303. Philip had sent Guillaume de Nogaret with a company of soldiers to Anagni, to arrest Boniface on fabricated charges of heresy, simony and the murder of the previous Pope, Celestine V. During the episode Pope Boniface VIII had been struck by one of the Colonna delegation accompanying the French soldiers (the Colonna family had long feuded with Boniface's Caetani clan). Boniface was subsequently rescued by his supporters but died four weeks later from trauma. Not even Clement V would lift the excommunication imposed on Guillaume de Nogaret for his role in the scandal.

Popular myth has it that the Templars protected some great secret that had Rome quaking in its boots. Yet it was not Rome that drove the persecution of the Templars. Rome was afraid not of them but of Philip IV. Philip had not consulted the Pope- in whose name he acted- before arresting the Templars. Numerous bishops, fearful for their own standing, left the Templars to the mercy of the King and the French Inquisition. Clement V himself was initially dismissive of the allegations and incensed by the violation of ecclesiastical rights. His cooperation was only secured later as the result of a mixture of bribery and intimidation from the French Court. The Archbishop of Sens, who oversaw the burning of those Templars who professed their innocence and rescinded their confessions, was a Royal appointee. Clearly then, the French Monarch and his advisors, and not the Catholic Church drove the persecution of the Templars.

Throughout the operation against the Templars, the excommunicated de Nogaret had to operate from the shadows. It is hard to think of another individual who inflicted more damage to the standing of the Church than this enigmatic lawyer and politician. In accusing first a Pope and then the foremost Crusader Order of heresy, he effectively turned the Catholic establishment's most damaging weapon against itself. According to Philip IV's propaganda machine (which de Nogaret largely directed), all this was done in the defence of the Faith, by loyal servants of Holy Mother Church. Philip, in reality, was no such thing. He wished to destroy the Templars to strengthen his own position, and to take their land. Guillaume de Nogaret surely encouraged King Philip's bold moves against the Church. There seems to be a reason for his personal animus against the Catholic establishment.

De Nogaret was born in St Felix de Carman, that same town near Toulouse where the Cathar Council was held, long before in 1167. The inquisitorial records for 1236 mention a Cathar minister called Raymond de Nogaret. In the 1440s, several Cathars would be burned alive in St Felix de Carman. Some say that De Nogaret's grandfather and parents were amongst them. (Guillaume de Nogaret was also denounced as a Patarin during the Anagni scandal- Patarin being a term for Cathars in Calabria). The irony, in the end, was that the man accusing the Templars of secretly adhering in some way to the Cathar heresy, had his own secret links to the Cathars. He was taking revenge where he could on the Catholic institution that had killed them.

It may have rankled with de Nogaret a little that he had to sup with the Devil to achieve his vengeance; and one wonders if he anticipated that the Inquisition would emerge stronger from the persecution of the Templars. The Inquisition was stronger, apparently vindicated, and poised to stay in business for centuries to come- by persecuting members of a spurious satanic conspiracy. The ensuing witch persecution might have been less wide reaching and destructive had not the trials of the Templars fostered paranoia about humans conspiring against Christianity under the Devil's command. If De Nogaret wanted personal revenge, though, the enduring consequences may not have concerned him excessively. He could not get at the Inquisition so had to transfer his wrath. The Templars had not been the organisation responsible for the persecution of the Cathars- they weren't the ideal group to attack as payback for the massacring of the sect. But equally these knights had hardly done anything to stop it. De Nogaret, who also gained materially from his role in the affair, would have derived some sense of satisfaction from making them suffer.

Later medieval crucifixion with Mary Magdalene at foot of cross, Paolo Veneziano.

Since 1969 the Catholic Church has abandoned the view that Mary Magdalene was identical with Mary of Bethany. Gerard of Nazareth has lost his argument. The saint remains popular, and still attracts pilgrims both to Vezelay and St Maximin near Aix. The idea of her as the redeemed sinner lingers in the religious mainstream, while the Gnostic Magdalene has also made a comeback in popular culture. Since the publication of Baigent Lincoln and Leigh's the 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail', and various derivatives including a certain novel, the notion has been abroad that the Knights Templar discovered (perhaps under the ruins of Solomon's Temple, some proof not only of Magdalene's special status but also of a marriage to Christ and the existence of a bloodline, for which the Holy Grail supposedly served as a metaphor. Possession of this 'secret' according to the conspiracy, enabled the Templars to blackmail the Holy See securing their sudden rise to power from obscurity. One searches in vain for compelling evidence that the Templars found any such thing nor that they held wildly heterodox views on the Magdalene's status, even if Gerard's polemic raises the possibility that some of them accepted the Greek view (now also the Catholic view) of her distinctness from Mary of Bethany. Meanwhile, ironically the originators of the bloodline conspiracy take seriously the legends that the saint came to the Carmargue actually argue for identification of the two Marys. The far fetched assertion was that Mary, Christ's widow came to the South of France bearing a son whose descendants married into the Merovingian dynasty, thus preserving the 'Davidic Line' through Clovis I and his heirs. (The legend of Mary Magdalene's coming to Gaul could not in fact be taken seriously, as Monsiegneur L. Duchesne demonstrated in the late nineteenth century). The holy bloodline theory goes on to represent Godfrioi de Bouillon as a scion of that supposed dynasty, thus having an ancient claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. There is little proof that Christ married Mary Magdalene or had a family. Though the theologian B. Thiering argued for this being the case (also that they divorced), coming to the conclusion on the basis of her idiosyncratic interpretations of the cryptic Dead Sea Scrolls, she failed to substantiate this or any other of her imaginative claims concerning the life of Jesus the man. It is unclear how the Cathar belief (if such there was) arose that Magdalene was the man Jesus' concubine. What is clear is the view wasn't shared by the Templars, whose own monastic lifestyle was predicated on belief in a celibate Christ.

Recommended Farther Reading:

Charles G. Addison, The History of the Knights Templars, (London, 1842).
M Baigent, R Leigh and H Lincoln, Holy Blood Holy Grail, (Cape, 1982).
Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, (Cambridge University Press, 1978).
_____., The New Knighthood, (Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, (Sussex University Press, 1975).
Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalene, Myth and Metaphor, (Pimlico, 2005)

Katherine Ludwig Jansen ,The Making o f the Magdalen (Princeton, 2000)
Andrew Jotischky, 'The Case of Gerard of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene' in Gervase, M. and Powell, J.M., Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades (Syracuse University Press, New York, 2001).
Benjamin Z. Kedar, 'Gerard of Nazareth a Neglected Twelfth-Century Writer in the Latin East: A Contribution to the Intellectual and Monastic History of the Crusader States,' Dumbarton Oaks Papers, vol. 37 (1983), pp. 55-77.
Keith Laidler, The Head of God, (Orion, 1998).
PG Maxwell-Stuart, Witchcraft, A History, (Tempus 2000).