FW: [MR] Templar challenges Osama

[Jeanne]

>From a friend who is an archeologist:

        Unfortunately this would appear to be yet another pious forgery,
not on par with the Donations of Constantine or the Shroud of Turin, but
in the same vein. The first and foremost problem is, of course, that the
Knights Templar are officially out of business. The Order was disbanded
by His Holiness Clement V, in 1312 A.D. A Papal Bull officially disbanded
the Order and transferred all property and non-accused Knights to the
Order of the Knights Hospitalier. Though the Portuguese Langues formed a
new Order, under a different name, and some Templars fled to Scotland to
hide out, the Order was officially out of business by that time.

Now for
the nit picky, internal inconsistencies that prove its a forgery. First,
Prior and Grand Prior are terms for monks. The Order was run by Knight
Commanders, who answered to Preceptors, who in turn answered to the Grand
Marshal. Second, no member of the Order referred to himself as Chevalier,
or Sieur, or Sir. They were a religious Order, armed monks actually, and
referred to each other as Brother. Finally, members of the Order never,
ever, referred to themselves as Templars or Knights Templar. They were
the Poor Knights, or, on formal occasions, the Poor Knights of Christ and
the Temple of Solomon.

Unfortunately for the author of this forgery, the
Poor Knights do have a bad reputation for not keeping their word, since
Grand Master Gerard de Ridefort, starting in 1186, did his damndest to
destroy the Crusader States in the Middle East. He, along with secular
lord Sieur Raymond de Chatelaine, lord of Karak, came to the astounding
conclusion, in contradiction to the Order's rules, and the general
regulation of Christianity, that now oath made with a non-Christian was
binding. This led to the disaster at Nazareth, where Brother Gerard
convinced King Guy of Jerusalem to attack a vastly superior Muslim force,
resulting in the destruction of the Crusader army almost to the last
man(de Ridefort survived by fleeing with King Guy.)

Then, against the
advice of Count Raymond of Tripoli, de Ridefort persuaded the Crusaders
to violate the truce with Saladin, that Saladin had kept scrupulously,
and attacked the Sultan at Hattan, resulting in the wiping out of entire
Army of Jerusalem and the loss of Jerusalem to the Egyptians. Saladin
pardoned most of the captured knights, even letting many go without
ransom. The Templars he had executed, because they had broken their word
to him too many times, and he felt they should have known better.

Besides, no true knight who lived accordingly to chivalry would ever
stoop to challenging a diabetic old man, who is missing a kidney. A
champion of his maybe, but not the man himself. A true knight does not
make war on the infirm, women, children, or the mad. The author's
knowledge of chivalry leads a little to be desired.

Soffya
Chatelaine
Argent, a patriarchal cross between three crescent gules on a chief sable
three fleur-de-lys Or
Order of St. Roche
Incipient Canton of Sudentur
Barony of Stierbach
Kingdom of Atlantia