Templar Globe

Richard Leigh, co-author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, one of the most controversial books of the 1980s has died November 21st, aged 64; in 2006, with Michael Baigent, he lost his plagiarism case against the American Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, the spectacularly successful thriller which they claimed was based on their book.

Written by Leigh, Baigent and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail claimed to have uncovered a massive conspiracy to conceal a bloodline descended from Jesus of Nazareth that has influenced the course of European history.

The protracted court case boosted sales of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which had stalled at 3,500 copies a year in Britain, to 7,000 copies a week, a 100-fold rise. (Similarly, The Da Vinci Code returned to the bestseller lists with sales of 20,000 copies a week.) But against their royalties windfall, Leigh and Baigent - Lincoln took no part in the case - were left with a legal bill for their failed action of about £2 million.

Originally published in January 1982, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail achieved enormous commercial success; by last year it had reportedly sold two million copies.

Richard Harris Leigh was born on August 16 1943 in New Jersey. His father was British, his mother Austrian. Leigh graduated from Tufts University in Boston and took a Master’s degree at the University of Chicago before studying for a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He spent several years working as a university lecturer in the United States, Canada and Britain.

In 1975, at a summer school in England where he was lecturing on aspects of literature, Leigh met the writer Henry Lincoln and discovered that they shared an interest in the order of medieval warrior-monks known as the Knights Templar.

Lincoln had already started researching the strange story of an obscure 19th-century French country priest, Bérenger Saunière, who had apparently been able to spend huge sums of money in the years around 1900, refurbishing his parish church in the remote Languedoc village of Rennes-le-Château in the foothills of the Pyrenees. In Leigh, Lincoln found a sympathetic and knowledgeable fellow-traveller.

When Leigh offered to help Lincoln with studying the Templars he recruited Michael Bagient, a psychology graduate who was researching the shadowy order for a film project.

Between them Leigh, Lincoln and Baigent developed the Saunière story into a full-blown hypothesis: that Saunière had stumbled on a sensational secret. This was that Jesus had not died on the Cross but had married Mary Magdalene and fathered at least one child; his descendants, they suggested, continue to exert an influence on European history through the Prieuré de Sion, a secret society originally founded in Jerusalem during the First Crusade.

In a follow-up book, The Messianic Legacy (1986), Leigh and his co-authors claimed that the then Grand Master of the Prieuré, Pierre Plantard de Saint Clair, was seeking to restore the Merovingian dynasty to rule France while also taking on a monarchic role in the running of the European Union. It was later proved that Plantard had made up the Prieuré as a hoax in 1956.

Further collaborations with Michael Baigent included The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, alleging a Roman Catholic conspiracy to conceal the scrolls, and The Temple and the Lodge, a history of Freemasonry (both 1991); Secret Germany (1994), the story of a plot to kill Hitler; The Elixir and the Stone (1997); and The Inquisition (1999).

Although best-known for his non-fiction work, Leigh preferred to think of himself as a writer of literary fiction. In Erceldoune & Other Stories (2006) he included an essay on “Ireland, Mythic Logic”, which explored the forces at work where the country’s past, present and future intersect.

His last novel, Grey Magic, published this year, was semi-autobiographical, the narrator and protagonist being born in the United States but moving to Britain in his early thirties.

Richard Leigh, who died on November 21, was unmarried.

in The Telegraph

Venham ao Vaticano dialogar com Bento XVI. Este foi o apelo lançado pelo Papa, por interposta pessoa, o cardeal Tarcisio Bertone, secretário de Estado, a altos dignitários muçulmanos que pugnam pelo entendimento entre islâmicos e cristãos. Um “grupo restrito”, este, composto por 138 sunitas e xiitas.

O Sumo Pontífice fê-lo depois de receber uma carta, juntamente com os representantes de outras confissões cristãs, a propor o diálogo entre as duas religiões. Uma proposta que teve bom acolhimento da Santa Sé, como se vê. A missiva do poliglota Papa foi redigida por Bertone em inglês, tendo como destinatário o príncipe da Jordânia Ghazi bin Muham- mad bin Talal, presidente do Instituto Real Aal al-Bayt para o Pensamento Islâmico.

O documento tem raízes. Foi escrito a 19 de Novembro (mas só divulgada ontem), um dia depois de o jornal americano New York Times ter publicado, em anúncio de página inteira, um texto de 300 teólogos cristãos e líderes de igrejas intitulado “A Christian Response to A Common Word Between you and me” , que, em Outubro, tinha sido divulgada pelos 138 clérigos muçulmanos.

Nesta “Resposta Cristã”, os signatários fazem uma espécie de catarse: deitam-se no sofá da História e pedem perdão aos muçulmanos. Um me culpa colectivo. Recordam vários episódios concretos, como as Cruzadas e eventuais excessos cometidos na luta contra o terrorismo (”war on terror”). Admitem que muitos cristãos foram culpados de pecados contra os vizinhos muçulmanos e, por isso, escrevem: “Pedimos perdão ao Todo-Poderoso (Alá) e às comunidades muçulmanas em todo o mundo.”

Tanta humildade não é pacífica. Uma das críticas mais bem feitas sobre este assunto foi escrita por Bruce S. Thornton, professor na Universidade Estadual da Califórnia, em artigo publicado na revista City. Chama-se “Epístola aos Muçulmanos”. “Não esqueçamos a longa ocupação islâmica, durante sete séculos, de Espanha, os séculos de raides no sul de Itália e de França, o quase saque de Roma em 846, a ocupação da Sicília e da Grécia, os quatro séculos de ocupação dos Balcãs, a destruição de Constantinopla, os dois cercos a Viena, o rapto de jovens cristãos para servirem como janíçaros dos séculos XIV a XIX, as contínuas incursões no litoral mediterrânico, de 1500 a 1800, à procura de escravos, além dos actuais ataques terroristas dos jihadistas contra o Ocidente.”

in DN.pt

The Templar Globe doesn’t usually associate with petitions, but we just received this appeal from our friend Brian Kannard and decided to let him speak to you directly.

___________________________________________

I have posted the following on Grail Seekers. Ever since I returned from Paris, I felt that I had to do something to help right the wrongs of the past. I have no idea if this little petition will do anything in that regard, however I had to do something. I ask that you take the time to read the following position statement and sign the petition that is linked. I really do believe the time is right to do this sort of thing.

Thanks for all your support,

Brian Kannard

There is no doubt that the media spotlight has shown brightly on the Knights Templars over the last couple of months. With the release of the Trail of the Templars by the Vatican press, and the 700th anniversary of the Order’s arrests the plight of the Templars has never been more publicly recognized. The media has even focused on Templar activists, such as the Acheson Twins who have called on the Vatican to officially apologize for their misdeeds.I personally think it is high time that the voice of the people be heard on this matter. Given the position taken by Pope Clement V in the Chinon Parchment, I believe the Knights Templar should be exonerated from any charges that were leveled against them 700 years ago.

There are many of you that feel the same way that I do on this matter. That is why I have set up an online petition for the Exoneration of the Knights Templar on the petition web site. It is my intention to let the Vatican know that there those out there that do believe the actions of the Church were motivated by political and malicious reasons. It is my intention to send the signatories of this petition to the Vatican on 18 March 08, the day that Jacque DeMolay was burned at the stake.

I have no idea if this will sway the opinion of the Holy See in this matter, or if it will even be accepted by the public. However, the time has come and the mistakes of the past should be corrected.

I ask that you take the time to sign the Exonerate the Knights Templar petition and let your voice be heard.

“HE’S not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.” In 1953, four years after Linda Loman’s famous soliloquy in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, the Rev Prebendary Chad Varah pioneered a wonderfully simple and effective way of paying attention to people to whom terrible things were happening.

The early years of the Samaritan movement he founded were centred on the dank, gloomy crypt of a beautiful Christopher Wren church, St Stephen Walbrook, a stone’s-throw from the Bank of England in the City of London. Volunteers would take phone calls and receive visits from the lonely, the desperate and the suicidal. As a young curate nearly 20 years earlier, Mr Varah had conducted his first funeral—a 13-year-old girl, who had started menstruating and thought she had some dreadful venereal disease. Confronting suicidal thoughts and sexual ignorance became the theme of his life.

In the 1950s, it was said that in the London area three people killed themselves every day. His simple insight was that many suicides could be averted if the despairing had emotional support in their darkest hour. This the Samaritans offered. He called it “active listening”, or “ befriending”. It was secular and non-judgmental: a kind of aural hug, perhaps all the more consolatory for coming from a stranger.

As Mr Varah himself put it: “There are in this world, in every country, people who seem to be ‘ordinary’, but who, when meeting a suicidal person, turn out to be extraordinary. They can usually save lives. How? They give the sad person their total attention. They completely forget themselves. They listen and listen and listen, without interrupting. They have no message. They do not preach. They have nothing to sell. We call them ‘Samaritans’.”

It caught on. Partly because Mr Varah had a flair for publicity; more importantly because they were soon seen to fill a need, the Samaritans spread rapidly in Britain, helped by a change of the law in 1961, before when attempted suicide was a crime in England and Wales. There are now 202 branches in Britain and Ireland with more than 17,000 trained volunteers. Through “Befrienders Worldwide”, founded by Mr Varah in 1974, there are now Samaritan operations in almost 40 countries across the world. He loved to travel, and visited many of them.

Many Samaritans who met him on his travels, as well as journalists and others, were rather taken aback by Mr Varah in person. They expected a saint-like figure of all-encompassing compassion. They found a charismatic, clever, argumentative, puckish and emotional man, who seemed obsessed with sex. Unshockable himself, he apparently enjoyed shocking others. He liked to tell young Samaritan recruits how he had dealt with a manipulative regular caller who had telephoned him at home and threatened to kill herself if he did not reschedule an appointment: “You do that, sweetie, and I’ll piss on your grave.”

Besides the Samaritans and his clerical work at St Stephen, Mr Varah had in the 1950s supplemented his income by writing comic strips, such as “Dan Dare” in the Eagle. He also had a lifelong career as a self-styled sex therapist. In Lincoln, in eastern England, where, after studying at Oxford, he went to theological college and had his first curacy, he made a name for himself with “marriage-preparation classes” including detailed sex education.

He counted himself an expert, he later explained, having enjoyed “amorous dalliances with most of the girls in my age group within cycling distance”. In 1940, though, he settled down in marriage and had five children. He would tell his marriage-preparation students that fidelity was a “privilege” not a problem. He later wrote a column for Forum, a sex magazine. Having said that he did not mind being considered a “dirty old man” at the age of 25, he liked to think of himself, when a nonagenarian, as the world’s oldest sex therapist, and claimed to have invented the permissive society.

Samaritan, heal thyself
As the Samaritans grew, he lost control and often found himself at odds with those leading the movement he had launched. Sex, typically, was one battleground. As might be expected of a number offering boundless sympathy and plenty of female voices, the Samaritans often attract telephone masturbators, a topic to which Mr Varah devoted one of his many books. Unlike some colleagues, he saw these callers as an opportunity rather than problem—if only they could get beyond their “presenting problem” and talk of their real troubles.

Mr Varah was an unconventional Christian. The title of his autobiography, “Before I Die Again”, which appeared in 1992, refers to his belief in reincarnation. He was also an unconventional Samaritan. Disenchanted with the movement he founded, he marked its 50th anniversary with a call for an end to its charitable status. He also had to be reminded that “founder” was not a post from which you can resign. Before his death, however, he was reconciled with those tending his legacy. They understood that he too was a human being, and that he thought terrible things were happening to his creation. Attention was paid. Millions are in his debt.

in The Economist

The original chest of the Ark of the Covenant is in Kenya, we can now authoritatively confirm. The chest said to contain the ten commandments that God handed over to Moses as stipulated in the book of Exodus 25; 6 - 10 has been in Kenya since the year 1210 AD.

In a paid up advertisement appearing in THE PEOPLE DAILY, dated 9th Nov 2007, the Chief Seer’s messenger has explained in detail how the Ark Of The Covenant was transported from its original location of king Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Solomon had a son with a foreign wife, Prince Menelik 1. At 19 years of age, he went to Sheba(Ethiopia) to attend his coronation and with consent of Levites carried with him the Chest. After years of temporary location in Ethiopia, the ark was put to rest in Axum.

In Axum, tunyaga (the people of the cross) or Nguo Ndune (the red costume) had conspired to steal Managi and Ikunjo (The Ark of the Covenant and Scrolls).This prompted the Kabiru (Hebrew) or the present day Gikuyu community to act. In the escape to hide the treasure, war erupted and had to be fought through to Thagana (Tana Island). From Tana Island the war entered the Somalia coast, Kaya forests in Kwale along the Kenyan coast. To divert attention, a replica of the Ark was made and broken into pieces in Digo, still on the Kenyan coast.

But that did not help as the war intensified pushing the Kabiru towards the mainland. They hurriedly burried the Managi and scrolls in secret locations in Mt Kenya. The writer continues to say that the location where the Ark Of The Covenant is, renamed by scholars as Tripple S, TSC shrine will never be subject to research. However, the scrolls which are of equal importance and which are concealed in sites renamed IKB and IKC, could be excavated and sited responsibly.

This revelation is likely to spark off renewed interest in the great search of the Ark Of The Covenant. In the article, the writer reveals that the Mt Kenya is regarded as a God’s Mountain. The shrines therein are held in trust by a college of 12 seers who operate in secrecy to guard their wisdom. People who pray with their hands raised and facing the mountain will always have their prayers answered by God. That mode of prayer was prophesied by David when he said “the Ethiopians will raise their hands in prayer to God”.

It was adopted as the Gikuyu mode of prayer when the Ark was put in their custody.

The revelation, and the events in the coming week, when the Gikuyu communities have been called upon to pray in unison to God, should be of great interest to religious scholars and historians.

By James Kamweru
From the Renessence News Feed - Radio Renessence

We are now approaching the critical time of the year for shops and supermarkets: the month before Christmas is the four weeks when stores of all kinds sell their products fastest. Father Christmas means one thing to children: presents. He has no connection with the original St Nicholas, who performed a miracle in providing dowries for three poor sisters, thereby enabling them to marry and escape a life of prostitution.

Human beings are religious animals. It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. You can see this in the positivist scientists of the 19th century.

They insisted that they were describing the universe in rigorously materialistic terms - yet at night they attended seances and tried to summon up the spirits of the dead. Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious - to such an extent that it sometimes seems to me that to be a rigorous unbeliever today, you have to be a philosopher. Or perhaps a priest.

And we need to justify our lives to ourselves and to other people. Money is an instrument. It is not a value - but we need values as well as instruments, ends as well as means. The great problem faced by human beings is finding a way to accept the fact that each of us will die.

Money can do a lot of things - but it cannot help reconcile you to your own death. It can sometimes help you postpone your own death: a man who can spend a million pounds on personal physicians will usually live longer than someone who cannot. But he can’t make himself live much longer than the average life-span of affluent people in the developed world.

And if you believe in money alone, then sooner or later, you discover money’s great limitation: it is unable to justify the fact that you are a mortal animal. Indeed, the more you try escape that fact, the more you are forced to realise that your possessions can’t make sense of your death.

It is the role of religion to provide that justification. Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death. We in Europe have faced a fading of organised religion in recent years. Faith in the Christian churches has been declining.

The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we’re all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: “When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing. He believes in anything.” Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The “death of God”, or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church — from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn’t crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown’s book.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: “No. I don’t believe in God. I believe in something greater.” Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren’t big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret “container” with his or her own fears and hopes.

As a child of the Enlightenment, and a believer in the Enlightenment values of truth, open inquiry, and freedom, I am depressed by that tendency. This is not just because of the association between the occult and fascism and Nazism - although that association was very strong. Himmler and many of Hitler’s henchmen were devotees of the most infantile occult fantasies.

The same was true of some of the fascist gurus in Italy - Julius Evola is one example - who continue to fascinate the neo-fascists in my country. And today, if you browse the shelves of any bookshop specialising in the occult, you will find not only the usual tomes on the Templars, Rosicrucians, pseudo-Kabbalists, and of course The Da Vinci Code, but also anti-semitic tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I was raised as a Catholic, and although I have abandoned the Church, this December, as usual, I will be putting together a Christmas crib for my grandson. We’ll construct it together - as my father did with me when I was a boy. I have profound respect for the Christian traditions - which, as rituals for coping with death, still make more sense than their purely commercial alternatives.

I think I agree with Joyce’s lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?” The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.

by Umberto Eco

Dear friends, it seems that it was just yesterday that we crossed over the 50,000 viewers target. Well, today we have proudly crossed the 100,000 mark with almost half of them in the last two months alone. As you can see from the statistics graphic above, the Templar Globe has been growing steadily since it’s first issue, but after June 2007 the monthly increase of readers has been overwhelming!

This month alone, almost 1 week to the end of the month, we already have almost as many visitors as we had in October. If we keep the present rate we will have over 4,000 more vistors this month, breaking our 24,000 readers / month record again.

 We want to thank you all for your interest and kindness. The hundreds of comments and emails are a true testimony that our work has been appreciated by Templars worldwide and other readers. We hope to keep the quality of information up to standard in the future.

The Templar Globe is the official bulletin of the Chancellery of the OSMTHU and it must be the most successful of all on-line publications by Templar groups. We believe our success has to do with the fact that we prefer to use these pages not as mean of self-promotion and advertising of our branch of the Order, but rather as a vehicle for the discussion of themes and news that are of interest to Templars worldwide. We seldom publish photos of our ceremonies and do not flood the site with photos of our leaders in messianic pose. We rather do our quiet work far from the limelight. We don’t, however, shy away from the issues that every Templar today should be informed about and actively bring you news about religion, other cultures and spiritual paths, current news and issues about Jerusalem and the Middle East, opinions from all sources about the role of Chivalry in our world today, inspirational stories and characters are brought to our attention and short articles and studies about places and events of the rich Templar history we share as a legacy are published.

 We want to be better in the future. We want to publish more. So, if you have written a short (or long) piece about the Order or if you have come across an interesting resource you think other readers might benefit from or even if there are issues you would like to see addressed in the Templar Globe, please feel free to let us know.

Non Nobis Domine Non Nobis Sed Nomine Tuo Da Gloriam

“Hoje a verdade é um cartucho vazio”. A afirmação é do historiador e jurista José Hermano Saraiva, que esteve esta semana em Pombal a gravar uma edição para o programa “A Alma e a Gente”, exibido na RTP2. Louriçal, Pombal e Abiul foram os lugares onde o famoso professor esteve para mostrar que “a história de Pombal pode-se apresentar como símbolo da própria formação de Portugal”. Um programa a ser exibido no próximo dia 29, pelas 21h30.

O [jornal] ECO acompanhou um pouco das filmagens e trocou impressões com José Hermano Saraiva no mesmo cenário onde, quatro anos e meio antes, tinha sido feita uma entrevista: no Castelo de Pombal. “Actualmente vive-se de faz de conta. Hoje a verdade é um cartucho vazio”, desabafou o professor, após ter feito uma explicação sobre a edificação, abordando as agitações entre os templários do Castelo de Pombal e a população do Cardal que terminaram “quando o Conde de Castelo Melhor levou a imagem de Nossa Senhora de Jerusalém lá para baixo”. Ainda a propósito da fortaleza, José Hermano Saraiva referiu que “eu daria vida ao Castelo chamando os templários (1). Esse é o castelo mais turístico de Portugal”.

Acompanhar as filmagens de José Hermano Saraiva, de 87 anos, é mais surpreendente do que os próprios enredos da História de Portugal que o professor vai desvendando. Isto porque, em cada cenário, a gravação é feita apenas uma vez, sem blocos de anotações ou paragens. “Faço o programa sem papéis ou qualquer outra indicação. Só digo o que manda o meu coração e as pessoas compreendem essa espontaneidade e aceitam”, acredita José Hermano Saraiva. E como explica ainda o sucesso de seus programas junto a um público tão diversificado? “É uma razão simples. É o poder da verdade. Agarra, convence e aceita-se”, destaca, acrescentando que “hoje o mundo está travesti, cheio de disfarces”.

O realizador d’“A Alma e a Gente”, José António Crespo, acompanha o professor nos programas de televisão há vários anos. “Estou com ele há 14 anos. Costumo dizer que estamos no quarto mandato”. Segundo o realizador, “é muito fácil trabalhar com o professor. Apesar de não podermos esquecer que faz muitas palestras para a elite, é um académico e, não sendo difícil, é essencial conhecê-lo para perceber a sua ironia”.

Já em pleno Largo do Cardal, quando explicava pormenores sobre a Igreja, José Hermano Saraiva atraía os olhares de todos os que passavam, a pé ou de carro. “É ele?” era a pergunta que mais se ouvia. De acordo com o historiador, “quatro anos depois encontro Pombal mais desenvolvido, a população cresceu imenso, além do comércio e trânsito. Pena porque não mostrei as coisas novas de Pombal. Há muito o que ver. Este é um dos lugares de Portugal em que os anos foram positivos”.

Por Adriana Afonso
www.oeco.pt

 (1) Estamos completamente de acordo!

 I have recently accessed the article entitled Vatican Supports Maltese Author [our own reference here: Vatican proves Maltese author correct], which I found sufficiently intriguing to Google the book mentioned, namely Of Craft And Honour And A Templar’s Chronicles, by George Gregory Buttigieg. The book’s website (www.ofcraftandhonour.com/) turned up among other information.

Accessing this site, I reconfirmed that the author had written the book (though not published it) well before The Da Vinci Code’s appearance as well as before Barbara Frale’s public revelations of the Chinon Parchment.

I ordered the book from amazon.com and I admit to being badly hooked enough to finish it in three days. I enjoyed it thoroughly and I was quite impressed that Dr Buttigieg’s Templars truly conform to the picture we now have emerging from the Chinon document.

I can now appreciate Malcolm Barber’s comments about the difference between Dr Buttigieg’s Templars and Dan Brown’s Templars. I found this description so eerily accurate, that I started wondering if the author could have had “private” knowledge of the Chinon Parchment before it was revealed to public scrutiny.

And then small bits of the puzzle started floating in my mind. We are told that Dr Buttigieg is a Hospitaller Knight of rank, decorated with the Commander’s Cross, as well as also being a diplomat for his country to the Order’s Rome headquarters and the Vatican.

Could it be that the author’s uncannily correct description of his Templars is based on information he was privy to as a knight or as a diplomat? Could he have been told about the Chinon document by Dr Frale or someone else whom he encountered in the “corridors of power”? More fascinatingly still, could he have had some access to other, still private documents, which, like the Chinon Parchment, have not been made public yet?

Another possible line of thinking took me down another alleyway. Could Of Craft And Honour And A Templar’s Chronicles and the release of the Chinon document be part of the establishment’s timely reaction to the modern heresies threatening the Catholic Church in the wake of books like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code?

Dr Buttigieg has strongly denied any secret agenda but he does come down strongly against the “new” heresies about Jesus’s bloodline continuing through the Magdalene. In fact, his creation - Henry Tonna Black - a third degree freemason, states that such nonsense demeans the “templarism” within the folds of the “Craft”. Incidentally and interesting enough, Dr Buttigieg coins a new related term “speculative neo-templarism” but that is another matter.

Although never a great believer of conspiracy theories, I admit to toying seriously with the above. The alternative - accepting Dr Buttigieg’s predictions - may be rather scary. Besides, correctly portraying the Templars’ individual human weaknesses versus collective heresy, he also predicts the assassination of the President of Pakistan and the Russian Bear’s new aggressive awakening. Hopefully, time will not fulfil these predictions!

By Lydia Grech, Balzan
www.timesofmalta.com

Os manuscritos e desenhos originais de Leonardo da Vinci podem ser consultados, pela primeira vez, através de um arquivo digital, o E-Leo, desenvolvido pela Biblioteca Leonardiana e que foi apresentado este ano.

O arquivo ajudar a compreender e a decifrar as complicadas notas de Leonardo da Vinci e pequenos desenhos graças a um avançado programa informático, informou em comunicado a Biblioteca Leonardiana, da localidade italiana de Vinci.

Mais de 6.000 páginas de manuscritos e desenhos de Leonardo da Vinci, que viveu entre 1452 e 1519, podem ser consultados gratuitamente, graças a uma iniciativa desenvolvida pela Biblioteca e que conta com financiamento da União Europeia.

A Biblioteca Leonardiana, inaugurada oficialmente em 1928 e que alberga a ampla obra de Leonardo da Vinci desde 1651, decidiu criar o E-Leo para que seja possível ler, estudar e compreender Leonardo da Vinci, pode ler-se na nota.

O E-Leo oferece a possibilidade de consultar em profundidade os manuscritos, cujas páginas estão reproduzidas em alta definição e os desenhos, além de oferecer um índice semântico e um glossário completo para decifrar a linguagem científica e técnica do Renascimento utilizada por da Vinci.

O glossário será ainda aperfeiçoado de forma a oferecer a terminologia própria da mecânica teórica, as matemáticas, a anatomia, sistema óptico e arquitectura.

O projecto E-Leo pretende ir mais além da vasta obra de Leonardo da Vinci e o objectivo final é realizar um arquivo digital de manuscritos da História da Ciência e da Técnica do período medieval e do Renascimento. Para atingir esse objectivo a Biblioteca está já em contacto com centros de estudo franceses e alemães.

O arquivo E-Leo pode ser consultado através do endereço www.leonardodigitale.com.

Diário Digital / Lusa

To late mythologist Joseph Campbell, there has only been one story ever told. Every myth and legend involves identical themes, and every hero undertakes the same basic journey. If he’s to be believed, there’s no essential distinction between the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, a computer-animated adaptation of which opens today, and, say, Dukes of Hazzard. While the idea that a heroic epic of sacrifice and bravery is thematically identical to a movie about hillbillies trying to poison their neighbours with methanol is somewhat depressing, the mono-myth theory might explain why Hollywood can easily rely on ancient legends when they run out of TV to adapt. Interested viewers can explore Campbell’s theory of the über-myth in the documentary series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, or embark on their own heroic journey through some DVD adaptations of classic myths and legends.

Beowulf

Robert Zemeckis’s new film is not the only retelling of Beowulf’s battle with the Grendel clan. In 1999, John McTiernan directed The 13th Warrior, a multicultural demystification that has an Arab writer fighting alongside Vikings to exterminate the last remaining tribe of Neanderthals, sort of like It’s a Small World with genocidal tendencies.

Another version of Beowulf stars Christopher Lambert and sets the tale in a futuristic dystopia. Sort of. The only real concession to the sci-fi conceit is the techno soundtrack, and even that only seems futuristic if rave pills are flashing you back to 1998.

A more faithful adaptation comes from the excellent 2005 Icelandic/Canadian/U.K. co-production Beowulf and Grendel. The film maintains the poem’s strange ahistoric hybrid of paganism and Christianity, though I don’t remember quite so much of Sarah Polley having sex with trolls in the Cliff Notes version.

King Arthur

Like Beowulf, the legend of King Arthur and his quest for the Holy Grail is deeply infused with Christian themes of sacrifice, healing, and unity. Also incest and dismemberment, which spices up the Sunday-school motifs with fleshy exploitation-film fundamentals. John Boorman’s 1981 Excalibur retains the legend’s more salacious elements, though the broad comedy occasionally missteps and gives Arthur the nobility of Mr. Bean.

On the other hand, 2004’s King Arthur replaces magic and mysticism with gritty realism, portraying Merlin not as a wise old wizard but as a pagan warrior-priest mixed with an aging hippie trying to cure a head cold with mandrake root and half a potato.

Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991) takes the same approach, and completely re-contextualizes elements of Arthurian legend in a modern setting. Robin Williams plays Parry, an insane homeless man whose quest for what looks to be a Grail-shaped bowling trophy cures shock-jock Jeff Bridges of hubris, arrogance and guilt.

Greek myths

In Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Jason searches not for the Holy Grail, but rather the Golden Fleece. The legend’s imaginative creatures, brought to life by stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen, prove there was more to ancient Hellenic culture than the bellowed catchphrases and mindless warmongering of 300.

In Clash of the Titans (1981), Perseus quests for Medusa’s head, and Harryhausen’s work is also the centerpiece. It’s a good thing, too, because otherwise the focus would be on star Harry Hamlin, who appears to have taken acting lessons from a sunlamp. As it stands, he gets upstaged by a robot owl with the voice of a rusty R2D2.

The acting is also not the highlight of 1960s Italian Hercules films starring Reg Park, a blundering British bodybuilder who all evidence suggests is a golem made of pressed meat. Nevertheless, 1961’s Hercules in the Haunted World is worth watching for the rich visuals of director/cinematographer Mario Bava, who drenches Hercules’s various quests in so much fog and atmosphere you barely notice his resemblance to Bo Duke.

AL KRATINA, Freelance

A committee of the UN General Assembly has voted for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

A total of 99 countries voted for a suspension of capital punishment worldwide, while 52 voted against and 33 abstained.

Although the vote is not legally binding, human rights groups say it is a significant demonstration of worldwide opinion.

Some 130 countries have already outlawed the practice.

After two days of fractious and sometimes bad-tempered debate, 99 countries voted for a worldwide pause in the use of the death penalty, with a view to ending the practice.

Italy was the driving force behind the vote.

A series of what are called wrecking amendments were tabled by the opponents of the measure, but they were all rejected.

Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Sir John Sawers, said the vote showed international opinion was changing.

“When we tried this eight years ago, it was mainly Europeans who voted in favour of such a moratorium,” he said.

“We now have a global coalition and I think it’s an important sign that the death penalty is increasingly unpopular and is seen as unreliable.”

The US was among the countries to vote against.

Influential vote

Singapore led the opposition, arguing that capital punishment is a criminal law issue which should be left to countries to decide on.

Singapore’s ambassador to the UN, Vanu Gopala Menon, said the European Union was trying to impose its values on the rest of the world.

“They claim to support freedom of expression, but vote to deny it to others,” he said.

“They claim that they do not seek to impose their views, but now they intend to force through a resolution that a significant number of other countries do not agree with.

“How else can this behaviour be described, other than as sanctimonious, hypocritical and intolerant?”

Now the entire UN General Assembly will vote on whether to adopt this call for a worldwide moratorium. That is expected to go through.

Campaigners say even though that will not be a legally binding vote, it will still be influential.

By Laura Trevelyan
BBC News, New York

Part 6: An Age of Ages

Although in some languages the Middle Ages are labeled in the singular (it’s le moyen age in French and das mittlere Alter in German), it is difficult to think of the era as anything other than ages plural. This is in part because of the numerous subjects encompassed by this long period of time, and in part because of the chronological sub-eras within the era.

Generally, the medieval era is divided into three periods: the Early Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages, and the Late Middle Ages. Like the Middle Ages itself, each of these three periods lacks hard and fast parameters.

The Early Middle Ages

The Early Medieval Era is sometimes still called the Dark Ages. This epithet oiginated with those who wanted to compare the earlier period unfavorably with their own so-called “enlightened” age.

Modern scholars who have actually studied the time period would not so readily use the label, since passing judgment on the past interferes with a true understanding of the time and its people. Yet the term is still somewhat apt for the simple reason that we know relatively little about events and material culture in those times.

This era is often considered to begin with the “fall of Rome” and end sometime in the 11th century. It encompasses the reigns of Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, and the Danish Kings of England; it saw frequent Viking activity, the Iconoclastic Controversy, and the birth and rapid expansion of Islam in Northern Africa and Spain. Over these centuries, Christianity spread throughout much of Europe, and the Papacy evolved into a powerful political entity.

The Early Middle Ages are also sometimes referred to as Late Antiquity. This time period is usually viewed as beginning in the third century and stretching to the seventh century, and sometimes as late as the eighth. Some scholars see Late Antiquity as distinct and separate from both the Ancient world and the Medieval one; others see it as a bridge between the two where significant factors from both eras overlap.

The High Middle Ages

The High Medieval Era is the period of time that seems to typify the Middle Ages best. Usually beginning with the 11th century, some scholars end it in 1300 and others extend it for as much as another 150 years. Even limiting it to a mere 300 years, the High Middle Ages saw such significant events as Norman conquests in Britain and Sicily, the earlier Crusades, the Investiture Controversy and the signing of the Magna Carta. By the end of the 11th century, nearly every corner of Europe had become Christianized (with the notable exception of much of Spain), and the Papacy, long established as a political force, was in constant struggle with some secular governments and alliance with others.

This period is often what we think of when someone mentions “medieval culture.” It is sometimes referred to as the “flowering” of medieval society, thanks to an intellectual renaissance in the 12th century, such notable philosophers as Pierre Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, and the establishment of such Universities as those in Paris, Oxford and Bologna. There was an explosion of stone castle-building, and the construction of some of the most magnificent cathedrals in Europe.

In terms of material culture and political structure, the High Middle Ages saw medievalism at its peak. What we call feudalism today was firmly established in Britain and parts of Europe; trade in luxury items as well as staples flourished; towns were granted charters of privilege and even established anew by feudal lords with alacrity; and a well-fed population was beginning to burgeon. By the end of the thirteenth century, Europe was at an economic and cultural height, perched at the verge of a downturn.

The Late Middle Ages

The end of the Middle Ages can be characterized as a transformation from the medieval world to the early modern one. It is often considered to begin in 1300, though some scholars look at the mid- to late-fifteenth century as the beginning of the end. Once again, the end of the end is debatable, ranging from 1500 to 1650.

Cataclysmic and awesome events of the 14th century include the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Avignon Papacy, the Italian Renaissance and the Peasants’ Revolt. The 15th century saw Joan of Arc burned at the stake, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, the Moors driven from Spain and the Jews expelled, the Wars of the Roses and the voyage of Columbus to the New World. The 16th century was wracked by the Reformation and blessed by the birth of Shakespeare. The 17th century, rarely included within the medieval era, saw the Great Fire of London, a rash of witch hunts, and the Thirty Years War.

Though famine and disease had always been a lurking presence, the Late Medieval era saw the horrific results of both in abundance. The Black Death, preceded by famine and overpopulation, wiped out at least a third of Europe and marked the end of the prosperity that had characterized the high medieval era. The Church, once so highly respected by the general populace, suffered reduced status when some of its priests refused to minister to the dying during the plague, and sparked resentment when it enjoyed enormous profits in bequests from plague victims. More and more towns and cities were wresting control of their own governments from the hands of the clergy or nobility that had previously ruled them. And the reduction in population triggered economic and political changes that would never be reversed.

High medieval society had been characterized by corporation. The nobility, the clergy, the peasantry, the guilds — all were group entities that saw to the welfare of their members but put the welfare of the community, and their own community in particular, first. Now, as was reflected in the Italian Renaissance, a new regard for the value of the individual was growing. By no means was late medieval nor early modern society a culture of equality, but the seeds of the idea of human rights had been sown.

Part 7: Make Your Choice

The viewpoints examined in the previous pages are by no means the only ways to look at the Middle Ages. Anyone studying a smaller geographical area, such as Great Britain or the Iberian Peninsula, will much more easily discover start- and end-dates for the era. Students of art, literature, sociology, militaria, and any number of subjects will each find specific turning points pertinent to their topic of interest. And I don’t doubt that you, too, will see a particular event that strikes you as possessed of such towering importance that it defines the beginning or end of the medieval era for you.

The comment has been made that all historical eras are arbitrary definitions and, therefore, how the Middle Ages is defined really has no significance.

I believe that the true historian will find something lacking in this approach. Defining historical eras not only makes each era more accessible to the newcomer, it helps the serious student identify interrelated events, recognize patterns of cause and effect, understand the influence of a period’s culture on those who lived within it and, ultimately, find a deeper meaning in the story of our past.

So make your own choice, and reap the benefits of approaching the Middle Ages from your own unique perspective.

Whether you are a serious scholar following the path of higher education or a devoted amateur like me, any conclusions you can support with facts will not only have validity but will help you make the Middle Ages your own. And do not be surprised if your view of Medieval times changes over the course of your studies. My own outlook has certainly evolved in the last 25 years, and will most likely continue to do so as long as the Middle Ages continues to hold me in its thrall.

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By Melissa Snell. She is a historical researcher and writer who holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin and has since spent more than two decades in independent study.

Part 4: Christendom

Throughout the medieval era only one institution came close to uniting all of Europe, though it was not so much a political empire as a spiritual one. That union was attempted by the Catholic Church, and the geopolitical entity it influenced was known as “Christendom.”

While the exact extent of the Church’s political power and influence on the material culture of medieval Europe has been and continues to be debated, there is no denying that it had a significant impact on international events and personal lifestyles throughout the era. It is for this reason that the Catholic Church has validity as a defining factor of the Middle Ages.

The rise, establishment, and ultimate fracturing of Catholicism as the single most influential religion in western Europe offers several significant dates to use as start- and end-points for the era.

In 306 C.E., Constantine was proclaimed Caesar and became co-ruler of the Roman Empire.

In 312 he converted to Christianity, the once-illegal religion now became favored over all others. (After his death, it would become the official religion of the empire.) Virtually overnight, an underground cult became the religion of the “Establishment,” forcing the once-radical Christian philosophers to rethink their attitudes toward the Empire.

In 325, Constantine called the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. This convocation of bishops from all over the known world was an important step in building the organized institution that would have so much influence over the next 1,200 years.

These events make the year 325, or at the very least the early fourth century, a viable starting point for the Christian Middle Ages. However, another event holds equal or greater weight in the minds of some scholars: the accession to the papal throne of Gregory the Great in 590. Gregory was instrumental in establishing the medieval papacy as a strong socio-political force, and many believe that without his efforts the Catholic Church would never have achieved the power and influence it wielded throughout medieval times.

In 1517 C.E. Martin Luther posted 95 theses criticizing the Catholic Church. In 1521 he was excommunicated, and he appeared before the Diet of Worms to defend his actions. The attempts to reform ecclesiastical practices from within the institution were futile; ultimately, the Protestant Reformation split the Western Church irrevocably. The Reformation was not a peaceful one, and religious wars ensued throughout much of Europe. These culminated in the Thirty Years War that ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

When equating “medieval” with the rise and fall of Christendom, the latter date is sometimes viewed as the end of the Middle Ages by those who prefer an all-inclusive view of the era. However, the sixteenth-century events that heralded the beginning of the end of Catholicism’s pervasive presence in Europe are more frequenly regarded as the era’s terminus.

Part 5: Europe

The field of medieval studies is by its very nature “eurocentric.” This does not mean that medievalists deny or ignore the significance of events that took place outside of what is today Europe during the medieval era. But the entire concept of a “medieval era” is a European one. The term “Middle Ages” was first used by European scholars during the Italian Renaissance to describe their own history, and as the study of the era has evolved, that focus has remained fundamentally the same.

As more research has been conducted in previously unexplored areas, a wider recognition of the importance of the lands outside Europe in shaping the modern world has evolved. While other specialists study the histories of non-European lands from varying perspectives, medievalists generally approach them with regard to how they affected European history.

It is an aspect of medieval studies that has always characterized the field.

Because the medieval era is so inextricably linked to the geographical entity we now call “Europe,” it is entirely valid to associate a definition of the Middle Ages with a significant stage in the development of that entity. But this presents us with a variety of challenges.

Europe is not a separate geological continent; it is part of a larger land mass properly called Eurasia. Throughout history, its boundaries shifted all too often, and they are still shifting today. It was not commonly recognized as a distinct geographical entity during the Middle Ages; the lands we now call Europe were more frequently considered “Christendom.” Throughout the Middle Ages, there was no single political force that controlled all of the continent. With these limitations, it becomes increasingly difficult to define the parameters of a broad historical age associated with what we now call Europe.

But perhaps this very lack of characteristic features can help us with our definition.

When the Roman Empire was at its height, it consisted primarily of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. By the time Columbus made his historic voyage to the “New World,” the “Old World” stretched from Italy to Scandinavia, and from Britain to the Balkans and beyond. No longer was Europe the wild, untamed frontier, populated by “barbarian,” frequently migratory cultures. It was now “civilized” (though still often in turmoil), with generally stable governments, established centers of commerce and learning, and the dominant presence of Christianity.

Thus, the medieval era might be considered the period of time during which Europe became a geopolitical entity.

The “fall of the Roman Empire” (c. 476) can still be considered a turning point in the development of Europe’s identity. However, the time when the migrations of Germanic tribes into Roman territory began to effect significant changes in the empire’s cohesiveness (the 2nd century C.E.) could be considered the genesis of Europe.

A common terminus is the late 15th century, when westward exploration into the new world initiated a new awareness in Europeans of their “old world.” The 15th century also saw significant turning points for regions within Europe: In 1453, the end of the Hundred Years War signalled the unification of France; in 1485, Britain saw the end of the Wars of the Roses and the beginning of an extensive peace; in 1492, the Moors were driven from Spain, the Jews were expelled, and “Catholic unity” prevailed. Changes were taking place everywhere, and as individual nations established modern identities, so too did Europe appear to take on a cohesive identity of its own.

(to follow)

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By Melissa Snell. She is a historical researcher and writer who holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin and has since spent more than two decades in independent study.

Recently it was brought to my attention an interesting text by Portuguese journalist and researcher António Carlos de Carvalho about the Templars in which his assessment of the Middle Ages period was severely criticized. Antonio, in a passage o his text, said that the end of the Middle Ages could be defined with the persecution of the Templars under Pope Clement V, that saw the great Schism of Avignon (13th century). Critics were saying that the Middle Ages had firm boundaries, widely accepted: from 476 with the disintegration of the Roman Empire, to 1453 with the fall of Contantinople.

Now, I defended that new studies could show otherwise and that history is not a closed book (as any science), and it is a subject of new and illuminating studies that can help us understand different ways to see a certain subject. Ultimately I defended the right to get it wrong and to create new historical models and hypothesis and test those against documents and facts. But that was too much for the detractors of alternative ways to look at our past.

So, I scanned the net and in no more than a few seconds I had found the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s definition: “the period in European history from the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century AD to the period of the Renaissance (variously interpreted as beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of Europe and on other factors).” There! Clearly, there are historians considering the 13th century. And other voices too.

Right after that I found the following, very informative and interesting, article that I now bring to your attention. I think it might interest serious historians and history buffs alike. It’s no surprise that it vindicates my claim to the right to reflect on the past and refrain to draw boundaries without considering the context and scope of a certain study.

I hope you like it and comment on it.

Luis de Matos

The Editor of the Templar Globe

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Part 1: Introduction 

One of the most frequently asked questions about medieval history is, “When did the Middle Ages start and end?” The answer to this simple question is more complicated than you might think.

There is currently no true consensus among historians, authors, and educators for the precise dates — or even the general dates — that mark the beginning and end of the medieval era. The most common time frame is approximately 500-1500 C.E., but you will often see different dates of significance marking the era’s parameters.

The reasons for this imprecision become a little more clear when one considers that the Middle Ages as a period of study has evolved over centuries of scholarship.

Once a “Dark Age,” then a romantic era and an “Age of Faith,” medieval times were approached by historians in the 20th century as a complex, multifaceted era, and many scholars found new and intriguing topics to pursue. Every view of the Middle Ages had its own defining characteristics, which in turn had its own turning points and associated dates.

This state of affairs offers the scholar or enthusiast the opportunity to define the Middle Ages in the manner that best suits his own personal approach to the era. Unfortunately, it also leaves the newcomer to medieval studies with a certain amount of confusion.

In this feature I will discuss some of the ways the medieval era has and can be delineated, and leave it to you to decide how you wish to define the Middle Ages.

Part 2: Stuck in the Middle

The phrase “Middle Ages” has its origins in the fifteenth century. Scholars of the time–primarily in Italy–were caught up in an exciting movement of art and philosophy, and they saw themselves embarking on a new age that revived the long-lost culture of “classical” Greece and Rome. The time that intervened between the ancient world and their own was a “middle” age and, sadly, one they disparaged and from which they disassociated themselves.

Eventually the term and its associated adjective, “medieval,” caught on. Yet, if the period of time the term covered was ever explicitly defined, the chosen dates were never unassailable. It may seem reasonable to end the era at the point where scholars began to see themselves in a different light; however, this would assume they were justified in their view.

From our vantage point of considerable hindsight, we can see that this was not necessarily the case.

The movement that outwardly characterized this period was in reality limited to the artistic elite (as well as to, for the most part, Italy). The political and material culture of the world around them had not radically changed from that of the centuries preceding their own. And despite the attitude of its participants, the Italian Renaissance did not spontaneously burst forth from nowhere, but was instead a product of the preceding 1,000 years of intellectual and artistic history. From a broad historical perspective, “the Renaissance” cannot be clearly separated from the Middle Ages.

Nevertheless, thanks to the work of historians such as Jacob Burkhardt and Voltaire, the Renaissance was considered a distinct time period for many years. Yet recent scholarship has blurred the distinction between “the Middle Ages” and “the Renaissance.” It has now become much more important to comprehend the Italian Renaissance as an artistic and literary movement, and to see the succeeding movements it influenced in northern Europe and Britain for what they were, instead of lumping them all together in an imprecise and misleading “age.”

Although the origin of the term “middle ages” may no longer hold the weight it once did, the idea of the medieval era as existing “in the middle” still has validity. It is now quite common to view the Middle Ages as that period of time between the ancient world and the early modern age. Unfortunately, the dates at which that first era ends and the later era begins are by no means clear. It may be more productive to define the medieval era in terms of its most significant and unique characteristics, and then identify the turning points and their associated dates.

This leaves us with a variety of options.

Part 3: Empires

Once, when political history defined the boundaries of the past, the date span of 476 to 1453 was generally considered the time frame of the medieval era. The reason: each date marked the fall of an empire.

In 476 C.E., the Western Roman Empire “officially” came to an end when the Germanic warrior Odoacer deposed and exiled the last emperor, Romulus Augustus. Instead of taking the title of emperor or acknowledging anyone else as such, Odoacer chose the title “King of Italy,” and the western empire was no more.

This event is no longer considered the definitive end of the Roman empire. In fact, whether Rome fell, dissolved, or evolved is still a matter for debate. Although at its height the empire spanned territory from Britain to Egypt, even at its most expansive the Roman bureacracy neither encompassed nor controlled most of what was to become Europe.

These lands, some of which were virgin territory, would be occupied by peoples that the Romans considered “barbarians,” and their genetic and cultural descendants would have just as much impact on the formation of western civilization as the survivors of Rome.

The study of the Roman Empire is important in understanding medieval Europe, but even if the date of its “fall” could be irrefutably determined, its status as a defining factor no longer holds the influence it once had.

In 1453 C.E., the Eastern Roman Empire came to an end when its captial city of Constantinople fell to invading Turks. Unlike the western terminus, this date is not contested, even though the Byzantine Empire had shrunk through the centuries and, at the time of the fall of Constantinople, had consisted of little more than the great city itself for more than two hundred years.

However, as significant as Byzantium is to medieval studies, to view it as a defining factor is misleading. At its height the eastern empire encompassed even less of present-day Europe than had the western empire. Furthermore, while Byzantine civilization influenced the course of western culture and politics, the empire remained quite deliberately separate from the tumultuous, unstable, dynamic societies that grew, foundered, merged and warred in the west.

The choice of Empires as a defining characteristic of medieval studies has one other significant flaw: throughout the course of the Middle Ages, no true empire encompassed a significant portion of Europe for any substantial length of time. Charlemagne succeeded in uniting large portions of modern-day France and Germany, but the nation he built broke into factions only two generations after his death. The Holy Roman Empire has been called neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, and its emperors certainly did not have the kind of control over its lands that Charlemagne achieved.

Yet the fall of empires lingers in our perception of the Middle Ages. One cannot help but notice how close the dates 476 and 1453 are to 500 and 1500.

(to follow)

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By Melissa Snell. She is a historical researcher and writer who holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin and has since spent more than two decades in independent study.