Roots of the Templars

". . . However, in response to the fanatical uprising of Zealot nationalism, the Romans   systematically  eliminated militant nationalistic groups, such as the Zealots, from Jerusalem and  surrounding strongholds. Josephus records that over 1,350,000 people died at this time. The resilient Zaddoki and Essene cultures survived in Damascus, Alexandria and in other regions of the Diaspora.

After 200BCE, the Jewish Diaspora accelerated with the decline of Hellenistic Egypt and Syria. Jews migrated to Italy and to Spain via North Africa. One of the far-flung lands of the dispersion was Gaul. In about 12CE the Romans exiled the brother of Herod Antipas, Archelaus, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. He settled in the Jewish district at Vienne, near Lyons, in France.  Some twenty-eight years later Herod Antipas joined him in exile as punishment for beheading John the Baptist. Jewish migration continued to Lyon, Arles and Bordeaux, culminating between five hundred CE and six hundred CE with a mass Diaspora movement to Marseilles and Barcelona.

The Zaddoki-Melchizedek line enjoyed great prominence in the Diaspora of Gaul, especially with the Merovingian Frank Kings who defeated the Visigoths at Vouillé, near Aquitaine, in 510CE. The Visigoth territories in Gascony, Languedoc and Provence and in Northern Spain provided fertile ground for both Zadok-Melchizedek and Rabbinical-Cabbalistic streams of Judaism.

The French Merovingian Royalty maintained that it was of a royal Trojan lineage that antedated the Roman Catholic Church. They rejected Church sponsored coronation. They also claimed to derive from the tribe of Judah through Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

The Merovingian kings placed great value on their long hair and believed that it gave them strength. Samsons name was common in the Royal Merovingian Household. The longhaired Monarchs identified with him as the hero Judge of the Tribe of Dan.

The Merovingians buried their last ruler, Dagobert II in a cape studded with golden honey bees. Napoleon removed the honeybees from Dagobert's tomb and placed them on his own coronation cape.

Displaying the same independence from Papal authority that characterized the Merovingians, Napoleon lifted the crown from the Bishop's hands and placed it upon his own head.

Merovingian claims of Davidic succession were an anathema to the Church. In 751CE, Pepin III the Short deposed the Merovingian King Childeric III with Papal support. He thereby established the Carolingian dynasty. Eight years later Pepin III himself faced military defeat at the hands of the Islamic Saracens at Narbonne.

The Jewish population came to his aid and opened the gates of Narbonne for his protection in return for Pepin III undertaking to elevate their principate city-state of Septimania to the status of an independent Davidic Princedom. Pepin III complied for reasons that seem to include the creation of a buffer state to keep the Umayyad Saracens at bay.

The granting of ancient privileges, high office, freehold land, the Jews own system of law and royal protection to the Jews of Southern France invoked a bitter rebuke from Pope Stephen III in 768CE.  The grant of hereditary freehold tenure of land called allodial hereditamenta was particularly controversial.  It was contrary to both Papal and Carolingian policy.

The Septimanian Jews established Davidic succession in their Princedom. The Nasi, or Jewish Prince in perpetuity, was to be descended from the line of David.  The first Nasi was Rabbi Natronai- Makhir. He was formerly the Exilarch of the Jews in Baghdad and a scholar-prince of the House of David, who the Caliph of Baghdad sent to Septimania.  Natronai-Makhir accepted the name Theodoric and took Pepin IIIs sister, Alda, for a wife.

In return for the elevation of Septimania to a Princedom, the Rabbis endorsed Pepin III's own claim to Davidic Succession of the Holy Roman Empire for his son Charlemagne. Charlemagne later confirmed the status of Septimania in 791CE by establishing it as a permanent State.  The Princedom had grown in power and influence with the campaigns of Natronai-Makhirs son, the great Guilhelm de Toulouse de Gellone, or William of Toulouse, into Spain. At this time, the Princedom encompassed a vast area from the Rhone to the Albères of the Pyrenees, including Nimes and Roussillon, and the Catalan counties in the March of Spain. These Catalan counties were Gerona, Vich (Ausona), Urgel, Pallars, Ribagorza and Barcelona.

Natronai-Makhir died in 793CE. His son Guilhelm de Toulouse succeeded him. In turn, Guilhelms son Bernard of Septimania became Prince.  Septimania then became a Jewish Kingdom, rather than the Princedom, which thrived until the end of Carolingian rule.

The seed of David was to multiply in Southern France and produce one of its most famous sons, Godefroi de Bouillon. Godefrois admirers elevated him to a hall of fame called the nine nobles. The other great warrior-kings in the hall of fame were Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joshua, Judas Maccabeus, David, King Arthur and Charlemagne. In Crathes Castle, between Balmoral and Aberdeen in Scotland, the 1602 owner asks:

Gude reder tell me or thou pass

Whilk of thir nyn maist Valliant was?

The nine nobles theme was popular amongst surviving Knights Templar groups in Scotland. A number of castles depict the same theme in their ceilings, including at Glamis in the Vale of Strathmore.

The Assassins beliefs were similar except that the Assassins considered their founder, Hassan, the hiek-al-Jabul or Old Man of the Mountain in Lebanon, to be one of the reincarnations. We will see the importance of Mount Hermon in Lebanon. It is worth adding that at Crathes, the room of the nine nobles leads directly into the Green Ladys room where the first image on the painted ceiling is that of the Triple Goddess. The floor of this room contained a skeleton and this led to legends that the ghost of girl carrying a baby haunts the room. At Glamis, a Grey Lady haunts the strikingly unconventional chapel, which has a magnificent window of St George and the Dragon.

On his father's side, Godefroi descended from the Merovingians and on that of his mother and grandmother, the Carolingian. His Carolingian grandparents bequeathed Godefroi the title of Duke of Lower Lorraine. Storming the wall of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, Godefroi de Bouillon was to shout the famous phrase expressing the Zaddoki belief that they were the only legitimate High Priests of Jerusalem, Deus Meumque Jus, meaning God and my Right.

The thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite adopted Godefrois motto. A gold ring worn by each member of the degree has the motto engraved within it.  It is also the Latin version of the motto of the royal arms of England Dieu et mon droit, adopted by Richard I the Lionheart at the siege of Gisors in 1198.

Following Godefroi de Bouillons successful assault on the walls of Jerusalem, he assumed the title of Guardian of the Holy Sepulcher. This title was Godefroi's preference over King, an uncharacteristically modest choice, continuing the tradition that there should be no king of Israel until the second coming of the Messiah. His brother Baldwin of Lorraine had no such inhibition. One year later, he became King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. Oddly, the circumstances surrounding the death of the glorious Godefroi de Bouillon remain a mystery to this day.

Hugh of Champagne and his vassal Hugues des Payens explored Jerusalem in 1104 and in 1114. The second visit generated considerable excitement. Thirty-three members of the Fontaine family of St Bernard promptly joined the Cistercian Order. Hugh of Champagne donated land to the Order for the Abbey of Clairvaux with similar enthusiasm. His protégé St Bernard became Abbot of Clairvaux at the remarkable age of twenty-five years.  St Bernards father Tescelin belonged to the family of Chevalier de Châtillion, who held feudal lordships in Burgundy and Champagne.  His mother Aleth was of the house of the Dukes of Burgundy.

Having successfully infiltrated the Church and established a comfortable niche as Cistercians, the Melchizedek houses of Champagne, Anjou, Gisors and Flanders arranged for nine knights to journey to Jerusalem in 1118.

The knights chose St John as their protector and called their Temple lodgings St Johns Hostel. They excavated the Temples foundations under the patronage of King Baldwin II, a cousin of Baldwin I.  Hugh of Champagne joined the excavations in 1124CE.

The Church had thought it was welcoming the troublesome Zaddoki-Melchizedek houses of France into the fold of Pauline Christianity, just as the Celtic Church successfully enjoined in 625CE. Instead, it had drawn fundamentalist, unshakeable heresy to its bosom. The Melchizedek houses of France regarded the unusual treasure beneath the Temple as their personal property. They set about recovering it for their own purposes, as we shall see."