SkeletonInCupboard

During their 200-year existence, the Knights Templars acquired great power and wealth. However, early in the 14th century, they were brutally suppressed. Were they really devil-worshipping heretics as was alleged, or were they the innocent victims of greedy individuals? Did they hide a vast fortune and survive as a secret organization, to emerge centuries later under a new banner? Speculation over what could have happened to this mysterious brotherhood continues today.

In the crusades of the Middle Ages an aggressively Christian Europe mounted a series of invasions of the Holy Land. There were two goals: to take the area from its Muslim rulers and to protect Christian pilgrims. Jerusalem fell to the invading Christians in 1099 during the first Crusade. As the Crusaders became established in Palestine, groups of deeply devout fighting knights banded together under monastic rules to form what became known as the military orders. Some knights had been informally protecting pilgrims to the Holy Land for several years by this time, but it was not until 1119 that the Knights Templars officially incorporated themselves into a military order for the defense of Jerusalem and the protection of Christian pilgrims making the hazardous journey from the Mediterranean port of Acre to the city. King Baldwin II of Jerusalem gave the order his blessing and provided them with lodgings in his palace on the supposed site of the famous biblical Temple of Solomon. From this, the order took its name, “les pauvres chevaliers du temple” (Poor Knights of the Temple).

From these modest beginnings, the Templars rapidly became one of the wealthiest and most powerful institutions in the medieval world. Estimates of Templars’ numbers vary, but at their 13th-century peak there may have been as many as 20,000 of them. They were ferocious in battle, and, at least in their early years, combined this martial valor with a piety befitting their dual identity as warrior-monks. They were widely admired for representing an ideal of Christian conduct, and the ecclesiastical and secular authorities competed with each other to shower them with favors and privileges. These included freedom from taxation, plus various legal rights, as well as the gifts of great estates from devout benefactors all over Europe, but especially France.

The unique combination of the Templars’ wealth, the sanctuary of their vast estates and safe houses spanning Europe and the Middle East, and their ability to provide travelers with physical security, gave them enormous influence over the commercial life of the time. When money was lodged with, they would issue letters of credit, which could only be redeemed elsewhere in their unofficial empire, in effect making the Templars Europe’s first bankers. This brought even more money cascading into their coffers. By the late 13th century, the Templars negotiated as equals with Europe’s greatest kings and princes, and acknowledged allegiance only to the pope.

It was now, however, that the tide of events began to turn against the great Knights Templars. The Muslim Saracens, led by Saladin, recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. The Templars were able to hold Acre for a further century, but, when that last toehold in Palestine fell in 1291, every Christian warrior who got into Muslim hands was put to the sword. Those Templars who survived the massacre at Acre took refuge in Cyprus, from where they hoped–in vain–eventually to mount a counterattack.

Eviction from the Holy Land may have removed the original purpose of the Templars but, with their organizational and financial headquarters in Paris, they still seemed unassailable as an institution. That sense of security was an illusion, however. An organization as rich as the Templars inevitably became the target of resentment. In their later years they had gained a widespread reputation for arrogance; for behaving as though their wealth and privileges made them a law unto themselves. This meant that, when they found themselves under threat, there were few willing to come to their aid. This threat came in the form of a flurry of allegations that the secret initiation rituals of the order were literally diabolical–that the Templars were in fact sworn enemies of Christ and, according to the most lurid charges, were active worshippers of Satan. In an age as intensely focused on salvation and damnation as medieval Europe, there could be no graver accusations.

Leading the attack on the Templars was Philip the Fair, king of France. When he failed to persuade Pope Clement V, the recently elected head of the Church, that the accusations of heresy and depravity required investigation, he took matters into his own hands. On October 13, 1307, in a swoop worthy of a modern security service, Philip had all the Templars in France arrested. The pope protested against this on the grounds that he alone had jurisdiction over the Templars, but to no avail. Under torture and threat of torture, many of the knights confessed to profanities like spitting on the crucifix, and to homosexual acts that at that time were regarded as abominations. Even the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, admitted to sacrilegious behavior.

Pope Clement was skeptical about the validity of such confessions. However, in June 1308, 72 of the “guilty” Templars repeated their confessions to his face. Clement was then obliged to order a papal commission to investigate the order, not just in France but throughout Europe. Whether torture was employed or not varied from time to time and place to place. The investigations dragged on for years and, not surprisingly, torture and the threat of torture prompted more confessions than did simple questioning. No other investigations produced such startling revelations of corrupt practices as those that took place in France.

However, the situation in France became clouded when many who had confessed under torture retracted. Those who did so were accused of relapsing into heresy and were then handed over to the secular authorities–which put them at Philip’s mercy. Of that there was none, and in May 1310, 54 Templars were burned at the stake. Four years later, Jacques de Molay decided he could live no longer with his own forced confession and denounced the allegations as a tissue of lies. On March 18, 1314, he went to the stake outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. According to legend, as the flames consumed him he was heard to summon the king and pope to join him at the bar of heavenly justice. Both King Philip and Pope Clement were dead within the year.

Molay’s death symbolized the end of the Templars, but in fact the pope had formally dissolved the order two years earlier, in 1312. In Christian Spain and Portugal, remnants of the Templars were allowed to carry on under new names, but elsewhere they disbanded and their possessions were confiscated and handed over to a rival order, the Knights Hospitaller. In France and England the ruling monarchs managed to get hold of most of the knights’ property.

With their departure from the historical stage, the Templars enter the shadowy world of mystery, myth, and conjecture. Whether or not they were guilty has been debated endlessly. Their defenders point out the Philip the Fair was notoriously grasping. Coveting the Templars’ wealth, he took advantage of Clement’s weakness to bring about their downfall. On this reading, the Templars were innocent martyrs. On the other side, some have always argued strongly that behind the Templars there lay a deep conspiracy to subvert Christianity, and in particular the Roman Catholic Church. Some even argue that this conspiracy continues to this day among the Freemasons, who–like the Templars–perform secret initiation rites. The fact that some (but by no means all) Freemasons claim at least spiritual kinship with the Templars is held to reinforce that suspicion. A more balanced view is that individual Templars undoubtedly abused their position (which is probably inevitable in any organization that became as large as the Templars), and that some few may have indulged in dubious initiation rites.

More intriguing is the fate of the Templars’ fortune. While their estates were forfeited, it is said that a vast hoard of treasure was spirited out of Paris on the fateful day of the mass arrest and taken to the Atlantic port of La Rochelle. From there, some say that a Templar fleet spirited it away to some secret hiding place that has never been found. With this fortune, surviving Templars were able to set up an underground organization that eventually emerged into the open as the international society of Freemasons.

As to where the treasure was hidden, the theory suggests that the fleeing Templars made their way to Scotland, where they were given sanctuary by Robert Bruce, king of the Scots, who was battling to preserve Scottish independence against Edward I of England. In 1314 he led the Scots to a stunning victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, where against overwhelming odds he routed Edward’s son and successor Edward II. According to the theory it was the Knights Templars, the most feared cavalry in Europe, who turned the tide for Robert Bruce of Bannockburn.

The theory then extends to the Scottish link to the emergence of Freemasonry in Scotland at the beginning of the 17th century. The story picks up again at the end of the 1700s, when traces of a carefully hidden treasure cache were stumbled upon in out-of-the-way Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, Canada. The hiding place–if that is what it is–has become famous as the Money Pit, a deep well that seems to have been cunningly constructed so that it floods whenever attempts are made to get to the bottom of it. Some claim that it contains pirate loot. But others point out that Nova Scotia means New Scotland, so just maybe Oak Island was the final destination of the Templars’ treasure.

What the fabled treasure actually consisted of has been the subject of just as much speculation. Some have suggested that the early Templars uncovered priceless relics in Jerusalem–the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail among their number. But if the treasure really contained such artifacts, the question surely is why the Templars, or the Freemasons, never revealed them. Others believe the treasure consists of purely worldly wealth, but on a scale so colossal as to defy imagining. Whatever the truth, the story of the Templars, their treasure, and their fate is still likely to inspire controversy for years to come.

Stonehenge comprises of a collection of big rocks of unknown origin located across the pond in England. But, did you know that America has its very own Stonehenge in New England?

Forty miles north of Boston in Salem, New Hampshire is home to an American prehistoric archaeological enigma. There, you can explore thirty acres of cave-like dwellings, astronomically aligned rock formations, a sacrificial stone, and other mysterious structures left behind by an unknown people.

In 1958, opened to the public under the name Mystery Hill Caves (but renamed to America’s Stonehenge in 1982), visitors and researchers began to be marveled by the strange series of stone structures. Many have constructed theories as to how these mysteries structures came to be.

Are the astronomically aligned megaliths positioned by migrant Europeans, maybe the descendants of the original builders of Stonehenge, who arrived in America long before Columbus? Were the secret passages and chambers constructed by Native Americans? Is this truly one of the oldest megalithic sites in North America, as radio-carbon dating would suggest?

When the first Colonial settlers arrived in New England in the 17th century, they were startled to find hundreds of stone buildings dotting the landscape, some of them surrounded by standing stones that resembled the megalithic structures of Europe and North America.

The fact that many were covered by huge earthen mounds and capped with large, old oak trees led observers to conclude that the enigmatic stone assemblies were of ancient origin. Some believed they might be older even than the pyramids of Egypt.

In those days it was assumed that a vanished race of Indians had built the structures, since none of the local tribesmen had any knowledge of their construction. Just who those ancient builders were and where they went was anybody’s guess. Few settlers had the time or desire to ponder such questions; if they were to survive in this harsh new world, they had work to do.

It didn’t take them long, however, to start putting the structures to good use–first as storage cellars for their root crops, then later as centers for illict whiskey operations. Runaway slaves also used some of the underground dwellings for hideouts.

In time, many of the buildings were dismantled and their ancient stones hauled off to use in dry walls and foundations for houses. By 1853, at least forty percent of the stone structures were either destroyed or severely damaged by building contractors who used the stones for dams and bridges.

One of the largest complexes of stone and slab structures is located near North Salem, New Hampshire. Known now as America’s Stonehenge (before 1982 it was called Mystery Hill), this curious configuration of rock buildings and underground chambers is one of America’s most baffling archaeological oddities.

A popular tourist attraction, the site consists of an elaborate grouping of twenty-two stone-walled formations, some with roof slabs weighing several tons. Others, sunk deep into the ground, contain high arching underground vaults.

Since its discovery more than a century ago, historians and archaeologists have pondered the origins of America’s Stonehenge. Some scholars believe seafaring peoples from Europe or perhaps northern Africa built the brooding rock assemblies thousands of years ago. Others believe the Vikings had a hand in their construction, while one group insists the Indians built it themselves.

In some ways, America’s Stonehenge resembles Stonehenge and other ancient astronomical observatories of Bronze Age Europe. Sprawling over twenty acres, the elaborate maze is oriented so that the sun sets behind particular standing stones on the days of the equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices.

Some scholars who have studied the ruins point to evidence of more sinister activity. A runnel, or drainage groove, carved into the rectangular surface of one stone altar suggests it may once have been used for human sacrifice. Similar altars found in Portugal and elsewhere in Iberia have long been associated with burial mounds and sacrificial rituals.

In the 1930s, one popular explanation was that a group of shipwrecked Irish monks had built the America’s Stonehenge complex hundreds of years ago. That didn’t explain the stone altar, of course; what use would Irish churchmen have had with such a pagan instrument of worship?

In time, theorists turned to other possibilities. One popular notion was that ancient Israelites–the “ten lost tribes” of the Bible–had masterminded the impressive project. When the theorists needed proof, they found it in the languages of various local Indian tribes–words and phrases that were too similar in meaning and phonetics to the language of the Israelites to be merely coincidental.

Few archaeologists accepted the fanciful theories of the time, preferring to link the origin of the enigmatic stones to native Americans themselves. Some even suggested early settlers were responsible for the stone structures, and all records had been lost over the passage of time.

Beginning in 1967, however, a series of radiocarbon studies on samples of charcoal obtained at America’s Stonehenge indicated that the site may be at least four thousand years old–too old, say some scholars, to have been built by a technologically backward race of people like the Indians. America’s Stonehenge, they argued, was surely constructed by some wayward group of ancient mariners, perhaps from Iberia or even Egypt.

One expert who is convinced of a transatlantic connection is Barry Fell, a retired professor of biology from Harvard University. Fell, an energetic New Zealander, has spent the past two decades of his life studying the riddle of America’s Stonehenge and other megalithic stone structures in New England.

In his bestselling book America B.C., Fell offers what he considers authoritative archaeological and linguistic evidence that about three thousand years ago, roving bands of Celtic mariners crossed the Atlantic from Portugal and Spain and established settlements not only in New England, but as far west as Ohio and Oklahoma.

These Celts, Fell argues, were followed or accompanied by succeeding waves of colonists from Europe and North Africa, many of them speaking Basque, Phoenician and Libyan. The truth, says the hard-digging, fast-talking professor is only now coming to light in the wake of the new archaeological excavations in New England.

“Ancient history is inscribed upon the bedrock and buried stone buildings of America,” Fell wrote, adding that “the only hands that could have inscribed it were those of ancient people.”

Fell, who now makes his home in San Francisco, further maintains that “America…is a treasure house of records of man’s achievement upon the high seas in bygone ages. Even more so are our inscribed rocks and tablets a heritage from a forgotten era of colonization. The tell us of settlers who came from the Old World and who remained to become founding fathers of some of the Amerindian nations.”

Based on badly eroded inscriptions in the stones, Fell and a handful of other scholars believe that at least some of the stone chambers at America’s Stonehenge were dedicated to the Phoenician god Baal.

“The probability is that other chambers on America’s Stonehenge were dedicated to other divinities, and that the whole complex was a religious center and astronomical observatory,” Fell said.

Barry Fell’s findings triggered a storm of controversy when they were published a few years ago. But the scientist, who holds advanced degrees in biology, oceanography, epigraphy, and Celtic languages and literature, clings fast to his theories about ancient trans-Atlantic voyages to and from the New World.

“There is more to America’s past than appears upon the surface,” he said. “A strange unrest is apparent among many of the younger historians and archaeologists…a sense that somehow a very large slice of America’s past has mysteriously vanished from our public records.”

How else, he asked, “can we explain the ever-swelling tally of puzzling ancient inscriptions now being reported from nearly all parts of the United States, Canada, and Latin America?”

Inscriptions at America’s Stonehenge and elsewhere in the New World do appear to be written in various European and Mediterranean languages in alphabets that are very old. If Fell’s theory is correct, they speak not only of visits by ancient ships, but also of permanent colonies of Celts, Basques, Libyans, and even Egyptians.

The consequences of these discoveries for history and archaeology are immeasurable. As one historian, Professor Norman Totten, has pointed out, it means that thousands of years of American prehistory must now be transferred to history.

“History begins when writing begins, and we now have the oldest written documents of our nation, and the names of the men who wrote them,” Totten said.

Probably the most iconic New Year’s Eve celebration in the United States takes place in New York. People travel from all over to take part in the Times Square experience. This got us thinking. When did New York begin this longstanding love affair with New Year’s Eve? Yes, New Year’s parties occur all over the world, but New York, particularly Times Square, is the place to be. What circumstances collided to enable  New York to be the center of all things New Year’s Eve?

The year was 1904 and a few innovations transformed New York: the invention of the neon light, the opening of the subway, and the very first New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square. Also, most importantly, the origin of New York’s New Year’s Eve celebration has everything to do with the newspaper The New York Times.

The headquarters of The New York Times, called Times Tower, officially opened on New Year’s Eve in 1904. This began the first massive New Year’s Eve celebration in New York. Simply, a tradition spanning more than 100 years started as an inauguration for the new building.

“As the old year died and 1905 was born the news flared out from the tower of the Times Building to the north and to the south, in giant figures which took on all the colors of the rainbow and bore the tidings to thousands who waited and watched over many miles of territory,” reported The New York Times on January 1, 1905.

This inaugural bash commemorated the official opening of the new headquarters of The New York Times. The newspaper’s owner, German Jewish immigrant Alfred Ochs, had successfully lobbied the city to rename Longacre Square, the district surrounding his paper’s new home, in honor of the famous publication. The impressive Times Tower, sat on a tiny triangle of land at the intersection of 7th Avenue, Broadway and 42nd Street and was at the time Manhattan’s second-tallest building — the tallest if measured from the bottom of its three massive sub-basements, built to handle the heavy weight demands of The Times‘ up-to-date printing equipment.

The building was the focus of an unprecedented New Year’s Eve celebration. Ochs spared no expense to ensure a party for the ages. An all-day street festival culminated in a fireworks display set off from the base of the tower, and at midnight the joyful sound of cheering, rattles and noisemakers from the over 200,000 attendees could be heard. It was said, from as far away as Croton-on-Hudson, thirty miles north along the Hudson River.

The night was such a rousing success that Times Square instantly replaced Lower Manhattan’s Trinity Church as “the” place in New York City to ring in the new year. Before long, this party of parties would capture the imagination of the nation, and the world.

Two years later, the city banned the fireworks display, but Ochs was undaunted. He arranged to have a large, illuminated seven-hundred-pound iron and wood ball lowered from the tower flagpole precisely at midnight to signal the end of 1907 and the beginning of 1908. On that occassion, and for almost a century thereafter, Times Square signmaker Artkraft Strauss was responsible for the ball-lowering.

In 1914, The New York Times had outgrown Times Tower and relocated to 229 West 43rd Street. However, by then New Year’s Eve in Times Square was already a permanent part of the cultural fabric.

In 1942 and 1943, the glowing Ball was temporarily retired due to the wartime “dimout” of lights in New York City. The crowds who still gathered in Times Square in those years greeted the New Year with a minute of silence followed by chimes ringing out from sound trucks parked at the base of the Times Tower.

The New York Times retained ownership of the Tower until 1961, when it was sold to developer Douglas Leigh, who was also the designer and deal-maker behind many of the spectacular signs in Times Square, including the famous Camel billboard that blew water-vapor “smoke rings” over the street. Mr. Leigh stripped the building down to its steel frame, then re-clad it in white marble as the headquarters for Allied Chemical Corporation.

Today, New Year’s Eve in Times Square is a bona fide international phenomenon. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people still gather around the Tower, now known as One Times Square, and wait for hours in the cold of a New York winter for the famous Ball-lowering ceremony. Thanks to satellite technology, a worldwide audience estimated at over one billion people watches the ceremony each year. The lowering of the Ball has become the world’s symbolic welcome to the New Year.