Monday, June 02, 2008
BOOK ON TEMPLAR TRIALS RELEASED
The unique book dedicated to the trial against templars issued by Secret Vatican City archive was presented Friday in Sofia's National Archeological Museum.
The publication, called "Processus Conta Templarios", is an expensive limited edition of the proceedings of the 1307-1312 papal trial of the mysterious medieval crusading order of warrior-monks who were accused of heresy.
The work was presented by the famous Bulgarian archaeologist Professor Nikolay Ovcharov and the Prior of the Bulgarian Priory Rumen Ralchev.
Here's the story.
Apparently the material had been miscatalogued for 300 years and was discovered in 2001.
A copy of the book has been purchased by the University of Sydney, Australia:
The University of Sydney has purchased Australia's only copy of the recently released manuscripts of the trials of the Knights Templar - a $10,000 reproduction of a document that rehabilitates the medieval Christian military order. ...
"The crux of these trial documents is that Pope Clement V didn't think the Templars were guilty of heresy," says Neil Boness, Rare Book librarian at the University's Fisher Library. It is "very unusual" for the Vatican to release a reproduction of material from the Secret Archives such as this, known as the Processus Contra Templarios - Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars, he added.
According to John Pryor, Associate Professor for Medieval Studies at Sydney, there was "significant pressure" exerted on the Pope by the King's agents to find the order guilty.
Read it here.
The first copy of the numbered manuscripts was presented to the Pope. An additional 798 copies were produced.
