Interesting article in The London Times on new evidence relating to the destruction of the Knights Templar by the Vatican and Prince Philip the Fair. This episode is the main reason the Masons have a historical animosity towards the Catholic Church:
Vatican file shows pope pardoned massacred Knights
L’Avvenire, the Catholic daily, said that the record of the Pope’s investigation was thought to have been lost when Napoleon looted the Vatican during his invasion of Italy in the 18th century, and that its rediscovery was an exceptional event.
The Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake on the orders of Philip IV of France (known as Philip the Fair), who coveted the Templar order’s land and treasure and began a campaign of dawn arrests and torture in 1307. At least 2,000 Knights were killed in an attempt to obliterate the order altogether. It was revived in the 18th century as part of the masonic movement, which is said to have inherited some of the Templars’ secret rituals.
Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican School of Paleontology, said that the consensus among historians was that Clement V, who was himself French and a former Archbishop of Bordeaux, had been pliant and weak, and had colluded in Philip the Fair’s scheme to wipe out the Templars and seize their fortune. But documents found in the Vatican archives, including a long-lost parchment, proved that the Pope had in fact manoeuvred ‘with skill and determination’ to ensure that his own emissaries questioned de Molay and other leading Templars in the dungeons of Chinon castle in the Loire in 1308, in what amounted to a papal trial.
Signora Frale, who is writing a book based on the Chinon parchment, told the Italian monthly Hera, a journal of historical mysteries, that the result was the complete exoneration of the Knights.
The Pope had accepted the Knights� explanation that the charges against them of sodomy and blasphemy were due to a misunderstanding of arcane rituals behind closed doors which had their origins in the Crusaders� bitter struggle against the Muslims, or Saracens. These included �denying Christ and spitting on the Cross three times�, as well as �kissing other men�s behinds�. Adriano Forgione, editor of Hera, said that these were intended to simulate the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected to by the Saracens if captured. They were taught how to abuse their own religion �with the mind only and not with the heart�.
The Knights Templar � properly called The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon � were founded during the early Crusades in the 12th century, when they protected pilgrims to the Holy Land, together with the Hospitallers (or Knights of St John). The Templars were so called because they were given part of the former Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem as their headquarters.
Noting that de Molay and the Knights had asked his pardon, the Pope wrote: �We hereby decree that they are absolved by the church and may again receive Christian sacraments.� Signor Forgione said that the Pope had failed to make this absolution public because the scandal of the Templars had aroused extreme passions and he feared a church schism. Philip IV had de Molay and other Templar leaders put to death before the Pope�s verdict could be published, and it was subsequently lost.
.heramagazine.net/home2.html”>Hera Magazine of Archaeological Mysteries I hope you can read Italian. If not you might try translating it with google.