Signor Buttiglione congratulated Franco Frattini, the Foreign Minister, on his nomination as EU Justice Commissioner, the job for which Signor Buttiglione had been nominated by Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister. If they do they will only be repeating the same injustice that was done to me. Signor Frattini, who has been Foreign Minister since November 2002, yesterday held talks in Brussels with José Manuel Durão Barroso, the new European Commission President, ahead of confirmation hearings at the European Parliament next Monday and Tuesday. I think that would be a perfectly reasonable theory.” There is, however, sound historical footing for the idea that a Vatican apology might be warranted. The Templars were victims of their own success: they had been granted the right to operate, during the era of the Crusades, with unprecedented freedom, levying taxes and growing rich by establishing some of Europe’s first banks. (According to legend, they also invented the biscuit.) Envy and hostility ran high, until, on Friday, October 13 1307 – the original unlucky Friday the 13th – hundreds of Templars were arrested in France. They stood accused of homosexuality, of devil worship, of crimes “horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of”, in the words of King Philip of France, who ordered the arrests. They were tortured, by the Inquisition, into admitting heresy, including their scandalous belief that Jesus had had children with Mary Magdalene. Their grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake a few years later, and the Templars were officially disbanded by the Pope. But only officially. “The vast majority of Templars either escaped, or didn’t escape, but survived,” Acheson says. So how did they end up in Hertford? History records that a number of them were imprisoned in Hertford Castle, but how did Hertford become a centre of operations? “I can’t really tell you that.
Just threading their roles together according to Gangfull’s original design would have been sufficient to come up with a fairly involving thriller. They believe the chapel was not simply a reflection of the philosophy of Freemasonry, but its original inspiration. But there’s a strange smell.” She enlists a colleague, Jo, who has worked there longer. “Have they ever looked underneath there? Ritchie says: “This is something which is so typical of Rosslyn. Every time you think you have worked things out, it throws up something which completely takes you by surprise.” While it might seems incredible to associate a tiny chapel in Midlothian with the very creation of a secret brotherhood which spread worldwide and played an important role in the creation of the American constitution, the link between Freemasonry with the Sinclair family is clear. Ritchie says: “It has examples of every kind of arch and window that were available at the time. It is like a guide book, an instruction book for the guild.” Astronomy, in particular the planet Venus, has an important role in Masonic ritual and Ritchie and Butler believe Rosslyn was used as an observatory from which to chart the movements of Venus. They write: “At the heart of Freemasonry we still find imperatives critically important to William Sinclair and Gilbert Haye. These include a deep reverence for John the Baptist, an enduring belief in justice, equality and fraternity, a reverence for the Noahide Laws of ancient Judaism and a recognition for that all-important part of the year around the autumn equinox. “The same heady cocktail of Old Testament legend, Ebionite Christianity, mystery rite religion and a reverence for the human sprit that was personified by the 15th-century Sinclairs was passed directly to Freemasonry and in part survives with the craft to this day.” While the Masonic angels inside the chapel are undoubtedly a piece of Victorian fancy, the Masonic initiate on the outside of the building may well have been the first of his kind. Once again, the facts about Rosslyn Chapel may well prove to be even more extraordinary than the fiction. In the book, Butler and Ritchie write: “Long after interest in The Da Vinci Code has waned, Freemasons from around the world will still be making their way to Rosslyn Chapel.
But Butler and Ritchie believe the connection between Rosslyn and Freemasonry is more dramatic than anyone previously suspected – arguing that the beliefs of Freemasonry were first formulated by the stonemasons who built Rosslyn. To anyone familiar with the rites of Freemasonry, this carving bears a remarkable similarity to a Masonic initiation ceremony. Many of the carvings inside the chapel with supposed Masonic links were actually added in 1871, when the chapel was extensively restored – and Butler and Ritchie are convinced that the carving which visitors to the chapel are told is of the apprentice who built the so-called Apprentice Pillar, linked to a well-known Masonic legend, is actually the defaced image of an apostle. NEW PAPER, 7/18/2012. Why is Mercury’s Magnetism 1% that of the Earth? But the story had been ignored by successive histories of the chapel.” While some eagle-eyed guides in the chapel had spotted the tiny window at the top of the east wall, few bothered to point it out to visitors. The tale of how Ritchie and Butler rediscovered the hidden lightbox and why it was key to understanding the chapel’s secrets is told in Rosslyn Revealed, out today. It all began when Ritchie, a resident of Roslin who has had a lifelong fascination with the chapel, discovered an old Victorian print of Rosslyn by Hill and Adamson. Taken in 1844, it shows the East wall before the Rose window was built. When he showed it to Nancy Bruce, a guide in the chapel and his second cousin, she pointed out the aperture above the window and said: “That must be where the light comes through on St Matthew’s Day.” Ritchie, a former Reuters cameraman, trained a telephoto lens on the tiny opening and discovered it was in the shape of a pentagon and appeared to be lined with some sort of highly reflective material. He explains: “I thought ‘we have got to test this’ and went to buy a power torch.” Thanks to the scaffolding currently built around the chapel to dry it out after disastrous renovation work, he was able to climb up and shine the torch through the aperture, while Butler stood in the centre aisle to see the effect. In the book, the authors describe what happened next: “At most, we expected a small glimmer of white light from the lamp to show above the East window in the comparative gloom of the chapel’s interior, but we couldn’t have been more wrong.
But he went on: I hope his hearings go well and that nobody asks him if he is a Freemason. It reaches beyond well known central Hertford locations,” one Templar said, “including the tourist office, the castle, Monsoon, Threshers, the post office, Bayley Hall, and the council offices.” Treasures of “immense importance” were hidden there, it was claimed. Was the quest for the Holy Grail finally about to come to an end? More surprisingly still, was it about to come to an end underneath Monsoon on Market Place? The man who has persuaded the Vatican to consider apologising, Tim Acheson, meets the Guardian in icy morning fog in Hertford, wearing smart pinstriped trousers and a thick winter overcoat. His midnight-blue sports car is parked nearby. “As you might expect,” he says, setting the tone for the day, “there are going to be some things that I’m not able to discuss.” Acheson claims to trace his ancestry to a renowned Scottish Templar family of the same name, though he won’t confirm his own role in the group. Might he just be a practical joker who managed to fool the Vatican? “That could well be, couldn’t it? I’m part of that generation.” Besides, he says ominously, “Things are about to happen that will deserve attention.” The notion that “things are about to happen” recurs throughout the Templar conspiracy theories that clog up the internet. Seemingly, 2000 had been awaited as a watershed, the moment the Templars’ secret knowledge would cascade into the public domain. It didn’t happen, of course. So what sort of “things” is Acheson talking about? “I can’t tell you.” OK. But could you maybe give me a rough idea of the timescale? Are these things going to happen this year? This decade? Next century? “I honestly can’t tell you.