Assassin’s Creed Revelations shows the most impressive experience available in the series yet plus in my opinion one of the best games currently on the market. In Assassin’s Creed Revelations, master assassin Ezio Auditore walks in the footsteps of his legendary ancestor, Altair, on a journey of discovery and revelation hence the name revelations. It is a quite a dangerous path for Ezio but he will always respon after death am i right? Anyways this path will take Ezio to Constantinople, the heart of the Ottoman Empire, where a growing army of Templar’s threatens to destabilize the region. If you have not bought this game yet and don’t think you should you should get the predecessor.

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In four municipalities in the state, including the capital, appeared on Friday blankets placed on the main avenues in the criminal group suspected of “The Knights Templar”, speaks to writer Javier Sicilia supporting the idea of a truce.

The appearance of these messages is given within 24 hours of the visit of President Felipe Calderon to the entity and within the framework of the meeting of the Operational Security Coordination, involving the Secretary of the Interior, and Alejandro Poire state governor Leonel Godoy.

The blankets were placed on roads in the municipalities of Morelia, Apatzingan Huetamo and Buena Vista.

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The church is very important in the history of Portugal as it goes back as far as the 12th century to the days when the Moors no longer had power in Portugal and the country was in the process of  becoming a nation. The central and most important part of the church is the Charola which has 16 sides and was the original Knights of the Templar church inspired by the Holy Sephulchre in the Holy Land. The town of Tomar became the headquarters of the Order of Christ in Portugal, and this wonderful  building, with its central octagon of altars, reflects the Order’s prosperity at the time. Portugal’s famous son, Henry the Navigator later added a cloister, Gothic in style and King Manel I built the church and chapter house in the style named after him, Manueline; a style you can see all over Portugal symbolising Portugal’s new golden empire in the east.

The Convento do Cristo is a church I recommend for its location and Manueline style. 

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With the recent much reported legal case surrounding Dan Brown’s blockbuster thriller The Da Vinci Code, at last we can enjoy its most eagerly-awaited film debut, starring Tom Hanks, on release from May 2006.

Cracking The Code 

So you’ve heard the conspiracy, read the novel, plan to see the film – so what next? How about following in the footstep of Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu and crack the code with your own da Vinci Code trail. There are Da Vinci Code tours for conspiracy fans and for those who simply want to find the truth behind such books as The Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code.

In Search Of The Facts 

As one of the best tour activities, you can personally retrace parts of the story. See for yourself the rose line or learn about the true Knights Templar amonst other activities to broaden your insight into the phenomenon and arrive to your own conclusions.

If The Da Vinci Code is not your thing, don’t worry. There are many other adventures and new experiences you can choose from at Gate 14’s dedicated activity section which you can access via their links and resources area.

You only live once so make sure you get to experience the things you want and create a mind of memories that will stay with your forever.

a Military Order but as a hospital. Its origins go back to a leper hospital established

outside the walls of Jerusalem in the third century ad (or possibly to the founding of

an institution outside the walls of Caesarea by St Basil in the late fourth century).

Cross of the Order of Saint Lazarus

In the Crusader period, the Order of St Lazarus is first recorded in a document

dating to between 1128 and 1137 referring to a leper hospital located outside the

northern wall of Jerusalem between the Tower of Tancred and St Stephen’s Gate. The

Order was headed by a  magister (le maister de Saint Ladre des Mesiaux), who was a

suffragan of the patriarch of Jerusalem and who, Clermont-Ganneau suggested, may be

the mitred figure appearing on the seal of the Order.

 The brothers wore a green cross on their mantles and followed the Rule of St Augustine. Although, like the other Orders, the Knights of St Lazarus received many grants and privileges, papal recognition was achieved only in 1255.

 Like the larger Military Orders, the Leper Knights began acquiring landed holdings quite early on. However, we lack information as to when they first took on a military role. The first reference comes only in 1244, when knights of the Order fought at La Forbie. Six years later they took part in the campaign of Louis IX in Egypt.

In the twelfth century a leper hospital was established by the Order in Acre, located

well outside the walls. When the city expanded north and was refortified the leper

hospital came within the walls. In 1240 land was rented to the Order by the Master of

the Temple, Armand of Perigord, for an annual payment of 15 bezants.

 There are records of other leper hospitals in the kingdom, including one at Castellum Regis

(Mi’iliya) in the western Galilee and another dedicated to St Bartholomew in Beirut;

but not all leprosaria were connected to the Military Order.

Perhaps not all the brothers of the Order of St Lazarus were lepers. Statute 429 of the

Rule of the Templars states: ‘Nor may any brother of the Temple enter the Order of St

Lazarus unless he becomes a leper.’

 This would seem to suggest that in the past some Templars who were not lepers had joined the Order. Why they should have done so is difficult to tell, but there would be no reason to make such a rule if this was not a possibility which had to be prevented

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In 1228, Emperor Frederick II finally started the crusade he had promised so many times to Pope Innocence III since 1215. When he tried to start the crusade the year before, he had to abort the start after an epidemic hit the army. Pope Gregory used the pretext to excommunicate him. The ensuing crusade became known as the Crusade of the Excommunicate, therefore, and lacked the backing of the church.

Despite the withdrawal of papal support, the Teutonic Knights joined the army unlike the other military orders. In return, they received the full support of the emperor. When Frederick crowned himself King of Jerusalem after he was handed it without striking a blow, only Teutonic Knights were part of the ceremony. As part of the deal, they were then exempted from all taxes within the kingdom.

The Knights Templar were miffed by the tax exemption granted to the Teutonic Knights; they had, after all, supported the crusade in material form even though abstaining from offering military help. The exclusion from any ceremony involving the Kingdom of Jerusalem in any form was a further diplomatic slight to them.

That Emperor Frederick II held the crown of Jerusalem was the fault of the Teutonic Knights, too. Their Grandmaster Hermann von Salza had arranged the marriage between Frederick and Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem (also known as Yolande of Jerusalem or Yolande de Brienne). The already strained relationship between the Teutonic Knights and the Knights Templar became acerbic.

The Teutonic Knights, unlike other the other military orders, lacked territorial independence. When they tried to establish it in 1211 in Transylvania, King Andrew II of Hungary chucked them out of the country. After taking sides with the emperor over the pope, Frederick handed them the possibility of territorial independence in the form of Prussia. They still had to conquer it, but once they had done that, they would be independent under the umbrella of the Holy Roman Empire.

While the Teutonic Knights were engaged in subduing the Prussians and defending Silesia against the Mongols, the Knights Templar saw their chance to redress the wrongs done to them in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1241, they started their own private crusade and forcibly evicted the Teutonic Knights from all Templar lands and strongholds in the Holy Land; they even forbade the priest of the Teutonic Order to enter their domains. The division between the military orders was one of the reasons the Holy Land was lost in 1291.

Related articles:
Teutonic Knights and Knights Templar: Clash of Interests
Membership in The Teutonic Knights
Product of The Crusades: Teutonic Knights
Hairy History: Tonsure

By 1202, the order had established itself in German lands, in other parts of the Holy Roman Empire like the Tyrol, and in Bohemia. And this was only the start! By 1218, its German landholdings and lordships had become so vast the order had to install a separate German Commandery for their administration. Success breeds envy, though.

The Teutonic Knights had received their rules from the Knights Templar; they adopted their distinctive white mantle as well. The latter did not amuse the Grandmaster of the Knights Templar, and in 1210 he lodged a formal complaint with Pope Innocence III to secure the exclusive rights to that mantle for his knights. It signalled the start of a continuously declining relationship between the two orders.

From the start, the Teutonic Knights had limited membership to Germans, thereby expressly excluding the Franks and the Normans dominating the Knights Templar. The interpretation of ‘German’ was up to the Grandmaster, though, and they accepted any noble from Burgundy, Italy, Bohemia, and Hungary; the obvious barb against Normans and Franks didn’t make them any more popular with the Knights Templar, either.

In 1220, Pope Honorius III confirmed that the Teutonic Knights were within their rights to wear the white mantle despite furious protests from the Knights Templar; in 1221, he granted the order the Papal General Privilege, promoting the Teutonic Knights to the same prominence held by the Knights Templar and the Order of St John. The privilege included the right to name their own bishops, to detach their possessions from the power of local bishops, and the permission to bury people under ban or interdiction in consecrated ground against payment. All these privileges amounted to one thing: More money for the order and less for the rest of the church.

The papal privilege meant, too, that the order was now under the direct command and control of the pope, just like the other two orders in the Holy Land. The Order of St John watched the development sceptically; the Knights Templar were plainly dismayed. The former was not unduly worried, it controlled the approach by sea to the Holy Land and its interests in the Holy Land itself were minor compared to that. But the Knights Templar saw their hegemony in the Holy Land threatened by these newcomers.

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Membership in The Teutonic Knights
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Misappropriation of The Teutonic Knights by The Nazis
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Hairy History: Tonsure

The total shaving of the head was first reported from early monks in Carthage. The idea was lambasted by St Jerome of Stridon (formerly St Hierom) in his commentary on the Book of Ezekiel at the beginning of the 5th century. Whenever someone forbids something though, the opposite is bound to happen; by the beginning of the 6th century, a stylish plate was all the rage with fashion conscious monks and clergy.

The eternal church, ever unchanging, true follower of the scriptures, and obedient to those it calls it teachers (a title accorded to St Jerome), made the tonsure mandatory in 633 at the Synod of Toledo. In modern governments, this would be called a u-turn. The tonsure therefore remained in fashion for anyone in orders from porter to pope until 1972, when Pope Paul VI made another u-turn and declared it optional.

The tonsure came in three major styles, but as with any other fashion fad there were many small variations to each of them.

The original Oriental Tonsure is still en vogue with skinheads. According to legend, St Paul the Apostle was a lookalike Kojak and the first skinhead (which seems fitting for a reformed hooligan who became chief ideologist to his former enemies). It didn’t really catch on in Rome and was mainly used in the Orthodox Church. The shearing was later cut down to shaving just the frontal head.

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The Roman Tonsure on the other hand was all the rage. It consisted of a pot shaved into whatever hair there was, leaving a stylish fringe all around. According to legend, the style was mad fashionable by St Peter; or maybe his hair just fell out in a peculiar way when they turned him upside down.

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The Celtic Tonsure was the usual case of ‘we do things differently from the continent’. So far, it has not been established what it looked like. Historical novelist Peter Berresford Ellis (Peter Tremayne) hazards the guess that it was a hold-over from the druids. Or maybe they were just the first punks? The hairstyle soon became associated with the likes of Simon Magus, meaning that sporting it could bring you a severe case of death. Legend has it that St James sported this hairy creation.

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In the Catholic Church (after the schism from the Orthodox Church), the Roman Tonsure was the dominant form, but the hairy schism was of an older date. In 668, Theodore of Tarsus had to let his hair grow for four months to allow him sporting the Roman rather than the Oriental; the change was necessary for him to take up his post as Archbishop of Canterbury.

As tonsure was required from all servants of the church, this included all monastic orders and namely the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights. In all the romanticised imagery produced of them since the 19th century, this fact got completely lost. If any of these knights make an appearance in Hollywood, they always sport a head full of hair instead of the nattily shining plate that was their due.

And the well shaved image of these holy craniums is just another illusion. Shaving was as frequent as bathing for medieval monks; it took place for Easter and Christmas, for the fastidious maybe for other high church occasions as well. Religion was a stubbly and fragrant occupation.

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Membership in The Teutonic Knights
Product of The Crusades: Teutonic Knights
Misappropriation of The Teutonic Knights by The Nazis
Dissolution of the Teutonic Knights by the Nazis
Knights Templar in Switzerland

Knight Brothers
The military arm of the order was made up of the knights. They were fully armed knights; a fully armed knight owned (and brought with him upon entering the order) full armour, arms and equipment as well as several battle chargers and a score of transport horses. A fully equipped knight was worth several villages with land, cattle, and serfs on the money side; in battle, he would be equal to a modern tank (at the time of the inception of the Teutonic Knights). Knight members could come from the nobility, the landed gentry, very rich merchant families, or the upper echelons of the ministerial class.

The knights made their vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty like other monks; by canonical law, they were allowed to hold mass like any other priest-monk; in fact though, they were considered lay-men and restricted to military matters. Membership became more restrictive with the waning of knighthood as a military force. Around 1300, the Swiss halberdiers had found methods to peel a knight out of his armour like a lobster out of its shell. With that, the advantage of the fully armoured knight in battle was doomed. During the 14th century, rules for admission as a knight member changed therefore; the applicant now had to issue from the nobility and had to prove this through four generations in male and female descent.

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Ordained Brothers
Ordained members were the priesthood of the order. They were responsible for the liturgy and sacred rituals. They kept the books, wrote the annals, and did other administrative work of the order and its land. The order’s bishops were drawn from their numbers. Both the knights and the ordained priests were few in number in the order, but they were the ones who constituted the General Chapter which elected the Grandmaster from amongst the knights.

Sergeant Brothers
They took the same vows as the knights and were part of the military arm of the order. They were armed by the order and usually served as light cavalry. In folklore, they also became known as knights, though their armour was lighter and their armament less formidable than the full knight’s. If you see old battle accounts like the one at Morgarten, where the Swiss Confederates killed 5,000 Austrian knights in 1315, that figure includes the cavalry. Had they killed that many full knights, they’d have annihilated most of the Austrian aristocracy.

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Sisters
They took the same vows as the ordained members and were full nuns under church law. They were the main workforce of the hospitals. During all the history of the order, there were always more sisters in the order than brothers (counting all three above mentioned categories together). They would receive their own motherhouse quite late in Prussia and never get a second house of their own.

Serving Half-Brothers
They didn’t take any vows but would stay with the order permanently and had to follow the rules of the order. They would be either armed to defend castles or serve in the hospitals (and where the two coincided, both). They were usually drawn from the local population.

Serving Half-Sisters
They joined the order under the same premises as the serving half-brothers and served in the hospitals. They were usually drawn from the local population.

Knight Brothers on time
Knights were allowed to join in the order without taking the vows and serving an appointed time; this appointed time could be the duration of a campaign or a set number of years. They were allowed to marry or be married, but they were constrained to leave half of their goods at their deaths as a bequest to the order. Tannhäuser of Richard Wagner fame was such a knight brother serving his time.

Familiars or Honorary Members

They would not join the order physically, but would help it financially and by promoting its cause. Upon their deaths, familiars would leave everything to the order at their sole heir.

Invited Knights

Knights from all over Europe would make it a point of honour to participate in at least one campaign of the Teutonic Order. Knights from the Holy Roman Empire would fight under the banner of St. George, all others under the banner of St. Mary. The expenses of Invited Knights would be met by the order. Famous Invited Knights included King Henry IV of England, King Louis of Hungary, King Valdemar of Denmark, and King John of Bohemia. Several noble families made a stint with the Teutonic Knights part of the upbringing of their sons, such as the Suffolks and Warwicks.

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Product of The Crusades: Teutonic Knights
Misappropriation of The Teutonic Knights by The Nazis
Dissolution of the Teutonic Knights by the Nazis
Knights Templar in Switzerland

The Hundred Years War

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Philip IV, King of France, was looking for a way to raise some money in the early 14th century. He was known as Philip the Fair, not because he was just and impartial but because he was a very handsome man. In those days the King of France had some lands that produced revenue and he received tribute from large landholders among the nobility, but those funds basically just provided operating expenses. If he needed a lot of money, like to start a war or build a new castle or pay off debts, he had to find another source. He could ask for money from an assembly of nobles, clergy, and merchants. Sometimes they would grant him the funds he wanted but often not.

In this case Philip looked around for a source of funds and he quickly focused on an organization known as the Knights Templar. These were knights who had fought in at least one Crusade. Philip decided this group was good choice to attack for three main reasons:

• they had substantial funds  (they had acted as bankers for those launching Crusades for over two hundred years)
• he owed them a lot of money
• they were not well-liked

This group was unpopular because they did not fund any charitable organizations, like other similar groups, and the members were arrogant and violent if crossed. Other groups of knights returned from the Crusades established hospitals and orphanages but this group kept their money for themselves. Philip figured the general dislike of this group made them a safe target. Nobody would grumble much if they went down.

He arranged for a couple of men to swear that they had been in a facility of the Knights Templar and had witnessed criminal behavior. They said the knights had committed devil worship, had sacrificed infants, and engaged in unspeakable orgies.

In those days, criminal procedures were a bit different from modern custom. There was no court confrontation between prosecution and defense, in which each side produced evidence and witnesses and a jury decided which to believe. Those who were charged with a crime were imprisoned and an attempt was made to elicit a confession. Torture was the method commonly used, and those who applied it were ingenious in finding ways to inflict pain. In the case of an accusation of heresy, which was the main charge against the Templars, only three outcomes were possible. First, the accused could break down under the torture and confess. In that case, his property was confiscated and he was consigned to a dungeon for life. Second, the accused could die as a result of the torture. In that case, his guilt was assumed and his property was confiscated. Third, the accused could withstand the torture and refuse to confess his guilt. Eventually, he would be deemed an unrepentant heretic and burned at the stake. Of course, his property would be confiscated. Exoneration and release almost never happened. The accused had to have powerful friends to successfully combat an arrest, but the Knights Templar did not have such friends.

Philip had his soldiers raid every single Knights Templar facility at the same time. That way news of an arrest could not travel to other members and give them a chance to prepare to defend themselves when the soldiers came. Some of the knights broke under torture and confessed.  Some died. Some were unrepentant and were burned at the stake. The leader of the group, Jacques de Molay, and his assistant, endured horrible torture but refused to confess. A contemporary chronicle that details the things that were done to them said that under those conditions, any ordinary man would have confessed to the murder of God himself. These were old men, both in their 60s, and yet they held out. Finally they agreed to make a public confession. They were taken to a public square where they would admit to the horrible crimes they had committed, express their repentance, and ask for forgiveness. They would then be led away to a prison, where they would remain the rest of their lives.

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Jacques de Molay, however, did not confess as promised. He denounced the proceedings, denied all the charges, and said the only crime was the one that had been committed against him and his fellow knights. He and his assistant were quickly taken out of the square and put back into the prison. They were brought back the next day to be publicly burned at the stake.  Jacques de Molay screamed a curse from the stake (some say while he was burning). He cursed the King and his descendants and Pope Clement. He said the King and the Pope would both be dead within a year. Clement did, in fact, die within a month. Seven months later Philip died without incurring any injury or suffering any illness. According to contemporary accounts, he just dropped dead. This was a vigorous, healthy 46-year-old man who hunted boars from horseback for entertainment.

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Philip’s eldest son ascended the throne. Then he died. The second son became King and then he died. The third and final son followed his brothers and direct male succession to the throne halted. These three brothers, whose ages at death were 27, 28, and 33, left no male offspring.

An uncle of Jeanne, the four-year-old daughter of the eldest brother, bypassed her and proclaimed himself Philip V. He convoked an assembly of notables which, at his direction, approved his right to the throne. They invoked (actually, they created it) the rule that the line of succession could not pass through a woman. This was incorporated into what later eras have called “Salic law.”

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They had a solid reason for doing this. If the crown were allowed to pass to a woman, the next in line would be Isabel, the daughter of Philip IV. Her husband would then be the King of France. The French notables did not like this idea at all, because Isabel’s husband was Edward II, the King of England. The French did not think placing the King of England on their throne was in any way acceptable. The English disagreed. They fought over it, with several breaks due to exhaustion and the Black Death, for more than a hundred years.