Wednesday August 13, 2008, 12:38 pm

.The Round Church was built by the Knights Templar on the site of King Solomon's temple.

'The Temple Pyx', c. 1150. This (MICHIGAN)copper-alloy plaque (92 x 72 mm)

was said in 1833 to have been found in the Temple Church 'during some of the repairs which have of late taken place in that edifice' (Gentleman's Magazine, 6 Oct. 1833, p. 305). The knights' similarity to our effigies might have given rise to the story; there is evidence of a quite different provenance. The plaque may have been made as part of a Holy Sepulchre group, showing the guards asleep at Jesus' tomb; the resurrection would then have been visible through the pierced arches. The piece is now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow

The Church was built by the Knights Templar, the order of crusading monks founded to protect pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem in the 12th century. The Church is in two parts: the Round and the Chancel.

The Round Church was consecrated in 1185 by the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was designed to recall the holiest place in the Crusaders' world: the circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is a numinous space - and has a wonderful acoustic for singing.

In the Round Church you will find the life-size stone effigies of nine knights. Most famous of these knights was William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, the most important mediator between King John and the Barons in 1215. John was at the Temple in January 1215 when the barons demanded that he confirm the rights enshrined in the Coronation Charter of his predecessor; it was William who swore on the King's behalf that the barons' grievances would be satisfied in the summer. William became Regent in the minority of Henry III.

William's own eldest son, also William, was among those chosen by the barons to force John's compliance with Magna Carta; and on John's death he joined the rebels against Henry's rule. His father eventually won him over to Henry's cause. The effigy of this younger William lies next to his father's.

The Chancel was built in 1240. Henry III had signalled his intention to be buried here. (He was in fact buried in Westminster Abbey; one of his sons, who died in infancy, was interred in the Temple.) If you look at the dark marble columns in the chancel, you will see that they 'lean' outwards. These columns are replicas of the 13th century columns that stood until the War; they leant outwards too. The church was bombed in 1941: the Chancel's vault survived; the columns cracked in the heat, and after the War they had to be replaced. The architects wondered whether to build the new columns upright. But if the 'leaning' columns had done good work for seven hundred years, their replacements, it was decided, should lean too - and so they do!


FOUNDATION-THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars - as the knights were popularly known - were soldier monks.
After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon's temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

The London Temple was the Templars' headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars' churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings. In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey

'Foster-Child of Silence and slow Time': The Round Church, its Consecration and its Effigies.

On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church's consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel's length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach's procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, - on that great day or later - was the function of the Round?

Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders' world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus' own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars' care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.

In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons' effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father's long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried 'in' Jerusalem.

The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius' opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius - who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. 'Ernoul' tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius' own doctor in Rome. William's narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L'Estoire d' Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 - and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.

Can anything redeem our Heraclius' reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers' Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus - and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom's royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem's factions; and instead to secure one - any one - of Europe's leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.

The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II's enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry's reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons' adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius' departure from Dover. Here is the king's last chance. 'Though all the men of my land,' said the king, 'were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.' 'Do by me,' replied Heraclius, 'as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.' 'I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.' 'No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.'

Gerald's Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. 'That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury' had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul - as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: 'for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul' he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: 'We seek a man even without money - but not money without a man.' Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.

***

Our church's consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.

In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order's origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh's town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe's spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux. Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.

Bernard secured single-handed the Templars' future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard's own uncle Andrew. The Templars' constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard's influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.

The New Knighthood's first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard's eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good - or for lawless violence. In the tract's second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims' understanding and to the Templars' own.

Wednesday August 13, 2008, 4:45 pm
There is a famous round church in Cambridge (UK) where I went to University...it has the most strange set of Ley Lines that I have ever come across...one side of the circle pull you inwards while the other push you outwards...to test Ley Lines I find best way is to close eyes and go up on tip-toe and see which way the force takes you...the round church in cambridge was built over an ancient hedge and hence has been a powerful site long before the Christians came and took over...that's why so many British churches have Yew trees in their graveyards...planted by the pre-christian believers to guard their dead during their wait for the crystal light...a belief taken over by the christians (very little of their religion is original...christ was probably fertility god dying to rise like the old Egyptians)As the romans before them had found with Mythras it is much better just to take over the local gods and give them new names(hence Mabon became Appolo QED) and gave rise to loads of temples to the belief in Cybeline...its a long story and the night is late...I'll send you some stuff on it...puts the christian mythology right where it belongs.
As to these Templars we have several chapels up here in Scotland dedicated to them where the local Masons get excited about their symbols everywhere...one even made it into that trashy novel the D'Vinci Code...again another story. It is an evening for digressiuons.

Wednesday August 13, 2008, 4:46 pm
sorry 'ancient henge' that should be

Wednesday August 13, 2008, 5:29 pm
Interesting! My English grandfather was part of a crew who built a community center at Pigeon Valley, Alberta, Canada, in the early years of the 20th century. It was called the "round hall", it was where the children slept under the lip of the band stage at Sat. night dances. I once asked why it was made round? His reply was "So the devil can't catch you in a corner"!! Well that brings to mind how many he caught under the trees outside, LOL

Friday August 15, 2008, 12:53 am
I love this, and very noted, thank you Scott.

Friday August 15, 2008, 8:34 am

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northern,comfort,grasshopper,war,indians,history,holy,grail,Anna,crystal skull in port colborne, was five. Tragedy struck when she and her seven year old sister were playing by the Port Colborne canal.Her sister drowned. Another sister was burned to death when their house caught fire.Agrogreen ,Canada,Inc.Get,God Conscious,Help Save Our Earth, and Yourself. Jean de Brébeuf hall and church,jean de brebeuf church, in port colborne, is round, like a stargate. is right next door to my house,Jean de Brébeuf,and the conviction that the reason of his death was not his association with the Hurons, but hatred of Christianity,BréBeuf National Historic Site of Canada - In 1948, the Site Became the Arsenault Dump, Used as a Snow Deposit Ten Years,the head of
Brébeuf is still kept as a relic at the Hôtel-Dieu, Quebec.The Round Temple Church,Built By the Knights Templar,The Templars(Jesuits)' Churches Were Always Built to a Circular Design,In the Round Church, life-size stone effigies of nine knights.the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.St. Jean De Brebeuf(Jesuit) Church's,stargate,are round,one is next to my house,Port Colborne,also a Millstone,no mill..and an obelisk,
Here's 914 articles I put in at care2, in the last 7 months, read them all, and my comments.

Monday August 18, 2008, 12:07 pm
Interesting-thanks Scott.