reply to post by itsallmaya
There are probably a hundred groups calling themselves "knights templar" in existence today. To my knowledge, not a single one of them has any
incontrovertible proof that there exists an unbroken chain between their modern organization and the Templars that were active from 1129 until
1312.
In reality, there was a romantic resurgence of interest in chivalric values in the early 1800s. Forming clubs and calling each other "knights" and
dressing up and carrying swords became a fashionable thing to do. The fact that they were espousing virtues like charity, equality, fraternity, etc,
was all good, so if they want to dress funny while they're doing it, or use silly titles, what's the harm?
There are countless legends of groups that may have stayed active after the templars were officially disbanded by the pope in 1312, but there's no
real evidence that any such organizations were, in fact, related to the KT, nor is there any evidence of those same organizations being active,
continuously, for the last 700 years. SOMEONE would have found a scrap of paper somewhere if there were any proof of this. You can't really keep an
organization like that entirely secret for that long without SOMEONE talking.
So there are Masonic groups who have Knight Templar degrees (both the York Rite and Scottish Rite have degrees styled as such), but there are also any
number of other, non-Masonic degrees calling themselves knights templar also. There's no trademark on the name. There's nobody to stop you from
calling yourself one. If we wanted to officially declare that anyone who posted a reply to this thread was a Knight Templar, we could, and nobody
could tell us otherwise.
So that's what Sinclair
has. The Sinclairs are the heriditary owners of Rosslyn Chapel, and sometimes
the old man likes to put on his white robes with the red cross on the front and wave around a sword. And there are people who want to be in his club.
It doesn't make his any more or less legitimate than any other group of Templars, but to think that they're all the same group would be foolish.
).
