In the News: Templars & Gnostics

The Vatican has published secret documents about the trial of the Knights Templar, including a parchment – long ignored because of a vague catalog entry in 1628 – showing that Pope Clement V initially absolved the medieval order of heresy.

Here’s the news story:
Vatican to publish Templar trial papers

Above: A detail is shown on a replica document of the Latin-language minutes of trials against the Knights Templar in 1308. Lost until its rediscovery in 2001, it is being published by the Vatican Secret Archives at the end of October. The book and parchments cost 5,900 euros and its 799 numbered copies are destined for top libraries and medieval scholars. Picture taken October 9, 2007 (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters).

Another news story, from Reuters:

Knights Templar win heresy reprieve after 700 years

Also in the news . . .

The United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many minorities in Iraq. This extinction in the making has simply been another unfortunate and entirely unintended consequence of our invasion of Iraq – though that will be of little comfort to the Mandeans, whose 2,000-year-old culture is in grave danger of disappearing from the face of the earth. The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who produced the Nag Hammadi writings like the Gospel of Thomas.

Here’s the op-ed article from The New York Times:

Save the Gnostics