Friday 22 November 2013

War of the Roses (1)

The war of the Roses

There is much to be said that the first public records of Masonic Lodges arose around Benedictine Monestaries. After all the Templars were connected closely to the Benedictine monasteries and building programmes were carried out around Benedictine monasteries. 

The initial vows of the Lodges then arose alongside the vows of the Monastic Orders themselves. And the three vows of Monastic Orders were reflected in the oaths and degrees of the Lodge. 

Also the officials of the Benedictine Monastery and that of the Lodge mirror each other closely. 

1. The Abbot in the Monastery mirrors the Worshipful Master in the Lodge. All brothers (Frater in both and in both receiving new names) listen to him and owe him obedience. 

2. The Cellaler in the Monastery mirrors the Steward in the Lodge. He functions as secretary and is responsible for all the needs of the brethren.

3. The Porter mirrors the Tyler. They receive the new members and check their credentials.

4. The Junior Warden mirrors the Master of the Novices. They instruct and are responsible for the brethren who have not progressed through all degrees yet.

Whereas the Porter remains outside the enclosure the three other officials are always sitting at the head of ceremonies. From there it is not hard to recognise the masonic origin of Protestant Churches. There will be sitting three elders in front of the congregation. Churches then are open Fraternities, whereas a Lodge is closed one. This is even the case with the Mormons.

A closer look at the Roman Catholic Church will show that they also will conform to this model. How then can the apparent conflict between the Roman Catholic Church en Freemasonry be explained?

The conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and Freemasonry is relatively of late origin. Apparently it happened as a response to English Protestantism, which created the modern form of Freemasonry and is quite adamant that this is the beginning of the history of Freemasons around 1717. 

It is no coincidence that when there is record of earlier lodges that they were in one way or another connected to Benedictine Monasteries. Not all Brethren in a Benedictine Monastery were equal. In most cases approx. one third were connected to a lodge connected to the Benedictine Monastery, whereas the other Brethren would not know anything about it. This was even the case within the Templar's. Some will have us believe that within the RC Church only very recently Bishops and Priest have joined Masonry. But it has been the case during the whole period R.C. Church apparently was against Masonry.

Let us not forget that even all symbols associated today with Masonry were during the 13th-17th centuries pack and parcel of Church Religious Paintings. It is only after the 18th Century that the two were separated.

We see here that the Templar's and later with them the Benedictines would have a different idea of the Papacy as had the Papacy itself. We can see that at the symbol of the Papal keys. The Pope was the Porter of his flock which were on their way either to hell or heaven. Peter would decide whether the door of Heaven (the Lodge) would open or not. 

As the Augustine's were really an offshoot of the Benedictines in the 14th century and as such were the carriers and caretakers of Protestantism in Germany it now becomes apparent why the resistance against Papal claims from men like Boniface VIII would have to arise from within the Church itself.

The Jesuits though were very much responsible for carrying through the Ultramontanist claims of the Papacy. This set the Jesuits at foot of war with the creations of the Benedictines and hence with Freemasonry.  

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Benedictines, the creators of our Culture

Charlemagne and 
the Benedictines

In the tale of Charlemagne the Benedictines take huge credit for the Education of Charlemagne himself and for Education in the newly created Western Roman Empire. 

And sure! Why not! After all, if anybody can be credited with the creation of the myth of Charlemagne it is the Benedictines. And sure, they are at the roots of the creation of the Roman Empire of the West. 

Only not at the time frame they claim. 

Rest assured! There were no Benedictine Monasteries before Cluny and neither did Cluny reform the Benedictine Order. Cluny was very much the original source for European monasteries. And at that, the Benedictines hence were not spending their lives in silence in Dark Middle Ages writing rooms to preserve for us antique culture. 

The Cluny monasteries were very much part of the influx of Slavs (later called Mongols) in the 12th century and originally were warrior Monks. They were the Rex Dei families creating the first instances of (family) communism with long term political goals. It is they who brought us the magnificent new building works, the Hanze movement, which brought us new cities and commerce at the same time. And even traditional historians wouldn't argue with the fact that the Mongol conquest enabled trade and trade routes more or less at global scale. 

Even in far Asia at this time warrior monks arose.

After 1307 the warrior monks were obsolete in that they became an obstacle for the desired emancipation of the West under a newly created Papacy. Then of course the Monasteries took upon themselves new tasks and became instrumental in the newly discovered art of printing, in education en transmission of a new culture. A new Western Roman culture that is. 

It is here that our Western form of Christianity in the coming 100 years would develop. It is here that first the uniform Latin Vulgate is developed and antique writers which were known (not that many actually. Hardouin for instance only recognised six, amongst whom Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Virgil) were used as source out of which all the others were created. The attentive reader will notice that they were typical Roman writers. But no references to Christianity is to be found in them.

But even all Church Fathers became suspect and Hardouin argued that the Church history of Eusebius, the works of Jerome (and that includes his Latin texts) and Augustine etc. were all written in the 15th-16th century, which could be detected by their writing styles. 

In this sense then the Benedictines of the 15th century can be credited with creating our Western Culture and laying a framework for the newly created Papacy in the West. 

How could this be? Very easy. Nobody had heard of a bible and in so far as a Vulgate existed nobody was allowed to read it apart from the clergy. Nobody would desire to do so, because it would not occur in their minds. 

Christianity was still very much a very diverse movement more Nestorian or Arian and only the Muslims, which were basically a Nestorian offshoot, had scriptures. 

Not even the Jews had them. They shared their traditions within the Saracen culture amongst whom they lived, but they had different traditions. The jews were Jacob, the Muslims were Esau. 

Edwin Johnson writing in the rise of English Culture around 1904 argued that the Jews in Spain created their Torah to provide themselves with a unique identity. 

Once the West after the crusades desired to emancipate and separate from the East, it is only logical that also their Christian Dogma had to separate itself and so big became their aversion of the Nestorian traditions that they needed their own scriptures as well as dogma and the Benedictines built this upon the Jewish traditions of the Synagogues in Spain. 

The Jewish modes in the sacred chants and Psalms became the basis for the Gregorian chants and the Benedictines were entrusted with this heritage. Their Opus Dei became the weekly chant of all Psalms.

Hence, Edwin Johnson would argue, this typical Benedictine tradition could not have developed before the Spanish Jews had developed theirs. 

Further Edwin Johnson argues, the rule of St. Benedict was not modelled to the three gospels of the New Testament. The gospels were written in fashion of the rule of St. Benedict and that is why in some early New Testament texts Jesus' sermon on the mountain was not to be found. Also the figure of Peter was very much modelled after how the Benedictines viewed the Papacy. The gospel of John again had very different source and existed earlier, being fashioned out of the antique writers with their typical distancing from the Jewish people. 

Which explains why amongst the Jewish groups for instance the Essenes are never mentioned in the New Testament, although we are to believe that they were in some respect a model for the later Monasteries but would have been very much still be present in Jesus own days. They aren't mentioned, because there were no Essenes in the 15th century and surely the Benedictines would conceal their own origins, especially their Slavic origins. 

The Epistles of Paul may indeed have been written before any writing of a historical Jesus. But they can't have been written before the 15th century either, as the social economic model, the model of the warrior knight, the idea of nations etc. are typical for the newly arisen world view of the West after the 13th century. 

Wouldn't Paul, had he sat and initiated the stoning of St. Stefan being the Sadducee he was, whilst claiming to be a Pharisee (hence he was lying), really have no physical recollection of the physical existence of Jesus himself? But he didn't because he was not living at that time at all. 

The 'salvation by grace' message was very much developed by Paul Sarpi, a Venetian Monk and assistent to Cardinal Borromeo of the Roman Church, who was instrumental in setting up Protestantism as well as Counter-Reforming Jesuits. Was it he who created the name Paul en Peter and Paul being the base of the Roman Church. The Roman Church then is built accordingly on the theocratic monarchal ideas of Batu and the merchants of Venice. It would explain much of later history. 

According to Edwin Johnson then the Latin Text was finished between 1480-1525. Luther found such a text (may have been made to find it) and hence had never seen one before. 

The Roman Church though was shocked at the realisation that the Reformation and especially English Culture highjacked their project and saw a place for common people in the process. 

Edwin Johnson then goes on to show that the Benedictines in that time set themselves the task to create all Church fathers to give the new texts authority above all other writings especially that of the Jews and the Muslims. And they created all the disputes - really the same disputes over and over allegedly during 1000 years - and many Church councils to shape and authorize their Dogma. By settling the disputes in the past the Roman Church gave itself the authority it desired.

Even the most staunch defender of the Counter Reformation, the Jesuit Jean Hardouin, didn't buy into the writings of the Benedictines. The Roman Church hence would never base their authority on any scripture, but on their own 'tradition'. On other hand they would always hold fast to their idea that it is they who gave the world the Word of God, the Bible. Because they did! But not before the council of Trient. 
  
It seems that above is a very solid view of what really happened in the Western Monasteries. But if Charlemagne and St. Bede (really an allusion to Batu) and even St. Benedict - an allegorical name as is Charlemagne - are not historical, what then is the historical root of Monte Cassino? 

We have before already argued that Batu Khan did not really leave Western Europe in 1242, because he never ever went to the election of the Great Khan Kublai. He only sent a representative. 

But Batu Khan also concealed his existence in Western Europe in the foundations of the Papacy and the Western Roman Empire. In this respect it is most likely that Monte Cassino was his first base camp and that it was a warrior Monastery at that. From here Italian Rome would have been created by the Slavic (Etruscan) Nobles in his entourage. 

There actually is a - negative clue - for this idea. There is very much talk, when relations with the Mongols are described, about Franciscans. But never about Benedictines, although traditional history tells us the Western world would have been full with them. Full with wise learned men at that. And even no traditional historian would argue against the fact that as was Kublai Khan, also Batu Khan was a learned men. A Savage nevertheless.

It is a tell tale, as with Essenes. There was no talk about it, because really the Slavic Culture of Batu Khan was the source for the European Monasteries as well as the Templars. 

And where-ever the Slavic Nobles came, they founded cities (Hanze) and Monasteries to cultivate their new settlements. They became our Princes and Kingly families. Present day history sees them as barbaric. In those days though in Europe they were seen as liberators bringing with them a whole new culture. 

A culture though that in the 16th century stagnated in the efforts by the Roman Catholic church to monopolise all development.