The Fall of the Templar Knights explained by the two saints...finally, and the revival of the Order …
I was looking a long time why corrupt Templar Knights were disbanded and.. finally I founded in the writings of the two mistics, St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Catherine of Siena. However, those quotes show up only in old translations /makes you wonder why? Haha/.
Here they are:
The quote comes from Christ's own words to the saint, explaining the downfall of the previous orders:
“For the ancient champions and knights of mine, who in the beginning were strong and fervent in the faith, putting their bodies in jeopardy of death for the love of my Cross and for the defense of the holy faith, afterwards their successors became lovers of the world. For their hearts were puffed up with pride, and their bodies were delighted in lusts, and their hands were stretched out to grasping for immoderate covetousness. For this reason I took away my grace from them, and they were made a scorn and a derision to all the world, and their memory is almost put out and blotted from the earth. Therefore, I will …More
"For this reason I took away my grace from them, and they were made a scorn and a derision to all the world, and their memory is almost put out and blotted from the earth. Therefore, I will now, in these last days, make a new order of knights…”
"Power corrupts, absolute power absolutely corrupts"
Looks like this happened to the Jesuits.
Revival of the Knights - from the letters of St. Francis of Paola:
First letter:
"From your Lordship shall be born the great leader of the Holy Militia of the Holy Spirit which shall overcome the world, and shall possess the earth so completely that no king or lord shall be able to exist, except he belongs to the Sacred Host of the Holy Ghost. These devout men shall wear on their breasts, and much more within their hearts, the sign of the living God, namely, the cross.
The first members of this holy Order shall be natives of the city of ... . where iniquity, vice, and sin abound. But they shall be converted from evil to good; from rebels against God they shall become most fervent and most faithful in his divine service. That city shall be cherished by God and by the great monarch, the elect and the beloved of the Most High Lord. For the sake of that place all holy souls who have done penance in it shall pray in the sight of God for that city and for its inhabitants.
When the time shall come of the immense and most right justice of the Holy Spirit, his Divine Majesty wills that such city become converted to God, and that many of its citizens follow the great Prince of the Holy Army. The first person that will openly wear the sign of the living God shall belong to that city, because he will through a letter be commanded by a holy hermit to have it impressed in his heart and to wear it externally on his breast."
Second Letter:
"He shall be a great captain and prince of holy men, who shall be called the holy Crociferi (I.e the Cruciferi, cross-bearers) of Jesus Christ, with whom he shall destroy the Mahometan sect and the rest of the infidels. He shall annihilate all the heresies and tyrannies of the world. He shall reform the Church of God by means of his followers, who shall be the best men upon earth in holiness, in arms, in science, and in every virtue, because such is the will of the Most High. They shall obtain the dominion of the whole world, both temporal and spiritual, and they shall support the Church of God until the end of time. I say no more."
Seventh Letter:
He shall be the great founder of a new religious order different from all the others. He shall divide it into three classes, namely:
Military knights; 2. Solitary priests; 3. Most pious hospitallers.
This shall be the last religious order in the Church, and it will do more good for our holy religion than all other religious institutes. By force of arms he shall take possession of a great kingdom. He shall destroy the sect of Mahomet, extirpate all tyrants and heresies. He shall bring the world to a holy mode of life. There will be one fold and one Shepherd. He shall reign until the end of time. On the whole earth there shall be only twelve kings, one emperor, and one pope. Rich gentlemen shall be very few, but all saints. May Jesus Christ be praised and blessed; for he has vouchsafed to grant to me, a poor unworthy sinner, the spirit of prophecy, not in an obscure way as to his other servants, but has enabled me to write and to speak in a most clear manner.
Image: The Two Crowns - Frank Dicksee, 1900
BTW. St. Bridget prophesized the fall of another order - the Teutonic Knights that began at the beginning of the 15th c. (1400's):
"Above, regarding the bees, I showed you that they receive three benefits from their queen. I tell you now that those crusaders whom I have placed at the borders of Christian lands should be bees like that. But now they are fighting against me, for they do not care about souls and have no compassion on the bodies of those who have been converted from error to the Catholic faith and to me. They oppress them with hardships and deprive them of their liberties. They do not instruct them in the faith, but deprive them of the sacraments and send them to hell with a greater punishment than if they had stayed in their traditional paganism. Furthermore, they fight only in order to increase their own pride and augment their greed. Therefore, the time is coming for them when their teeth will be ground, their right hand mutilated, their right foot severed, in order that they may live and know themselves"
@In Principio
A titbit: Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz (author of "Quo Vadis" about persecutions of Christians in the times of Nero for which he received the Nobel prize) quoted the above St. Bridget's prophecy in his novel about the Teutonic Order.
the knights of the cross. : Henryk Sienkiewicz : …
1. The Templars were destroyed because the corrupt king (Philip the Fair of France) wanted their money.
2. As for the papal stance (the papacy was moved to Avignon - south France after the same king stroke Boniface VIII) let me quote the Catholic Encyclopedia:
". The fate of the Templars was finally sealed at the Council of Vienne (opened 16 October, 1311). The majority of its three hundred members were opposed to the abolition of the order, believing the alleged crimes unproven, but the king was urgent, appeared in person at the council, and finally obtained from Clement V the practical execution of his will. At the second session of the council, in presence of the king and his three sons, was read the Bull "Vox in excelsis", dated 22 March, 1312, in which the pope said that though he had no sufficient reasons for a formal condemnation of the order, nevertheless, because of the common weal, the hatred borne them by the King of France, the scandalous nature of their trial, and the probable dilapidation of the order's property in every Christian land, he suppressed it by virtue of his sovereign power, and not by any definitive sentence"
3. As for St. Bridget she was about 9 years old when the order was abolished.
These holy knights gave everything for Christ, his Church, and Cristendom! Pope Benedict XVI released the Vatican archives on the Templar trial and showed they were completely innocent of the charges and unjustly suppressed. Those such as the Pope at the time and King of France were the only ones guilty of pride and greed!