The implication is that the order had succeeded in winning a position of power, trust and influence with Lalibela, and with the Zagwe dynasty to which he belonged. If so then it would be reasonable to assume that the last two Zagwe monarchs (Imrahana Christos and Naakuto Laab) would also have had a good relationship with the Templars – whom they might have continued to grant privileged access to the Ark.
Assume that this was what happened and that during the six decades after Lalibela’s death in 1211 the Templars were allowed to approach the sacred relic but not, of course, to take it out of Ethiopia. Perhaps they planned to take it but were simply biding their time until a favourable opportunity presented itself. Meanwhile, as the knights who had originally come to Ethiopia grew old the order would have sent out others from the Holy Land to replace them. There would have been no particular sense of urgency; indeed they might have been quite content for the Ark to stay in Ethiopia.
This state of affairs would have changed dramatically in 1270, however, when (for whatever reasons) Naakuto Laab was persuaded to abdicate his throne and was replaced by Yekuno Amlak – a monarch claiming Solomonic descent. Unlike the Zagwes, the very identity of the Solomonids was irrevocably bound up with the Ark of the Covenant and with the notion that Menelik I – the founder of their dynasty – had brought it from Jerusalem during the reign of King Solomon himself. In this context it is worth remembering that the first written version of the Kebra Nagast was prepared on the orders of Yekuno Amlak.28 In other words, although the legend was by then already very old in oral form,29 Yekuno Amlak wanted it formalized. Why? Because it served to legitimize and glorify his title to the throne.
From this it follows that Yekuno Amlak would have been horrified by the presence in his country of a body of armed, militant (and technologically advanced) foreigners like the Templars: foreigners who could call on reinforcements from amongst the thousands of other members of their order in the Near East; foreigners who clearly had a special interest in the Ark and who were possibly plotting to steal away with it.
Assume, however, that Yekuno Amlak (new to the throne and still insecure) initially tried to placate these powerful and dangerous white men, perhaps by giving them the false impression that he was willing to co-operate with them in much the same way as the Zagwes had done. That would have been a logical strategy – particularly since it is known that his army was very small30 – and would explain why nothing spectacular happened during his reign. It would therefore have been up to his successors to seek a final solution to the problem of how to get rid of the Templars and retain the Ark.
Yekuno Amlak’s son (Yagba Zion, 1285–94) was, if anything, even weaker than his father in military terms. Yagba Zion, however, was succeeded by a much stronger character, Wedem Ara’ad, who reigned until 1314. Significantly it was Wedem Ara’ad who sent a large embassy to Pope Clement V at Avignon in 1306.
Is it not possible that the purpose of that embassy was to stir up trouble for the Templars – and perhaps to give the Pope and the French king (Philip IV) an urgent motive to destroy the order? Such a motive could have been provided by the suggestion that the knights were planning to bring the Ark of the Covenant to France. After all, this was a period when deep superstitions ruled the popular imagination. With so sacred and so powerful a relic in their hands the Templars would have been in a unique position to challenge both the secular and religious authorities of the land – and those authorities would certainly have taken any steps they could to prevent such an eventuality.
This theory begins to look particularly attractive when set against the backdrop of the arrests of the Templars in France and elsewhere. All these arrests took place in 1307 – i.e. about a year after the departure of the Ethiopian mission from Avignon. This fits perfectly with what is known about the behaviour of King Philip IV: there is evidence that he began to plan his operation against the Templars about a year in advance of its implementation31 (i.e. in 1306) and there is also evidence that on several occasions during that year he discussed his plans with Pope Clement.32
It would of course be folly to imagine that the destruction of the Templars was occasioned only by the lobbying of the Ethiopian envoys. Malice and greed on the part of Philip IV also played a role (the former because the king had several times been snubbed by the order; the latter because he undoubtedly had his eyes on the huge sums of money resting in Templar treasuries throughout his realm).
By the same token, however, it would be folly to imagine that the Ethiopian mission to Avignon in 1306 had nothing to do with the events of 1307. On the contrary it is more than probable that there was a link – and that link, I am convinced, was the Ark of the Covenant.
Portuguese and Scottish connections
The Templars were a rich and powerful international brotherhood of religious warriors. As such, despite the best efforts of King Philip IV and Pope Clement V, they did not prove easy to destroy. The suppression was most effectively and completely implemented in France; even there, however, some brothers managed to evade capture33 (as did the entire Templar fleet which slipped out of the Atlantic port of La Rochelle on the morning of the arrests and was never seen again34).
In other countries the trials and inquisitions were pursued with much less vigour than in France; nevertheless, tortures, imprisonments, executions, confiscation of property and the final dissolution of the order were the end result in England (after some considerable delay), in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, in Cyprus and elsewhere.35
In Portugal and Scotland, however, the Templars appear to have escaped persecution almost completely. Indeed, circumstances were so favourable in these countries that, under different disguises, the order managed to live on in both of them.
At the time when Pope Clement V issued his bull ordering the arrests of the Templars throughout Christendom – November 1307 – Scotland was locked in a fierce struggle to preserve its national independence against the colonial aspirations of England. Leading this struggle was the most famous of all Scots monarchs – King Robert the Bruce who, at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, was to inflict such a crushing defeat upon the English that his country’s freedom was guaranteed for centuries afterwards. With all his energies focussed on the war, Bruce had no interest whatsoever in pursuing the papal vendetta against the Templars. He therefore only went through the motions of suppressing them: just two knights were arrested36 and the most that appears to have been required of the remainder was that they should keep a low profile.
There was method in the Scottish king’s behaviour: all the evidence suggests that he granted safe haven not only to local Templars but also to members of the order fleeing persecution in other lands.37 Not naturally altruistic, it seems that he adopted this generous policy in order to encourage fugitive knights to join his army.38 It has, furthermore, been cogently argued that a Templar contingent did fight on Bruce’s side at Bannockburn39 – a suggestion that looks worthy of further research when it is remembered that the victorious Scots marched behind a tiny Ark-shaped reliquary at that famous battle.40
The favour that Bruce showed towards the Templars in Scotland, and the fact that many knights escaped arrest in England (because of a delay in implementing the papal bull there), made it possible for the order to go underground in the British Isles – in other words to survive in a secret and hidden form rather than to be completely destroyed. For hundreds of years it has been rumoured that this secret survival took the form of Freemasonry41 – a view supported by a specific Masonic tradition that the oldest Scottish lodge (Kilwinning) was founded by King Robert the Bruce after the battle of Bannockburn ‘for the reception of those Knights Templar who had fled from France’.42 In the eighteenth century Andrew Ramsay, a prominent Scots Mason and historian, added credibility to this tradition with a considerable body of work on the connections between Freemasonry and the Templars.43 And at around the same time Baron Carl von Hund, a leading German Mason, declared that ‘Freemasonry originated in Knight Templary, and that,
in consequence, every Mason is a Templar.’44
That such forthright statements should have been made in the eighteenth century (rather than in any earlier century) is not surprising: this was the period in which Freemasons finally ‘came out of the closet’ and began to talk about themselves and about their history.45 Subsequently, as the new spirit of openness encouraged further research, it became clear that ‘Knight Templarism’ was and always had been an important force within the Masonic system.46 This research, together with much other material not previously uncovered, has recently been incorporated into a detailed and authoritative study which itemizes the many ways in which Freemasonry was shaped and influenced by fugitive Templars.47
It is not my intention here to participate at all in what is undoubtedly a heated, convoluted and highly specialized debate. The point I wish to make is simply that the Masonic system did inherit many of the most central traditions of the Order of the Temple of Solomon, and that this inheritance was first passed on in the British Isles in the years 1307–14 by Templars who had survived papal persecution because of the specially favourable conditions then prevailing in Scotland.
Nor, as I have already noted, was Scotland the only country in which the Templars were left unscathed. In Portugal they were tried but found to be free of guilt, and thus neither tortured nor imprisoned.48 Of course, as a good Catholic, the Portuguese monarch (Dennis I) could not afford to ignore papal instructions completely: accordingly lip service was paid to these instructions and the Templars were officially dissolved in 1312. Just six years later, however, they were reborn under a new name: the Militia of Jesus Christ (also known as the Knights of Christ or, more simply, as the Order of Christ).49
This transformation of one order into another enabled the Portuguese Templars not only to survive the fires of the Inquisition during the years 1307 to 1314 but also to emerge phoenix-like from the ashes in 1318 – after which date they seem to have carried on with business very much as usual. All Templar properties and funds in Portugal were transferred intact to the Order of Christ, as were all personnel.50 Moreover, on 14 March 1319, the newly formed entity received the approval and confirmation of Pope John XXII (Clement meanwhile having died).51
In summary, therefore, despite the harshness of the suppression in France and elsewhere, the Portuguese Order of Christ, and British (and especially Scottish) Freemasonry, were the means by which Templar traditions were preserved and carried forward into the distant future – perhaps right up to modern times.
As my research continued I was to become increasingly sure that one of the traditions thus perpetuated was the quest for the Ark of the Covenant.
‘After battle like wolves and after slaughter like lions …’
Even if my theory about the Templars in Ethiopia was correct, I knew that there was no way that I could establish what might have happened to them in that country after the persecutions began in Europe in 1307. Historical records from the reign of Wedem Ara’ad were virtually non-existent. After sending his mission to Avignon, however, my guess was that he would have stayed in touch with developments and would have been informed of the order’s destruction. Secure in the knowledge that no further knights could now be sent to vex him, the Emperor would then have moved against those Templars who remained in Ethiopia and either expelled them or wiped them out – most probably the latter.
That, at any rate, was my working hypothesis, and probably I would have thought no more about this aspect of my investigation if I had not learnt about the ‘Portuguese connection’ represented by the Order of Christ. You see, with just two unimportant exceptions,52 all the known early visitors to Ethiopia were Portuguese. Moreover, this Portuguese interest in the realm of ‘Prester John’ was already pronounced within a century of the destruction of the Templars and was, from the beginning, spearheaded by members of the Order of Christ.
In this endeavour, the first and most active figure on whom any solid information is available was Prince Henry the Navigator, Grand Master of the Order of Christ and a man described by his biographer as possessing ‘strength of heart and keenness of mind to a very excellent degree … [who] was, beyond comparison, ambitious of achieving great and lofty deeds.’53
Born in 1394, and actively involved in seafaring by 1415,54 Henry’s greatest ambition – as he himself declared – was that he would ‘have knowledge of the land of Prester John’.55 Chroniclers who were his contemporaries, as well as modern historians, are in full agreement that he devoted the greater part of his illustrious career to the pursuit of precisely this goal.56 Yet an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue surrounds all his efforts. As Edgar Prestage, the late Camoens Professor of Portuguese Language, Literature and History at the University of London, observed:
Our knowledge of the Henrican voyages is inadequate, and this is largely due to the adoption of a policy of secrecy which included the suppression of facts … historical works … nautical guides, maps, instructions to navigators and their reports.57
Indeed, so great was the commitment to secrecy in Henry’s time that the release of information on the results of the various exploratory voyages that were undertaken was punishable by death.58 Despite this, however, it is known that the prince was obsessed with the notion of making direct contact with Ethiopia – and that he sought to achieve this end by circumnavigating Africa (since the shorter route through the Mediterranean and then into the Red Sea via Egypt was blocked by hostile Muslim forces59). Moreover, even before the Cape of Good Hope was rounded, the masters of Portuguese vessels venturing down the West African coast were instructed to enquire after ‘Prester John’ to see whether it might not be quicker to approach his kingdom overland.60
One can only speculate as to the true objective of the Portuguese prince. The common view is that he intended – as a ‘good crusader’61 – to forge an anti-Islamic alliance with the Christian Ethiopian emperor. Perhaps he did. Since all serious plans to win the Holy Land for Christendom had been abandoned more than a century before Henry was born, however, I found it difficult to resist the notion that he must have had some other motive – some hidden agenda, perhaps, that would have accounted both for his secrecy and for his fascination with Prester John.
As I studied the life of the great navigator further I became more and more certain that this motive was rooted and grounded in his identity as Grand Master of the Order of Christ, in which capacity he would have inherited all the mystical traditions of the Order of the Temple of Solomon. It is notable that he immersed himself in the study of mathematics and cosmography, ‘the course of the heavens and astrology’,62 and that he was constantly surrounded by Jewish doctors and astronomers63 –men in every way reminiscent of Wolfram’s character Flegetanis who ‘saw hidden secrets in the constellations [and] declared there was a thing called the Gral whose name he read in the stars without more ado.’64
Another factor which suggested to me that the Portuguese prince was profoundly influenced by Templar traditions was his celibacy. The Knights of Christ were not bound by such strict rules as their predecessors in the Order of the Temple. Nevertheless, like the Templar Grand Masters before him, Henry ‘would never marry, but preserved great chastity [and] remained a virgin till his death.’65 Likewise, I could not help but wonder whether it was entirely a matter of coincidence that the illustrious navigator chose to make his last will and testament on 13 October 146066 – the 153rd anniversary of the arrests of the Templars in France (which took place on 13 October 1307).
Henry died in 1460, shortly after making his will, and it was not until the early years of the twentieth century that certain secret archives pertaining to the last decade of his life came to light. Amongst these archives (details of which were published by Dr Jaime Cortezao in 1924 in the review Lusitania67) a brief note was found to the effect that ‘an ambassador of Prester John visited Lisbon eight years before Henry’s death’.68 It is not known what the purpose of this mission was, or what the prince and the Ethiopian envoy discussed. Never
theless, two years after their meeting it can hardly have been accidental that King Alfonso V of Portugal granted spiritual jurisdiction over Ethiopia to the Order of Christ.69 ‘We are’, admits Professor Prestage, ‘still ignorant of the motives that led to this concession.’70
In the year that Henry the Navigator died – 1460 – a fitting successor was born at Sines, a seaport in the south of Portugal. That successor, also a Knight of the Order of Christ,71 was Vasco da Gama, who was to open up the Cape route to India in 1497.
It is notable that when he set off on this famous voyage da Gama was carrying two things: a white silk banner with the double red cross of the Order of Christ embroidered upon it; and letters of credence for delivery to Prester John.72 Moreover, although his ultimate destination was indeed India, the Portuguese admiral devoted a considerable part of the expedition to African exploration and is reported to have wept for joy when, at anchor off Mozambique, he was rightly told that Prester John lived in the interior far to the north.73 It was also claimed by the same informants that the Ethiopian emperor ‘held many cities along the coast’.74 This claim was incorrect, but da Gama’s subsequent stop-overs at Malindi, Mombasa, Brava (where he built a lighthouse that still stands) and Mogadishu were in part motivated by his continuing desire to make contact with Prester John.75
Meanwhile, in 1487 – a decade before da Gama set off – the Order of Christ had sponsored a different initiative also aimed at reaching Ethiopia. In that year King John II of Portugal, then Grand Master of the Order, had sent his trusted aide Pero de Covilhan on a perilous journey to the court of Prester John via the Mediterranean, Egypt and the Red Sea. Disguised as a merchant, Covilhan passed through Alexandria and Cairo to Suakin and there, in 1488, he took ship in a small Arab barque for the Yemeni port of Aden. He then became caught up in various adventures which delayed him considerably. As a result it was not until 1493 that he finally succeeded in entering Abyssinia.76 Once there, however, he made his way immediately to the emperor’s court where he was first welcomed but later placed under comfortable house arrest. One can only speculate as to why this happened, but since it is known that Covilhan’s greatest skill was as a spy (he had previously worked as a secret agent in Spain77) it is difficult to resist the notion that the Order of Christ may have commissioned him to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant. Perhaps he aroused suspicion by making enquiries about the sacred relic; perhaps not. At any rate he was detained in Ethiopia for the rest of his life.78
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