A Medieval Conspiracy

Guillaume de Nogaret wrote the charges against the Templars, brought down a pope and laid the groundwork for the later witchcrazes.

I've been hearing this oft-quoted phrase by Alex Haley many times recently since before the film version of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code hit the theatres last weekend. Of course it's not true. History isn't a game that you win or lose. Some people and groups get their day in the sun but that sun eventually sets for all.

Brown claims in his preface that the background to his novel is true history. Many people want to believe it because Brown seems to give them a story written by the losers--for example, that the Knights Templar, the stars of this week's article, were a secret, pagan society. This story isn't new--in fact, it's 700 years old. But if you believe that history is always written by the winners, isn't even this story written by them?

Take, for example, Guillaume de Nogaret, a certified winner in history, the King of France's chief minister and author of the charges against the Templars--including the charge that they were pagans who worshipped idols.

A self-made lawyer and the greatest landowner in Languedoc, Nogaret attracted a lot of gossip. He was a sorcerer, his neighbors said, a man who hated the Church and would do anything to bring it down. We don't know if Nogaret really practiced black magic. But we do know that he beat up Pope Boniface VIII in 1303, indirectly causing the Pope's death. We also know that Nogaret wrote anti-Semitic propaganda that gave his king the excuse to expel all of the Jews from France in 1306 and seize their money. He wrote the five charges (denying Christ, desecrating the crucifix, ritual obscene kisses upon initiation, sodomy and worshipping an idol) that allowed the King to put the Templars on trial in 1307 and try to seize their money, too. Nogaret profited handsomely from these lies and died in 1313 a very rich man.

So the next time you read something in a book that seems shocking and new, think hard before you believe it. It may be an old lie by one of history's Men in Black.