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Re: Grandmaster List



Dear Labehotiere,

    While I will happily give references to any assertions or statements of
fact or opinion I make, may I enquire - in the light of your comment 'do not
come to the debate' - what work have you had published, and by whom?

    If you can read French, may I suggest a good starting point would be the
'Cahier d'etude' on the subject of the 'Transmission of Larmenius' published
two years ago by the 'Centre des Etudes et des Recherches Templieres' in
Campagne-sur-Aude.This lists a good cross section of scholarly comment on
this dubious document.

    Among serious authors who have commented in recent years, may I list
Peter Partner, (The Knights Templar and their Myth - Oxford University Press
1981) who claims the document was forged by Dr. Ladru in the late
seventeenth, early eighteenth century. John Robinson ( The Lost Secrets of
Freemasonry - Born in Blood - Century 1990)  who states that it is now
proven to be a blatent forgery. Baigent and Leigh (The Temple and the
Lodge - Jonathan Cape 1989) who are non-committal. Lastly, Knight and Lomas
on the one hand and Picknet on Prince on the other, who both simply assume
its veracity asit is used to support the central themes of their works,
namely The Second Messiah (K & L) and The Templar Revelation ( P & P).

    Thus scholarly authorswith good reputations either condemn it, or at
best equivocate, while other, more speculative authors pushing highly
arguable themes, sometimes endorse it.

    What does the document itself tell us? Rather a lot. The original can be
inspected in Mark Masons Hall in London. It is in cipher, which upon
translation reveals not the clumsy, ecclesiastical Latin of the medieval era
to be found on so many charters, documents and deeds from that time, but a
far more polished and scholarly form of the language used in universities
and medical schools in eighteenth century Europe. According to most scholars
who have commented on the prose style used, it is quite obviously the
product of a seventeenth or eighteenth century mind, well steeped in the
masonic lore of that time and bears no relationship whatsoever to the
phraseology current in the early years of the fourteenth century.

    The alleged list of Grandmasters includes among their number, several
Princes of the Royal House of Bourbon. Some absolute howlers are made in
their alleged titles which quite obviously indicate that no-one from that
social class had anything to do with the document whatsoever much less
became a Grandmaster repsonsible for it..

    According to the consensus among the scholars who have studied this
document, the most favoured candidate for the position of forger, is not Dr
Bernard Fabre-Palaprat who did most to promote it, but a certain colleague
of his a Dr Ladru.

    Therefore my dear challenger, the debate is on. I have responded to your
challenge - now, where are your proofs of theis document's authenticity -
with sources please?

Best wishes

tim

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