Listen to Me

About that "Heroes" event I mentioned earlier, it's coming up soon. And now you can listen to me talk about it.

Revelations: OMG, fiery archangelz iz ouside! run awayz!

First, we have lolchaucer, then lolhistorian. Now, we have the entire Bible translated into lolcat. Yes, that's what I just wrote. Let me repeat that for you: "Now, we have the entire Bible translated into lolcat."

Thanks to Jennifer Lynn Jordan, Jonathan Jarrett, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Update on the Templars Book

You just knew it was coming. Related to my earlier article (about the "newly-found" documents exonerating the Templars of heresy), "British Templars Want Apology from Pope." Ok, 2 things:

1. You guys aren't Templars. I don't care if you think you are. You're just not.
   
2. Why in God's name is the press covering this? Maybe this is a good way for all us medieval bloggers to get some attention -- let's form a secret society and claim descent from the Templars. After all, who's really to say if the Templars weren't originally suppressed because they were blogging?

Awesome Popeishness on the Radio

Eamon Duffy will present short lives of important popes on BBC's Radio 4. Website here. The first half are medieval(-ish) -- Peter, Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, Gregory VII, and Innocent III.

Should be interesting.

Apologia for the Templars' Dissolution (Without the Apology)

According to Reuters, the official papal transcripts of the Templars' trial will soon be released. They were recently "discovered" in the Vatican's Secret Archive in 2001 due to a misfiling of the documents. Don't rush to your local bookstore quite yet though, only 799 copies will be produced, priced at a hefty $8,333 a pop (roughly).

The Vatican expects most copies of the work to be bought up by specialized libraries at top universities and by leading medieval scholars.

I don't know which "leading medieval scholars" can afford that price. Maybe Reuters knows some people I don't. Pope Benedict will be given the 1st copy, but I assume he won't have to pay for it.

Anyway, this will certainly be a boon to scholars who study anything related to the Templars or their trial but there's something else really interesting going on here. The Reuters headline says the Templars have now "won a reprieve." No, not really. Apparently, they were never found guilty of heresy in the first place. The Chinon parchment

contains phrases in which Pope Clement V absolves the Templars of charges of heresy, which had been the backbone of King Philip's attempts to eliminate them.... Clement was convinced that while the Templars had committed some grave sins, they were not heretics.

Think about that for a minute. This document "absolves" the papacy of any direct involvement in the Templars' suppression. The document absolves the papacy from abusing its spiritual power and instead portrays the struggle over the Templars' suppression as nothing more than political, with Philip IV "the Fair" vs. the Templars (and the papacy). The papacy are now on the "good guys'" side. Stunning.

Now, far be it for me to suggest that something fishy might be going on but it is, I think, weird that all this is coming out now. Weird that it fits so well in the context of another recent Vatican-sponsored conference on the crusades that also sought to exonerate the papacy (and Christians more generally) from culpability for their actions -- saying, in effect, well, the Muslims were much worse...