Traditionally, Mary Magdalene is said to have arrived at a village which has been called from memory out of time, St. Magdalene-sur-le-Mer, on the Provence seaside, where this arrival is celebrated every year in a festival.

The Magdalene was highly revered in France. Before Joan of Arc, the Magdalene was the patron saint of France. She brought Christianity to then Gaul with her disciples. In the South of France, in the Languedoc area, there was a Duchy called Septamania. It was a matriarchy which welcomed artists and writers of all kinds. Women were held in high esteem and the area was always run by the Duchess of Septamania. On famous Duchess was Duoda (c.806/11-aft.843). Her husband, Bernard, Duke of Septimania (c.802-844) was nearly always in Paris serving in the court of Louis I. He was in charge of the Finances for Louis's government. Dhuoda of Septimania was very famous for writing a Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son.

This was a moral guide for her 15 year-old son whom Bernard sent court after Bernard fell out of favor with Charles, Louis' son. In it she writes a moral code which includes treatment of women as well as how to behave in Court. It is considered the handbook used by Eleanor of Aquitaine, her decendent, to beget the Court of Love that she was famous for in the later 12th century. There are many who believe that this line was decended from Magdalene. If it wasn't, it at least followed a reverence to her memory and her legacy that was unparalleled anywhere else in European Christianity. While the leaders of this area adhered to the Roman Pope, it welcomed all comers of all religions. The only turmoil was when the Muslims welcomed by the Duchesses of the area originally joined the invading Moors to try to take over this area. Jews were especially welcome, it appears and flourished in this area until the Albigensian Crusades which killed all occupants - the crusade motto was "Kill 'em all and let God sort them."

Romantic love, in its origins as courtly love, was conceived as a spiritual discipline. The cult of courtly love had it roots in the religion of the Cathars. Believers called themselves Cathars, meaning "pure". By the twelfth century entire towns and provinces in the south of France practiced Catharism. Many of the nobility in the courts of Europe were Cathars. In France the movement was called the Albigensian heresy because the movement centered in the city of Albi in France. One of their basic beliefs was that "true love" was not the ordinary love between husband and wife but rather the adoration of the feminine mediator between God and man. She waited in the sky to welcome the pure with a holy kiss and lead him or her into the Realm of Light. Cathars believed that the love of a man for a woman should be an earthly allegory of their love for the Queen of Heaven.

this is a continuation of the Judaic teachings on the Matronit.The Matronit is an aspect of Shekinah, the Sacred Feminine. She is the Queen of the Sabbath and Sacred Union rituals are done in Her honor every Sabbath within Orthodox Jewish homes. The tools of traditional Shabbat - the wine, the kiddush cup, the candles, the covered eyes, the spice box, the braided candle, the songs. She represents Compassion and Justice like Guvurah on the Tree of Life. Shekinah is the link between the Divine and the human. It is she who we see in visions and call it the Virgin Mary, if we are Catholic, but the Jews call her by name. She is Mother Zion to Jeremiah. The Gnostics call her "the Daughter of God." She is also called Malkuth, the Supernal Woman and the Discarded Cornerstone. There is a story in the Zohar where the Matronit is abused by evil and Lilith takes her place as the Consort of JHVH. In this passage, JHVH is stripped of His power because He has lost his Matronit. Thus the importance of She to the Godhead.

Many Christians saw Cartharism as a reform movement, a reaction against the corruption and politics within the religious hierarchy. The Cathars practices an exemplary morality and offered an experience of God that was at once personal, individual, and lyrical. They returned the feminine to religion.

The teachings and Ideals of the Cathars reappeared in the cult of courtly love, in songs and poems of the troubador and in the "romances". The ideal of courtly love swept through the feudal courts of medieval Europe and began a revolution the attitudes toward the feminine values of devotion and the pursuit of beauty. This revolution matured into what we call romanticism.

Within this court, the story of Lancelot and Guinevere was born. It has been attributed to Chrètien de Troyes but many think that Eleanor's daughter by Louis, Marie of France who had left her husband to set up shop writing in her mother's court may have actually penned the work. Basically, courtly love was the first celebration of an emotional relationship between a man and a woman. never before in Europe had the female been so highly prized within society. The women were equal for the first time since the Aryan attacks on the Sumerian Matriarchal communities of the 3000s BC. In 1174, after Eleanor supported an uprising by her sons against their father, Henry came into Poitier and took her back to England. There he locked her in a tower for a decade until he deemed her as not dangerous any more. In 1189, Henry died and Richard, who was a favorite in Eleanor's court of love, became King of England but left it to John to run while he ran off to crusade against Salladin. After Richard's death, Phillip, now King of France, tried to strip John of Eleanor and Henry's lands in France. Eleanor, who had retired to Fontevrault, came out of the convent and led an army against Phillip and won. She finally died in 1204, but the legends about her court of love never did.

But who were the Cathars? The Medieval sect from the Languedoc region of France, now more commonly known as the French Pyrénées, and the Albigensian Crusade that was mounted against them. In 1208, the Pope, the ironically named Innocent III, unleashed this brutal crusade, under the command of Simon de Montfort, against the districts of Toulouse, Albi and the surrounding region, because of their support for those known as the Cathars. These poor preachers had given up their worldly goods to deliver the message of Christ, by word and by example, through an austere lifestyle. Today we would regard them as devout religious extremists, then they burned them, in large numbers!

These Cathars had a huge following. The spiritual leaders were known asParfaits and lived a life of chastity and purity. Though historically known as the Good Men, there is little doubt that the Cathars, with their general rejection of genderism, would today prefer the term 'Good People', or as they were commonly known, the 'Good Christians'. Women occupied priestly roles alongside the men, taking the words of Christ as their absolute guiding principle. They were simple, humble and much respected by their communities - yet they were burned alive as heretics.

On Mary Magdalene's feast day they entered Mary,s church and killed her priest before all the people; They then proceeded to kill all the town's people.

The magnitude of the "heresy" can be guessed when we learn that after two years of the most brutal carnage the Albigensians were still so strong that, when the Pope renewed the "crusade" in 1214, a fresh hundred thousand "pilgrims" had to be summoned. Pope Innocent III boasts that they took five hundred towns and castles from the heretics, and they generally butchered every man, woman and child in a town when they took it. Noble ladies with their daughters were thrown down wells, and large stones flung upon them. Knights were hanged in batches of eighty. When, at the first large town, soldiers asked how they could distinguish between heretics and orthodox, the Cistercian abbot thundered: "Kill them all, God will know his own," and they put to the sword the forty thousand surviving men, women and children.

This was the begining of the inquisiton; they then proceeded to kill thousands of men, women, and children, stealing all the wealth of southern france. They proceeded further to kill any troubador, or singer of romantic love. They rewrote history to cover their murderous crime; blaming the Carthari of a heresy that they themselves promoted; that is Manachee dualism, Which the Cathari did not preach or believe. A certain rich dynasty in southern France known as the 'Magorvian Kings' promoted a heresy of 'The Holy Blood' claiming to be direct descendents of Jesus and Mary Magdalene; it was this heresy that was their fatal mistake. And it is this particular heresy that lead to the destruction of the Albigenses culture.

What is true is that the Cathari, believed themselves to be the descendents of Mary's church, the Jewish Christian church, and that Jesus was indeed married. Actions speak loader than words, and the Cathari' actions were good; Indeed they had a reputation of being the 'best christians'. Their daughters as well as their sons recieved an education. The daughters were able to own lands and recieve an inheritence. It is a fact that there were many landowning, prominent and noble women among the Cathari. The mother of St. Francis was a Cathari. At the time of the Cathari southern France was experincing great prosperity and an advancing civilization.

The actions of the Troubadors were good, they sang of love and wrote poetry. They were the hearld of what became great in the writings of Shakespere.

The Pope at this time was reputed to be a great coveter of of land and power; and at no other time has a pope owned more land. A twelfh century artist portayed this pope as the devil himself. The wealth plundered from the Cathari was enormous. The inquisition destroyed thousand of artifacts and writings; And lasted in various forms for 500 years; killing millions. However, many refused to give up Christ's Bride and Mary as Goddess; This is why Mary told St. Dominic that only the Rosary could stop the bloodshed. It was at this time that marraige was done away with in the Roman Priesthood. Though The Roman church claimed to honor Mary; they maintained the lie of who promoted the heresy of Manachian duality; They spoke against the Carthari veiws on romantic love and they told their own preist that celebicy was the will of God.

The Knights Templar are one of the best-known military Crusading orders of the Middle Ages. The Order of the Temple was founded in 1118 with the initial aim of protecting pilgrims going to and from Jerusalem, but many believe they were in all probability also searching for hidden treasures under the long destroyed Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the place where the Order was originally installed.

The Order, (ostensibly) founded in 1118 by nobleman Hugues de Payens, was the first of a number of Military Monastic Orders that flourished during the Crusade years. The word "Templar" derives from the full official name of the order, "The poor knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon." Originally promoted as the protectors Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, they were known as fierce warriors with tremendous military prowess.

In a very short time after their inception, the Knights Templar became very popular. They were exempted from taxation, and had amassed great wealth and property by the 13th century. By this time, Jerusalem had fallen back into Muslim hands, and enthusiasm for crusades was waning. The Templars were now living quite well. They had tremendous political and financial influence (even instituting Europe's first banking system).

However, with no Crusades to justify their continued existence, they became to some a target of resentment. King Phillip of France, possibly with an eye toward gaining control of Templar finances, issued secret orders to have all of the Templars in France arrested on grounds of heresy and sorcery. Torture elicited confessions of various crimes and heresies from many of the Knights.

The Templars developed into one of the richest and most powerful organizations in the medieval world, and had a large network of preceptories and commanderies throughout Europe and the Middle East. They were the bankers to kings and originated our modern-day concept of a letter of credit, in addition to fighting in the Crusades and assisting pilgrims.

The Knights Templar were a military-religious order founded in the early 12th century to defend the kingdom the crusaders had carved out in the Holy Land. From modest beginnings, the order grew to wield immense political and financial power not only in the Holy Land, but also in Europe. Pope Clement V ordered its dissolution after a campaign to discredit the order which saw bogus confessions extracted by the use of often ferocious torture. Two years after the pope issued his decree, the last grand master of the Knights Templar was burned at the stake on an island in the Seine in front of Nôtre Dame cathedral. Jealousy and covetousness reigned. Phillip IV, who was deeply in dept to the Order, had seen their treasures stored in Paris, and designed to make it his own.

On Friday morning October 13th 1307 - and the reason for which Friday the 13th has become known as an unlucky day - King Phillip IV together with Avignonese Pope Clement V, ruthlessly suppressed the Order throughout Europe, with false accusations, arrests, torture and executions. (Timeline) Though they were offered communted sentences and comfortable lives if they would renounce their Order and plead guilty to the charges, for some mysterious reason, they preferred to remain true to their principles and received their punishment. A large number of Templars escaped that day to an uncertain future, and found refuge abroad. On the eve of the arrests, the entire Templar fleet mysteriously vanished from the port of La Rochelle carrying with it a vast fortune, the fate of which remains a mystery down to this day.

After being driven out of the Holy Land as well as Europe, but still formidable at sea, the refugee Templars found sanctuary in Scotland, where Templar graves bear witness to them having lived and died there in the fourteenth century. King Robert the Bruce had no interest in persecuting the Order, in spite of a papal bull ordering him to do precisely that. To the contrary, he took advantage of their fugitive status, offering them asylum in return for their help in his war for independence against King Edward II of England. Templars have been suggested as the source of mounted soldiers who assisted Robert the Bruce's Scots Guard at the battle of Bannockburn, as the Scots did not have a mounted force. As the Scots Guard continued through the years, two of the prominent families involved in its history were the Sinclairs and the Stuarts.

Both families trace their lineage back to members of the Knights Templar, as well as to prominent figures of the New Testament. Hugues de Payns the first Grand Master of the Templars was married to a Sinclair. There is also evidence that the Templar fleet traveled to North America in 1398 (almost 100 years before Columbus) with the Sinclairs, and settled there at least temporarily. Connections are made between the tower ruins along the eastern coast of the United States, objects discovered in the Oak Island "Money Pit", and the Templar Order. The Sinclairs (or Saint-Clairs) castle near Edinburgh, was situated next to Rosslyn chapel, which was constructed by the Sinclairs according to the floorplan of Solomon's original temple.

 Engraved in the masonry around the chapel are maize and aloe plants, which grew only in North America. Throughout Scotland, as well as within Rosslyn Chapel, there are carvings and tombstones dating back to the 15th, 16th, and 17th century using combinations of Templar imagery (skull and crossbones, Templar swords, Templar crosses) and Masonic symbols (compass and square). The Stuart royal house became one of Freemasonry's biggest supporters during their reign of Scotland and England. Some also suggest that the rituals used in modern Freemasonry have their origins in the ancient texts discovered by the Templars in the ruins of Solomon's Temple while excavating to build their stables. Recent archaeological digs in the area have supported this theory by finding serveral Templar artifacts buried beneath the temple.

In the 1950's, a scroll made entirely of copper was discovered in the caves near Qumran. When translated with the other "Dead Sea Scrolls", this "Copper Scroll", as it has become known, was identified as a treasure map listing various precious metals, religious artifacts, and writings supposedly buried beneath the temple in Jerusalem.

Many of the ships carrying the Templar's funds were never found. While many escaped France, those who were captured went so without resistance. By March 22, 1312 a Papal decree dissolved the Order. Within the year Jacques de Molay and fellow Preceptor Geoffri de Charnay were put to death by Philippe's order. Some of those who had escaped lived on to form other orders like the Knights of Christ in Portugal, the Order of Calatreve in Spain, and the Order of St. John in Germany. No one has ever found the vast fortunes that the Templars were to have hidden.

Their insistence on the Bible being available to all believers in their own tongue was a very profound violation of the establishment's concern over its portrayal of Christ. The blood of Christ heresy can not be refuted from the Bible, and the fact that Jesus is spoken of as having brothers and sisters in that book, when his mother according to the new tradition remained virgin until death, was a real inconvenience. The secret purpose of the Templar Knights, believers in the heresy, had become the protection of the blood(line) of Christ, the Holy Grail, and their very existence thus became an embarrassment and they were also disbanded and exterminated. Troubadours’ Courtly Love poetry was declared heretical, and they were forced into changing their tune(s). The cult of the Virgin Mary provided a convenient and worthy substitute for the other Mary probably the object of the Religion of Love, a Mary who was said to have spent her life in the same region in which these heresies took root and flourished. The King and Pope decieved and ambushed the order of 'poor knights for Christ' known as the templar knights; killing them all and stealing their wealth.

"Avignon had been the seat of Pope Clement V - who had been crowned at Lyons in 1305 in the presence of King Philip of France...It also been Clement V who had order the arrest of the Templars throughout Christendom in 1307."

"There is evidence that he [Philip IV] began to plan his operation against the Templars about a year in advance of its implementation (i.e. in 1306) and there is also evidence that on several occasions during that year he discussed his plans with Pope Clement."

"King Philip the Fair of France developed a similar idea of making himself ruler of a vast Christian empire centered at Jerusalem. He also needed money. First he seized all the Jews in his kingdom and forced them to give up their futures by removing one of their eyes and threatening to remove the other." Then he moved against the Templars to seize their riches.

Historians over the years have debated whether or not there was any truth at all to the charges against the Templars. There is evidence of connections between the Knights and the Cathars, or Albigensians, a heretical Gnostic group which was the very first target of the inquisition. The Cathars were pious ascetics whose main offense to the Church seems to have been their acceptance of women as the spiritual equals of men. In a time when it was still a matter of debate whether women had souls, even the suggestion was beyond blasphemy. (The Templars, too, seemed to take a more positive view of women. Surviving records show many instances of women joining the Order, a practice which was discontinued by Papal order.) The Cathar’s last stand was in the mountain fortress of Montsegur. The Templars are rumored to have refused to participate in the fight, and may have assisted fleeing Cathars.

The actions of the Knights Templar were good, for they became the model of chivalry. The tales of brave romantic Knights were modeled after them.

The Order lasted for nearly two hundred years, before its suppression by both the French king and Pope Clement V - who issued the papal bull Vox in excelso on 22 March 1312 which finally suppressed the Order. The initial event was sudden and brutal - in the early hours of Friday, 13th October 1307, the French Templars were arrested by the officials of King Philip IV in the name of the Inquisition and their property was confiscated by royal representatives. This event also led to the arrest of Templars elsewhere, but the situation was most severe in France.

The Templars were then arrested, tortured, charged with serious heresies, and brought to trial. The confessions of "heresy" against the knights are questionable, since they are known to have been extracted by torture by the Inquisition. The leaders of the Templars finally came before the papal representatives in March 1314 and were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. But Grand Master Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney, the Preceptor of Normandy, continued to protest their innocence and, that very evening, King Philip IV ordered that they be burned at the stake on an island in the Seine.

"When one considers how the Templars fought and died throughout the crusades it seems hard not to believe in their innocence...It is surely more than coincidence that the most strident accusations came from the heartlands of the Albigensian heresy.

Local brethren in these regions could well have turned isolated perceptories into Cathar cells during the previous century when the heresy was at its height, while the Order's bankers would have been quite capable of protecting fugitive heretics to obtain the Cathari treasure which disappeared just before their last stronghold fell in 1244.

Admittedly Catharism was almost extinct by 1307. But vague memories from years before of heresy hunts within the Order, kept secret to avoid scandal, may have been the origin of tales of devil worship, secret rites and sodomy which were all charges which had been made against the Cathari.

The story of the hunchback of notre dam (which means ''great lady'') hides the story of the inqusition inside of itself.. Many escaping Carthar were also Jewish, many became the Gypsy and this can be heard in their music style..

Another interesting connection between the two groups can be found in the Arthurian Grail romances where thinly disguised Templars are the Guardians of the Holy Grail. A fourteenth century painting underlines the hidden message of the Grail stories- it depicts the Grail knights kneeling before a glowing vision of the Goddess Venus:

However, their real threat to the King and Pope was that they to knew of the Jewish Christian church and of the marriage of Jesus to Mary.

The magnitude of the "heresy" can be guessed when we learn that after two years of the most brutal carnage the Albigensians were still so strong that, when the Pope renewed the "crusade" in 1214, a fresh hundred thousand "pilgrims" had to be summoned. Pope Innocent III boasts that they took five hundred towns and castles from the heretics, and they generally butchered every man, woman and child in a town when they took it. Noble ladies with their daughters were thrown down wells, and large stones flung upon them. Knights were hanged in batches of eighty. When, at the first large town, soldiers asked how they could distinguish between heretics and orthodox, the Cistercian abbot thundered: "Kill them all, God will know his own," and they put to the sword the forty thousand surviving men, women and children.

This was the begining of the inquisiton; they then proceeded to kill thousands of men, women, and children, stealing all the wealth of southern france. They proceeded further to kill any troubador, or singer of romantic love. They rewrote history to cover their murderous crime; blaming the Carthari of a heresy that they themselves promoted; that is Manachee dualism, Which the Cathari did not preach or believe. A certain rich dynasty in southern France known as the 'Magorvian Kings' promoted a heresy of 'The Holy Blood' claiming to be direct descendents of Jesus and Mary Magdalene; it was this heresy that was their fatal mistake. And it is this particular heresy that lead to the destruction of the Albigenses cultre. What is true is that the Cathari, believed themselves to be the descendents of Mary's church, the Jewish Christian church, and that Jesus was indeed married. Actions speak loader than words, and the Cathari' actions were good; Indeed they had a reputation of being the 'best christians'. Their daughters as well as their sons recieved an education. The daughters were able to own lands and recieve an inheritence. It is a fact that there were many landowning, prominent and noble women among the Cathari. The mother of St. Francis was a Cathari.

 At the time of the Cathari southern France was experincing great prosperity and an advancing civilization.
The actions of the Troubadors were good, they sang of love and wrote poetry. They were the hearld of what became great in the writings of Shakespere. The pope at this time was reputed to be a great coveter of of land and power; and at no other time has a pope owned more land. A twelfh century artist portayed this pope as the devil himself. The wealth plundered from the Cathari was enormous.

The inquisition destroyed thousand of artifacts and writings; And lasted in various forms for 500 years; killing millions. However, many refused to give up Christ's Bride and Mary as Goddess; This is why Mary told St. Dominic that only the Rosary could stop the bloodshed. It was at this time that marraige was done away with in the Roman Priesthood. Though The Roman church claimed to honor Mary; they maintained the lie of who promoted the heresy of Manachian duality; They spoke against the Carthari veiws on romantic love and they told their own preist that celebicy was the will of God.