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Sunday, 22nd November 2009

1836 chapel painting revives Holy Grail quest

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Published Date: 05 September 2009
By Rhiannon Edward
AN UNUSUAL painting has emerged that seems to present fresh evidence of the fabled history of Rosslyn Chapel.
The figure of a Templar knight is shown standing in front of a staircase at the back of the Midlothian chapel, which features in Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code.

Symbologist Ashley Cowie believes that the staircase may lead to long-lost vaults or chambers housing Templar treasure – including the Holy Grail.

The pastel painting, entitled Templar Knight at Roslyn Chapel by the Scottish artist RT McPherson, is dated 1836 and remained in private ownership until its auction at Shapes of Edinburgh four years ago.

The modern order of the Scottish Knights Templar commissioned Mr Cowie, 36, to analyse the painting for evidence of Rosslyn's links to the Templar legend.

Mr Cowie said: "There is a growing amount of scientific evidence from excavations and scans which seems to point to the existence of these chambers, so there is every possibility that this stairwell did exist and that it was once the entrance to the chambers."


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  • Last Updated: 04 September 2009 11:58 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Rosslyn Chapel
 
1

Brianwci,

05/09/2009 00:49:30
That's good news for Rosslyn Chapel. It should increase tourism no end.
2

Pericles of Selkirk,

05/09/2009 01:26:52
Is that not just the staircase down to the crypt? (which by the way is open to the public.)
3

Dunnie,

Canada 05/09/2009 03:36:26
Does the Chapel charge admission and sell copies of Brown's books?
4

lobout,

Edinburgh 05/09/2009 03:48:17
Yes, and the moon landing was faked, and Elvis is still alive no doubt
5

Samcafe,

05/09/2009 06:12:10
Where's the Timeteam when you want them.
6

Ben Thehoose,

05/09/2009 06:58:29
#1

The existing staircase doesn't lead to the crypt, only to small room and window. Any proper crypt is under the chapel and the supposed access to it has long been walled up. Leave the place alone: it's worth more as a mystery!
7

Pilrig.,

Livingston 05/09/2009 10:28:06
2 - nope the present staircase is on the right of the Prentice Piller.

3) yep £11 to get in and probably does sell DB's books.
8

Pilrig.,

Livingston 05/09/2009 10:39:55
6 - Correction; the present staircase DOES lead to the Crypt.
The VAULTS, on the other hand, containing the mortal remains of the Sinclair dynasty is under the chapelfloor, (along with if you believe it, the Holy Grail, the lost treasure of Jerusalem..the Head of Jesus -and or that of John the Baptist..and perhaps, as one wit put it.. the remains of Shergar).

Despite the unfortunate and inconclusive drilling through the chapel floor in the 1990s by Andrew Sinclair and his team. The access to the VAULTS is known; there is an entrance underneath the slab which is between the pillars just to the left of the north door. This was mentioned in a book about the chapel by Will Grant in the 1950s.

And of course the connection with the chapel and the Knights Templar is a 19th century invention. The Templar order was ended about 120 years before the foundation stone of the Chapel was laid in 1446.

But we shouldn't let the facts get in the way of a wonderful (and lucrative) yarn !
9

Mcsnagpile,

05/09/2009 11:13:37
The big secret is, it is not the Holy Grail but the talking head—it wouldn’t shut up so they had to bury it. Some times in the stillness of the night you can hear it gibber on—“ah told her tae take the last turning on the right”, “ an whit dae ye think o' it noo faither”.
The stairs are called Jacobs stairs and lead to a lot of Knights old fur coats you can push through them to the nether world, the land o’ moths and naphnelene balls.
10

Pilrig.,

Livingston 05/09/2009 11:18:11
9 : )
11

Yok Finney,

Ross-shire 05/09/2009 12:25:45
It seems more than plausible that a Vast Active Living Intelligence System focused from Rosslyn directed a beam on insight into a dull plodding legal mind called Donald Dewar to commission a catalan architect to design a marvelous Parliament for Holyrood. That both men died before its completion confirms the narrative of Philip K Dick.
12

Fifi la Bonbon,

05/09/2009 15:33:41
Midlothian Council should demolish the place forthwith and convert the site into a Heritage Fun Experience with swingparks and a cafe-restaurant, with linked petting zoo.
13

Nelson51,

Newcastle 05/09/2009 15:34:36
An organisation which founded the first global banking system with vast treasure and resources did not just disappear overnight. Let's not forget that Henry St Clair (The Crusader)was the builder's grandfather. My own father and I easily span 120 years in just two generations. Hugues De Payen, (of the pagans )founder of the Knights Templars, according to a French family historian, was from minor nobility.
Funny that Pagan is a surname mostly found in East Lothian and that the first Templar Commanderie was built at Ballintraddoch (now Temple) near Roslin.
A man of the stature of Hugues de Payen, in his time, more powerful and popular around the world than the Pope, very little is known of his birth and death. The Templars could keep secrets.
14

Nelson51,

Newcastle 05/09/2009 15:43:29
#Fifi La Bonbon

There already is a place with swing parks and a cafe-restaurant at nearby Dalkeith Country Park. You can pat the hens in the courtyard but if that not enough I'll try and let Edinburgh Zoo let you pat the lions.
15

Yok Finney,

Ross-shire 05/09/2009 16:39:39
OK Nelson, are you going to reveal some secrets? Disclosure is the current mood.
16

hoblar,

05/09/2009 20:03:09
The guy Cowie wrote a book recently about this painting which proves naffall as I read it last week, The subject of the painting doesn't even need to have been posed in the Chapel, so lacking in details related to Rosslyn as it is.

When he was 'studying' the stairs which appear to merely be tacked on and lead to (and end in) the Lady Chapel, he missed out the people on horseback carved into the east wall where the inserted stair rail ends. He fails to notice this and it isn't a feature of the original Chapel itself either, so it might mean something related to the mysterious portrait.

The Vaults are known about, even I know where they are and their position, it has been well documented.

Balantradoch was the first templar ecclesiastical site built outside the Holy Land, and was gifted to the Templars by David I of Scotland in 1129.

There is NO connection whatsoever between the Knights templar and Rosslyn Chapel.

It is almost as good a laugh as the silly assertion about the Templar intervention at Bannockburn in 1314, another myth began in the 18th century.

Nowt at all.

The Knights in Scotland were far cooler than the templars. lol
17

Nelson51,

Newcastle 05/09/2009 22:07:04
Henri St Clair and Hugues de Payen returned from the 1st Crusade and Hugues married Henri's niece Catherine St Clair and was given the Ballintraddoch estate ("next door" to Roslin)as a dowry in 1101. The St Clairs were a powerful family in Scotland and related to William the Conqueror. David 1, certainly made donations to the order, maybe including the Templar church.Ballintraddoch became their principal Templar seat and Preceptory in Scotland until the suppression of the order. Hugues de Payen was succeeded by Robert de Burgoyne in 1131. Hugues died in 1136. Where did he retire to ?.

18

hoblar,

06/09/2009 00:08:55
"Henri St Clair and Hugues de Payen returned from the 1st Crusade and Hugues married Henri's niece Catherine St Clair and was given the Ballintraddoch estate ("next door" to Roslin)as a dowry in 1101."

There is no proof that Catherine St Clair existed. Feel free to give a primary source, or even the details of a secondary one,

David I of Scotland granted Balantradoch to the Templars, or at least Bernard De Clairvaux, (St Bernard-) in 1129 and I think from memory the ecclesiastical building was built in Scotland within five years.

"So what" is the question as far as a Templar connection to Rosslyn is concerned?

19

gone but not forgotten,

right here 06/09/2009 01:10:26
The knights are fair drawn in
20

The secret keeper,

newry 06/09/2009 10:49:29
I believe everyone who is interested in the Templar Knights should in reality study the proper history & or beginnings of this great band of warriors and protectors of the faith. When they do all these pathetic stories and guesses concerning the whereabouts of the Grail and the Templars gold will be squashed in the rush for the true site. In recent years I disclosed the name of the first Abbey church that weas the destination for the fleeing templar ships that were loaded with caskets and the Grail. This great Cistercian abbey were the forming and beginnings of the Templars expanded and all that belonged to it has been hidden and wipped off the monastic trail since the reformation. While there are many tales of its extinction and burnings,I raised it from the debths of lost history and have fought against great odds to reinstate it in our local history. The powers that mabye have battled me into the ground,but the veil of cobwebs that I lifted has revealed a little more than what meets the eye. The Abbey church and its choir and all and any historical documentation pertaining to its ancient existence has been butchered and minuiplated and refabricated to suit a Castle that never existed at this spot. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554755/Lotterys-1.5m-to-restore-fake-castle.html .Why after 500 years would the Crown stamp be put on what seems to be a very insignificant or not there, long lost Cistercian abbeychurch, which will at some stage lead to inevitable world opinion, as to how the law canm be minipulated by the law upholders them selves, where in "No One" is allowed to use or abuse ancient or modern churches or thier consecrated grounds in any military fashion let alone building a modern day fake Castle above the circa 1142 staircase which leads to of the undercrofts and tombs of the ancient Irish pope Kings of the Mourne Valley. Why would all this take place in a place where one of the two earliest Taras in the world existed and spawned in the V
21

Pilrig.,

Livingston 06/09/2009 12:29:07
12 if you put your tongue any further intae your cheek - you'll choke !
22

Pilrig.,

Livingston 06/09/2009 12:35:28
13 - that there was a Templar building at the village of Temple (Ballintraddoch) is indisputable.
That the KT (or Freemasons, for that matter) for that matter had anything to do with the creation of Rosslyn Chapel is not only disputable but fictitious.
And, as Robert L. Cooper has shown, it is and always has been a purely Christian church, anything pagan about the symbology in the carvings, is accidental
23

Pilrig.,

Livingston 06/09/2009 12:48:57
20 - shouldnae really describe the grail and Templar stories as 'pathetic'. Despite their lack of veracity they are damn good yarns, in fact it my auld fella back in the 60s who first told me aboot the alleged connection with the Prentice Pillar and the grail. And if brings folk, ok some of them gullible, to the chapel - and that lovely part of Midlothian - well and good. I can recall days back in the 70s and 80s when the wife and I, living then in nearby Bonnyrigg, had the whole chapel (and dungeons of the castle) to ourselves. But you could see the decay in the fabric of the building clearly, and if the tourist hordes bring much needed lucre for the building's preservation, once again - well and good.
24

Nelson51,

Newcastle 06/09/2009 18:03:19
Rosslyn Chapel, properly named the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, was built for the Catholic faithful to pray for their dead and their benefactors, the St Clairs.It was the burial place of some of the St Clair family. The first original chapel (and presumably. the burial place of Henry the Crusader) was inside Roslin Castle.
25

hoblar,

06/09/2009 21:37:03
There is a chance that the original castle was on the site on collegiate hill where Rosslyn Chapel now stands, and that the crypt in the east is part of that, probably the associated Chapel of that castle.

There was an earlier Chapel dedicated to St Mathew where the graveyard now stands, some of the wall supports still stand.

Roslin castle stands on the promontory across from the Chapel, and was allegedly a suggested site by an English captive after the Battle of Roslin. (1303)

Some people are off their rockers when it comes to the history of Rosslyn Chapel, which was a collegiate church originally intended to be a cruciform building (uncompleted) and the history of this building, and how normal it really was in many ways is interesting.

After the reformation the slightly zealot protestants spent a hundred years removing "iconography" (carved allusions of Christianity) from St Giles, ruining our observance of the mindset of Scotland forever.

That's why I think it is a fitting laugh that John Knox, he of the "iconography is blasphemy" school, now has his tomb (why was it ok for HIM to be allowed a tomb?) under a car-park in Edinburgh.

Ironic and cool.

26

Templar75,

Edinburgh 07/09/2009 23:35:38
There is no proof that says Hughes de Payen married Catherine,they have searched high and low and nothing comes up.
The St.Clairs gave evidence against the Templars at their trial in Edinburgh, the St.Clairs were Sheriffs at the time, they were never Templars.
I have to laugh at all the people with the name St.Clair, saying they are direct decendants, their ancestors either lived on St.Clair land or worked for them as Serfs and took up the name.
The Apprentice Pillar was said to emulate D.N.A., the Apprentice was supposed to have been killed in the Chapel, where is the documentation. These are all made by people who have nothing better to do with their time.
Now we have this painting that Ashley Cowie has written a book about, he is very clever with words that's all, even the Rosslyn Matrix is not worth the money, but fools and their money are easily parted.

Templar75
27

Nelson51,

Newcastle 08/09/2009 10:38:50
#26 Templar75

As I said in an earlier post "A man of the stature of Hugues de Payen, in his time, more powerful and popular around the world than the Pope, very little is known of his birth and death. The Templars could keep secrets"
How much information is kept in the Vatican Secret Archives,lying around in former Temples, or plainly destroyed, we will never know. The fact that Hughes de Payen spent time in Scotland is indisputable.
28

Nelson51,

Newcastle 09/09/2009 09:17:02
The first leader of the Knights Templar was Hugues de Payen. Hugues spent most of his time in Scotland and the Holy Land. Though like the St Clairs, William the Conqueror, etc, De Payen was of Norman/French extraction, he was probably Scots born and bred.

 

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