Historical Researches on the Knights Templar and on Their Religious Beliefs: Followed by the Statutes of the Order in Latin and English - Paperback

Historical Researches on the Knights Templar and on Their Religious Beliefs presents, for the first time in English, Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat's 1835 apologetic for his revived Order of the Temple, followed by the Statuta Commilitonum Ordinis Templi in Latin and English.

Published pseudonymously in Paris as the work of "J. P......, ancien élève de l'École Polytechnique," this volume is in fact the Grand Master's own defense of the Order he founded in 1804: a history of the medieval Templars from their founding through the execution of Jacques de Molay; an account of the Order's claimed survival under the Larménius Charter of Transmission; and an extended exposition of Johannite Christian doctrine, including a public address by Fabré-Palaprat affirming the divinity of Christ against members drifting toward rationalist readings of the Gospel, four Justificatory Notes documenting the doctrine from the Lévitikon, and a seventeen-article Creed of the Primitive Christians.

The volume concludes with the Statuta Commilitonum Ordinis Templi, the Order's own constitutional law, translated here from the Latin text preserved in Thory's Acta Latomorum (1815). Presented in parallel Latin and English, the thirty-four chapters govern the Order's hierarchy, elections, councils, ceremonies, and dress, including the Johannine consecration rite for the Supreme Master.

A translator's introduction situates both texts within the history of Fabré-Palaprat's Order, addresses the contested authenticity of the Larménius Charter with appropriate scholarly care, and explains the relationship of this volume to the translator's earlier edition of the Lévitikon. Extensive translator's notes accompany the text throughout.

This edition will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century French esotericism and the Templar revival, and to members of Gnostic churches, Martinist orders, and Templar fraternities who trace their lineage, in whole or in part, to Fabré-Palaprat's Order.