Templar Edification

Our middle child has outgrown most of her old stuffed animals, yet two retain their prominence of place: her plush Krampus, and her plush Jersey Devil. Yes, the pastor’s daughter delights in adorable little demons, both of which I bought for her. In fairness, they’re really more fairy tale monsters than anything else: folkloric entities limited to St. Nicholas’ Day and the greater Philadelphia area, respectively. And in these particular renditions, they’re honestly quite cute. Creatures such as Krampus are often claimed to be heathen holdovers from pre-Christian times, but most of that is bunk. Pagans don’t have devils. They didn’t need them. Their gods were bad enough. Devils, by and large, are of Christian conception, and for good reason. The Hebrew Scriptures, which make up the bulk of the Christian Old Testament, are best taken not as a single work but as a library. They contain histories, mythologies, poetry, letters, liturgies, all witnessing to the relationship between God and H...

By: Reverend Grand Chaplain Ryan Stout One of the perks of being a Christian of a catholic disposition—by which I mean coming from a religious tradition that emphasizes liturgy, history, the sacraments and saints—is that I, as a grown man, get to continue proudly to believe in Santa Claus. Not only that, but the stories about Santa Claus only improve as one delves deeper into his legend. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. I have a vial of the oil from his bones. Perhaps I should back up a tick. The story of St Nicholas begins, as do so many good things, with a mother’s prayer. Nonna and Theophannes were a Greek Christian couple living in third-century Lycia, reckoned today as part of Turkey. They had everything they could want: wealth, respect, an honorable bloodline; everything except a child. Nonna’s prayers were answered late in life, and she bore a son, Nicholas, named for his uncle in the monastery. Alas, both parents would soon be lost to a plague, and the young Nicholas woul...

I have a melancholic disposition. I don’t mean that in the modern sense of sad and vaguely depressing, but in the medieval sense of melancholic as introverted and thoughtful. Rowling readers might term it Ravenclaw. Books have been my portals to worlds of endless learning ever since my youth, and when silence seeps into my bones it provides to me a wondrous rejuvenation. My grandparents’ property abutted an old church and graveyard, ancient by American standards, with headstones dating back to the 1600s. We used to take walks amongst the monuments, deciphering their weathered engravings, some fallen over like loosened teeth. We would read the inscriptions and imagine their stories. My grandparents rest there now too. I’ve always been drawn to liminal spaces, those borderlands betwixt past and present, man and nature, Christian and pagan, life and death. Autumn of course is perfect for that, with holidays like Halloween. I never was much of a hunter myself, but I understand why people l...

The Templars were Latin—that is, Catholic—Christians. Their faith was the faith of pre-Reformation Europe, a broad Church which expected believers to attend church only three times a year and did not expect the laity to take an active role in church services. The Templars were not educated in theology and would not have been aware of or even interested in the complex theological debates that were taking place in the Latin Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their function was to serve the Holy Land, not to engage in intellectual debate. The Templars’ admission ceremony instructed that new members should make their vows to “God and Our Lady” (the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ's Mother). They swore to be obedient to the master of the order, to preserve their physical chastity, and live without personal property. They also promised to keep the customs of the order, to help to conquer the Holy Land of Jerusalem, never to leave the order without permission from the master, and...

In Western Christendom, and especially Roman Catholicism, the month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary, due to the 7 October 1571 Battle of Lepanto, at which the naval powers of Europe soundly defeated the Ottoman Turks, definitively settling the question of which empire would dominate the Mediterranean. The Holy League dedicated their victory to the Virgin Mary, whose intercession they had sought by praying the Rosary—though the presence of newly-developed Venetian galleasses surely didn’t hurt. When given the choice between devotion and firepower, Europe historically has opted for both. The resultant sinking of the Turkish fleet massively popularized the Rosary throughout Italy and Spain. Humans have been using prayer beads for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Ba’hai, and neopagans all have their own variations. Indeed, the Old English “bede” means a bid, or a prayer. Christians classically speak of three broad forms...