Summary Of Good Country People By Flannery O Connor

Abear Tesalona Ms. Sosniak ENG4U1 23 October 2016 Personal Essay To begin with, As far as I can remember, there was not an event that was important. There was a whole lot of mistakes here and there and sometimes, I learned from them. Other times, I just forgot about it. However, there were still some memories that I wanted to treasure for a long time. It is quite embarrassing to be honest but thinking back I could argue that I was still a naive kid. Even up to now, I am still a young adult who needs to learn more about the outside world. Comparing my experience to a short story or a novel is quite an understatement, considering there will be a massive gap between the two. However, I can still type a thing or two about the similarities. For instance, let us talk about the short story â€Å"Good Country People† by Flannery O Connor. From what I understood, Hulga Hopewell and her mother are unique. In fact, ‘Hopewell’ (hope well) characterize both characters as something that was blinded by the simplicity of this world. They believed that what is wanted can be had but both fail to understand that the world they â€Å"reside within† is a mixture of good and evil. Such as when Manley Pointer came to visit Mrs. Hopewell to sell the bible, She straight up told him that she did not need one. When she felt irritated, she said, â€Å"Good country people are the salt of the earth! Besides, we all have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round. That’s life!â €  â€Å"You said aShow MoreRelatedThe Life You Save May Be Your Own1506 Words   |  7 Pagesinto unraveling their writing style and, in an artistic way, write out their feelings in the form of a poem or story. We see this in the case of almost every writer, but as of now we re only going to look at Mary Flannery O - Connor. A major theme that reoccurs in much of Flannery O Connors work is her strong dis- like for the worlds current state, as in the condition of our world s morality and values. Let s see some examples in her work that support this thesis. First, let s take a look at oneRead MoreSummary Of Good Country People 830 Words   |  4 PagesAlexandra Dorman Mrs. Ermis English 1302.02N 1 November 2014 Summary of â€Å"Good Country People† In each of Flannery O’Connor’s works she inhabits a Christian aspect or theme. In O’Connor’s short story Good Country People, a 32-year-old atheist woman named Joy is faced with the representation of evil in our society. The protagonist Joy believes that her name doesn’t fit who she is. Because of this opinion she decides to legally change her name to Hulga. When Hulga was 10 years old she was in a huntingRead MoreA good man is hard to find2745 Words   |  11 Pagesï » ¿Critical Essay #1 A Closer Look Into â€Å"A Good Man Is Hard to Find† By James ENC-1102 The short story I chose for my critical essay is a story that caught my attention with a gentle and inspiring title and as I began to turn pages it suddenly evolved into a theme that caught me off guard and I quickly became intrigued by elusive style of writing the author used to express this story in a unique form of literature. After reading Flannery O’Connor’s â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find†, I will discussRead MoreEliot s The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock1777 Words   |  8 Pagesat least five complete sentences, including at least one relevant quotation from each poem or story. *Remember: each response must include at least one specific quotation from the poem or story in question. Do not quote from discussion notes, summaries from the textbook, or other study materials. Quotations should be taken directly from the primary readings. Early 20th-Century Poetry: Analyze and describe the character T.S. Eliot creates in â€Å"Prufrock.† What aspects of early twentieth-century

The Knights Templar vs. the Davinci Code Free Essays

string(118) " which had apparently been their source of power, was Clement’s true objective, but it slipped through his fingers\." The Knights Templar have been a topic of speculation since 1119, nearly ten years after they banded together to protect pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Questions arose about their origins just as soon as they were recognized by King Baldwin II of Jerusalem as a military order.It is not only their mystery that intrigues us but also who and what they were that titillate our curiosity. We will write a custom essay sample on The Knights Templar vs. the Davinci Code or any similar topic only for you Order Now During their period of influence the Templars became the second most powerful entity in the known world; surpassed only by the Catholic Church and the papacy itself. It is their acquired power in such a short amount of time that is fascinating. The DaVinci Code[1] is the most popular work of fiction in all history (other than the Bible) and so Dan Brown’s use of the Knights Templar in this novel has brought them to the forefront of our awareness once again. Many readers of The DaVinci Code were introduced to the Knights Templar for the first time. Dan Brown portrayed the Templars as powerful guardians of a secret treasure that would destroy the image of the Catholic Church. His novel made many assertions regarding the Templars’ power. I will reiterate those claims and then compare them with factual knowledge from various sources. Through research, actual facts regarding the power behind the Templars will be disclosed. This paper will also explore how and why the Knights Templar lost that power.Ultimately, we will see where the real power of the Templars came from versus the claims made in The DaVinci Code and why this enigmatic group holds our attention nearly one thousand years after they became a recognized order of the Catholic Church. I argue against Brown’s claim that the Knights were controlled by a secret society called the Priory of Sion and that their power came from guarding the Holy Grail; defined in the novel as the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene and the documentation of her descendents with Jesus of Nazareth.THE NON-EXISTENT SECRET SOCIETY AND THE MYSTERY DOCUMENTS In the front of The DaVinci Code, before the novel begins, Dan Brown stipulates as â€Å"Fact† that the Priory of Sion was a secret society that was founded over 900 years ago: â€Å"The Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organization. † (Brown, page 1) Brown generates the following dialogue as back up to his initial claim of â€Å"Fact†: â€Å"The Priory of Sion,† he [Robert Langdon] began, â€Å"was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a French king named Godefroi de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city. â€Å"King Godefroi was allegedly the pos sessor of a powerful secret – a secret that had been in his family since the time of Christ. Fearing his secret might be lost when he died, he founded a secret brotherhood – the Priory of Sion – charged them with protecting his secret by quietly passing it on from generation to generation. During their years in Jerusalem, the Priory learned of a stash of hidden documents buried beneath the ruins of Herod’s temple, which had been built atop the earlier ruins of Solomon’s Temple.These documents, they believed, corroborated Godefroi’s powerful secret and were so explosive in nature that the Church would stop at nothing to get them. † â€Å"The Priory vowed that no matter how long it took, these documents must be recovered from the rubble beneath the temple and protected forever, so the truth would never die. In order to retrieve the documents from within the ruins, the Priory created a military arm – a group of nine knights called the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and Temple of Solomon. † Langdon paused. â€Å"More commonly known as the Knights Templar. (Brown, page 171) So, according to Brown the Knights Templar acquired their very existence, as well as their power, exclusively from an organization known as the Priory of Sion that was established in 1099; however, research has revealed that there was no such organization from that time in history. There were two entities so named but they were created hundreds of years later: 1. ) â€Å"There was a medieval monastic order known as the Priory of Sion, but it died out and all its assets were absorbed by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) in 1617. [2] 2. )†On May 7, 1956 Pierre Plantard legally incorporated in Annemasse, a municipality in France that lies on the Swiss border, an esoteric and political order known as the Priory of Sion – C. I. R. C. U. I. T. (Chivalry of Catholic Rule and Institution and of Independent Traditionalist Union). The politics of the Priory of Sion were quite modest and focused on supporting politicians determined to build low-cost houses for the working classes of Annemasse.By 1964, however, Plantard was ready to try again his luck with the Priory of Sion, this time through the version which eventually inspired The DaVinci Code. Plantard had come across the curious story of the parish church of a small French village of less than one hundred inhabitants in the Aude region, at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees Mountains, Rennes-le-Chateau, where a hidden treasure had been supposedly discovered in 1897 by the local parish priest, Berenger Sauniere (1852-1917) while renovating his church in Rennes-le-Chateau.There were those who claimed that the treasure consisted not of gold or antiques but of secret documents which enabled the parish priest to come into contact with the esoteric and political milieu of the time and become incredibly wealthy. †[3] It is these false documents that connected the Knights Templar to the Priory of Sion in The DaVinci Code: â€Å"Their [the Knights Templar’s] true goal in the Holy Land was to retrieve the documents from beneath the ruins of the temple. † â€Å"And did they find them? † Langdon grinned. Nobody knows for sure, but the one thing on which all academics agree is this: The Knights discovered something down there in the ruins †¦ something that made them wealthy and powerful beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. † (Brown, page 172) â€Å"The Templars’ potent treasure trove of documents, which had apparently been their source of power, was Clement’s true objective, but it slipped through his fingers. You read "The Knights Templar vs. the Davinci Code" in category "Papers" The documents had long since been entrusted to the Templars’ shadowy architects, the Priory of Sion, whose veil of secrecy had kept them safely out of range of the Vatican’s onslaught.As the Vatican closed in, the Priory smuggled their documents from a Paris preceptory by night onto Templar ships in La Rochelle. † (Brown, page 174) These parchments were known as the Les Dossiers Secrets and were actually produced in the twentieth century by Philippe de Cherisey, a friend and coconspirator of Plantard’s. [4] The name of Pierre Plantard’s original 1956 group, The Priory of Sion, undoubtedly gave Plantard the subsequent idea to claim that his organization had been historically founded in Jerusalem during the Crusades (good thing that hill in Annemasse, France was named Sion). Plantard made up a fake pedigree of the Priory of Sion claiming that his order was the subsidiary of the Order of Sion (aka: Abbey de Notre Dame du Mont Sion) which had been founded in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. Plantard manipulated Sauniere’s activities at Rennes-le-Chateau in order to make the parchments appear valid and, thus, substantiate his claims regarding his Priory of Sion.During the 1960s, Plantard and de Cherisey then deposited the so-called Dossiers Secrets at the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris so that people who set out to research the Priory of Sion would come across these fake documents and further corroborate Plantard’s claims. It was the goal of Pierre Plantard that these documents act as independent sources revealing the survival of a Merovingian line of Frankish kings and connecting him directly to the French throne. Henry Lincoln, one of the Holy Blood / Holy Grail[5] authors, would oblige.We should note here that P ierre Plantard had some help with his ruse from an original story written by Noel Corbu (1912-1968), the restaurant owner and one-time detective fiction writer who acquired property in 1953 from Sauniere’s housekeeper Marie Denarnaud. Mr. Corbu, in an attempt to generate a little extra income, wrote a story about a priest who lived in a little out of the way place known as Rennes-le-Chateau and found a secret treasure while renovating his church; an embellishment of a lie originally told by the priest to cover up ill-gotten gains (he was accused of trafficking in masses or simony in 1915). 6] It is upon this foundation that Plantard wove his connections to the 1956 Priory of Sion and then to the Knights Templar. Thus, the Knights Templar could not have originated from a secret society known as the Priory of Sion since no such entity co-existed at the time of the order. We can deduce further that the power and purpose behind the Templars was in no way connected to this non-existent organization. Having debunked this claim made in The DaVinci Code, let us now research the historical account of the power behind the Knights of the Temple.POWER BEGETS POWER The DaVinci Code informs us that the Knights Templar did not prot ect pilgrims: Sophie already looked troubled. â€Å"You’re saying the Knights Templar were founded by the Priory of Sion to retrieve a collection of secret documents? I thought the Templars were created to protect the Holy Land. † â€Å"A common misconception. The idea of protection of pilgrims was the guise under which the Templars ran their mission. Their true goal in the Holy Land was to retrieve the documents from beneath the ruins of the temple. (Brown, page 171-172) Jonathan Riley-Smith tells us in his book The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades that the first Crusade ended in 1099 with the Christian acquisition of Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, and Acre; however, there were some other cities nearby that had not been conquered thus the roads between the occupied cities were basically still in the hands of the Muslims. [7] The taking of the Holy Land saw an influx of many Christian pilgrims but their journeys, and excursions to and from Jordan, were treacherous at best.A small group of religious men took up arms and set out to protect these pilgrims. The fact that these men were legitimate protectors of pilgrims and a group of religious men who wished to devote their military skill to defe nd the Holy Land made a huge difference in the eyes of King Baldwin II. John J. Robinson explains that it was a new paradigm for a knight to take on the same triple vow that was common only to monastic orders; poverty, chastity, and obedience. 8] These three pledges directly contrasted the life goals of secular medieval knights. The service of protecting pilgrims was greatly needed. It had been twenty years since the taking of Jerusalem and the number of pilgrims had grown to the point that they had become a substantial source of revenue. The pilgrims spent their money on travel, tolls, gifts, and tithes to the church; thus, the greatest danger to those growing proceeds was the threat to the pilgrims’ life and property.All the lands between the Christian cities were subject to marauders, Muslim zealots, slave traders, rapists, and murderers; all of which kept those revenues from getting to the Holy Land. King Baldwin II must have been ecstatic when he heard the vows of that small group of knights who would fight to restore and maintain the flow of revenue; power begets power. The DaVinci Code continues with its own history of the Knights’ origins:Langdon quickly gave Sophie the standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights Templar history, explaining how the Knights were in the Holy Land during the Second Crusade and told King Baldwin II that they were there to protect Christian pilgrims on the roadways. Although unpaid and sworn to poverty, the Knights told the king they required basic shelter and requested his permission to take up residence in the stables under the ruins of the temple. King Baldwin granted the soldiers’ request, and Knights took up their meager residence inside the devastated shrine.The odd choice of lodging, Langdon explained, had been anything but random. The Knights believed the documents the Priory sought were buried deep under the ruins â₠¬â€œ beneath the Holy of Holies, a sacred chamber where God Himself was believed to reside. Literally, the very center of the Jewish faith. For almost a decade, the nine Knights lived in the ruins, excavating in total secrecy through solid rock. (Brown, page 172) Some of this depiction is true. The Knights received their secular military order, circa 1119, and were given shelter at King Baldwin’s palace; specifically in the al-Aqsa Mosque (not just the stables).During the construction of the al-Aqsa Mosque in the 7th century, â€Å"†¦ contemporary Muslim and Jewish sources record that the site was covered with garbage dumped there by Byzantine Christians, and that the two communities participated in cleaning it up as Umar watched on, until the rock upon which the Temples of Jerusalem [Solomon’s Temple] were said to have been erected was revealed. †[9] So The Knights of the Temple, aka the Knights Templar, were so named. In the year 1128, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Abbot of Clairvaux and cousin to Hugues de Payens, assisted at the Council of Troyes.The purpose of this council was to settle certai n disputes of the bishops of Paris, and regulate other matters of the Church of France. It was at this council that Bernard traced the outlines of the Rule of the Knights Templar and where the order was given papal recognition. [10] A letter from Saint Bernard was written to Hugues de Payens and entitled De Laudibus Novae Militiae translated as In Praise of the New Knighthood. [11] It was this letter that propelled the Templars forward more then any other single event. The powerful association with the papacy and the Catholic Church started here; power begets power again.Once the Knights received official recognition from the papacy, Pope Honorius II, they set out with their Templar Rule to recruit more members and acquire donations to support their cause. The order owed its rapid growth in popularity to the fact that it combined the two great passions of the middle ages, religious fervor and martial prowess, into one entity. [12] This appealed to thousands of people who were willing to take up the cause, live by the Rule, and donate all their wealth. There is power behind wealth and in numbers of people; the Knights Templar attained both in unfathomable quantity.Dan Brown tells us in The DaVinci Code that it was the Catholic Church that was being blackmailed by the Knights of the Temple: â€Å"For almost a decade, the nine Knights lived in the ruins, excavating in total secrecy through solid rock. † Sophie looked over. â€Å"And you said they discovered something? † â€Å"They certainly did,† Langdon said, explaining how it had taken nine years, â€Å"but the Knights had finally found what they had been searching for. They took the treasure from the temple and traveled to Europe, where their influence seemed to solidify overnight.Nobody was certain whether the Knights had blackmailed the Vatican or whether the Church simply tried to buy the Knights’ silence, but Pope Innocent II immediately issued an unprecedented papal bull that afforded the Knights Templar limitless power and declared them ‘a law unto themselves’ – an autonomous army independent of all interference from kings and prelates, both religious and political. With their new carte blanche from the Vatican, the Knights Templar expanded at a staggering rate, both in numbers and political force, amassing vast estates in over a dozen countries. They began extending credit to bankrupt royals and charging interest in return, †¦. † (Brown, pages 172 – 173) Within ten years of their recognition by the Catholic Church that Pope Innocent II issued the bull Omne datum optimum (Every Great Gift) on the Templar order. This bull did exempt the Templars from all authority on earth, secular or temporal, except that of the pope. This enabled the Knights Templar to collect tithes but they didn’t have to pay any. No one could ask a Templar to swear an oath or demand any change in their Rule.No monarch could impose his own civil law; one result was that they didn’t have to pay taxes. No bishop, archbishop, or cardinal could give them an order or interfere with their activities. Templars even had the power to abolish priests that didn’t suit them. [13] This was a level of power unheard of before their time so the blackmailing scenario is feasible but not very probable. The Knights Templar were exempt from paying tithes and taxes because all their funds were used to fight for Christ. Building and maintaining fortifications required a stream of money and the Templars were ingenious in keeping it flowing. Regular income was generated from the much needed service of money-changing in the Holy Land. However, an order of the Catholic Church was not allowed to loan money and collect interest, so the Templars invented, or at least popularized, the concept of interest deducted in advance; give a man ten dollars but create a document that says he is to pay back eleven dollars. [14] Voila, they charged no interest and generated lots of wealth. The DaVinci Code says: â€Å"The Templars invented the concept of modern banking. For European nobility, traveling with gold was perilous, so the Templars allowed nobles o deposit gold in their nearest Temple Church and then draw it from any other Temple Church across Europe. All they needed was proper documentation. † (Brown, page 375) The Knights Templar’s military strength, acuity, and perseverance really did make it possible to collect, store, and transport gold and other valuables to and from Europe and the Holy Land successfully. Kings, noblemen, and pilgrims used the Knights Templar as a kind of bank or armored truck; the concept of safe deposit boxes and travelers checks originated in these activities. 15] They did not, however, invent modern style banking; we have to give that credit to the Jews. The most obvious source of the Templars power was their fierce might and tenacity. â€Å"Knighthood, as known in Europe, was characterized by two elements, feudalism and service as a mounted combatant. Both arose under the reign of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, from which the knighthood of the Middle Ages can be seen to have had its genesis. †[16] These men were warrior monks who fought courageously during the crusades.Malcolm Barber, a recognized Templar scholar, illustrates that the Knights Templar were extremely zealous and had a creed to never flee a battlefield[17] – this depiction leads many people to believe they were quite possibly insane. Fear is a powerful weapon to wield and in the Middle Ages, fear was key to control and domination in every aspect of life. To tell a ranking official that you were not afraid of them was considered in insult. [18] The DaVinci Code tells us that the Knights Templar were powerful due to their connection with the Holy Grail (as defined by Brown) which the following citations reveal: The Templars’ potent treasure trove of documents, which had apparently been their source of power, was Clement’s true objective, but it slipped through his fingers. The documents had long since been entrusted to the Templars’ shadowy architects, the Priory of Sion, whose veil of secrecy had kept them safely out of range of the Vatican’s onslaught. As the Vatican closed in, the Priory smuggled their documents from a Paris preceptory by night onto Templar ships in La Rochelle. † [Emphasis added] â€Å"Where did the documents go? † â€Å"The entire collection of docume nts, its power, and the secret it eveals have become known by a single name – Sangreal. † â€Å"The legend is complicated, but the important thing to remember is that the Priory guards the proof, and is purportedly awaiting the right moment in history to review the truth. † â€Å"What truth? What secret could possibly be that powerful? † â€Å"Sophie, the word Sangreal is an ancient word. It has evolved over the years into another term †¦ a more modern name. † â€Å"†¦ ‘Holy Grail’. † â€Å"†¦ but the Sangreal documents are only half of the Holy Grail treasure. They are buried with the Grail itself †¦ and reveal its true meaning.The documents gave the Knights Templar so much power because the pages revealed the true nature of the Grail. † (Brown, pages 174 – 175) Sophie quickly outlined what Langdon had explained earlier – the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar, the Sangreal documents, and the Holy Grail, which many claimed was not a cup †¦ but rather something far more powerful. (Brown, page 248) â€Å"The Holy Grail is not a thing. It is, in fact †¦ a person. † (Brown, page 256) â€Å"Legends of chivalric quests for the lost Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests for the lost sacred feminine.Knights who claimed to be ‘searching for the chalice’ were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned nonbelievers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine. † (Brown, page 259) The Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene †¦ the mother of the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. Sophie tilted her head and scanned the list of titles: THE TEMPLAR REVELATION: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ (Brown, page 273) Sophie was silent for a long moment. And these four chests of documents were the treasure that the Knights Templar found under Solomon’s Temple? † â€Å"Exactly. The documents that made the Knights so powerful. The documents that have been the object of countless Grail quests throughout history. † â€Å"But you said the Holy Grail was Mary Magdalene. If people are searching for documents, why would you call it a search for the Holy Grail? † Teabing eyed her, his expression softening. â€Å"Because the hiding place of the Holy Grail includes a sarcophagus. â€Å"The quest for the Holy Grail is literally the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one, the lost sacred feminine. † (Brown, page 277) Sophie felt an unexpected wonder. â€Å"The hiding place of the Holy Grail is actually †¦ a tomb? † Teabing’s hazel eyes got misty. â€Å"It is. A tomb containing the body of Mary Magdalene and the documents that tell the true story of her life. At its heart, the quest for the Holy Grail has always been a quest for Magdalene – the wronged Queen, entombed with the proof of her family’s rightful claim to power. (Brown, page 278) †¦ [Godefroi de Bouillon, descendant in the Merovingian bloodline and founder of the Priory of Sion] â€Å"ordered the Knights Templar to recover the Sangreal documents from beneath Solomon’s Temple and thus provide the Merovingians proof of their hereditary ties to Jesus Christ† [through Christ’s marriage to and subsequent children with Mary Magdalene]. (Brown, page 279) This personification of the Knights Templar by Dan Brown is simply not true; he created it to further his plot and keep the readers enthralled. Mission accomplished.As previously illustrated, the Knights Templar were powerful in their own right and not because they were created to protect the holy grail for a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. The things that actually made the Knights Templar powerful were as follows: 1. ) the papacy and their association with the Catholic Church; 2. ) the view the masses had of them as good, righteous, and true; 3. ) the trust that the nobles and lay peoples put in them; 4. ) their wealth and ingenuity in creating and sustaining that wealth; 5. ) their own righteous attitude, tenacity, and fervor; 6. the fear they invoked – including fear on the battlefield; and 7. ) the secrecy that they were determined to sustain. CONCLUSION / HYPOTHESIS The enigmatic Knights Templar would have probably faded into history if it had not been for the mention of knights (secular or devout) in the popular literary works of the Templar’s time. The unfinished poem of Chretien de Troyes, regarded by many as the oldest known Grail romance, tells of the adventures of a knight named Perceval, also the name of his poem. Another name for the same poem is Conte del Graal translated as The Story of the Grail (c. 190). [19] Chretien died before he revealed exactly what the grail was; however, the knights did not cease to exist in the written word. Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170-1220) continued the thread with his grail romance poem known as Parzival. Wolfram’s character, Parzival, is the representation of the slow and stumbling progress of an honorable man reaching toward the highest earthly responsibilities. In parallel incidents, it tells of a knight’s adventures that have already been recognized by his peers as unmatched by any other knight. 20] Even though the Knights Templar were not named specifically they are assumed to be the basis for the character since the Templars coexisted with the authors. Here is where the connection between the Holy Grail and the Knights Templar begins; in poems and other fictional writings that made people feel good. In many of these grail romances it was discerned that the grail was a plate or a vessel that Christ was believed to have ate off of or dr ank out of at the last supper. This item was then used to catch droplets of his blood while he hung from the cross, dying.So, from a vessel holding the blood of Christ we don’t have to jump very far to get to a pregnant woman carrying Jesus’ baby (still a vessel holding the blood of Christ). Mary Magdalene was merely a logical choice as the notorious vessel. Referencing the Templars as the guardian of the Holy Grail was also a logical choice; they had been depicted in literature doing just that for hundreds of years. I must say that Dan Brown’s idea of having Mary Magdalene’s physical remains as the actual object was a bit gruesome. Writers still find it easy to use the Templars in their tales because the Knights were a secretive order.The Knights Templar Encyclopedia tells us that the Templars’ central archives were shipped to Cyprus while the Saracens were taking Acre in August of 1291. After the Templars were suppressed in 1312 all of their records were passed on to their rivals, the Knights Hospitallars who were also residing on Cyprus. It is believed that when the Turks took Cyprus in 1571 most of these archives were destroyed;[21] however, it is through the Hospitallars’, and a few other sources such as the chronicles of William of Tyre, that we still have some records today, a few of which still await translation.These facts are not only enlightening but assist our understanding of why there is so much myth and mystery surrounding the order. The fact that the Knights Templar have remained in the forefront of our thoughts all these years is simply amazing. The Templars continue to be used by everyday writers in all kinds of genre and forums which touch the varying aspects of individual interests and personalities. Yes, all of their efforts keep us coming back for more. Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code entertained readers everywhere. Sony Pictures’ movie of his story spread the tale to an even wider audience. New video games rose up everywhere and in all different languages. The Knights Templar were introduced to new generations for the first time and this is why we remain fascinated with them. Whether they are depicted as bad guys or good guys they were once a real order of warrior monks and that fact gives at least a little credence to all new manifestations. It is from this research that I hypothesize the true power behind the Knights Templar comes from the universal psychology of the masses.We, as human beings, have basic needs that must be met (food, shelter, and security) and when we find a safe source to fulfill any of those needs, we latch on to it. Initially the Templars came to us in a manner that provided protection of our physical well being, enabling us to seek spiritual fulfillment. As our protectors of faith they took on an even stronger idealistic role that helped them to become ‘established’ within the universal psyche. Once fully accepted by the people of the day to be their protectors, the people supported them without question. This is where the true power lies, in the minds and actions of the masses.Any entity with the ability to control the perception of the majority is a powerful entity indeed. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood Holy Grail. New York: Dell Publishing, 1982. I actually bought this book for my research. It was used to establish an understanding of where Dan Brown came up with his crazy facts. de Troyes, Chretien. Perceval, Or, The Story of The Grail. New York: Pergamon Press, 1983. This is the version I referenced for the noted source. The actual unfinished work was circa 1190 and is not listed in the Library of Congress. Barber, Malcolm. â€Å"The Knights Templar. Slate, April 20, 2006, http://www. slate. com/id/2140307/? nav=tap3 (accessed October 26, 2008). This was a good place to start. It established a basic scholarly overview of my topic by a renowned and trusted source. Barber, Malcolm. The New Knighthood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Malcolm Barber is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading. This was my bible. I was able to use this book as noted in this paper and to verify or throw out information from other sources. Barber, Malcolm, and Keith Bate. The Templars: Selected Sources. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Reprint, New York: Palgrave, 2002. Malcolm Barber is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading. This book was translated and Annotated by Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate and it comprises a substantial collection of translated material illustrative of its history. I used it only for the noted referenced. Bernard of Clairvaux; translated by M. Conrad Greenia. In Praise of The New Knighthood: A Treatise On The Knights Templar and The Holy Places of Jerusalem. Kalamazoo, Mich. : Cistercian Publications, 2000. Very important document; without it, there may never have been a Catholic order called the Knights of the Temple.Bold, Kevin. â€Å"Baphomet: A â€Å"Mystery† Solved At Last? ,† 1995. Stephen Dafoe. http://www. templarhistory. com/solved. html. Interesting article, I did not use it in this paper. Boudicca, Laura. â€Å"Knights Templar Page,† April 10, 2008. Church of Y Dynion Mwyn. http://www. tylwythteg. com/templar. html. Interesting article, I did not use it in this paper. Brown, Dan. The Davinci Code. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. I liked this book and the creativity of those who were responsible for its basis; Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (especially Lincoln). Not to forget Noel Corbu and Pierre Plantard.If you take out the FACT page it is an entertaining work of fiction without as much controversy. Fodor’s Guide to The Davinci Code: On The Trail to The Best-Selling Novel. Edited by Jennifer Paull, and Christopher Culwell. First ed. New York: Fodor’s Travel / Random House, 2006. This book was okay; however, I did not find it very useful in my research. I am glad I bought it though; it is fun to see the pictures of the actual places. Charbonnel, Josaephe Chartrou. (From Old Catalog). Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1928. This source was translated by Malcolm Barber. I used it only for the noted reference.Correll, Larry, and Susan Correll. â€Å"Priory of Sion,† Timothy Ministries. http://timothyministries. org/theologicaldictionary/default. aspx? theword=priory%20of%20sion This is merely one definition of the Priory of Sion; short and to the point. The Vatican Publishing House. â€Å"THE PARCHMENT OF CHINON – Chinon, Diocese of Tours, 1308 August 17th – 20th,† Unknown. The Vatican Publishing House. http://asv. vatican. va/en/doc/1308. htm#top. I used this source only for the noted reference. This website appears to be the official website of the Vatican – it says it is the Holy See. Dafoe, Stephen. Baphomet: The Pentagram Connection,† Stephen Dafoe. http://www. templarhistory. com/pentagram. html. TemplarHistory. com is an online resource of information on the history, mystery, myth and legacy of the Knights Templar that was started by Templar author Stephen Dafoe in the fall of 1997. Interesting article, I did not use it in this paper. Dafoe, Stephen. â€Å"The Templar Hierarchy,† Stephen Dafoe. http://www. templarhistory. com/hierarchy. html. TemplarHistory. com is an online resource of information on the history, mystery, myth and legacy of the Knights Templar that was started by Templar author Stephen Dafoe in the fall of 1997.Interesting article, it was my first resource regarding the structure of the order. I received the same information in several other sources; however, the Templar hierarchy was not used in this paper. Dafoe, Stephen. â€Å"Who Were The Knights Templar? ,† Stephen Dafoe. http://www. templarhistory. com/who. html. TemplarHistory. com is an online resource of information on the history, mystery, myth and legacy of the Knights Templar that was started by Templar author Stephen Dafoe in the fall of 1997. An overview. de Sede, Gerard;. The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-chateau. Translated by Bill Kersey. Worcester Park: DEK, 2001. Gerard de Sede was a surrealist writer. This book reveals a plausible explanation of the source of Sauniere’s wealth and untangles the astounding hoax which includes false genealogies and international conspiracies. Gerard de Sede wrote a magazine article about Gisors, which in turn was responsible for his acquainting himself with Pierre Plantard and soon a collaboration developed between them that inspired Gerard de Sede’s 1962 book, Les Templiers sont parmi nous, ou, L’Enigme de Gisors (â€Å"The Templars are Amongst Us, or The Enigma of Gisors†), which also paved the way for the introduction of the mythical Priory of Sion.Pretty interesting stuff these collaborations. Editee pour la premiere fois et traduite en fran? cais par J. -B. Chabot. Chronique De Michel Le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite D’antioche (1166-1199). 4 vols. Bruxelles: Culture et Civilisation, 1963. This source was translated by Malcolm Barber. I used it only for the noted reference. Gonen, Rivka. Contested Holiness: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Perspectives On The Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Pub. House, 2003. Rivka Gonen is the former Senior Curator of the Department of Jewish Ethnography at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and a participant in the Temple Mount Excavations.The book is a straightforward survey and history enhanced with modern-day perspectives on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. I used it only for the noted reference. Griffith-Jones, Robin. The Da Vinci Code and The Secrets of The Temple. Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Pub. , 2006. Robin Griffith-Jones works at the Temple Church in England and this book is the accumulation of what her presents to visitors. Parchments known as the Les Dossiers Secrets which were actually produced by Philippe de Cherisey is hat I pulled from an excerpt of this source, although it is common knowledge and found in many sources. GNU Free Documentation License. â€Å"Origins of medieval knighthood,† Last updated 10-18-2008: 22:50. The Wikimedia Foundation. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Knight. This provided me with the definition of secular knight. I could then compare it with the definition of a Knights Templar. Haag, Michael, Veronica Haag, and James McConnachie. The Rough Guide to The Davinci Code. Edited by Mark Ellingham. rev. ed. N. p. : Rough Guides Ltd. , 2006. This was a somewhat useful source.Some of the websites no longer work but we needed it for class and it was handy to look up other peoples topics. Hindley, Geoffrey. The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. New York: Carroll Graf Publishers, 2003. This work chronicles the numerous expeditions to recover Jerusalem for Christendom. It was useful in my research. Geoffrey Hindley is a lecturer/writer educated at University College, Oxford. This was a useful and reliable source. Housley, Norman. The Avignon Papacy and The Crusades, 1305-1378. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.While focusing on the relationship between the papacy and the 14th-century crusades, this study illuminates other fields of activity in Avignon, such as papal taxation and interaction with Byzantium. Housley analyzes the Curia’s approach to related issues such as peacemaking between warring Christian powers, the work of Military Orders, and western attempts to maintain a trade embargo on Mamluk, Egypt. I used it only for the noted reference. Housley, Norman, ed. Knighthoods of Christ: Essays On The History of The Crusades and The Knights Templar, Presented to Malcolm Barber. Aldershot, England. Reprint, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.Technically the essay I pulled this from was called â€Å"The Military Orders and the East, 1149-1291 written by Jonathan Riley-Smith which begins on page 137 of the collection edited by Norman Housley. It provide the information I needed and was a good source. Introvigne, Massimo. â€Å"Beyond The Da Vinci Code: History and Myth of the Priory of Sion,† June, 2005. CESNUR Center for Studies On New Religions. http://www. cesnur. org/2005/pa_introvigne. htm. Massimo Introvigne is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements.Introvigne is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the field of sociology of religion. Finding a scholarly source on this topic was not easy. I was grateful to find this work by him and gave it to Emily to use in their research. Very important to my research on this topic. Jones, Greg. Beyond Da Vinci. New York: Seabury Books, 2004. This book is short, concise, and understandable. Greg Jones presents the facts openly and shows the flaws when they are there in a way that is simply debatable. I used it only for the noted reference. Moore, Malcolm. â€Å"Vatican paper set to clear Knights Templar,† October 7, 2007.Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008. http://www. telegraph. co. uk/news/worldnews/1565252/Vatican-paper-set-to-clear-Knights-Templar. html. Article was printed verbatim under the CHINON PARCHMENT. Very useful. Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of The Crusades, Oxford ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Jonathan Riley-Smith is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge. This was a great source that I referenced it often. Malcolm Barber also references his work. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, William Kenan, and E. Ann Matter, eds.Law and The Illicit in Medieval Europe. Middle Ages series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Ruth Mazo Karras is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. Joel Kaye is Professor of History at Barnard College. William R. Kenan is Jr. Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. E. Ann Matter is Associate Dean for Arts and Letters in the School of Arts and Sciences. Various scholars make the case that the development of law is deeply implicated in the growth of medieval theology and Christian doctrine. I used it only for the noted reference.Schein, Sylvia. Fideles Crucis: The Papacy, The West, and The Recovery of The Holy Land, 1274-1314. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Schein is a PhD who challenges the view that the fall of Acre in 1291 was a watershed dividing the â€Å"classical age† of the crusade from the late Middle Ages, when the ideal had become sterile, the obsessive dream of a handful of individuals. She shows instead that the desire to recover the Holy Land remained powerful and pervasive, and was an important consideration in the policy-making of European rulers.She uses an enormous range of sources consulted and collated: papal bulls, chronicles, prophecies, apocalyptic treatises and letters. Very useful source. Strayer, Joseph R. The Reign of Philip The Fair. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1980. Strayer (1904-1987) taught at Princeton University and was chair of their History Department from 1941-1961. I wasn’t able to get my hands on this book, only the noted reference. Newman, Sharan. The Real History Behind The Templars, 10th ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Sharan Newman was a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara, CA at the time this book was published. She is also a longtime member of the Medieval Academy and has served on the advisory board for the Medieval Association of the Pacific. I bought this book for my research and found it very useful in collaborating less scholarly sources as well as the noted reference. Nicholson, Helen, and David Nicolle. God’s Warriors: Knights Templar, Saracens and The Battle for Jerusalem, Pbk ed. New York, NY, USA: Osprey Pub. , 2006. This is a good source for information about the battle of Hattin in 1187 and â€Å"rival military elites†. Helen Nicholson actually wrote about the Knights Templar.I used it only for the noted reference. Phillips, Jonathan. Defenders of The Holy Land: Relations Between The Latin East and The West, 1119-1187. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. I used this source only for the noted reference; however, I also viewed various clips on you-tube with this author in them. I took notes because he was very good. The author has his doctorate. Ralls, Karen. Knights Templar Encyclopedia. Edited by Gina Talucci. New Jersey: The Career Press, Inc. , 2007. The author is a Ph. D. medieval historian and religious studies scholar.I bought this one for my research and used to confirm or debunk various other sources. Robinson, John J. Dungeon, Fire, and Sword: The Knights Templar in The Crusades. New York: M. Evans Co. , 1991. The author is a member of the Medieval Academy of America, the Organization of American Historians, and Royal Overseas League of London. This was the most enjoyable research book of them all. I lost many hours just because I couldn’t stop reading it. The context is not dry but flows more like novel. Valletta, Malta. â€Å"The â€Å"Priory of Sion† Hoax / Part 1: A Barkeeper’s Myth,† MalGo Media Services Ltd. http://www. avinci-the-movie. com/priory-of-sion-1. html. Part one: This was a good site for getting the explanation in chronological order with a lot more detail. I also verified information found in Massimo Introvigne’s site. There is no author listed on site so it was very suspect until verified. Valletta, Malta. â€Å"The â€Å"Priory of Sion† Hoax / Part 2: The rich, poor Priest,† MalGo Media Services Ltd. http://www. davinci-the-movie. com/priory-of-sion-2. html. Part two: This was a good site for getting the explanation in chronological order with a lot more detail. I also verified information found in Massimo Introvigne’s site.There is no author listed on site so it was very suspect until verified. Valletta, Malta. â€Å"The â€Å"Priory of Sion† Hoax / Part 3: BCC is taken by,† MalGo Media Services Ltd. http://www. davinci-the-movie. com/priory-of-sion-3. html. Part three: This was a good site for getting the explanation in chronological order with a lot more detail. I also verified information found in Massimo Introvigne’s site. There is no author listed on site so it was very suspect until verified. von Eschenbach, Wolfram. Parzival. Harmondsworth, Eng. Reprint, New York, N. Y. : Penguin Books, 1980. This is the version I referenced for the noted source.The actual works were written between 1200 and 1210 and are not listed in the Library of Congress. William Chester Jordan. The French Monarchy and The Jews: From Philip Augustus to The Last Capetians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. I used this source only for the noted reference. APPENDIX – THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR CITATIONS IN THE DAVINCI CODE Pages 171 – 173 {prelude citation in this instance will be important to my research. } â€Å"The Priory of Sion,† he began, â€Å"was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a French king named Godefori de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city. â€Å"King Godefroi was allegedly the possessor of a powerful secret – a secret that had been in his family since the time of Christ. Fearing his secret might be lost when he died, he founded a secret brotherhood – the Priory of Sion – charged them with protecting his secret by quietly passing it on from generation to generation. During their years in Jerusalem, the Priory learned of stash of hidden documents buried beneath the ruins of Herod’s temple, which had been built atop the earlier ruins of Solomon’s Temple.These documents, they believed, corroborated Godefroi’s powerful secret and were so explosive in nature that the Church would stop at nothing to get them. † â€Å"The Priory vowed that no matter how long it took, these documents must be recovered from the rubble beneath the temple and protected forever, so the truth would never die. In order to retrieve the documents from within the ruins, the Priory created a military arm – a group of nine knights called the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and Temple of Solomon. † Langdon paused. â€Å"More commonly known as the Knights Templar. †Langdon had lectured often enough on the Knights Templar to know that almost everyone on earth had heard of them, at least abstractedly. For academics, the Templars’ history was a precarious world where fact, lore, and misinformation had become so intertwined that extracting a pristine truth was almost impossible. Nowadays, Langdon hesitated even to mention the Knights Templar while lecturing because it invariably led to a barrage of convoluted inquiries into assorted conspiracy theories. Sophie already looked troubled. â€Å"You’re saying the Knights Templar were founded by the Priory of Sion to retrieve a collection of secret documents?I thought the Templars were created to protect the Holy Land. † â€Å"A common misconception. The idea of protection of pilgrims was the guise under which the Templars ran their mission. Their true goal in the Holy Land was to retrieve the documents from beneath the ruins of the temple. † â€Å"And did they find them? † Langdon grinned. â€Å"Nobody knows for sure, but the one thing on which all academics agree is this: The Knights discovered something down there in the ruins †¦ something that made them wealthy and powerful beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. † {Emphasis added}Langdon quickly gave Sophie the standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights Templar history, explaining how the Knights were in the Holy Land during the Second Crusade and told King Baldwin II that they were there to protect Christian pilgrims on the roadways. Although unpaid and sworn to poverty, the Knights told the king they required basic shelter and requested his permission to take up residence in the stables under the ruins of the temple. King Baldwin granted the soldiers’ request, and Knights took up their meager residence inside the devastated shrine.The odd choice of lodging, Langdon explained, had been anything but random. The Knights bel ieved the documents the Priory sought were buried deep under the ruins – beneath the Holy of Holies, a sacred chamber where God Himself was believed to reside. Literally, the very center of the Jewish faith. For almost a decade, the nine Knights lived in the ruins, excavating in total secrecy through solid rock. Sophie looked over. â€Å"And you said they discovered something? † â€Å"They certainly did,† Langdon said, explaining how it had taken nine years, but the Knights had finally found what they had been searching for.They took the treasure from the temple and traveled to Europe, where their influence seemed to solidify overnight. Nobody was certain whether the Knights had blackmailed the Vatican or whether the Church simply tried to buy the Knights’ silence, but Pope Innocent II immediately issued an unprecedented papal bull that afforded the Knights Templar limitless power and declared them ‘a law unto themselves’ – an autonomous army independent of all interference from kings and prelates, both religious and political. {Emphasis added}With their new carte blanche from the Vatican, the Knigh ts Templar expanded at a staggering rate, both in numbers and political force, amassing vast estates in over a dozen countries. The began extending credit to bankrupt royals and charging interest in return, thereby establish modern banking and broadening their wealth and influence still further. {After the citation above Brown begins to talk about the fall of the Knights, where they went, and states that they still exist under other names and â€Å"fraternities†. } Pages 174 – 175 The Templars’ potent treasure trove of documents, which had apparently been their source of power, was Clement’s true objective, but it slipped through his fingers. The documents had long since been entrusted to the Templars’ shadowy architects, the Priory of Sion, whose veil of secrecy had kept them safely out of range of the Vatican’s onslaught. As the Vatican closed in, the Priory smuggled their documents from a Paris preceptory by night onto Templar ships in La Rochelle. † {Emphasis added} â€Å"Where did the documents go? â€Å"The entire collection of documents, its power, and the secret it reveals have become known by a single name – Sangreal. † {Emphasis added} â€Å"The legend is complicated, but the important thing to remember is that the Priory guards the proof, and is purportedly awaiting the right moment in history to review the truth. † â€Å"What truth? What secret could possibly be that powerful? † â€Å"Sophie, the word Sangreal is an ancient word. It has evolved over the years into another term †¦ a more modern name. † â€Å"†¦ ‘Holy Grail’. † †¦ but the Sangreal documents are only half of the Holy Grail treasure. They are buried with the Grail itself †¦ and reveal its true meaning. The documents gave the Knights Templar so much power because the pages revealed the true nature of the Grail. † {Emphasis added} Pages 182 – 183 {Langdon and Sophie are in the taxi on the way to 24 Rue Haxo – also known as the Depository Bank of Zurich. My point, the Knights initiation of international banking as a source of power. } â€Å"Langdon pulled the heavy key from his pocket †¦ Earlier, while tellingSophie about the Knights Templar, Langdon had realized that this key, in addition to having the Priory seal embossed on it, possessed a more subtle tie to the Priory of Sion. The equal-armed cruciform was symbolic of the balance and harmony but also of the Knights Templar. Everyone had seen the paintings of Knights Templar wearing white tunics emblazoned with the red equal-armed crosses. Granted, the arms of the Templar cross were slightly flared at the ends, but they were still of equal length. A square cross. Just like the one on this key. The Grail was believed to be somewhere in England, buried in a hidden chamber beneath one of the many Templar churches, where it had been hidden since at least 1500. Page 185 â€Å"Is it possible,† Sophie asked, â€Å"that the key you’re holding unlocks the hiding place of the Holy Grail? † â€Å"We have an extremely secure key, stamped with the Priory of Sion seal, delivered to us by a member of the Priory of Sion – a brotherhood which, you just told me, are guardians of the Holy Grail. † Pages 186 – 187 †¦ Langdon had entirely forgotten that the peaceful, equal-armed cross had been adopted as the perfect symbol for the flag of neutral Switzerland.At least the mystery was solved. Sophie and Langdon were holding the key to a Swiss bank deposit box. Page 248 Sophie quickly outlined what Langdon had explained earlier – the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar, the Sangreal documents, and the Holy Grail, which many claimed was not a c up †¦ but rather something far more powerful. {Emphasis added} {These next citations identify the novel’s description of the ‘thing’ that gave the documents that the Knights Templar guarded, their power. } Page 253 â€Å"It was all about power,† Teabing continued. Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power. † {Emphasis added} Page 256 â€Å"The Holy Grail is not a thing. It is, in fact †¦ a person. † Page 258 â€Å"The Grail is literally the ancient symbol for womanhood, and the Holy Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which of course has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church.The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church †¦Ã¢â‚¬  Page 259 â€Å"Legends of chivalric quests for the lost Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests for the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be ‘searching for the chalice’ were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned nonbelievers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine. Page 273 The Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene †¦ the mother of the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. Sophie tilted her head and scanned the list of titles: THE TEMPLAR REVELATION: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ Page 277 â€Å"The Sangreal documents simply tell the other side of the Christ story. In the end, which side of the story you believe becomes a matter of faith and personal exploration, but at least the information has survived. The Sangreal documents include tens of thousands of pages of information.Eyewitness accounts of the Sangreal treasure describe it as being carried in four enormous trunks. In those trunks are reputed to be the Purist Documents – thousands of pages of unaltered, pre-Con stantine documents, written by the early followers of Jesus, revering Him as a wholly human teacher and prophet. Also rumored to be part of the treasure is the legendary â€Å"Q† Documents – a manuscript that even the Vatican admits they believe exists. Allegedly, it is a book of Jesus’ teachings, possibly written in His own hand. † Sophie was silent for a long moment. And these four chests of documents were the treasure that the Knights Templar found under Solomon’s Temple? † â€Å"Exactly. The documents that made the Knights so powerful. The documents that have been the object of countless Grail quests throughout history. † {Emphasis added} â€Å"But you said the Holy Grail was Mary Magdalene. If people are searching for documents, why would you call it a search for the Holy Grail? † Teabing eyed her, his expression softening. â€Å"Because the hiding place of the Holy Grail includes a sarcophagus. † The quest for the Holy Grail is literally the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one, the lost sacred feminine. † Page 278 Sophie felt an unexpected wonder.â€Å"The hiding place of the Holy Grail is actually †¦ a tomb? † Teabing’s hazel eyes got misty. â€Å"It is. A tomb containing the body of Mary Magdalene and the documents that tell the true story of her life. At its heart, the quest for the Holy Grail has always been a quest for Magdalene – the wronged Queen, entombed with the proof of her family’s rightful claim to power. {Emphasis added} Page 279 â€Å"†¦ {Godefroi de Bouillon, descendant in the Merovingian bloodline and founder of the Priory of Sion} ordered the Knights Templar to recover the Sangreal documents from beneath Solomon’s Temple and thus provide the Merovingians proof of their hereditary ties to Jesus Christ [through Christ’s marriage to and subsequent children with Mary Magdalene]. Pages 328 – 329 An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll †¦ and helps us keep her scatter’d family whole †¦ a headstone praised by templars is the key †¦ and atbash will reveal the truth to thee. This poem,† Teabing gushed, â€Å"references not only the Grail, but the Knigh ts Templar and scattered family of Mary Magdalene! What more could we ask for? † Page 366 â€Å"Robert, for heaven’s sake! The church built in London by the Priory’s military arm – the Knights Templar themselves! † â€Å"The Temple Church? † Once the epicenter of all Templar/Priory activities in the United Kingdom, the Temple Church had been so named in honor of Solomon’s Temple, from which the Knights Templar had extracted theirs own title, as well as the Sangreal documents that gave them all their influence in Rome.Tales abounded of knights performing strange, secretive rituals within the Temple Church’s unusual sanctuary. Page 375 â€Å"The Knights Templar were warriors,† Teabing reminded †¦ â€Å"A religio-military society. Their churches were their strongholds and their banks. † â€Å"Banks? † Sophie asked, glancing at Leigh. â€Å"Heavens, yes. The Templars invented the concept of modern banking. For European nobility, traveling with gold was perilous, so the Templars allowed nobles to deposit gold in their nearest Temple Church and the draw it from any other Temple Church across Europe. All they needed was proper documentation. † Alanus Marcel†, Teabing said, â€Å"The master of the Temple in the early twelve hundreds. He and his successors actually held the Parliamentary chair of Primus Baro Angiae. † Langdon was surprised. â€Å"First Baron of the Realm? † Teabing nodded.â€Å"The Master of the Temple, some claim, held more influence than the king himself. † {Emphasis added} â€Å"You know,† Teabing whispered to Sophie, â€Å"the Holy Grail is said to once have been stored in this church overnight while the Templars moved it from one hiding place to another. Can you imagine the four chests of Sangreal documents sitting right here with Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus? Pages 466 – 467 The Knights Templar had designed Rosslyn Chapel as an exact architectural blueprint of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem – compete with a west wall, a narrow rectangular sanctuary, and a subterranean vault like the Holy of Holies, in which the original nine knights had first unearthed their priceless treasure. Langdon had to admit, there existed an intriguing symmetry in the idea of the Templars building a modern Grail repository that echoed of the Grail’s original hiding place. How to cite The Knights Templar vs. the Davinci Code, Papers

Conflict in Banking Organisations-Free-Samples-Myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Conflict in Banking Organisations. Answer: Background and definition of the issue: The background of the assessment lies in workplace conflicts and their impacts on employee performances in banking organisations taking HSBC Bank Australia as the example. According to Fu and Deshpande(2014) unethical practices, stress and lack of healthy employee relationship causes conflict among the employees in the organisations. The functioning of the multinational banks like HSBC Australia and their power to deliver high degree of services to the customers depends largely in the cooperation among employees. Thus, the conflict among the employees influences their performances detrimentally and consequently hits the performance of the organisation as a whole. Definitions: Organisational conflicts: Leonardi, Huysman Steinfield(2013) defines organisational conflicts as the perceived or actual opposition of interests, values, needs and decisions. The conflicts can take place between teams, individual employees and between management and employees. The conflicts can also be present among due to intervention of external bodies like labour unions. Here the conflicts take place due to conflict employee policies like those pertaining to employee compensations and between the demands of the union like raising of compensation amounts. Role conflict: Wolford et al. (2013) defines role conflict as the conflict of functional areas of different individuals working within an organisation and holding different positions. There are several factors which can lead to role conflicts within an organisation like HSBC Australia. The industries like banking are under continuous pressure to cater to a larger customer base to earn higher revenue owing to presence of large numbers of banking institutions in the market of every country like Australia. This competition among the banking organisations and their aim to earn higher revenue is transferred down to the employees. Cohn, Fehr and Marchal(2014) state that the higher management bodies of the banks fix targets which is allocated among the employees. The difference in opinion among the managers regarding the strategies to be adopted to achieve these targets creates conflicts. This conflicts among the people of different based on their job roles creates role conflict among the employees. Passive aggressive behaviour: Decoster, Camps and Stouten(2014) define passive aggressive behaviour as the indirect expression of hostility, controlling and stubbornness and deliberate failure to accomplish business targets among the managers or subordinate employees. Passive aggressive behaviour within an organisation leads to lack of collaboration and cooperation among the team members or within departments. This jeopardises team or departmental productivity and in organisations like banks, it affects customer services. Office romance: Mainiero and Jones(2013) define office romance as public display of affection in workplaces. They say that public display of affection makes employees feel uncomfortable and raise accusations of favouritism against the employees displaying office romance. This once again hampers the productivity in service organisations like HSBC Bank Australia because the employees who feel prejudiced refuse to cooperate with the employees who they benefit from the favouritism. Justification of crucial relevance of workplace conflicts and impacts on productivity: Workplace conflicts and resultant fall in the employee productivity have devastating impacts on the banks, which makes these aspects crucial to the banks. Larsen et al.(2015) state that revenue generation in the service sector organisations like HSBC Bank Australia depends to a great extent on customer service and customer satisfaction. The employees play key roles in providing services to the customers in the banking industry by offering appropriate financial products. DuBrin(2013) stresses that conflicts among the employees in the banks lead to lack of cooperation and understanding among them. This prevents them from offering appropriate financial products to the customers, which in turn affects the customer satisfaction. N. Torres and Kline(2013) stress that this failure of the employees to ensure customer satisfaction leads the banks to lose customers to their competitors. This reduces the revenue generation in the banks, which influences their long-term growth. It can be pointed out that the employees of the companies manufacturing goods do not come in direct contact with the consumers. Their profitability depends on their power to offer superior goods to the customers. The service sector companies like banks, on the other hand are dependent on their employees to provide customers directly with the financial products. According to Neth et al.(2014), the financial products serve diverse customer purposes like savings, risk management and insuring assets. This complex nature of the financial products often require knowledge and expertise of several employees to sell them to the customers which calls for collaboration and cooperation among the bank staff. Thus lack of cooperation and collaboration among the bank staff due to conflicts prevent them from serving customers and selling products to them. This impacts the revenue generation of the banks and they end up losing customers which erodes their long term competitive advantage(DuBrin, 2013). Thus it can be justified from the discussion that workplace conflicts and consequent fall in employee performances have serious impacts on the organisational performances of the banks as whole. Aims and objectives of the project and research questions: Aims and objectives of the project: The aims of the project are to study organisational conflicts and their types. The objectives of the assignment are also to delve into the impact of conflicts on the productivity of the employees and consequently on the service providing companies like banks. These objectives and aims have been studied on the background of HSBC Bank, Australia. Research questions: The literature review and the findings would try to answer a set of research questions. The following are the research that the assignment would delve into: What are the impacts of organisational conflicts? What impacts do conflicts among the employees have on the service sector companies? What are the conflict management roles of the apex management? How does workplace conflicts inhibit customer satisfaction? How do conflicts in service sector companies particularly banks hamper their market position? Literature review: Organisational conflicts hamper employee productivity: Arnett and Wittmann(2014) state that the companies are required to adapt their marketing and product strategies to the market requirements to adapt to the challenges offered by the competitors. This requires the organisations to acquire and share knowledge capital within the departments and external business partners like suppliers. This sharing of information requires collaboration of all the departments and their employees. It ensures smooth operations within the companies and generation of huge revenue. Lozano(2013) supports this saying that the conflict among the employees lead to impediments in the flow of information among the departments and the it employees. Lack of proper information result in low grade utilisation of the resources of the companies by the employees in performing job responsibilities. Thus, conflicts among employees result low efficiency among employees and consequently results in poor performances of the companies. Kastalli and Van Looy(2013) mention that th e productivity and customer services in the service providing companies like banks depend on the efficiency of the employees. Hence, conflicts and lack of coordination among employees impede customer service in banks. Thus, it can be inferred that conflicts among employees in service organisations result in low efficiency among yhe employees and impedes productivity. The graph obtained from the Australian Statistical Bureau below shows that the numbers of conflict between employers and employees in Australia have decreased. This graph can be related to the next graph of ABS showing increase in gross profit margin in the business organisations of Australia. An analysis of these two graphs shows that the fall in the number of conflicts can be linked to the rising profit margins in Australia. This shows that decrease in employee conflict promotes rise in employee productivity and profitability in the business organisations. Figure 1. Graph showing number of conflicts in workplaces in Australia (Source: abs.gov.au, 2017) Figure 2. Graph showing profit margin manufacturing in Australia (Source: abs.gov.au, 2017) Impact of conflicts on service sector employees: Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain(2014) state that the employees play the most important role in the service sector because they interact and provide services to the customers. This generates revenue for these company and account for their competitive advantage in the market. Thus, it can be construed that the revenue generation of the service providing companies like banks depend on the efficiency of their employees to serve the customers. Yu et al.(2014) support this opinion and strengthens it by mentioning that serving customers effectively and providing them with appropriate financial products , employees of banks ensure customer satisfaction. This results in generation of high revenue by the banks by serving customers efficiently and ensuring customer satisfaction. Slater, Mohr and Sengupta(2014) state that ensuring customer satisfaction helps banks to obtain references from loyal customers who conduct business with them. This helps banks generate repeat business by offering serv ices to new and existing customers. Entrop et al.(2016) state that the financial products have become increasing complex and often require the collaboration of several bank employees to sell them to the customers. Yu et al.(2014) state this collaboration between employees enable selling products to customers and generation of revenue. Thus, it can be inferred from the discussion that conflicts among employees impedes this combined effort and selling of products to customers. Ho, Sharma and Hosie(2015) state that when this lack of customer services exceeds the level of tolerance of the customers, they switch over to other banks. This results in banks losing customers to their competitors, which reduces their revenue generation. Thus, it can be summarised from the discussion that conflict among employees result in service sector companies like banks losing customers to their competitors, which erodes their revenue earning capacity in the long run. Conflict management role of the apex management: Gelens et al.(2014) state that the conflict management is very important in the service sector organisations like banks to ensure high efficiency of the employee. They state that management of conflict efficiently in organisations helps the managers ensure smooth future production and re-establish productivity if it has been hampered by conflicts among employees. Deresky(2017) states that the apex management and the senior management play a very important role in management of conflict in the organisations. The senior managers use several conflict resolution methods and enforce them on employees to resolve conflicts. They use techniques like collaboration and compromise to compel their employees to restart productivity. Khan(2014) contradicts this view and points out that unethical practices and over exploitation of human resources result in conflict among employees. Samuel(2014) supports Khan and states apex management often support employee conflict to derive undue advantage. The a pex management often support conflicts in order to break the employee unity and make unethical employee policies. Cullinane and Dundon(2014) state that the labour unions indulge into conflict with the apex management of companies while demanding better payments for employees. This discussion shows that apex management plays very significant role in conflict management in organisations. Workplace conflict inhibits customer satisfaction: Jahanshani et al.(2014) state customers appreciate high quality services from organisations like banks which ensures customer satisfaction. The financial products have become so complicated that it requires expertise and skill of several bank employees to sell them to the customers. Ho, Sharma and Hosie(2015) contradicts this statement and state that employee conflicts on the other hand result in lack of collaboration among the employees. This as a result in selling of inappropriate products, which impede customer satisfaction. The customers as a result are dissatisfied and switch over to the competitive banks to fulfil their financial requirements. This discussion shows that workplace conflict among employees and prevents customer satisfaction. Conflicts in service sector companies particularly banks hamper their market position: Entrop et al.(2016) state that customer satisfaction is very important to service sector companies particularly banks. Customer satisfaction leads to repeat business in banks because customers satisfied with the products of the banks provide references of customers. This enables banks to achieve new customers, which causes development in their business. According to Kastalli and Van Looy(2013) vast base of loyal existing and new customers generate huge revenue for the bank. This huge customer base in other attribute to high market position of the banks. However, as pointed out by Ho, Sharma and Hosie(2015) conflict among the employees results in low quality customer services. The dissatisfied customers do not provide references to the banks which prevents the banks from acquiring new customers. The dissatisfied existing customers terminate their relationship with the banks and switch over to the competing banks. This leads to lowering of revenue generation and loss of market position of the banks. Thus, it can be inferred from the discussion that conflicts among employees in banks lead to loss of customers and ultimately loss of market position. Method of carrying out the project: Introduction: This part of the assignment deals with the process and methods, which the researcher has used to conduct the research. The objective of the paper is to delve into the impact of workplace conflict among employees and their impact on their performances. The assignment relates conflicts among employees, fall in their production and its consequences on the organisation as a whole in the light of HSBC Bank, Australia. The researcher has reviewed the literature part in this chapter based on secondary literary sources like articles and books. Research Approaches: The choice of the research method is a very important aspect of a conducting a project scientifically. Researchers choose tow approaches to conduct research namely, qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative approaches consider statistics and graphs. The qualitative approach consists of articles, books, websites and other written sources of information. The researcher has used both qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct the research. Quantitative approach: The researcher has considered graphs from the Australian Bureau of Statistics(ABS) as the source of qualitative approach. The paper contains study of graphs to show the number of decreasing employee-employer conflict and increasing profit in Australian companies. This approach has given the literature review a firmer base to conduct more in-depth analysis. Qualitative approaches: The paper considers qualitative sources of information like newspaper articles, journals and books to collect information about conflict. These qualitative sources have provided information to the researcher, which have helped to conduct the research more holistically. Research philosophy: The research philosophy is the section that delves into the motives of conducting the research. There researcher has considered two methods for the research methodology, qualitative and quantitative. Ethical consideration: Ethical considerations are very important aspects researchers stress during conducting researches. The researcher should try to obtain as accurate data as possible and present it in the paper. The researcher has kept in mind not to collect unreliable data to ensure that the research laws pertain of usage of data available on the internet is not breached. Reliability and validity of Qualitative research: The reliability and accuracy of qualitative data is one of the most important thing researcher keep into consideration. They researcher has ensured that the information collected is reliable and valid by considering only articles by authors and government website. Findings from secondary information analysis: It has been found from the secondary information analysis like articles, books and government websites that conflict has a devastating impact on employee productivity. The service providing companies like banks depend on the efficiency of the employees to serve their clients effectively and ensure customer satisfaction. Providing services to customers require collaboration of expertise and skills of several employees. However, lack of collaboration among employees result the deterioration of the service quality offered to customers. This results in lack of customers satisfaction, which leads to loss of customers. This losing of customers affects the profit earning capacity of banks devastatingly and erodes their market position. Thus, the researches shows that conflict among employees not only lead to fall in the performances of employees but also can lead to the bank lose its market position in the long run. Discussions of findings in light of the literature review: The literature review shows that workplace conflicts results in lack of collaboration among the employees. These lack of collaboration and deliberate impacts their performances. This fall in the performances, have stronger implications in the service providing companies like banks because their productivity is dependent on the efficiency of employees. The financial products are often bundled together into product by the banks and selling them requires inputs of more than an employee. The conflict prevents the employees from collaborating to sell the product and they offer customers inappropriate products. These result in inconvenience to customers and them switchover to other competitors banks. This losing of customers results in fall in revenue generation and loss of market position in the end. This discussion shows that conflict among employees can have far-reaching impacts like loss of competitive advantage for the organisations. Conclusion: It can be concluded from the above discussion that conflict within employees have far reaching influences not only on employees but also on the service providing companies. The conflicts between employees of a service organisation like a bank results in lack of service to customers and loss of revenue to the company. The limitations of the project were the scarcity of time and money. The following recommendations can be made to be soon to be professionals in the light of the above discussion: The employees should be more collaborative and cooperative amongst themselves while carrying out their job responsibilities. This would help them to avoid conflicting situations and loss of consequent productivity. The managers should hold meetings and discussions with their subordinate employees. This would help the subordinate employees to have a clear idea about the strategies of the company. It would enable them to understand their own responsibilities more clearly and help them to cooperate and collaborate among themselves better. This would help them to avoid conflicting situations. The newly hired employees should be made aware about the organisational policies, methods of operations and expectations of the higher management. The human resource department should train the employees on the products of the companies like multinational banks. This would help them to develop a clear idea about the products and sell them more efficiently References: 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2012. (2017).Abs.gov.au. 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