MAYTE IN MIRAVET, TEMPLAR HISTORY IN RIBERA D'EBRE

Today, The Grandma has received news from Mayte, one of her closest friends.

Mayte has visited Miravet in La Ribera d'Ebre, and she has shared her memories and photos with The Grandma.

Miravet is a municipality in the comarca of Ribera d'Ebre in Catalonia.

The village and the castle was founded by the Moors and rebuilt by the Knights Templar and transformed into a fortress-monastery, after the conquest of 1153. 

It is considered to be the largest fortified complex in Catalonia, and one of the best examples of Romanesque, religious and military, architecture of the Templar order in the whole Western world.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, in Latin Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici, also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars, was a Catholic military order, one of the most wealthy and popular of the Western Christian military orders.

They were founded in 1119, headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.

Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church by such decrees as the papal bull Omne datum optimum of Pope Innocent II, the Templars became a favored charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were amongst the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.

They were prominent in Christian finance; non-combatant members of the order, who made up as much as 90% of their members, managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom.

They developed innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building a network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming the world's first multinational corporation.

The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France, while being deeply in debt to the order, used this distrust to take advantage of the situation.

In 1307, he pressured Pope Clement to have many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under further pressure, Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the Templar name alive into the present day.

More information: Turisme Miravet

 In times of war, as in life, surround yourself
with people of value, virtue and high morals,
because it's always better to lose, perish
and vanish in glory than to live in shame.

Robin Sacredfire