Rosslyn Chapel is
the final part of Sophie Neveu and Robert Langdon’s journey and the place where
Sophie will learn the truth about her family… although not the truth about the
Holy Grail.
Although often
connected in popular legend to the Knights Templar, Rosslyn Chapel was actually
founded by Sir William St Clair, Earl of Rosslyn, in the 15th century at a time
when the Templar Order had not existed for over a hundred years, although there
were still small groups who saw themselves as inheritors of Templar wisdom and
rituals.
The St Clair family
did, however, have connections with the guild of masons – prior to the
founding of the Order of
Freemasons - and for a time during the early 17th century the current
William St Clair (it seems that all the St Clair heirs were named William) was
a kind of ‘protector’ of the local masonic branch. Extant documents show that
his son, who was a rather more respectable character than his father, was
formally designated an official patron of the masons. When the Order of
Freemasons was founded, the St Clairs of Rosslyn were among the earlier
members.
Simon Cox points out
in Cracking the Da Vinci Code that members of the St Clair family had actually
testified against the Knights Templar when some of its members were tried at
Holyrood in Edinburgh in 1309. (One notes that this piece of information
contradicts the claim that no Knights Templar were persecuted in Britain.)
Rosslyn Chapel is
only about eight miles from Edinburgh in the village of Roslin in Lothian,
where most of the inhabitants are so used to its just ‘being there’ that they
have little curiosity about it, despite the fact that a reward has long been
available to anyone able to decipher the large number of its symbols that
remain shrouded in mystery. Weekly services continue to be held in the church,
which is actually named Rosslyn Collegiate Church.
For those who enjoy
collecting extraneous pieces of information, Dolly the sheep was cloned at the
Roslin Institute.
Cox and Newman,
among others, point out that the name ‘Rosslyn’ does not come from ‘Rose Line’
as reported in The Da Vinci Code, but from the Scottish words ‘ross’, meaning a
hill or rocky excrescence, and ‘lynn’ meaning water or waterfall, both of which
aptly describe Rosslyn’s situation.
There is indeed an
underground chamber, a crypt, under Roslynn Chapel, where members of the St Claire
family were buried over the centuries. The entrance to the crypt is well-known.
It is beneath the flagstones of the north aisle of the chapel, but to this
point excavations have not been allowed. There is no real evidence that the
crypt contains documentary or any other kind of treasure, and the owners fear
that the church – which has been neglected over many centuries –
would suffer irreversible damage were it to be undermined.
The entire church is
covered in carvings, and people sometimes express surprise that so little work
has been done on deciphering the huge number of signs, symbols and carvings at
Rosslyn Chapel, but this kind of work usually takes years, especially since
many cryptographers work at unravelling such esoteric mysteries only in their
spare time. Cox points out that cryptographers have been studying the Rosslyn
symbols for a relatively short time.
People who have
visited Rosslyn to make their own explorations have reported that they have
been unable to find the pentacle on the floor of the chapel described by Dan
Brown in The Da Vinci Code. Once again, one is reminded that The Da Vinci Code
is a novel, not a work of non-fiction, and a novelist may embroider where he
chooses.
In January 2003, the
district branch of the Scottish Knights Templar announced that they would be
using new scanning technology at Rosslyn Chapel that was capable of taking
readings to a deep underground level. These readings would presumably indicate
whether there were any crypts or vaults in addition to the burial crypt of the
St Clair family which is already known, although not accessible today. There
does not appear to have been any further news on this matter.
The Scottish Knights Templar are not an actual continuation of the Order of the Knights Templar which was destroyed in the early 14th century as a result of the persecutions of Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V, but see themselves as philosophically linked to the original Knights Templar and dedicated to perpetuating their ethic.
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