J. R. Church's Guardians of The Grail 1989

My copy of this book was already an old used copy when I first obtained it years ago, I think when Church was still with us, everything highlighted and underlined in it was already like that when I got it.  I used to be a big fan of Prophecy In The News but never agreed with them on everything and over the last decade my views on a lot of subjects have changed.

This book is an American Evangelical Christian response to/appropriation of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail/Priory of Sion conspiracy theory before it was cool, before The DaVinci Code made it a mainstream cultural phenomenon.

Starting on page 14 is a genealogy of the supposed Grail Bloodline that has a lot of historical errors in it.  But I don't know how much that is Church's own fault and how much comes from the original Priory of Sion hoax documents forged by Pierre Plantard.

It starts as a genealogy of the Merovingian Dynasty which seems pretty accurate down to Dagobert II.  Then it lists a Sigisbert IV as a son of Dagobert II which is the foundational claim of the Priory of Sion hoax.  It's not impossible that Dagobert II had a son not known to the contemporary historians because of how weak our documentation of that era is in general, and also because the Merovingians tended to delay Baptizing and officially naming their children.  So it's a plausible claim, but right now any genealogy listing Dagobert II as having a known documented son is doing so based on that hoax.

So everyone on this list from Sigisbert IV until the first Eustace of Boulogne is probably purely the fiction of the original hoax.  I don't know whether or not the original hoax claimed Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers were part of this bloodline or if that was simply added by Crusades Nerds later.  Their real Pater-Lineal ancestry can only be traced back as far as Baldwin I Margrave of Flanders who lived in the 800s and married a daughter of Charles The Bald an heir of Charlemagne.  It's not impossible he descended from an unknown cadet branch of the Merovingians, but it can't be proven.

This genealogy then makes two weird mistakes at the First Crusade generation.  1. It claims they had a sister named Alex who was married to Henry IV Holy Roman Emperor which is not the case, all known children of Eustace II of Boulogne were sons.  Henry IV had a couple different wives, none were directly related to the houses of Boulogne or Flanders.  2. It merges Baldwin I of Jerusalem who was a brother of Godfrey with Baldwin II of Jerusalem who descended from different noble houses, so that it can claim one individual has both the ancestors of Baldwin I and descendants of Baldwin II.

The next weird error is pretty much claiming all descendants of Fulk V of Anjou King of Jerusalem descended from Melisande of Jerusalem, in fact the Plantagenet Dynasty as well as other later Counts of Anjou descended from Fulk V's first wife.

However the most randomly weird claim of the genealogy is that Philip II Augustus of France was a son of Henry II of England.  That one really baffles me.

But from Philip II Augustus of France down to Karl Von Habsburg on page 18 it is accurate.  The next section which is about tracing the Holy Roman Emperors to the Habsburgs I can't comment on, I haven't looked into that history nearly as much.

The main objective of this genealogy is to trace the House of Valois-Anjou to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.  Amusingly the Valois Dynasty does descend from Henry II of England.

The Kings of France descend from Henry II of England starting with Louis IX and his full brother Charles of Anjou.  Their maternal grandmother was Eleanor of England a daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Meanwhile their paternal Grandmother descended from a daughter of Fulk V,  and was also descended from the counts of Hainaut (another offshoot of Flanders) through a sister of the first Latin Emperors.

Louis IX was the direct Paterlineal ancestor of Charles Valois as well as the Bourbon Dynasty, and Charles of Anjou was the direct Paterlineal ancestor of Margaret, Countess of Anjou and Maine the wife of Charles Valois from whom he inherited his claim to Anjou.  Charles Valois through his mother descended from Agnes of Antioch a granddaughter of a sister of Melisande, and from Yolanda of Flanders & Peter II of Courtenay, as well as Eudokia Komnene a Byzantine Princess.

I talked about the Valois Dynasty including a little bit it's connection to Anjou in the post I made in April about the Crusader Crown of Jerusalem.  But ultimately that focused more on the Burgundian branch of the Valois Dynasty which descended from the youngest son of King John II of France.  The Valois-Anjou dynasty descends from an older son of John II, Louis I Duke of Anjou.

Direct Paterlineal descent from the Valois-Anjou line ends with sons of Rene I of Anjou and so the line continued long term through his daughter Yolande of Anjou who married Frederick of Lorraine.  In addition to being the progenitors of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty they also sired the Guise, the arch enemies of the Hugenots during the French Wars of Religion.

Rene I of Anjou is also on the list of alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion, but it's weird because that timeline has him Grand Master already as a nine year old in 1418.  His family also played a role in the history of Jeanne d'Arc.

Illuminazi

[Update December 2021, this spot I never really took seriously but now I definitively want to state that's not a real thesis I endorse.]

The Curse of Balal was lifted at Pentecost

It's common for Fundamentalist Christians, particularly ones who are Conspiracy Theorists, to argue against the concept of Globalism by pointing to Genesis 11, Global Government is evil because it's a do over of the Tower of Babel.

The thing is this ignores how much of The New Testament is about Jesus and The Holy Spirit through The Church undoing the various curses inflicted upon mankind because of our sins over the course of the Book of Genesis (and beyond).  Culminating in us returning to Eden in Revelation 21-22.

And the undoing of the confusion of tongs in Genesis 11 is explicitly one of the things Acts 2 is about.  And we later see in Corinthians that in addition to a spiritual gift for speaking in other Tongs there is a also a gift for interpreting tongs.

In Romans 11 Paul explains that God is going to graft the fullness of the Gentile Nations into Israel and THEN All of Israel will be Saved.  In Revelation 21 the Gates of New Jerusalem are never closed and all the nations bring their treasures into it.

The main person speaking in Acts 2 is Peter who in his First Epistle tells us he is now at Babylon.

And the Veil being torn in The Temple when Jesus was on The Cross symbolized Man no longer being separated from God. At Pentecost we became His Temple.

None of this means I'm enthusiastic about the Capitalist Global Government the Billionaires and Mega-Corporations are trying to impose on us.  I already did a post on my Prophesy Blog about how Babylon in Revelation is Capitalism.

But objecting to Globalization simply on the grounds of saying "God divided the nations at Babel" displays a really insulting Biblical illiteracy.

For those confused by the title of this post.  It is partly a Symphogear reference, I think I might be the only Western Symphogear fan who knows that Balal is the Hebrew word for Confusion used in the text of Genesis 11.  The comments section on Crunchyroll I remember assumed it was a reference to Baal.

The Knights Templars and the Outremer Crown of Jerusalem.

Every European Noble who has formally and publicly claimed the title "King of Jerusalem" since the Crusader states fell has done so via some claim of succession from Baldwin II of Jerusalem.  But an argument can be made that Baldwin II was a usurper to begin with.

Now in my opinion the Crusader States were invalid to begin with, Christians should view Jesus as the only King of Jerusalem and that land as belonging to The Jews.  But this post is being done in the context of what old fashioned Feudal European logic was.

Godfrey de Bouillon declined the title of King in 1099 and instead went by Protector of the Holy Sepulcher under which title he founded the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher.  By both the same father and mother Godfrey had an older brother and a younger brother, both of whom also took part in the first Crusade.

It was his younger brother Baldwin I who proclaimed himself the first King of Jerusalem.  Which was funny because even by the "Right of Conquest" logic he didn't take part in the siege of Jerusalem, he was too busy Little Fingering his way to the thrown of Edessa.

Their older bother Eustace III of Boulogne did take part in the siege of Jerusalem.  When Baldwin I died in 1118 he was offered the Throne of Jerusalem, at first he was hesitant to take it but then decided he would.  But then when on the way there he heard Baldwin II had been crowned and he decided to just head back home, he died in less then a decade anyway.

He only had one child, a daughter, Matilda of Boulogne.  She married Stephen of England and had five children, however only Marie I Countess of Boulogne had any children of her own.  Basically long term descent from Eustace III of Boulogne comes entirely from Matilda of Boulogne's marriage to Henry I Duke of Barbant, more often then not through Henry II Duke of Barbant.  His sons include the founder of the House of Hesse, but the claims to the title of Duke of Barbant all descend from Henry III Duke of Barbant, who was succeeded by three straight John of Barbants.  Henry II of Barbant's first wife was a descendant of Fredrick Barbarossa, and his second wife descended from Barbarossa's sister.

The Paterlineal ancestry of the Counts of Boulogne go back to Adalulf Count of Boulogne, his brother Arnulf I of Flanders would be the progenitor of other nobles involved in the Crusades including the Counts of Flanders and the Latin Emperors of Constantinople.  Their mother was  Ælfthryth of Wessex daughter of Alfred The Great.  Their father was Baldwin II of Flanders, son of Baldwin I of Flanders and Judith a great-granddaughter of Charlemagne.  Baldwin of Flanders' ancestry isn't known.

The Grandson of Charlemagne who was Judith's father was Charles The Bald, specifically he inherited West Francia, which basically became what we now know as France, though Flanders and Barbant specifically are in Belgium.  Judith was the first born child of Charles The Bald, older then any of his sons.  So an argument can be made that especially once all the male line Carolingian dies out the Heirs to Flanders became the rightful heirs to France.

Eustace III also became one of the early Patrons of the Knights Templars.  However another early noble supporter and maybe also member of the Knights Templars was Fulk V of Anjou.  A number of Grand Masters of the order also came from Anjou.  The Count of Anjou during the third Crusade was King Richard I of England, the Grand Master of the Templars at that time was Robert de Sable who was a very close ally to Richard.  Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is the origin of associating the Templars with the Holy Grail, it also associates the Grail with a royal family from Anjou which produces Parzival himself and others.

In 1290 Charles of Valois became Count of Anjou by his marriage to Margaret Countess of Anjou.  He very strongly publicly opposed the execution of Jacques de Molay last Grand Master of the Knights Templars in 1314.  The sudden tragedies that befell the family of Philip IV following this resulted in the descendants of Charles and Margaret ruling France for over 200 years till the rise of the Bourbon Dynasty.

The House of Valois would go on to make a number of dynastic connections to descendants of Henry II of Barbant.  But the most significant of them was Philip the Bold's marriage to Margaret III of Flanders, through which their descendants would inherit the titles of Count of Flanders (and with it a potential claim to being the Latin Emperor) and Duke of Barbant, thus making them the heirs to Eustace III's claim to the Throne of Jerusalem.

The thing is, there is no need to look at weird Secret History to find a continuation of The Knights Templars.  The King of Portugal in 1307-1314 never went along with their suppression and thus the Templars in Portugal became the Military Order of Christ which continues to this day.  From 1417-1460 the Grand Master of the Order of Christ was Henry the Navigator, a younger son of the then King of Portugal, his mother was also a Lancaster. In January of 1430 his Sister Isabella of Portugal married Philip The Good.

Philip The Good was a paternal grandson of Philip the Bold.  At this time he had already inherited the title Count of Flanders and before 1430 is over he'll become Duke of Barbant upon the death of his paternal Cousin.  He celebrated this marriage by founding the Order of the Golden Fleece, and to this day the Grandmasters of that Order are the direct heirs of Philip the Good through Charles the Bold his son by Isabella. Charles the Bold's only child was a daughter Mary of Burgundy who married Maximilian Holy Roman Emperor, they were the grandparents of Emperor Charles V and Ferdinand making the Hapsburg Dynasty the Heirs of Barbant and Flanders right down to the current Karl von Hapsburg, and the King of Spain.

An offshoot of that order is the Order of Saint George which became the Imperial Order of St George.  Who's Grand Master is also still Karl von Hapsburg.  All of these orders are Roman Catholic orders, some more wiling to let non Catholics in then others.

Philip The Good was on the side of the English during much of the latter phase of the Hundred Years War, it was he who captured Jeanne d'Arc and the Cardinal who orchestrated her trail was a close associate of his.  He would switch sides later however.