Medievalists and their hangers-on are some of the craziest people I know. The end.

You have to read more books published after 1800!

I do! At least 30% of my field is 1800-1835...

I stand corrected. But still... :-P

the occultists are the primary
culprits with the templers...
"vengence for jacques demolay!" etc
but also a lot of nonsense about
their supposed esoterism...of course
in part this is from the trials.
"the templars knights of God" by
edward berman is a very level headed
book and I think it is perhaps the one
that eco read because I recall in reading
foucault's pendulum by eco shortly after
reading that,that I felt I was getting
a summary... in fact as I recall a good
deal of foucault's pendulum was summary
of various books on the occult and
the related history not as in plagiarism
but as in a student's cobbled together
fair use thesis or term paper going from
one to another with one book per subject.
nonetheless foucault's pendulum is an
interesting book...

an interesting idea in another book is
that the "templar head" they 'worshipped'
was the folded over shroud of turin and then
that could be what was taken from the paris
priory in a hay wagon before the police
raid. they could have brought it from
constantinople.

Luke White wrote on the copy of this entry on my Facebook page that:

Everybody thinks Foucault's Pendulum is about the Knights Templar, but it's really about hacks obsessing over the Knights Templar. Which is kind of awesome.

That does sound interesting if he's correct. Myself, I've not read the novel, nor have I read much on the Templars (the real stuff, I mean) and so I will simply content myself with repeating his words.

I did not think it was about the templars.
It is about the occult world, the comte de saint
germain an alchemist whom some imagine to have
achieved an immortality appearing later as Mr Welldone
etc, is one figure... well now reading the wikipedia
summary I see that summary gives the templars a
centrality which I did not exactly feel reading it.
in any case it is a tour of the history of the occult
world each section as I recall named for one of
the sephiroth of the tree of life...
it is in any case about the seeking for meaning in
perverse ways which undermine the authenticity of language
and of thought...
his view of the esoteric world is in this light of
subversion of thought but a prior problem is that Eco is
at most an agnostic, an educated agnostic with a respect
for Aquinas but not a believer and so when he says well if
they have in the eucharist what is more marvellous than
anything else how is it that they seek something else? but he
himself does not have the eucharist.
it is a little as fr zosima says to ivan that he is fortunate
if he really believes what he says about the consequences of
faith in the Resurrection.

but on the other hand if one believes then it also becomes
possible perhaps to take a calmer and more positive view
of the hermetic tradtion than this historical nightmare...

too late in evening too many words to too little effect
book worth looking at.

Heh. No, I didn't mean to imply that you were alleging it to be about the Templars, I just thought Luke's comment to be interesting in itself.

From your description, I'm not sure if I want to move the book farther up the "to read" list, or whether I would find the whole thing annoying. I did, in fact, start it eight or ten years ago, and didn't get past the first few pages, which is a rare level of disinterest for me. I had so enjoyed The Name of the Rose, even sweating through the Latin sections in my measly Latin, but for some reason I found the first few pages of Foucault's Pendulum quite off-putting. It sits next to me on the shelf, here, as I write, mocking me for my weak-will....

Is he implying that the Knights Templar were wiped out at the Battle of Bannockburn? *g*

See? Now you have the makings of your own crazy best-seller!