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Rosslyn Chapel.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
02:52, 3 November 2005     BLueFiSH.as 

 RosslynInterior.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
03:57, 5 February 2006 JeremyA

"Rosslyn Chapel, properly named the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, was
founded on a small hill above Roslin Glen as a Roman Catholic collegiate church
(with between 4 and 6 ordained canons and two boy choristers) in the mid-15th
century. Rosslyn Chapel and the nearby Roslin Castle are located at the village of
Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland.

The chapel was founded by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness (also spelled
"Sainteclaire/Saintclair/Sinclair/St. Clair") of the Sinclair family, a noble family
descended from Norman knights, using the standard designs the medieval
architects made available to him. Rosslyn Chapel is the third Sinclair place of
worship at Roslin - the first being in Roslin Castle and the second (whose
crumbling buttresses can still be seen today) in what is now Roslin Cemetery.[1]

The purpose of the college was to celebrate the Divine Office throughout the day
and night and also to celebrate Holy Mass for all the faithful departed, including
the deceased members of the Sinclair family. During this period the rich heritage
of plainsong (a single melodic line) or polyphony (vocal harmony) would be used
to enrich the singing of the liturgy. An endowment was made that would pay for the
upkeep of the priests and choristers in perpetuity and they also had parochial
responsibilities.

After the Scottish Reformation (1560) Roman Catholic worship in the Chapel was
brought to an end, although the Sinclair family continued to be Roman Catholics
until the early 18th century. From that time the Chapel was closed to public
worship until 1861 when it was opened again as a place of worship according to
the rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

In later years the Chapel has featured in speculative theories regarding
Freemasonry and the Knights Templar.

Architecture
The original plans for Rosslyn have never been found or recorded, so it is open to
speculation whether or not the chapel was intended to be built in its current layout.
Its architecture is considered to be some of the finest in Scotland.[2]

Construction of the chapel began on 20 September 1456, although it is often been
recorded as 1446. The confusion over the building date comes from the chapel's
receiving its founding charter to build a collegiate chapel in 1446 from Rome.
Sinclair did not start to build the chapel until he had built houses for his craftsmen.
Although the original building was to be cruciform in shape, it was never
completed; only the choir was constructed, with the retro-chapel, otherwise called
the Lady Chapel, built on the much earlier crypt (Lower Chapel) believed to form
part of an earlier castle. The foundations of the unbuilt nave and transepts
stretching to a distance of 90 feet were recorded in the 19th century. The
decorative carving was executed over a forty-year period. After the founder's death,
construction of the planned nave and transepts was abandoned - either from lack
of funds, disinterest, or a change in liturgical fashion. The Lower Chapel (also
known as the crypt or sacristy) should not be confused with the burial vaults that
lie underneath Rosslyn Chapel.[1]

The chapel stands on fourteen pillars, which form an arcade of twelve pointed
arches on three sides of the nave. At the east end, a fourteenth pillar between the
penultimate pair form a three-pillared division between the nave and the Lady
Chapel.[3] The three pillars at the east end of the chapel are named, from north to
south: the Master Pillar, the Journeyman Pillar, and most famously, the Apprentice
Pillar. These names for the pillars date from the late Georgian period — prior to
this period they were called The Earl's Pillar, The Shekinah and the Prince's pillar.

Apprentice Pillar
The "Apprentice Pillar", or "Prentice Pillar", gets its name from an 18th century
legend involving the master mason in charge of the stonework in the chapel and
his young apprentice. According to the legend, the master mason did not believe
that the apprentice could perform the complicated task of carving the column,
without seeing the original which formed the inspiration for the design. The
master mason travelled to see the original himself, but upon his return was
enraged to find that the upstart apprentice had completed the column anyway. In a
fit of jealous anger the mason took up his mallet and struck the apprentice on the
head, killing him. As punishment for his crime, the master mason's face was
carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice's pillar.[4]

The pillar is also referred to as the "Princes Pillar" in An Account of the Chapel of
Roslin (1778). On the architrave joining the pillar, there is the inscription Forte est
vinum fortior est rex fortiores sunt mulieres super omnia vincit veritas: "Wine is
strong, a king is stronger, women are stronger still, but truth conquers all" (1
Esdras, chapters 3 & 4)

Author Henning Klovekorn has proposed that the pillar is representative of one of
the roots of the Nordic Yggdrasil tree, prominent in Germanic and Viking
Mythology. He is of the opinion that the dragons at the base of the pillar are also
found eating away at the base of the Yggdrasil root, and the top of the pillar is
carved tree foliage, and argues that the Nordic/Viking association is plausible
considering the many auxiliary references in the chapel to Celtic and Nordic
mythology.[5]
[edit] 'Musical' boxes

Among Rosslyn's many intricate carvings are a sequence of 213 cubes or boxes
protruding from pillars and arches with a selection of patterns on them. It is
unknown whether these patterns have any particular meaning attached to them —
many people have attempted to find information coded into them, but no
interpretation has yet proven conclusive.

One recent attempt to make sense of the boxes has been to interpret them as a
musical score. The motifs on the boxes somewhat resemble geometric patterns
seen in the study of cymatics. The patterns are formed by placing powder upon a
flat surface and vibrating the surface at different frequencies. By matching these
Chladni patterns with musical notes corresponding to the same frequencies, the
father-and-son team of Thomas and Stuart Mitchell produced a tune which Stuart
calls the Rosslyn Motet.
Green Men
Another notable feature of Rosslyn's architecture is the presence of 'Green Men'.
These are carvings of human faces with greenery all around them, often growing
out of their mouths. They are commonly thought to be a symbol of rebirth or fertility,
pre-Christian in origin. In Rosslyn they are found in all areas of the chapel, with
one excellent example in the Lady Chapel, between the two middle altars of the
east wall. The green men in Rosslyn symbolise the months of the year in
progression from East to West in the Chapel. Young faces are seen in the East
symbolising Spring and as we progress towards the setting sun in the west the
carvings age as in autumn of man's years. There are in excess of 110 carvings of
Green men in and around the Chapel.
[edit] 'Ears of corn'

In addition to the boxes, there are carvings of what the authors Robert Lomas and
Christopher Knight believe could be ears of new world corn or maize in the chapel.
[7] This crop was unknown in Europe at the time of the chapel's construction, and
was not cultivated there until several hundred years later. Knight and Lomas view
these carvings as evidence supporting the idea that Henry I Sinclair, Earl of
Orkney, travelled to the Americas well before Columbus. Mediaeval scholars
interpret these carvings as stylised depictions of wheat, strawberries or lilies

Crypt

The Chapel has also acted as a burial place for several generations of the
Sinclairs — a crypt was once reachable from a descending stair at the rear of the
chapel. This crypt has for many years been sealed shut, which may explain the
recurrent legends that it is merely a front to a more extensive subterranean vault
containing (variously) the mummified head of Jesus Christ,[9] the Holy Grail,[10]
the treasure of the Templars,[11] or the original crown jewels of Scotland.[12] In
1837 when the 2nd Earl of Rosslyn died, his wish was to be buried in the original
vault; exhaustive searches over the period of a week were made, but no entrance
to the original vault was found and he was buried beside his wife in the Lady
Chapel.[13]

Templar and Masonic connections

The chapel, built 150 years after the dissolution of the Knights Templar,
supposedly has many Templar symbols, such as the "Two riders on a single
horse" that appear on the Seal of the Knights Templar.

The claim that the layout of Rosslyn Chapel echoes that of Solomon's Temple [14]
has been analysed by Mark Oxbrow and Ian Robertson in their book, Rosslyn and
the Grail:

Rosslyn Chapel bears no more resemblance to Solomon's or Herod's Temple
than a house brick does to a paperback book. If you superimpose the floor plans
of Rosslyn Chapel and either Solomon's or Herod's Temple, you will actually find
that they are not even remotely similar. Writers admit that the chapel is far smaller
than either of the temples. They freely scale the plans up or down in an attempt to
fit them together. What they actually find are no significant similarities at all. [...] If
you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn Chapel and the East Quire of
Glasgow Cathedral you will find a startling match: the four walls of both buildings
fit precisely. The East Quire of Glasgow is larger than Rosslyn, but the designs of
these two medieval Scottish buildings are virtually identical. They both have the
same number of windows and the same number of pillars in the same
configuration. [...] The similarity between Rosslyn Chapel and Glasgow's East
Quire is well established. Andrew Kemp noted that 'the entire plan of this Chapel
corresponds to a large extent with the choir of Glasgow Cathedral' as far back as
1877 in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries. Many alternative history
writers are well aware of this but fail to mention it in their books.[15]

With regards to a possible connection between the St. Clairs and the Knights
Templar, the family testified against the Templars when that Order was put on trial
in Edinburgh in 1309.[16] Historian Dr. Louise Yeoman, along with other
mediaeval scholars, says the Knights Templar connection is false, and points out
that Rosslyn Chapel was built by William Sinclair so that Mass could be said for
the souls of his family.[17]

It is also claimed that other carvings in the chapel reflect Masonic imagery, such
as the way that hands are placed in various figures. One carving may show a
blindfolded man being led forward with a noose around his neck—similar to the
way a candidate is prepared for initiation into Freemasonry. The carving has been
eroded by time and pollution and is difficult to make out clearly. The chapel was
built in the 15th century, and the earliest records of Freemasonic lodges date back
only to the late 16th and early 17th centuries.[18] A more likely explanation
however is that the Masonic imagery was added at a later date. This may have
taken place in the 1860s when James St Clair-Erskine, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn
instructed Edinburgh architect David Bryce, a known freemason, to undertake
restoration work on areas of the church including many of the carvings.[19]

William Sinclair 3rd Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin and 1st Earl of Caithness,
claimed by novelists to be a hereditary Grand Master of the Scottish stone
masons, built Rosslyn Chapel.[14] A later William Sinclair of Roslin became the
first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and, subsequently, several
other members of the Sinclair family have held this position.[20]

These connections, to both the Templars and the Freemasons, mean that
Rosslyn features prominently in romantic conjectures that the Freemasons are
direct descendants of the Knights Templar.
[edit] Alternative histories

Alternative histories involving Rosslyn Chapel and the Sinclairs have been
published by Andrew Sinclair and Timothy Wallace-Murphy arguing links with the
Knights Templar and the supposed descendants of Jesus Christ. The books in
particular by Timothy Wallace-Murphy Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-le-
Château And The Dynasty of Jesus (2000) and Custodians Of Truth: The
Continuance Of Rex Deus (2005) have focused on the hypothetical Jesus
bloodline with the Sinclairs and Rosslyn Chapel. On the ABC documentary Jesus,
Mary and Da Vinci aired on 3 November 2003 Niven Sinclair hinted that the
descendants of Jesus Christ existed within the Sinclair families. These alternative
histories are relatively modern - not dating back before the early 1990s. The
precursor to these Rosslyn theories is the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy
Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln that introduced the
theory of the Jesus bloodline in relation to the Priory of Sion hoax - the main
protagonist of which was Pierre Plantard, who for a time adopted the name Pierre
Plantard de Saint-Clair.

 Fictional references

The Chapel is a major feature in the last part of Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da
Vinci Code, though many incorrect assertions were made about the structure. For
example, Brown's book states that the Chapel was built by the Knights Templar,
and contains a six-pointed Star of David worn into the stone floor although no
such star is present. Many sources say that Brown never visited the Chapel until
after the publication of his book, and most of his material came from previously
published material.

Another claim from The Da Vinci Code is that the name "Rosslyn" is a form of the
term Rose Line, and that a line starting in France also runs through the Chapel,
however scholars point out that the name "Rosslyn" is most likely derived from
two Celtic words: "ros", meaning promontory or point, and "lyn", meaning waterfall.
[21]
See also

* Clan Sinclair;
* Sinclair (surname);
* Earl of Caithness;
* Sinclair & Girnigoe Castle;
* Roslin Castle;
* Castle of Mey."

Rosslyn Chapel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn_Chapel
Sunday, December 06, 2009