The title of the fourth book, Templar’s Prophecy, in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, is based on a mid-14th century encounter in the prologue between an Englishman from Cirencester and a survivor of the Knights Templars. Templars had ceased to exist as an organisation after 1312. The meeting of the two men occurred in Nubia in Africa at a famous Christian pilgrimage site for healing, the Church of Saint Raphael, in Banganarti, Nubia.
You well might ask, “Where was Nubia?” It was an ancient civilization that stretched along the Nile River from southern Egypt into Sudan on a modern map. At one time, it was made up of three kingdoms as shown in the map above to the left. Nobatia in the north stretched from just south of Aswan and the 1st cataract of the Nile to just south of the 3rd cataract. Mukaria was next with its capital at Dongola, and just beyond that city was Banganarti. Finally, the Kingdom of Alodia began between the 5th and 6th cataracts.
Unknown to many in the west, this area was Christian from the late fourth century until the mid-14th century when it was conquered by Islam. Makuria had become largely Christian by the end of the 6th century. Egypt was conquered by Islam in the 7th century, cutting Nubia off from other Christian lands, but in 651 AD, efforts to extend Islam into Nubia were defeated. Thereafter, a kind of peace between Christianity and Islam existed until the 13th century. In the medieval period, things began to change dramatically in Nubia, and Christianity collapsed completely in favour of Islam before the end of the 14th century.
Yet, in the 14th century, a man named Benesec travelled from southern France or northern Spain across the Mediterranean to Egypt and up the Nile to the Church of Saint Raphael in Banganarti. How do we know that? It is because he scratched a memento in Latin onto a wall of the church which reads, “When Benesec came to pay homage to Raphael.” This was revealed in the 21st century when Polish archaeologists began excavating a huge artificial mound covering a church. The archaeologists exposed a series of churches in which the walls were decorated with many representations of Nubian kings under the protection of the Archangel Raphael, a guardian of human health. There were also inscriptions similar to Benesecs, testifying to its being a site where pilgrims came from great distances for healing. This marvellous human story inspired me to use Banganarti in the prologue of my book and in the main part of my story to name a grandson of the Templar survivor “Benesec Raphael de Farleigh.”
For more on Nubia, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia or on
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits/history-ancient-nubia
Tags: Chaucer's England, historical fiction, medieval mysteries