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"[...] With it, a poor carpenter turned water into wine."
―Al Mualim, on Jesus' use of a Piece of Eden, 1191.[src]-[m]

Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BCE – c. 33 CE) was a 1st century Jewish preacher and carpenter and is the central figure of Christianity. His believers, called Christians, view him as the Christ and the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament, believing him to be the "Son of God" who sacrificed himself to cleanse humanity's sins before being resurrected and ascending to Heaven. For this reason, he is commonly referred to as Jesus Christ.

Early Christians wrote down his life and teachings as the New Testament. His miraculous powers were discovered to be due to possessing ancient technology from the Isu, including a Shroud of Eden.

Biography

At one point in his life, Jesus came into contact with a Piece of Eden known as the Shroud.[1] He also on one occasion allegedly turned water into wine.[2]

However, the Order of the Ancients took notice of his many followers and investigated these groups as well as the miracles being performed by Jesus. After being betrayed by his disciple Judas Iscariot, Jesus was arrested by the Romans under the control of the Order. He was tortured and then crucified on Mount Golgotha in Jerusalem while the Order took the Shroud for themselves.[1][3] A man known only as "the Wanderer" was believed to have encountered Jesus on his way to Golgotha, though all contemporary references to him were unreliable.[4]

ACIJesus

Jesus' disciple holding his deceased body after the crucifixion

Following the crucifixion, Jesus' disciples recovered the Holy Shroud to try and bring him back to life.[3] Numerous attempts were made, but they were all futile.[5]

Legacy and influence

After Jesus' death, his disciples spread his teachings across the Roman Empire's holdings in the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East, developing a new religion of Christianity. Christians were intermittently persecuted for not worshipping the Roman emperors' divine right to rule, until Emperor Constantine I halted the practice and made Christianity the chief religion in the Empire.[6] The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed over the places where Jesus was crucified and buried, becoming an important place of pilgrimage.[7]

Even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Christianity remained a major religion in the Mediterranean world. In Rome, the bishop of the city became an influential person in European politics, taking the title of Pope and ruling his own city-state of the Vatican. The Popes' influence was amplified by three Pieces of Eden in their possession: the Staff of Eden and two of the three prongs of the Trident of Eden.[8] Many churches, monasteries, and basilicas were founded throughout Europe as the church's influence grew. In the 10th century, the bishop Poppa converted the entire nation of Denmark to Christianity using one of the Trident's prongs.[9] As the rivalry between the Popes and the Byzantine Emperors increased, Christianity experienced a Great Schism in 1054 between the Catholic Church, led by the Pope in Rome, and the Orthodox Church, spread in the Byzantine Empire and Russia.[10]

During the Middle Ages, the Christian kingdoms entered in Holy Wars against the Islamic caliphates. Among these conflicts were the Crusades, through which the Crusaders tried to take back Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre from the Seljukides and later the Ayyubid dynasty and the Mamluks.[7] During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Crusaders took Constantinople from the Byzantines and founded a Catholic Latin Empire.[11] In 1238, the last Latin Emperor Baldwin II sold the crown of thorns allegedly worn by Jesus to the French king Louis IX, who kept it in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.[12] After the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, ending the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos. Even if the official religion became Islam under the Turks and the Basilica Hagia Sophia was transformed in a mosque,[13] the Orthodox church was authorized to remain in the city with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople at its head.[14]

Another one of these conflicts was the Reconquista, when the Spanish kings took back the territories conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate during the 8th century. The Granada War between the Catholics and the Muslims ended with the taking of Granada by the Spanish forces. With the installation of the Spanish Inquisition, any faiths other than the Catholic one were deemed heretical and punishable by death in Spain and later in Portugal.[15][16]

During the Renaissance, Jesus and other Christian figures were major artistic subjects during this period. Many Italian artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael painted events from the Bible as the Adoration of the Magi or the resurrection of the Christ.[8] Theatrical productions of his life also took place, such as the one featuring the actor Pietro Rossi in the central role.[17]

At the end of the 15th century, some clergymen criticized the Catholic church for its luxury and wanted to reform social life. Between 1494 and 1498, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola took the control of the city of Florence using an Apple of Eden, establishing the Bonfire of the Vanities to purge the city from its arts and luxurious objects.[8] In 1517, the German priest Martin Luther criticized the church's mass commercialization and continued use of indulgences, a practice where believers paid clergy for the absolution of sins, unaware that the ministers regularly overcharged their rates or pocketed the money for the church's treasury instead of local goodwill projects.[18] He was excommunicated by the church, but his new visions of religion created a new branch of Christianity in Europe: Protestantism.[19] This separation sparked centuries of conflict between the kingdoms that stayed Catholic and the ones that adopted Protestantism. In England, the Catholic Queen Mary I persecuted Protestant before her half-sister Elizabeth took the crown and reestablished the Protestant faith. Similar events occurred in France during the French Wars of Religion, after which King Henry IV of France converted to Catholicism to stabilize the kingdom.[20]

After Christopher Columbus' attempt in 1492 to find a westward sea route to Asia ended in his getting lost and reaching the Americas instead, he returned to Europe and told of a "New World", inciting the Age of Exploration. This saw the European powers fight over which nation could establish the most colonies, and during the 16th century, they turned to spreading Christianity to subjugate the local indigenous populations and earn allies through forced or voluntary conversions. The Portuguese Empire and the Jesuits expanded Catholicism's influence across Asia, principally in China, Japan, and India,[21] as did the French and Spanish Empire in the Americas, while the British Empire and the Dutch Republic spread Protestantism.[22] Despite Christianity's global propagation, its legitimacy regarding the world's beginnings and its role in everyday life were regularly questioned, especially with the advancement of the sciences. In 1500, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus presented his astronomical model of heliocentrism that ran counter to the church-approved geocentrism;[23] radical partisans during the French Revolution led a wave of dechristianizing the state, destroying churches and basilicas like Saint-Denis,[24] while the Parisian Templar Maximilien de Robespierre tried but failed to establish a state religion loosely based off Templar doctrine called the Cult of the Supreme Being;[25] and in 1859, English naturalist Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, proposing that a theory of evolution was behind unique, inheritable characteristics in animals rather than a divine power.[26]

The Shroud used to heal Jesus was later considered a sacred relic. In the mid-14th century, the French Templar Geoffroy de Charny owned a Shroud purported to be the same one used on Jesus before the Italian Assassins stole it from him in 1356. Renato Auditore later hid the Shroud beneath his villa in Monteriggioni,[27] where it lay undisturbed for a century until his descendant Mario found and moved it to Agnadello in 1454.[28] The Shroud was taken by Niccolò di Pitigliano during the Battle of Agnadello in 1509, but a year later it was taken back by the Assassin Francesco Vecellio.[29] During the 20th century, the Milanese Baguttiani family owned the Shroud, and 25 December, 1944, the Templar agent Keith Scipione bought the Shroud from them for Abstergo Industries, the Templar's public front.[27] The Templar scientist Álvaro Gramática used the Shroud for the Phoenix Project before the Assassins attacked his Paris laboratory and destroyed it in 2014.[30]

Appearances

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Assassin's Creed IIGlyph #7: "Keep On Seeking, And You Will Find"
  2. Assassin's CreedAssassination (Majd Addin)
  3. 3.0 3.1 Assassin's Creed: InitiatesDatabase: Messiah
  4. Assassin's Creed: UnityDatabase: 09. Potential "Sage" List
  5. Although several religious books narrate the resurrection of Jesus as a fact, this cannot be corroborated in the Assassin's Creed series since the Shrouds of Eden cannot bring the deceased back to life.
  6. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
  7. 7.0 7.1 Assassin's Creed
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 Assassin's Creed II
  9. Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods
  10. Wikipedia-W-visual-balanced East–West Schism on Wikipedia
  11. Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade
  12. Assassin's Creed: UnityDatabase: Sainte-Chapelle
  13. Assassin's Creed: RevelationsDatabase: Hagia Sophia
  14. Wikipedia-W-visual-balanced Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople on Wikipedia
  15. Assassin's Creed II: Discovery
  16. Assassin's Creed: Rebellion
  17. Assassin's Creed: BrotherhoodExit Stage Right
  18. Wikipedia-W-visual-balanced Indulgence on Wikipedia
  19. FamilyTreeDNA (28 October, 2016). Assassin's Creed DNA – The Inside Story: Explore Historical Timeline. Family Tree DNA. Archived from the original on 30 October 2016. Retrieved on 26 April 2021.
  20. Assassin's Creed: UnityDatabase: Statue of Henri IV
  21. Assassin's Creed: Memories
  22. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
  23. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood – Copernicus ConspiracyFalse Censorship
  24. Assassin's Creed: UnityDead Kings
  25. Assassin's Creed: UnityThe Supreme Being
  26. Assassin's Creed: SyndicateDatabase: Charles Darwin
  27. 27.0 27.1 Assassin's Creed: Project LegacyHolidays: Chapter 1 – Ghosts of Christmas Past
  28. Assassin's Creed: Project LegacyItalian Wars: Chapter 3 – Mario Auditore
  29. Assassin's Creed: Project LegacyItalian Wars: Chapter 2 – Francesco Vecellio
  30. Assassin's Creed: SyndicateDatabase: Reconstructed Data 007
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