Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BCE – c. 33 CE) was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and carpenter who became 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 later discovered to be due to possessing ancient technology from the Isu, including a Shroud of Eden.
Biography[edit | edit source]
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]
Eventually, the Order of the Ancients, a secret society seeking to exploit Isu technology for their own ends, took notice of Jesus' many followers and investigated these groups, as well as the alleged miracles being performed by Jesus. After being betrayed by his disciple Judas Iscariot, Jesus was arrested by the Romans. Due to the Order's influence, he was then tortured and crucified on 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] Following the crucifixion, Jesus' disciples recovered the Shroud and made attempts to resurrect him,[3] but it is unknown if they succeeded.[note 1]
Legacy and influence[edit | edit source]
After Jesus' supposed 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.[5] During the 4th century, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed over the place where Jesus had been reportedly crucified and buried in Jerusalem, becoming an important place of pilgrimage.[6]
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: a Staff of Eden[7] and two of the three prongs from the Trident of Eden.[8] Many churches, monasteries, and basilicas were founded throughout Europe as the church's influence grew. In the 10th century, 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 throughout the Byzantine Empire and Russia.[10]
During the Middle Ages, the Christian kingdoms engaged 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 Seljuk and later the Ayyubid dynasty and the Mamluks.[6] 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 Byzantine Empire's restoration, Constantinople was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, ending Constantine XI Palaiologos' reign. Even though the official religion became Islam under the Turks and the Hagia Sophia basilica was turned into 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 became major artistic subjects. Many Italian artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael painted events from the Bible, including the Adoration of the Magi and the resurrection of Christ.[7] Theatrical productions of Jesus' 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 control of the city of Florence using an Apple of Eden, establishing the Bonfire of the Vanities to purge the city of its arts and luxurious objects.[7] In 1517, the German priest Martin Luther criticized the church's mass commercialization[18] 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.[19] Luther was excommunicated by the church, but his new visions of religion created a new branch of Christianity in Europe: Protestantism.[20] 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 Protestants before her half-sister Elizabeth I took the crown and re-established the Protestant faith. Similar events occurred in France during the French Wars of Religion, after which King Henry IV converted to Catholicism to stabilize the kingdom.[21]
After Christoffa Corombo's 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 in Europe. This saw 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,[22][23] as did the French and Spanish Empire in the Americas, while the British Empire and the Dutch Republic spread Protestantism.[24]
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.[25] Radical partisans during the French Revolution led a wave of dechristianizing the state, destroying churches and basilicas like in Saint-Denis,[26] while the French Templar Maximilien de Robespierre tried but failed to establish a state religion loosely based off Templar doctrine called the Cult of the Supreme Being.[27] 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.[28]
The Shroud used in the attempts to resurrect 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; they would hold it for the next two centuries. Renato Auditore later hid the Shroud beneath his villa in Monteriggioni,[29] where it lay undisturbed for a century until his descendant Mario found and moved it to Agnadello in 1454.[30] The Shroud was stolen by Niccolò di Pitigliano during the Battle of Agnadello in 1509, but a year later it was taken back by the Assassin Francesco Vecellio.[31] In the 16th century, the French Templars retrieved the Shroud, but the Assassins Isaac du Queyran and Florine stole the artifact in 1593 before entrusting it to the healer Catherine. During the Labourd witch-hunt of 1609, the Templar Pierre de Lancre sent Catherine to the stake to recover the Shroud, but the Assassins once again intervened and helped Catherine's adopted daughter Margaux take the artifact to Labrador, Canada.[32] By the late 19th century, the Hermeticist William Robert Woodman was in possession of the Shroud.[33] During the 20th century, the Milanese Baguttiani family owned the Shroud, and on 25 December 1944, the Templar agent Keith Scipione bought it from them for Abstergo Industries, the Templars' public front.[29] The Templar scientist Álvaro Gramática later used the Shroud for the Phoenix Project until the Assassins attacked his Paris laboratory and destroyed it in 2014.[34]
Behind the scenes[edit | edit source]
Jesus is a biblical figure and historical character mentioned several times throughout the Assassin's Creed franchise. As he has never appeared in person, his ultimate fate is yet to be confirmed.
If the biblical account of Jesus' resurrection is to be taken as fact, it is possible that Jesus' execution did not result in his death, but merely left him critically injured, and the Shroud was used to heal his wounds; to the uninitiated, this would create the impression that Jesus had been brought back to life. On the other hand, if Jesus was indeed killed, as the situation with Brutus and biblical accounts seem to suggest, the Shroud could have been used to preserve his body rather than restore life. Both interpretations remain speculative, offering different ways to reconcile the biblical narrative with the series' fictional framework.
Appearances[edit | edit source]
- Assassin's Creed (first mentioned) (indirect mention only)
- Assassin's Creed II (glyphs only)
- Assassin's Creed: Initiates (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Unity (mentioned in Database entry only)
- Assassin's Creed: Origins – The Curse of the Pharaohs (indirect mention only)
- Echoes of History (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla – Blood Brothers (mentioned only)
- The World of Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Journey to the North – Logs and Files of a Hidden One (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Mirage (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Mirage – A Soar of Eagles (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Shadows (indirect mention only)
- Animus Hub (mentioned in Database entry only)
Notes[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Although several religious books narrate Jesus' resurrection as a fact, this cannot be corroborated in the Assassin's Creed series, as the Shrouds of Eden cannot bring the dead back to life. They can, however, save an individual from fatal injuries if one wears a Shroud at the moment of being wounded.
