The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (14 page)

Twice the family received credit for the survival of their city-state—first in 1253, when Renier Zeno brought financial life back to a Venice wracked by revolts that had hurt trade. His diplomacy put an end to the struggles and reestablished the commercial primacy of Venice. His fleet defeated the Genoese fleet in their trade war for the Levant, and he was rewarded with the title of doge. While being the doge of Venice might be compared to being mayor of a great city, Venice was the richest city and the doge was entitled to make the rules governing world trade and to benefit from them. When this first Zeno saved his city, the real reward was riches, and when he died the fortune he left behind was vast.

The second rescue of Venice by the Zeno family was in 1380. At that time Venice was still the strongest principality in a divided Italy as well as the heart of the world’s trade linking the East and West. Everything that came overland passed through Venice, where a fee, sometimes one-third of the entire value of the goods, would be charged. Such a monopoly on world trade attracted the jealousy of other states that lived in the shadow of Venice. Two of Venice’s enemies, Padua and Genoa, teamed up with Hungary against Venice. The early conflict started badly for the outmanned city, and the Genoese fleet captured and occupied Chioggia on the lagoon of Venice and prepared to take the entire city. There were two fleets of importance in Venice at the time. The fleet commanded by Vittor Pisani was defeated by Genoa. The second fleet was under the command of Carlo Zeno.

The Zeno fleet had been away in the east when the conflict started. Messengers had been sent out from the city, to find the fleet and to tell of the dire threat hanging over Venice, but there was no confirmation the message had even gotten through to Zeno. The city was starving under the Genoese blockade, and the question on everyone’s mind was “Where is Zeno?” A vote was taken, and it was decided that Venice would surrender on New Year’s Day in 1381. Just as it appeared the war was over for Venice, the Zeno fleet appeared. The Genoese fleet was immediately attacked and defeated by “Carlo the Lion,” as he was called. Younger brother Niccolo commanded one of the ships. Although the war continued until the next June, the Genoese were soundly beaten.

While their financial acumen and military prowess made the Zenos one of the most important families in Venetian history, their critics charge them with one failing so great as to cast doubt on the entire voyage to America: poor spelling. The blame should not lie entirely with the Zenos, since they were forced not only to translate the Norman-English language into their own Italian dialect but also to convey their message through writing. The text and charts of the narrative were in some cases destroyed and often were illegible; then they were resurrected by the Zenos’ sixteenth-century descendant, who translated freely.

One example of just what distance, time, and language can do to alter a text is the name of the starting point of the journey. The Shet-land Islands had originally received their name from the Norse word for “basalt,”
Het-Land.
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Through time the name became Shetland. The younger Niccolo was familiar with neither, and so he substituted “Este-Land,” a name derived from the town of Este near his own home in the northern Italian peninsula. A family of that name had a pedigree as long and as noble as the Zenos’.

The home of Henry Sinclair, whom Niccolo’s ancestor called “Prince,” was Roslin, a name that has been spelled several different ways; the Scottish “Sinclairs” were originally Norman “St. Clairs,” and spelling in different translations was more an art than a science. This text will refer to the Norman family as “St. Clair” and to the Scottish branch as “Sinclair,” although exceptions do exist.
Ros
, means “red,” and
lin,
or more often
lynn,
means “stream.” Again, young Niccolo may have in-verted
“ros” to spell “sor” and come up with “Sorano” as the home of the prince. Another important family of Venice, who shared the leadership of the city with the Zeno family, was that of Soranza. At the time of Niccolo’s writings, Soranza was the doge, the supreme head of Venice. Like Niccolo’s ancestor, Soranza was an admiral of the Venetian fleet and had also been victorious against the Genoese. In Italian,
Sorano
would mean “of Sor.” If Niccolo translated “Ros” as “Sor,” Sorano would be the natural result. In his work on the Sinclair family Andrew Sinclair stated that Niccolo took this name from Caithness, the lands that the Sinclairs had inherited in the north; translating Caithness into Sorano, however, would be even more difficult.

Henry Sinclair’s base of operations was often an island named Bressay. The younger Niccolo abbreviated the name of the island as Bres, but for once this was actually more accurate. The “-ay” suffix denotes “island” in the Norse language that was prevalent throughout the north—calling the place the “island of Bressay” would be redundant. An important island situated halfway between the Orkneys and the Shetlands was Fer Island. This island, previously mentioned, was translated on maps by various spellings that included Ferisland and later Frislandia. When the Zeno narrative speaks of Porlanda, an island south of the Hebrides, which is much more populated, it is no stretch to guess that the island of Skye with its large town of Portree is the perfect candidate. Skye was south of the Hebrides, and more populous, and Portree was the largest settlement. Such spelling and translation problems plague modern historians. Pohl says Porlanda was simply Pentland, a large area of Scotland; other writers supply Portland, which is no longer on any map. History records Portland as having had a duke who also wrote of the earls of Roslin. The Zeno narrative speaks of captured fishing boats in “Sanestol,” which could be Stenscholl, also in Skye.

While such strained translations do little to enhance Niccolo’s credibility, we should remember other historic translations. London is a name that was translated differently under different masters. It was originally called Lug, for a powerful Celtic god of the same name. When Roman legionnaires reached the town of Lug, they translated it as
Luguvalium,
“the town of Lug,” or
Lugdunum,
“the stronghold of Lug.”
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When Vikings left behind their city of Jarvik in Norway, it remained in their hearts. They named a place where they settled in England for their hometown. This new Jarvik was translated by the English language as “York,” and it has remained so.
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English settlers in America, again keeping a fondness for their own city, named their new settlement “New York.” Very few New Yorkers would recognize their city’s name as having descended from a relatively small Norwegian seaport. With London and New York in mind, it is not difficult to see how time, distance, translation, and modernization can alter an original spelling. The added hindrance to continuity in the case of Zeno’s narrative is the fact that the original letters were in a mutilated condition when they were finally compiled.

If the damage done to place-names were not bad enough, it was the younger Niccolo’s rendering of Henry Sinclair’s name that stirred the greatest debate. Niccolo compounded his ancestors’ mistake in calling Henry a prince by naming him Prince Zichmni. This title defied explanation until Johann Reinhold Forster came along.
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This eighteenth-century writer and historian started with the declaration that while there were no “princes” in the Orkneys, there was an earl—Henry Sinclair. There were no earls in Venice, so Niccolo needed a word that translated into a title that could be understood in the Italian language. Henry’s title was Earl of the Orkneys and Caithness. Forster also pointed out that the title of prince was never followed by a surname but rather by the municipality that the prince called his domain. He believed “Prince of the Orkneys” was what the older Niccolo had attempted to convey to his brother in his letters.

Translation, however, was a problem. There was no equivalent to an “ey” ending in Italian; an “I” would have to be substituted. And the “D’O” beginning of “D’Orkney” (of Orkney) appearing as a “Z” was simply poor handwriting. While Forster’s work as a historian had merit, this explanation is not easy to accept. A look at the Sinclair history might be helpful. In 1392 King Richard II of England granted safe conduct for Henry Sinclair (then St. Clair) to come into his country. In this letter he described Sinclair as “Comes Orchadie, et Dominus de Roslyne.” He spelled the family name as “Seintcler.” It was not just the
unlearned who rendered the written language of the fourteenth century less than simple to understand.

The Sinclairs themselves seemingly provide further evidence as to just how badly a name can be distorted. In 1658 one of the first direct descendants of the Sinclair family went to America.
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Once in his new home in New Hampshire, he changed the spelling of the name to “Sinkler.” A once proud and respected family name that could be traced back a thousand years to a saint was rendered in terms that might be freely associated with an implement for fishing. In America, other direct descendants did even more damage. New spellings included “Sain Clair,” “Cinclair,” “Sinklee,” “Sinklir,” and “Synkler,” among numerous other versions. It was in
The History of the Sinclair Family in Europe and America
, published in 1896, that I found facsimiles of signatures that came to confuse the family name further. The signature of the son of the original immigrant, “Sinkler,” appears as “Sink Por.” An eighteenth-century Joseph Sinkler distorted his surname, making the “S” in the first part of the name a “Z” separate from the last letters. It was not until 1800 that most variations started to disappear and the descendants adopted the more correct “Sinclair” or “St. Clair.”

While a prince in the north of Europe may have been more inclined to use his country or province in his title, a prince in any of the states that make up modern Italy certainly would have used his name. It is likely that Prince Sinclair, as Niccolo might have called his employer, translated to Prince Zichmni, if the “S” became a “Z” and a more common vowel ending was substituted in Italian. The most relevant fact is that there was only one man who ruled the Orkneys at the turn of the fifteenth century and there was only one fleet big enough to fit the description. That ruler and that fleet owner was one person, and no one else fit the bill. The earl of the Orkneys was Henry Sinclair.

Another translation of the Zeno narratives was put together by Richard Henry Major. His version, published in 1873, also said that Zichmni and Sinclair were the same person, and at that point the discussion and debate were considered resolved. The staid
Dictionary of National Biography
agreed that it was Henry Sinclair who led the Zeno expedition. Soon after the Major’s publication, a new critic, Fred Lucas, came along
to confuse the matter once again. Declaring that Zichmni was actually a Baltic pirate instead of the earl of the Orkneys, he threw the Zeno narratives into doubt once more. The Baltic pirate was actually named “Wichmann,” but fifteenth-century spelling being what it was, that did not resolve the dispute.
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The main flaw in Lucas’s theory is that he failed to explain why two rich shipowners from an incredibly wealthy and powerful family would ever enlist in a pirate fleet in the Baltic Sea or why they would be proud to report to their brother Carlo, a war hero, that they had allowed a pirate to “knight” them.

Before the 1960 discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows and Norse settlers in Canada, any tale of an expedition, planned or otherwise, to the New World was fair game to criticism. Once the discovery became public knowledge, the old school’s position began to lose ground. Much damage, however, had already been done to discredit the Zeno narratives and charts. And it would not be until later years that historians and cartographers would again validate both the story and the maps of the Zenos. The Sinclairs themselves were of no help in the recognition of Zeno’s charts, considering that they may have wished their new lands to remain secret. By the time the younger Zeno brought his compilation of maps and letters to the attention of the world in 1558, the Sinclairs had already made at least one more trip, and most likely several, to their new lands.

The Clan Sinclair

In the sixteenth century the Sinclair family became embroiled in a life-and-death struggle for their own lands and the lands of the countrymen to whom they were allied. The nation of Scotland was only a concept, and most of the greatest families had loyalty to their own. A united England as aggressor, however, began to unite the Scots in retaliation to their overlords. The Sinclairs soon found themselves the targets of the English, and they needed a refuge to fall back to if they were overwhelmed. They had allied themselves by their actions to Scottish history’s strongest leader and the family that would lead the revolution in Scotland. They had also allied themselves to another, stronger secret society outlawed in Europe, but called upon by Scotland to join the fight against
the English. Thanks to Sinclair protection, this secret society has survived to modern times.

To understand how this secret alliance came to be, and just how the Sinclairs became both the protectors of the society and guardian to a treasure so important that it needed to be hidden from England, it is necessary to trace the Sinclair history even further back in time. The man who sailed to America before the Cabots and Cartiers of later years came from a family at least as ancient and important as that of the Zenos. Henry Sinclair and the Sinclair family are prominent indeed in the history of Scotland, but they trace their origin back to much earlier days—to a Norse migration to France and then north to the British Isles.
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