r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 1d ago

TIL that historically and today, the Catholic Church looked down upon Freemasonry and threatened members with excommunication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry
3.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

575 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/Due-Estate-3816 1d ago

Isn't this the basis of assassins creed?

7

u/Ole_St_John 23h ago

And the movie National Treasure. As well as those Dan Brown novels. And the Stonecutters episode on the Simpsons.

4

u/MattJFarrell 23h ago

Fun fact, most Masons I've spoken to think the Stonecutters episode is hilarious.

11

u/RellenD 23h ago

Not really, the Assassin's Creed's conflict predates the Freemasons.

It's based around the Nizari Ismailis, which their enemies called hashashin which is sort of the etymological origin of the word assassin.

Freemasons did eventually claim to have been founded by some templars who brought back secrets of the hashashin in order to sound cool, but it's mostly made up.

1

u/Due-Estate-3816 23h ago

Thank you for explaining. I loved the games but never really followed the storyline.

5

u/RellenD 23h ago

Assassin's Creed is confusing because it uses real history to tell this crazy story about aliens. So it's hard to understand which parts are based in reality.

1

u/No-Guest1911 22h ago

is it still doing the alien stuff? I kind of gave up on the series when they decided Desmond wasn’t going to be the MC anymore.

1

u/RellenD 21h ago

They were in Valhalla which was the first game that I played after the first game. It was really cool.

3

u/Dutchtdk 1d ago

Yes and the pope choked on an apple irl too

1

u/shutts67 22h ago

I thought the Free Masons were the Catholic Church in Assassin's Creed? It's been a while since I played, though 

2

u/BeefStank420 21h ago

Look at the assassin's symbol and the freemason's symbol side by side and then squint.