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The Vatican began a scheme to market treasures from its Secret Archives yesterday, beginning with luxury reproductions of a 14th-century papal parchment absolving the Knights Templar of heresy.

The reproduction of Processus Contra Templariosor Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars is being sold at €5,900 (£4,000) a copy. It comes in a soft leather case with translations into English and Italian, a scholarly commentary and replicas of the wax seals used by the Inquisition. Pope Benedict has been given the first set free.

Barbara Frale, the Secret Archives medieval specialist who came across the document, which is also known as the Chinon Parchment, in 2003 after realising that it had been wrongly catalogued, said that it shed new light on the fate of the Templars.

Dr Frale said that the parchment showed that Pope Clement V had accepted the Templars were guilty of “grave sins”, such as corruption and sexual immorality, but not of heresy. Their initiation ceremony involved spitting on the Cross, but this was to brace them for having to do so if captured by Muslim forces, she said.

“This is a milestone because it is the first time these documents have been released by the Vatican,” she said. The Templars were founded in 1119 by knights protecting Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land after the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. They amassed fortunes through property and banking but declined after the Muslim reconquest of the Holy Land at the end of the 13th century.

The knights were accused of heresy by the French King Philip IV, who hoped to seize their wealth and free himself of his debts to the order. They were rounded up and many knights were tortured and murdered. Their Grand Master, Jacques De Molay, was burnt at the stake in 1314.

Legends of the Templars’ secret rituals and lost treasures have long fascinated conspiracy theorists, and figure in The Da Vinci Code, which repeated the theory that the knights were entrusted with the Holy Grail.

Pope Clement disbanded the Templars, but did so only for the greater good of saving the Church in France from further persecution by the aggressively secular Philip IV, Dr Frale said.

The Vatican is selling 800 copies of the document. “This is a commercial operation to satisfy the demands of a global market keen to acquire works of historic value and of universally recognised scientific rigour, permeated with intrinsic beauty, artistic value and destined to last,” said Ferdinando Santoro, head of Scrinium, a publisher linked to the Vatican.

However, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, Prefect of the Secret Archives, appeared uncomfortable with the sales pitch. He said that the Vatican archivists carried out “humble work”, and books and documents were meant to be “studied and read, not presented with fanfare. That is not our style”. He emphasised that the document was “in no way a scoop or discovery”, since it had been listed in the Vatican inventories since the 17th century. Reports saying it “rehabilitated” the Templars were also mistaken, he said.

Treasures in the Secret Archive include letters from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, stolen by a Vatican spy to prove the King’s disloyalty to the Pope.

Medieval enigma

- The Knights Templar were a powerful and secretive medieval order formed to protect Christian pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem

- Founded by Hugues de Payns, a French Knight, after first Crusade

- Its headquarters were the Al Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount

- Officially disbanded in 1300s

- Latter day orders such as the Grand Priory of Knight Templars hold no direct descendence to the ancient order but claim to carry on the legacy in spirit

Source: Times archives