History of Friday the 13th
No historical date has been verifiably identified as the origin of the superstition. Before the 20th century, although there is evidence that the number 13 was considered unlucky, and Friday was considered unlucky, there was no link between them. The first documented mention of a "Friday the 13th" is generally listed as occurring in the early 20th century.[1][2][3]
However, many popular stories exist about the origin of the concept:
* The Last Supper which occurred on Thursday, with Judas numbered among the thirteen guests (Jesus plus his 12 apostles), and that the Crucifixion of Jesus which occurred on a Friday. However, Judas was not actually present for the latter part of the meal.
* That the biblical Eve offered the fruit to Adam on a Friday, and that the slaying of Abel happened on a Friday (though the Bible does not identify the days of the week when these events occurred).[4]
* Friday 13th October 1066 was the last day of the reign of the Saxon King Harold II. On this day, William, Duke of Normandy offered Harold the option of ceding the crown; Harold declined the offer. The Battle of Hastings took place the following day (Saturday 14th October 1066). Harold was slain and William took control of England.
* One theory holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago. The catastrophe was the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books: 1995): "On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars ? knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren ? in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges were ever proven, even in France ? and the Order was found innocent elsewhere ? but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake." This theory is mentioned in the novel The DaVinci Code and in the computer game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars.
* Friday and 13 were both sacred to the Norse goddess Freyja, so Friday 13th was especially sacred. Christians who wished to suppress her worship said the day was unlucky.
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