MILITARY ORDERS.

Pierre Gérard founds the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.—History of that Order.—The Siege of Rhodes.—History of the Order of the Knights Templars.—Order of the Knights of Calatrava.—Order of the Teuton Knights.—Order of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.—Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus.—Orders of the Star, of the Cosse de Geneste, of the Ship, of St. Michael, and of the Holy Ghost.

One of our great modern historians remarks:—“The association of the Church and chivalry, of war and religion, culminated in the foundation of an institution hitherto entirely unknown, and owing its origin principally to the Crusades, namely, the institution of religious military orders....

“In nothing does chivalry show itself more worthy of admiration than in its religious military aspect; in that phase it accepted the sacrifice of all the affections, it abandoned the renown of the soldier and the repose of the cloister, and it exposed its votary to the hardships of both, by devoting him in turn to the perils of the battle-field, and to the labours attendant upon the succouring of the distressed. Other knights courted adventure for the sake of their honour and the lady of their love; these incurred it in order to help the unfortunate and to assist the poor. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers was proud of the title ofGuardian of the Redeemer’s poor; he of the order of St. Lazarus was of necessity always a leper; while the knight-companions termed the poor ‘our masters.’ Such were the admirable effects of religion, which, at a period when the sword decided every question, knew how to chasten thefailings of valour, and make it forget the pride that generally accompanies it.”

As early as the middle of the eleventh century some merchants of Amalfi had obtained from the Caliph of Egypt permission to build a hospital at Jerusalem, which they dedicated to St. John, and in which were received and sheltered the poor pilgrims who visited the Holy Land. Godefroy de Bouillon and his successors encouraged this charitable institution, and bestowed upon it several large donations. Pierre Gérard, a native of the Island of Martigues, in Provence, proposed to the brothers who managed the hospital to renounce the world, to don a regular dress, and to form an uncloistered monastic order under the name of theHospitallers. Pope Pascal II. appointed Gérard director of the new institution, which he formally authorised, took the Hospitallers under his protection, and granted them many privileges.

Fig. 137.—Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, afterwards called the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Fig. 138.—Knight of the Order of Rhodes.Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in a work entitled “Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus:” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.

Fig. 138.—Knight of the Order of Rhodes.

Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in a work entitled “Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus:” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.

The regulations of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem not onlyimposed upon the brethren the triple vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience; they enjoined upon them, besides the duties of hospitality, the exercise of arms, in order that they might defend the kingdom of Jerusalem against the attacks of the unbelievers. The opportunity was soon afforded them of putting aside their purely charitable character, and of becoming men of war (Fig. 139).

Fig. 139.—Fortress of the Knights Hospitallers, in Syria, taken from the Kurds by the Franks about the year 1125, and rebuilt in 1202. A representation of it as restored.—Engraving from “Monuments of the Architecture of the Crusaders in Syria,” by M. G. Rey.

Driven out of Jerusalem by the victorious Saladin, who retook that city on the 19th of October, 1191, the Hospitallers were the last to leave the Holy Land, and transferred their hospital to Margat, after ransoming from the Saracens more than a thousand captive Crusaders; they remained there until the end of the siege of Acre by the Christians, in which they took an active and glorious share, and they then established themselves in the reconquered city and took the name of Knights of St. John of Acre. Again driven from their new residence by the infidels, the Hospitallers asked theKing of Cyprus to allow them to settle in his dominion, and to re-establish the central house of their order in the town of Limisso, at which they arrived in small knots, as fast as they were able to escape from the cruisers of the Mussulman fleet. As they, disembarked, exhausted with war’s fatigues, covered with wounds, and unable to console themselves for having survived the loss of Palestine, they presented a really touching spectacle.

The grand master of the knights of St. John of Acre, Jean de Villiers, assembled a chapter general in Cyprus to deliberate upon the best policy to adopt after the last disasters of the crusade, and to take measures to prevent the complete extinction of the order, which had been decimated in the war against the infidels. The Hospitallers of all nations answered the appeal of Jean de Villiers. Never had a meeting been so numerously attended since the foundation of the order; the knights present, carried away by the eloquent appeal of their grand master, swore that they would shed their last blood to recover possession of the Holy Sepulchre.

In spite of the wise measures recommended by Jean de Villiers, the Hospitallers were no longer in safety at Limisso. They had to defend themselves from two equally formidable enemies; from the Saracens, who were ceaselessly threatening their naval and military organization, and from the King of Cyprus, who seemed to desire the ruin of the order, upon which he had just imposed a heavy tax. Indeed, Villaret, the new grand master, proposed to his brothers in arms that they should retire to the island of Rhodes, entrench themselves there, and wait until a more propitious moment should arrive for their return to Palestine. Unfortunately the forces of the order of St. John were not sufficient for such a daring enterprise, and the grand master invited the Western Christians to undertake a new crusade, keeping the real motive of the expedition a secret. The Crusaders assembled in great numbers at the port of Brindisi, in Italy, and the grand master, selecting the noblest and the best equipped, set sail for Rhodes. There he successfully disembarked his little army, with provisions and warlike materials, and laid siege to the capital, which was well fortified and thronged with defenders. After an investment of four years the town was taken by assault; the other strongholds met with a similar fate, and the whole island passed under the sway of the Hospitallers in 1310. But for more than two centuries they had to defend it against the constant attacks of the infidels.

Under the leadership of Joubert or Jacques de Milly, the grand prior ofAuvergne, the Knights of Rhodes (the Hospitallers had assumed this name in memory of a victory that so redounded to the fame of the Order of St. John) inflicted a first repulse upon the Ottomans in 1455. All danger, however, was not banished. A rupture seemed imminent with the Sultan of Egypt, quite as formidable an adversary as Mahomet II., the Sultan of Constantinople; and the knights were also obliged to bestir themselves against the Venetians, who had effected a landing on the island, and had been guilty of greater cruelty and violence than the Saracens and the Turks. Raymond Zacosta, the successor of Jacques de Milly in the grand mastership, took advantage of an interval of truce to build a new fort intended to defend the town and port of Rhodes. This impregnable fortress, constructed upon a rocky promontory, received the name of St. Nicholas, from a chapel dedicated to that saint standing within its walls (Fig. 140).

As, in spite of the truce, the Turkish corsairs made continual descents upon the island, the grand master dispatched his galleys to the Ottoman shores, and inflicted a series of reprisals. These so aroused the anger of Mahomet II., that he swore to drive the knights of Rhodes right out of the island. With this purpose he organized an expedition, and entrusted its command to Misach Paleologus, a Greek renegade of the imperial household, who had been appointed grand vizier by the sultan, and who was continually urging his master to take possession of Rhodes.

A hundred and sixty vessels of war and an army of a hundred thousand men arrived off Rhodes on the 23rd of May, 1480. The Turkish fleet endeavoured, under cover of the fire of their artillery, to effect the disembarcation of their troops, while the knights of the order, supported by the guns of the town and its forts, waded up to their waists in the sea and attacked the Ottoman boats sword in hand.

Fig. 140.—Plan of the Island of Rhodes.—Reduced Fac-simile of one of the large Topographical Plans in the “Saintes Pérégrinations de Hiérusalem,” by Breydenhach; in folio, with copperplate figures: Lyons, 1488. (Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.)

The infidels at last succeeded in making good their landing, and entrenched themselves on Mount St. Stephen. After the knights had been vainly summoned to surrender, a German engineer who had accompanied Paleologus, and who was the superintendent of the siege operations, advised the latter to concentrate his attack on the tower of St. Nicholas, the capture of which would be certain to make him master of the place. After more than three hundred discharges of cannon a breach was effected, and the Turks rushed to the assault. Pierre d’Aubusson, grand prior of Auvergne, recently elected grand master, stood aloft in the breach and set an exampleof the highest courage to his knights: “Here,” said he, “is the only post of honour worthy of your grand master.”

Exasperated by such an energetic resistance, the vizier determined to rid himself by foul means of Pierre d’Aubusson; but an engineer who had undertaken the treacherous commission was detected, and torn in pieces by the inhabitants of Rhodes on his way to the scaffold.

Misach Paleologus proposed to hold a conference to discuss terms of capitulation. To this the grand master gave his consent, his real object being to gain time to construct new defences in place of those the enemy had destroyed; and the interview, between one of the principal officers of the Turkish army and the castellan of Rhodes, took place at the edge of the moat. The vizier’s envoy urged that in the extremity to which the town was reduced, with its walls levelled, its towers shattered, and its ditches filled up, it would be perfectly possible to take it by assault in a couple of hours; and that it behoved the knights companions to prevent, by an honourable capitulation, a general massacre of the inhabitants. D’Aubusson, concealed hard by, overheard these specious proposals: in pursuance of his orders the castellan made answer to the Ottoman officer that his spies had misinformed him; that, behind the moat, defences had been constructed, the capture of which would cost many lives; that the town was defended by Christians all animated with the same spirit and perfectly resigned to sacrifice their lives for their religion; and that the order would entertain no proposal inimical to its honour or to the interests of its faith.

The haughty vizier, irritated by this noble reply, swore to put every knight to the sword; he even ordered a large number of stakes to be sharpened on which to impale the inhabitants, and, under cover of a still hotter fire from his guns, gave the signal for the assault.

The Turks succeeded for a moment in planting their standard on the ramparts, but they were soon beaten off by the defenders, led by their grand master in person: five times wounded, and covered with blood, Pierre d’Aubusson refused to leave the scene of the struggle, which he animated by his example. His lofty heroism infused new energy into his knights, who rushed on the Turks with the courage of despair and put them completely to the rout. But victory as it was, it was not sufficiently definitive or decisive to secure to the order the tranquil possession of the island, and leave them for the future free from Turkish aggression. Ever since the death ofMahomet II., they had had in their power a precious hostage, Zizim, a brother of Sultan Bajazet, and his most formidable competitor for the throne (Figs. 141 and 142).

Fig. 141.—Death of Mahomet II. (1481): the devil flying away with his soul.—His two sons, Bajazet and Zizim, disputed the throne, and the latter was defeated.

Fig. 142.—Zizim, who had been kept a prisoner at Rhodes, to which he had fled after his defeat, and had afterwards been transferred to Rome, is handed over to Charles VIII., King of France.“Description of the Siege of the Island of Rhodes,” by G. Caoursin (Ulm, 1496: Gothic folio).—Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.

Fig. 142.—Zizim, who had been kept a prisoner at Rhodes, to which he had fled after his defeat, and had afterwards been transferred to Rome, is handed over to Charles VIII., King of France.

“Description of the Siege of the Island of Rhodes,” by G. Caoursin (Ulm, 1496: Gothic folio).—Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.

In 1522, Sultan Soliman II., surnamed the Magnificent, discovered amidst his father’s archives an exact account of the island of Rhodes, and resolved to attack it. He put forward, as a pretext, a desire to punish the knights of the order for the losses they were daily inflicting on the Turkish navy, and the hope of paralyzing their efforts in favour of the Holy Land. The treachery of André Amaral, the chancellor of the order and the grand prior of Castile, who wished to revenge himself on his brother knights for having preferred to himself as their grand master, Philippe deVilliers de l’Ile-Adam, made Soliman aware of the scanty material resources of the island, and persuaded him to undertake the fatal siege, in which treachery and deceit were his most powerful allies. In vain did he collect a fleet of four hundred sail, an army of one hundred and forty thousand men and sixty thousand pioneers; in vain he swept the ramparts with the fire of his guns, in vain he dug ditch after ditch, mine upon mine, and endeavoured to wear out the besieged by his harassing and ceaseless attacks. His want of success would have certainly exhausted his patience, and he would probably have raised the siege had not the traitor Amaral revealed to him the weak condition of both the town and its garrison. At last, however, on the 30th of November, the Turks made what was supposed to be their final effort. They penetrated as far as the inner defences, and the struggle was a terrible one. Roused by the tocsin, the grand master, the knights, and the inhabitants poured on to the ramparts and threw themselves on the enemy, who had already deemed themselves successful, and forced them to retreat.

Grieved and discouraged by this final check, Soliman proposed a capitulation. He threw letters into the town exhorting the inhabitants to yield, and threatening them with the utmost severities if they persisted in a useless resistance. At first Villiers de l’Ile-Adam made answer that he only treated with infidels sword in hand; but he had to give way to the urgent remonstrances of the principal inhabitants, who showed a determination to take at all hazards measures to ensure the honour and the lives of their wives and their children. The sultan having hung out a white flag, the grand master did the same, and demanded a truce of three days to draw up the capitulation. But Soliman, fearing lest assistance might arrive in the interval, rejected this proposal, and ordered a fresh assault. The knights of Rhodes, reduced to a mere handful, and having only the barbican of the Spanish bastion left to protect them, obliged the enemy once more to retire. On the morrow, however, another attack of the Turks drove the defenders of the bastion back into the town, and the terror-stricken inhabitants implored the grand master to resume negotiations. Achmet, Soliman’s minister, who knew how impatiently his master desired the end of the war, obtained at last the surrender of Rhodes on terms so honourable and so advantageous to its defenders, that they spoke volumes for the esteem with which the conquered had inspired their conquerors. The knights, to the number of four thousand, abandoned the island under the guidance of theirgrand master, Villiers; after touching at Candia and Sicily, they finally settled at Malta, which was ceded to them by Charles V., and which became the definitive residence of the order. This was in 1530.

Fig. 143.—Barracks of the Knights of Rhodes. State of the Ruins in 1828.—From “Monuments of Rhodes.”

Thirty-five years later, at the end of Soliman II.’s reign, the Turks once more attacked the order under the pretext of avenging the capture of a galliot laden with costly merchandise, the property of the sultana; and Mustapha, Pasha of Buda, a brave officer, the general of the Ottoman army, landed on the island on the 18th of May, 1565. After a few skirmishes the Turks made a fierce attack on Fort St. Elmo, and captured it in spite of the brave defence of the Knights of Malta (the new title of the members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem)—a defence which lasted twenty-four days, and cost the lives of four thousand of the assailants, amongst them that of the famous pirate Dragut, the vice-sultan of Tripoli. The fort of St. Michael, and the suburb of that name, were reduced to ashes by the fire of the enemy; and it was only the invincible courage of the grand master, Jean de la Valette, and of a small number of his knights, all to the last man prepared to die for their faith—even after more than two thousand of them had already perished—that still enabled Malta to hold out.

Fortunately, Don Garcias de Toledo, the viceroy of Sicily, came with sixty galleys to their assistance. During the four months of the siege the Turkish forces fired seventy-eight thousand rounds of artillery, and lost fifteen thousand soldiers and eight thousand sailors.

Fig. 144.—The French Priory at Rhodes (Fifteenth Century).—State of the Ruins in 1828.

The knights of the order had on their side to deplore the loss of more than three thousand of their brethren. Their grand master decreed that annually, on the eve of the festival of Our Lady of September, prayers should be offered up in all the churches of the order, thanking God for the providential succours which had delivered the besieged, and that on the preceding day a commemorative service should be celebrated in honour of those who had fallen in defence of the faith.

Henceforward neither the town nor the island, which remained the head quarters of the order, was again disturbed by the Turks, and Jean de la Valette built a new city in Malta, which was called Valetta, after him.

The members of the Order of Malta were divided into three classes: the knights, the chaplains, and the serving brothers. The first comprised those whose noble birth and previous rank in other armies marked them out for military service. The second consisted of priests, and ecclesiastics who performed all the ordinary religious duties, and who acted as almoners in time of war. The last were neither nobles nor ecclesiastics; and all that was necessary to admit an individual to this class, was for him to prove that he was born of respectable parents, who had never exercised any handicraft. The serving brothers were distinguished at a later period by a coat-of-arms of a different colour to that of the knights. The aspirants were termeddouatsordemi-croix. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem had merely a nominal existence in the statutes of the Order of Malta, although the knights of the latter, on their reception into the order, were still termed “servants of the sick and needy.” For a long time there existed in Spain, Lady Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who devoted themselves to hospital work and deeds of charity (Fig. 145). Every country in Europe furnished its quota to the Order of Malta, which had entirely replaced that of St. John, and was divided into eight different tongues or nations, each under the direction of a grand prior, viz., Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, Germany, Castile, and England. These national grand priors were termedpiliers, ormonastic bailiffs. Each nation was subdivided into a number of lesser commands, to hold one of which was equivalent to holding an ecclesiastical benefice, and which were subordinate to their grand prior alone.

Fig. 145.—Tomb of Beatrix Cornel, Prioress of the Lady Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, in the Convent of Sigena, in Aragon (Fifteenth Century).—From the “Iconografia Española” of M.] Carderera.

The regular dress of the order consisted, in each nation, of a black robe, with a pointed cape of the same colour; on the left sleeve of each robe wasa cross of white linen having eight points, typical of the eight beatitudes they were always supposed to possess, and which, according to a MS. preserved in the library of the Arsenal, were:—1, spiritual contentment; 2, a life free from malice; 3, repentance for sins; 4, meekness under suffering; 5, a love of justice; 6, a merciful disposition; 7, sincerity and frankness of heart; and 8, a capability of enduring persecution. At a later period the regulations became less austere, and permitted the knights to wear an octagonal golden cross inlaid with white enamel, and suspended from the breast with black ribbon.

A candidate for the robe of St. John of Jerusalem was obliged to present himself at the high altar, clad in a long gown without girdle, in order to denote that he was free from all other vows, and with a taper in his hand. The knight assessor then handed him a gilt sword, saying, “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” to remind him that henceforth it would be his duty to devote his life to the defence of religion. A girdle was then fastened round his waist, to signify that he was bound for the future by the vows of the order. The professing knight then brandished the sword round his head, in token of defiance of the unbelievers, and returned it to its scabbard, first passing it under his arm as if to wipe it, as a symbol that he intended to preserve it free from stain. The knight who received his vows then placed his hand on his shoulder, exhorted him to succour the poor of Jesus Christ, to undertake works of charity, and to devote himself to the welfare of the faith. The new knight having promised to observe these exhortations, golden spurs were placed on his heels as emblems that he was bound to fly wherever honour called him, and to trample under his feet the riches of this world. His taper was then lighted and he continued to hold it during the celebration of a mass, and while a preacher passed in review the rules which should bind, and the duties which should sway a true knight. He was then asked if he was in debt, if he was married or betrothed, if he already belonged to any other religious order, and, finally, if he really and sincerely desired to belong to the Order of St. John. If he answered these questions in a satisfactory manner, he was admitted into the brotherhood, and led up to the high altar. There he pronounced the oath upon the missal, and was declared formally invested with the privileges granted to the order by the pontificate. He was told that henceforward he must daily recite fifty paters, fifty aves, the service of the Virgin, the burial service, and several prayers for the repose of the souls of departed knights companions.Whilst he was donning the dress of the order he was further instructed in his duties. As he put his arms through his sleeves he was reminded of the obedience he owed to his superiors; as the white cross was being adjusted next his heart, he was told that he must be always ready to shed his blood for Christ, who by his own death had redeemed mankind. All the insignia of the Order of Malta were symbols. The pointed black mantle with its peaked cape, worn only on occasions of solemn ceremony, was typical of the robe of camel’s hair worn by John the Baptist, the patron of the order. The cords which fastened the mantle about the neck, and fell over the shoulder, were significant of the passion our Saviour suffered with such calmness and resignation. In time of battle the members of the order wore a red doublet embroidered with the eight-pointed cross.

About twenty years after the first establishment of the Hospitallers, Hugues de Payens, and Geoffrey de Saint-Aldemar, having crossed the seas with nine other nobles, all of French birth, obtained from the patriarch Guarimond, and from Baldwin II., King of Jerusalem, permission to form an association, the objects of which were to act in concert with the Hospitallers against the infidels, to protect pilgrims, and to defend Solomon’s Temple. Baldwin granted them a dwelling within the Temple walls, a circumstance which gave them the name ofTemplars, orKnights of the Temple. At first they led a simple and regular life, contenting themselves with the humble title ofpoor soldiers of Jesus Christ. Their charity and their devotion obtained for them the sympathy of the kings of Jerusalem and the Eastern Christians, who made them frequent and considerable donations.

In the first nine years of their existence, from 1118 to 1127, the Templars admitted no strangers into their ranks; but their number having nevertheless considerably increased, they soon preferred a request to the Holy See to ratify the institution of their order. At the Council of Troyes, in 1228, Hugues de Payens, accompanied with five of his companions, presented the letters that the brotherhood had received from the pope and the patriarch of Jerusalem, together with the certificate of the founding of their order. Cardinal Matthew, Bishop of Alba, who presided over the council as the pope’s legate, granted them an authentic confirmation of their order, and a special code was drawn up for them under the guidance of St. Bernard.

The Templars were bound to go to mass three times a week, and to communicate thrice a year; they wore a white robe symbolical of purity, to which Pope Eugenius III. added a red cross, to remind them of their oath to be always ready to shed their blood in defence of the Christian religion. Their rules were of great austerity; they prescribed perpetual exile, and war for the holy places to the death. The knights were to accept every combat, however outnumbered they might be, to ask no quarter, and to give no ransom. However irksome might prove the observance of these regulations, they were not allowed to escape them by entering the ranks of a less austere order.

Fig. 146.—Knight of Malta.

Fig. 147.—Templar in Travelling Dress.Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in his work entitled “Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus;” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.

Fig. 147.—Templar in Travelling Dress.

Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in his work entitled “Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus;” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.

The unbelievers dreaded no enemy so much as these poor soldiers of Christ, of whom it was said that they possessed the gentleness of the lamb and the patience of the hermit, united to the courage of the hero and the strength of the lion. Their standard, termedBeaucéant, was half black and half white, and inscribed with these words:Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.[12]

According to the rules of St. Bernard, the Order of the Temple was composed ofmilites, or knights commanders, of serving brothers, calledarmigeri, or men bearing arms, and ofclientes, or clients, whose duty it was to attend to domestic matters. Their oaths were similar to those of St. John of Jerusalem. They swore to live in chastity, poverty, and obedience. Some of their number obtained permission to marry, but on condition of their no longer wearing the white dress, and of their bequeathing a portion of their property to the order. The distinctive mark of the Templars was, according to some, a broad red patriarchal cross; according to others, a red Maltese cross embroidered with gold. As they all made public profession of extreme poverty, they were forbidden to use valuable articles of furniture, or gold or silver utensils; to wear velvet trappings in the field, helmets with armorial bearings, silken sashes, or other superfluous articles of clothing; and they were only permitted to wear an under doublet of white wool.

The Order of the Temple had only been established fifty years when its knights held at Jerusalem its first general chapter, attended by three hundred gentlemen, and as many serving brothers, most of whom were French. The chapter elected a grand master, Gérard de Rederfort, and in so doing freed themselves from the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Jerusalem. The new grand master transferred the seat of the order to St. Jean d’Acre, and manifested the prowess of his knights on several occasions against the troops of Saladin, who attempted shortly afterwards to capture the town, but who was obliged to abandon the task.

The resources of the Knights Templars increased, in a very short space, in such a remarkable manner, by donations and legacies, that some historians declare that the revenue of the order amounted to four and a half millions sterling; others merely observe that the Templars possessed enormous wealth in Christendom, one item being nine thousand houses. In 1129 they already had several establishments in the Low Countries; six years later the King of Navarre and of Aragon, Alphonso I., bequeathed his states to the order; but it was with great difficulty that the knights obtained possession of even a few of his towns. At that time, however, they possessed seventeen strongholds in the kingdom of Valencia. In their quarters in London were deposited most of the treasures of the English crown, and King Philip Augustus, on the eve of his departure for the Holy Land, entrusted them with the care of his jewels and archives.

Fig. 148.—The Earthern Vase, on one side of which is seen, between two fleurs-de-lis, the figure of St. Paul bitten by a serpent, bears a Latin inscription signifying, “In the name of St. Paul, and by this stone, thou shalt drive out poison.” On the other side is engraved in relief the cross of the Temple, between a sword and a serpent. Another Vase bears the head of a saint and a sword, and is surrounded by venomous animals and herbs. On the Medal is represented a dragon with an Italian legend signifying, “The grace of St. Paul is proof against any poison.” These objects were found in 1863 at Florence, on the site of the old Church of the Templars, dedicated to St. Paul.—Collection of M. Gancia.

The Templars were magnificent soldiers, and the annals of the Crusades are full of their feats of arms. Few knights acquired the fame they did in their expeditions across the seas; though always inferior in number to the infidel, who held them in greater fear than the Crusaders, they almost always defeated them. The defence of Gaza, the battle of Tiberias, the capture ofDamietta, and the Egyptian Crusade, are all splendid attestations of their courage and prowess.

The Templars in time reached the summit of their fortunes, the height of their prosperity and their fame, and nothing was left to them but to decay. Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave them almost sovereign power, the only judges they recognised were the pope and themselves. The order at last became so demoralised by luxury and idleness that it forgot the aim for which it was founded, disdained to obey its own rules, and gave itself up to the love of gain and thirst for pleasure. Its covetousness and pride soon became boundless. The knights pretended that they were above the reach of even crowned heads: they seized and pillaged without concern the property of both infidels and Christians.

Their jealousy of the Knights Hospitallers induced them to interfere with a man of position, a vassal of the Order of St. John, and to drive him from a castle he possessed in the neighbourhood of their establishment at Margat. This caused a violent quarrel between the two orders, which soon became a permanent struggle for supremacy. The pope wrote to the grand masters of both orders to exhort them to re-establish peace and good-will, and to forget their mutual rancour, so dangerous for Christendom and so fatal to the interests of the Holy Land. An apparent truce took place between them; but the Templars had not forgotten their hatred, and they lost no opportunity of showing it to the knights of St. John. Moreover, they no longer cared to support the holy cause that had led to the birth of their order. They signed a treaty of alliance with the Old Man of the Mountain, the leader of the sect of the Assassins or Ishmaelites, the most implacable enemies of the cross; they allowed him, on condition of paying tribute, to fortify himself in Lebanon; they made war against the king of Cyprus and the prince of Antioch; ravaged Thrace and Greece, where the Christian nobles had founded principalities, marquisates, and baronies; took Athens by storm, and massacred Robert de Brienne, its duke.

In short, the consciousness of their strength, of their wealth, and of their power, inspired the Templars with an audacity that nothing could restrain. Their pride, which had become proverbial, was particularly offensive. Their belief and their morals were very far from orthodox, and even in 1273, Pope Gregory X. had thought of fusing their order in that of the Hospitallers. In the beginning of the following century, Philippe le Bel, King of France,received weighty accusations against them of most serious offences, accusations that were generally believed to be true, and consulted Pope Clement V. on the subject. Clement at first declared the crimes with which they were accused to be altogether improbable, but the grand master having insisted on a rigorous inquiry, the pope wrote to the king for the details of his information. Philippe le Bel wished to decide the matter himself, and proceeded to arrest all the Templars within his jurisdiction, amongst them their grand master, Jacques de Molai, who had just returned from Cyprus.

Fig. 149.—Seal of the Knights of Christ (Thirteenth Century).—Early Device of the Order of Templars, representing two knights on one horse.

One hundred and forty knights were examined in Paris, and all but three confessed that the order practised a secret initiation, in which the aspirants were bound to deny Christ, and spit upon the cross; and that, moreover, immoral customs were practised amongst them. Many of them also confessed that they had committed acts of idolatry. A learned contemporary writer, De Wilcke, a German protestant clergyman, has epitomized the researches of two of his co-religionists—Moldenhawer, who discovered in the National Library in Paris the original records of the examination, and Munster, who found in the library of the Vatican the original notes of the proceedings that took place in England. This is De Wilcke’s conclusion: “The two facts of the denial of Christ and the spitting on the cross are attested by all the witnesses who were examined, with one or two exceptions.”

In spite of the scandal caused by these confessions, Pope Clement V. urgently protested against Philippe’s course of action, and represented to him that the Templars were a religious body, under the control of the Holy See alone, that the king was consequently wrong to make himself their judge, and that he had no authority over either their possessions or their persons.

Philippe unwillingly yielded to the pope’s remonstrances, and the pontiffhimself examined seventy-two Templars, whose confessions tallied with the avowals made in the first instance at Paris.

An inquiry was instituted in England, in Italy, in Spain, and in Germany. The answers extracted in the course of the different examinations were not exactly coincident, but the confessions of impiety and immorality were very numerous, except in Spain. The Aragonese Templars took up arms and held themselves on the defensive in their fortresses; they were however, conquered by King James II., and thrown into prison as rebels. The Templars of Castile were arrested, tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal, and declared innocent.

Fig. 150.—Council of Vienne.—Fresco executed in the Vatican Library by order of Pope Pius V. (Sixteenth Century).

The pope acknowledged the existence of serious irregularities amongst the knights of the order, but persisted in reserving to himself the right to pronounce a final decision. He, however, instructed every bishop in the Christian world to investigate the cases within his own diocese, and to absolve the innocent, and condemn the guilty Templars according to the utmost rigour of the law.

The provincial council of Paris handed over the contumacious to the secular authorities; fifty-nine of the guilty knights were burnt in that city at the back of the abbey of St. Antoine. A second council, at Senlis, in a similar manner delivered nine Templars to the mercies of the secular judge, who sentenced them to be burnt at the stake. It is said that the culprits retracted their confession on the scaffold, and died protesting their innocence. As soon as the commissioners appointed by the pope were informed of these executions they suspended their sittings, declaring that the terror inspired by these capital penalties deprived the prisoners of the tranquillity of mind necessary to their defence. They further requested the council of Paris to act with more deliberation.

When Pope Clement V. had obtained all the necessary information he convoked the council of Vienne (Fig. 150), and there, on the 22nd of March, 1312, pronounced his decision, which rather absolved than condemned the order, and placed their persons and their property at his disposal and at that of the Church. In Spain and in Portugal, this property was applied to the defence of the Christians against the constant attacks of the Saracens and the Moors (Fig. 151); but the greater portion of the possessions of the Templars, and particularly those they held in France, was transferred to the keeping of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who continued to devote themselves to the cause of the holy places, and kept up the good works to perform which the Templars had received so many and such costly donations.

The serious abuses and crimes which caused the suppression of the order had not fortunately vitiated the whole of its members: most of the Templars were set at liberty, many of them, preserving their former rank, enrolled themselves in the Order of St. John. In this wise, as is pointed out by Wilcke, Albert de Blacas, prior of Aix, obtained the commandership of Saint-Maurice, as prior of the Hospitallers; and Frederick, grand prior of Lower Germany, retained the title in the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Fig. 151.—Our Lady of Grace sheltering under the folds of her mantle the first Grand Masters of the Military Order of Montessa. This order was established in Spain in 1317 by James II., King of Aragon, with the approval of John XXII., as a substitute for the Order of the Temple, with whose possessions it was endowed.—From a Painting on Wood of the Fifteenth Century, held in veneration in the Church of the Temple, at Valencia; and from the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.

The pope had specially reserved his judgment in the case of the grand master, Jacques de Molai, in that of the Visitor of France, and in those of the commanders of Guyenne and of Normandy. Several cardinals-legate, with some French bishops and doctors of the University of Paris, constituted the tribunal which was to pass the sentence in the name of the pontiff. After satisfying themselves that these four eminent knights had repeated their avowals before a second commission, the members of the tribunal,convinced of their guilt, caused a scaffold to be erected in front of Notre-Dame, and there, on Monday, March 18th, 1314, the four Templars were publicly condemned to imprisonment for life. On the scaffold the grand master and one of the others recanted their confession of guilt and protested their innocence. The cardinals, surprised at this recantation, committed the prisoners to the care of the provost of Paris, with orders to bring them before them the next day, when the tribunal had had time to deliberateon this fresh incident. But Philippe le Bel, learning what was taking place, hurriedly assembled his council, and had the grand master, and the other Templar who had similarly persisted in denying his twice-avowed guilt, burnt alive the same night. They underwent this horrible torture protesting their innocence to the last. The two remaining knights who had acknowledged their guilt were kept for some time in prison, but were afterwards set at liberty.

Fig. 152.—Surrender of the Town of Montefrio, near Granada, in 1486. The alcids and Moorish chiefs, after the siege, delivering the keys of the town to Ferdinand the Catholic and Queen Isabella.—Bas-relief on the stalls of the choir of the high altar of the cathedral, carved in wood in the Sixteenth Century.

Other orders of knighthood, having more or less of a religious character, were founded in the Middle Ages, or during the Renaissance period: the principal were, in Spain, the Order of the Knights of Calatrava; in Germany, the Order of the Teuton Knights; the Order of the Golden Fleece in the Low Countries, in Spain, and in Austria; that of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in Savoy; that of St. Stephen in Tuscany; and in France, those of St. Michael and of the Holy Ghost, which were merely honorary orders, although the first Order of the Holy Ghost, founded in 1352 by Louis d’Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, had for its object the re-establishmentof an essentially military knighthood, as a means for bringing about a new crusade.

The Knights of Calatrava, on whom their founder, Don Raymond, Abbot of Citeaux, imposed the regulations of his own monastery, distinguished themselves by many brilliant feats of arms, particularly against the Moors of Spain and Africa (Fig. 152); and the princes in whose cause they had fought in these wars—termed, like the Crusades in the East, holy—granted them large possessions and considerable privileges. They were bound by a triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, and, like the Templars, wore a red cross embroidered on a white mantle. From the days of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, the sovereigns of Spain have always been the grand masters of this order, which acquired and long retained a considerable amount of importance, even when it had ceased to signify anything but an indication of nobility. The order of Alcantara, which had a similar origin to that of Calatrava, ran a like career and was in like manner doomed to decay. Spain, too, was the only country that possessed a military order for ladies. After the heroic defence of Placentia against the English by the women of that city in 1390, John I., the sovereign of Castile, created in their honour the order of the Ladies of the Sash, which was united at a later period to the Order of the Belt, founded in the fourteenth century to do battle against the Moors.

The Teutonic Knights, whose order had been founded in 1128, at Jerusalem, by the German Crusaders, obeyed the rules of St. Augustin. They were subject beside to special statutes somewhat similar to those of the Knights of St. John and of the Temple, whose privileges they also enjoyed. Their first grand master, Henri Walpot, established his residence near St. Jean d’Acre.

This order was divided, like that of St. John, into knights, chaplains, and serving brethren. Its members wore a white mantle with a rather broad black cross, picked out with silver, on the left sleeve. To gain admission into the order it was necessary for the candidate to be over fifteen years of age, and to be of a strong, robust build, in order to resist the fatigues of war. Its knights, bound by a vow of chastity, were expected to avoid all intercourse with women; they were not even allowed to give their own mothers a filial kiss when they saluted them. They possessed no individual property; they always left their cell doors open, so that everybody might see what they were doing. Their arms were free from both gold and silver ornaments, and for a long period they spent their lives in great humility. Their most celebratedgrand master, Hermann de Salza, received in 1210, from Pope Honorius III. and the Emperor Frederick II., whom he had reconciled, large possessions and high honours.

The Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, and in 1283 became masters of the whole territory between the Vistula and the Niemen. In 1309 they abandoned Venice, where, twenty years earlier, their grand master had fixed his ordinary residence, and selected Marienburg as their head-quarters. At that date the order had reached the culminating point of its prosperity, and its sway in Germany had the most fortunate results for Prussia. But luxury soon began to undermine the religious faith of the knights; and internal struggles, caused by the elections of their grand masters, introduced fresh elements of decay into their organization.

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