CHAPTER VIII

THE TEMPLARS
The Templars were in no sense of the term a secret society, but so much literature has been composed about the alleged practices for which their order was ultimately dis¬ solved that a short account of the facts of the case will not be out of place.
The Order of the Knights Templars was founded in the year 1 1 1 7 with the object of guarding travellers on pil¬ grimage to the Holy Land. King Baldwin II gave them as quarters in Jerusalem part of a palace built on the site of the Temple of Solomon, hence they took the name of Templars, and the houses of their order in other cities became known as Temples. The rule of the order was drawn up by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The life contemplated by the statutes was a very austere one, excluding all luxury and all worldly pleasure, and in addition the knights pledged themselves to chastity, poverty and obedience. The order consisted at first only of knights, but later serving-brethren (men-at- arms) and chaplains were also admitted. The headquarters were at Jerusalem; then in Acre, when the Christians were expelled from the former city in 1187; and their last home was in Cyprus, when driven from Palestine in 1291. The order became immensely popular, and in consequence immensely powerful and immensely rich. At its head stood the Grand Master, and under him various Masters or Preceptors managed the affairs of the different provinces.
With the accumulation of power, wealth and pride the Templars failed to retain their primitive strictness, and had become feared and envied and hated, while their great possessions were a challenge to the cupidity of all im¬ pecunious rulers. Philip the Fair, king of France, intending
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THE TEMPLARS
53
to make their wealth his own, won over Pope Clement V to his purposes, and invited the Grand Master to visit him in Paris, bringing with him the accumulated money treasure of the Order.
The invitation having been accepted and the Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, having arrived bringing with him the war-funds of the Order, borne on three hundred sumpter mules, Philip proceeded to arrest him and the other French Templars in the year 1307. The ensuing trial of the Order was by Pope Clement’s command extended in the year 1308 into all the countries of Christendom.
Proceedings were dragging out to an interminable length, so in 1312, before the trials were completed, the Pope exercised his spiritual authority and by Bull declared the Order dissolved. Such of its property as escaped royal or ecclesiastical cupidity was given to the Order of Knights Hospitallers.
In 1314 the last Grand Master and several more French Templars were burnt alive in Paris. In England and other countries where the Knights had been found guilty of charges of heresy, imprisonment was the worst penalty inflicted on the culprits; while in Spain no condemnation of an individual Templar, much less of the Order in general, was ever secured.
The charges brought against the Templars were suffi¬ ciently horrible, and the evidence obtained from witnesses under torture sufficiently confirmatory of those charges to blacken the character of the Order through many long centuries; but the consensus of modern opinion agrees in acquitting the Templars as a whole of having fallen into such a state of degeneracy as was alleged by their accusers, while in isolated cases judgment has to be reserved; for it is quite within the bounds of credibility that a local precep- tory or Master may on occasions have become tainted with disgusting immorality or anti-Christian doctrines.
The following account of the charges laid against the Templars and the considerations that ought to weigh in forming our judgment are condensed from the learned analysis and summing up of a skilled lawyer who went
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54 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
carefully through all the evidence of the trial of the Templars which is still preserved in Paris.1
One circumstance laid the Order open to misrepresen¬ tation: the receptions of Templars were held in secret. No good reason why this should have been so was ever suggested at the trial — “their own unaccountable folly” was the best excuse that suggested itself to the champion of the Order in England. However, held in secret they were, usually before dawn, and guards were placed round the chapter- house to prevent the approach of unauthorised persons.
The ceremony itself was innocent enough. The candidate was warned beforehand of the life of hardship and self-denial that awaited him, and on signifying his willingness to proceed was admitted to the chapter-house. Here he had to reply to certain questions put to test his vocation; then he was sworn to poverty, chastity and obedience, and was invested with the mantle of a knight, after which he was kissed by the Receptor and the Chaplain. He had then to listen to a long homily, and to exchange his garments for the habit of the Order.
In the mouths of the accusers of the order this ceremony had degenerated into a denial of God, an insult offered to the Cross, an indecent kiss given to the Receptor, and the commission of a crime against nature.
In addition to these charges levelled by contemporaries a further count has since been preferred against the Templars of being Gnostics, but the first allusion to this is in a work by a learned German orientalist, Count von Hammer, written in 1 8 1 8. The last charge need not detain us, for subsequent scholars have demonstrated that the Gnostic or Ophite heresy of which the Templars were accused had gone out of existence in Syria and the world eight hundred years before their Order was founded; while a glance at the doctrines of the Gnostics will be quite sufficient to show that their conception of the godhead was something quite opposed to the Unitarianism of the Saracens, who are supposed to have taught these pernicious doctrines to the Templars.
1 E. J. Castle, K.C., The Reception of a Templar, 1902; Enquiry into the charge of Gnohcism brought against the Freemasons and Templars, 1 906 ; Proceedings against the Templars, 1907 . All printed in Ars Qualuor Coronalorum.
THE TEMPLARS
55
The contemporary charges, however, cannot be dis¬ missed so certainly. A great many witnesses swore to having personally denied God and to having been forced to spit upon the Cross during their ceremony of reception; that they swore what they did under torture and for the greater part retracted their evidence later must, however, be borne in mind. The prosecution contented itself in the main with securing a conviction on the charge of heresy, and did not press the counts dealing with depravity and idolatry; but on one point only does it seem to have proved its case, which was, that a custom had grown up in the Order for the Knights to confess their faults publicly in Chapter, whereupon the Master would declare them absolved, and this absolution was regarded by them as of equal virtue with that coming from a priest.
The secrecy with which the Templars had invested their proceedings bore its fruit at their trial, when a crowd of their enemies pressed forward to offer testimony based on gossip and hearsay. From such sources came assertions such as the story that Grand Master Bello-Joco being a prisoner of the Saracens obtained his liberty by promising that in all future receptions the Saviour should be denied; that the Templars had a brazen, double-faced head in their possession that replied to all questions; that they wor¬ shipped a cat which appeared at their meetings and addressed them, and so on and so forth. One of the mysterious heads mentioned at the trial was actually found and put in evidence, when it turned out to be the head of a beautiful woman in silver gilt, containing bones, in other words a reliquary, the relics being putatively those of one of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne. This may perhaps be taken as an index to the reliability of the other gossip about the Templars’ idolatry.
It only remains to emphasize that the Order of Knights Templars was thoroughly suppressed, and the stories which make them the progenitors of various societies, both respect¬ able and the reverse, in existence to-day are comparatively recent inventions.