18 DECEMBER 1841, Page 13

SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Hrteronv„ The History of the Knights-Templars. the Temple Church, and the Temple. By

Charles G. Addison, Esq., of the Inner Temple Longman and Co.

BIOGRAPHY,

Letters of David Hume, and Extracts from Letters referring to him. Edited by Thomas Murray, LL.D., Author of The Literary History of Galloway."

Black, Edinburgh.

Tirevtra,

Rambles in Ceylon. By Lieutenant De Butts Allen and Co. Fromm,

Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon. Edited by Harry Lorrequer. With Illustra-

tions by Phis. In two volumes Curry and Co., ADDISON'S KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.

THE chivalrous courage of the Knights-Templars, and the remote scene in which it was displayed—the mixture in their singular order of the soldier and the priest—the mysterious accusations against them, the sudden destruction of their body when in apparent vigour, and the cruel fate of the Templar chiefs— possess the elements of romance in the highest degree ; of which poets and novelists have not been slow to avail themselves. Popular literature has thus added a deeper interest to that which was in its own nature mysterious or romantic, but at the expense of accurate knowledge. A good history of the Knights-Templars is still a desideratum in literature ; although a series of public documents, and many contemporary historians, Greek, Latin, and Oriental, furnish materials for a copious view of their character and career.

The order of the Templars originated in the commencement of the twelfth century : long before its close they had reached the acme of their reputation and power; both of which immediately began to decline. After various vicissitudes of fortune, in which the ill predominated, Acre, the last Christian fortress in Palestine, was wrested from the military orders, in 1201. In 1308 PHILIP of France began his persecutions of the Templars; and in 1312 their existence was formally abolished by the Pepe. The sudden rise and the sudden fall of the Templars are not an anomaly, but natural. At their first institution they were not only useful but necessary. The " phrensy of the Crusades," or to speak more truly, the eager awakening of the European mind, taking a religious direction on its first excited outbreak, poured myriads of pilgrims upon Palestine. But the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem was a nominal kingdom ; the bulk of the population was foreign ; several strongholds of a strong country were in hostile hands, and the territory was surrounded by the armies of the Caliph or the predatory hordes of the Bedouin. The establishment of an order was hailed with enthusiasm, which flattered the prejudices and promised to supply a pressing want of mankind, by undertaking the defence of the Temple and the Sepulchre, as well as the protection of the devotees who thronged to Jerusalem. But the Templars were not only useful by protecting from the Infidels the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, and that in the mode of a spiritual knight-errantry, or mounted police. It may be questioned whether the profoundest policy could have framed an institution better adapted to the occupation and defence of Pales- tine. The mass of surviving Crusaders never settled in the coun- try; it was still possessed by the original inhabitants ; so that no native force could have been raised for its defence. No secular power, much less the petty princes who remained in the Holy Land, could have raised a regular army from Europe. But this was easy to the Templars. The example of the Rornish Church gave the corporation a received mode of acquiring im- mense wealth in every Christian country ; the military character of the institution opened its ranks to the most fiery spirits, without depriving it of the gifts of the feeblest and most devout ; celibacy secured its members from individual or family objects ; and the vow of " obedience " was a means of discipline which no other army of that time could make the least approach to. Whilst the head-quarters of the order were in Palestine, its different estates and establishments throughout Christendom were fiscal treasuries and military depots, whence money and soldiers were regularly supplied to Palestine. So well did their institution harmonize with the feelings and wants of the times, and so rapidly did they increase in wealth as well as repute, that some have estimated their annual income at six millions ster- ling !—a preposterous if not an impossible amount. MATTHEW PARIS, with more probability, fixes the number of their manors or lordships in Christendom at nine thousand, besides a casual but large revenue arising from the gifts of the pious. The Popes granted them many spiritual privileges—such as freedom from clerical domination, and power of providing their own priests independent of any authority short of the Pope himself; and many temporal advantages—such as freedom from tithes, and the power of holding that species of property. Monarchs be- stowed upon them, and the tenants of their estates, various secular privileges. In England, they had power to hold courts, to impose and levy fines and amercements upon their tenants, to judge and punish their villeins and vassals, and to try thieves and malefactors belonging to their manors and taken within the precincts thereof. They were also relieved from royal and sheriff's aids, from toll in all markets and fairs, and upon all bridges and bifhways, as well as from different feudal burdens. Besides these things, " Sir Edward Coke observes, that the Templars were freed from tenths and fifteenths to be paid to the King ; that they were discharged of purveyance ; that they could not be sued for any ecclesiastical cause before the ordinary, Ised corms conservator:7ms suorum privilegiorum ; and that of ancient time they claimed that a felon might take to their houses, haying their crosses for lus safety, as well as to any church. And concerning these conservers or keepers of their privileges he remarks, that the Templars and Hospitallers ' held an ecclesiastical court before a canonist, whom they termed conservator privilegio- rum suorum, which judge had indeed more authority than was convenient, and did dayly, in respect of the height of these two orders, and at their instance and direction, encroach upon and hold plea of matters determinable by the common law, for cui plus licet guam par eat, plus vult quam licet ; and this was one great misehiefe. Another mischiefe was, that this judge, likewise at their instance, in cases wherein he had jurisdiction, would make general citations, as pro salute anima and the like, without expressing the matter whereupon the citation was made ; which also was against law, and tended to the grievous vex- ation of the subject.'"

Wealthy, privileged, and powerful, and combining in themselves the consideration paid to the sole principles of their age, arms, knighthood, and religion, the ranks of the Templars were con- stantly recruited by the scions of the aristocracy : for it is a trait of the upper classes, and perhaps of human nature, to neglect every thing whilst its success is doubtful, and to fasten themselves upon it as soon as credit or profit is to be gotten. The conse- quence, as may be readily supposed, was corruption. " Pride " was the characteristic vice imputed to the Templars by a monarch

who knew them in their efflorescent state. Seca; in his notes to Ivanhoe, charges them with "copying closely the luxuries of the Asiatic warriors," but adduces no authority whatever for his charge ; and writers in general have assumed their dissoluteness. That their vow of chastity was always kept by the younger spirits of the order, is not probable, when the notorious con- duct of contemporary priesthood is considered : that, in com- pliance with the rules of their Order, "none of the brethren fol- lowed the sport of catching one bird with another," or "pre- sumed to go forth with a man following such diversions," or "ventured to shoot in the woods," and so forth, is very unlikely : ambition or love of enterprise may have prompted the professions of many, and the hopes of remaining idly and luxuriously at home of some, though their history contradicts this last supposition. For, as GIBBON remarks, "in their most dissolute period, the Knights of the Hospital and Temple maintained their fearless and fanatic character ; they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die, in the service of Christ." Constantly trained to arms, experienced in the warfare of the country, and yielding implicit submission to their Superior, less as soldiers than as vowed monks, and attended by a body of professing or paid followers, the Templars formed the flower of the Christian forces. As circumstances required, they led the assault, restored the conflict, decided the victory, or covered the retreat. We believe no stain of cowardice, no suspicion of apostacy, rests upon the Order. Wherever impatience or cupidity broke the ranks to pursue too early or to plunder, or fear impelled to flight, or treachery deserted with contrivance and purpose, there the Templars sustaiued the combat, till the action was restored, the retreat insured, or their lives or liberties lost. And if secret scep- ticism obtained in the Order, whenever the stern alternative to the captive Templar was Mahornetanism or death, the point of honour led him to choose the grave. At the battle fought near Jacob's Ford, on the river Jordan, the whole of the Templars present were killed or taken prisoners; a similar event befel the Order at the battle of Tiberias; and when SALA DIN after a series of suc- cesses marched upon Jerusalem, two knights and a few serving brethren alone remained to defend the city and the Temple. When Europe, stung with these disasters, poured forth another crusade, the Templars, at the battle before Acre, which the Chris- tians were besieging, upheld the fight with the loss of more than half their number; in the attack upon Gaza, during the Carizmian invasion, only thirty-three Templars escaped ; and when, after barren victories and losses which European enthusiasm would no longer replace, they were driven to Acre, the Templars and Hos- pitallers persisted to the last, though a safe retreat was open and no hope existed of saving the place.

"William de Beaujeu, the Grand Master of the Temple, a veteran warrior of a hundred fights, took the command of the garrison, which amounted to about twelve thousand men, exclusive of the forces of the Temple and the Hospital, and a body of five hundred foot and two hundred horse, under the command of the King of Cyprus. These forces were distributed along the walls in four divisions ; the first of which was commanded by Hugh De Grandi- son, an English knight. The old and the feeble, women and children, were sent as ay by sea to the Christian island of Cyprus ; and none remained in the devoted city but those who were prepared to fight in its defence or to suffer martyrdom at the hands of the Infidels. The siege lasted six weeks ; during the whole of which period the sallies and the attacks were incessant. Neither by night nor by day did the shouts of the assailants and the noise of the military engines cease ; the walls were battered from without, and the foundations were sapped by miners, who were incessantly labouring to advance their works. More than six hundred catapults, balistw, and other instruments of destruction, were di- rected against the fortifications; and the battering-machines were of such im- mense size and weight, that a hundred waggons were required to transport the separate timbers of one of them. Moveable towers were erected by the Mos- lems, so as to overtop the walls; their workmen and advanced parties were protected by hurdles covered with raw hides ; and all the military contrivances which the art and the skill of the age could produce were used to facilitate the assault. For a long time their utmost efforts were foiled by the valour of the besieged ; who made constant sallies upon their works, burnt their towers and machines, and destroyed their miners. Day by day, however, the numbers of the garrison were thinned by the sword, whilst in the enemy's camp the places of the dead were constantly supplied by fresh warriors from the deserts of Arabia, animated with the same wild fanaticism in the cease of their religion as that which so eminently distinguished the military monks of the Temple. On the 4th May, after thirty-three days of constant lighting, the great tower, considered the key of the fortifications, and called by the Moslems the cursed tower, was thrown down by the military engines. To increase the terror and distraction of the besieged, Sultan Khalil mounted three hundred drummers with their drums upon as many dromedaries, and commanded them to make as much noise as possible whenever a general assault was ordered. From the 4th to the

14th May, the attacks were incessant. On the 15th, the double wall was forced ; and the King of Cyprus, panic-stricken, fled in the night to his ships, and made sail for the island of Cyprus with all his followers, and with near three thousand of the best men of the garrison. On the morrow, the Saracens at- tacked the post he had deserted: they filled up the ditch with the bodies of dead men and horses, piles of wood, stones, and earth; and their trumpets then sounded to the assault. Ranged under the yellow banner of Mahomet, the Mamlooks forced the breach, and penetrated sword in hand to the very centre of the city : but their victorious career and insulting shouts were there stopped by the mail-clad knights of the Temple and the Hospital, who charged on horseback through the narrow streets, drove them back with immense carnage, and precipitated them headlong from the walls.

"At sunrise the following morning, the air resounded with the deafening noise of drums and trumpets ; and the breach was carried and recovered several times; the military friars at last closing up the passage with their bodies, and presenting a wall of steel to the advance of the enemy. Loud appeals to God and to Mahomet, to Heaven and the Saints, were to be heard on all sides ; and after an obstinate engagement from sunrise to sunset, darkness put an end to the slaughter. On the third day (the 18th), the Infidels made the final assault on the side next the gate of St. Anthony. The Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital fought side by side at the head of their knights, and for a time successfully resisted all the efforts of the enemy. They engaged hand to hand with the Mamlooks, and pressed like the meanest of the soldiers into the thick of the battle. But as each knight fell beneath the keen scimitars of the Mos- lems, there were none in reserve to supply his place, whilst the vast hordes of the Infidels pressed on with untiring energy and perseverance. The Marshal of the Hospital fell, covered with wounds; and William de Beaujen, as a last resort, requested the Grand Master of that order to sally out of an adjoining gateway, at the head of five hundred horse, and attack the enemy's rear. Imme- diately after the Grand Master of the Temple had given these orders, he was himself struck down by the darts and the arrows of the enemy ; the panic. stricken garrison fled to the port, and the Infidels rushed on with tremendous shouts of Allah acbar ! Allah acbar (' God is victorious.') Three hundred Templars, the sole survivors of their illustrious order in Acre, were now left alone to withstand the shock of the victorious Mamlooks. In a close and com- pact column they fought their way, accompanied by several hundred Christian fugitives, to the Temple, and shutting their gates, they again bade defiance to the advancing foe."

Their stronghold afforded them a refuge for a few days ; when the Master and a chosen band, bearing the treasures of the Order and ornaments of the Church, sallied out of a secret postern, and reaching the harbour, embarked in a vessel and escaped to Cyprus. The remnant of the band retired into "the Tower of the Master," which they successfully defended against the flower of the Maho- metan army. Finding force unavailing, the Sultan resorted to military art. The place, we are told, was undermined, beams of wood propping the foundations as the workmen advanced ; and when the whole excavation was completed, the wooden pillars were consumed by fire, and the last defenders of the Holy Land were buried in the ruins of their falling tower.

The loss of Palestine induced the downfal of the Order, for which previous circumstances had prepared the way. Their ecclesiastical privileges exasperated the Churchmen; the sovereigns and the nobility looked with an evil eye on the vast possessions which their supersti- tious ancestors had bestowed upon the Order ; men in general, now that the crusading fervour had passed away, begrudged the annual drain of treasure sent to Palestine ; and reflecting minds, who had seen the insolence of the priesthood and the domination of the Popes, might well regard with suspicion an organized and ramified body like the Templars, uniting to a religious character a military force, which the clergy could not command. Had the necessity for their services continued, these things would scarcely have sufficed to cause their ruin, even coupled with their alleged pride, luxury, and irregularities ; for much is always borne from men who supply a tangible want. Could they have retained a footing in Pales- tine, the Templars might still have held their own in Europe ; for the time had not yet arrived when its voluntary abandonment to the Infidels could have been openly recommended. But their enemies turned their failure into a crime, declaring that had they been Christians they would not have lost the Holy Land ; their occasional alliance with Mahometan powers, sometimes against a common enemy, but sometimes for the purposes of temporal con- quest, did not escape animadversion, and FREDERICK the Second had commented upon it as a heavy offence ; whilst, though contain- ing in their institution the germs of an intellectual organ, they never made or seem to have thought of making a regular appeal to popular opinion,—unsupported by which, force falls immediately when opposed to a greater force, or taken at odds. Whether PHILIP the Fair of France in his persecution of the Templars was actuated by policy or stimulated by avarice, is per- haps open to doubt, though the latter is the more probable motive. Having, with the assistance of his creature CLEMENT the Fifth, inveigled the Grand Master into his power, (by wariness or good fortune, the Master of the Hospitallers declined the invitation to consult about the recovery of the Holy Land,) the King arrested him simultaneously with the whole of the brethren in France ; im- mediately despatching an envoy to EDWARD the Second of England to unfold the crimes of the Order, and to urge him to the same conduct ; his efforts being everywhere well seconded by the Pope and the clergy. The charges brought against the Templars were very numerous, but most of them relating to irreligion, or to immo- ralities so absurd or so monstrous as to refute themselves. They were accused, on admission to the Order, or soon afterwards, of denying Christ and the truths of Christianity ; of spitting upon the cross, and otherwise defiling it, and sometimes trampling it under foot. In their assemblies, it was said, they worshiped a cat, a man's skull, and different idols, "some of which had three faces and some one." It was alleged that their members were admitted with a variety of indecent ceremonies ; that they burned the bodies of deceased brethren, and made the ashes into a powder, as a medicine to induce a stedfast belief in their idolatries; and that they were guilty of other_ crimes too disgusting to be al- luded to. An accusation brought against the early Christians was revived against the Templars. They were reported to assemble in a dark ." pit or cave," where they placed an idol covered with an old skin embalmed, and having two carbuncles for eyes. In this cave, women, whom they had seduced to belong to their sect, were present ; and after sacrifice was performed, and the cross trampled upon, the lights were extinguished, and all kinds of impurities followed. If from this intercourse_a son was born, the assembly ranged themselves in a circle, (" un rond,") and threw the infant to one another till it was dead ; when they roasted it, and anointed the idol with its fat. Various other charges related to matters of doctrine ; a few reaching to Deism or Unitarianism, but the majority concerning the more questionable dogmas of the Romish Church.

The, only evidence, beyond the suspicions of certain persons who grounded their conjectures upon hearsay, was extorted by torture. In Paris, one hundred and forty Templars in succes- sion were put to the question ; and thirty-six perished in the hands of the inquisitors, maintaining their innocence to the last. Throughout the kingdom, similar proceedings took place, but not always with the same result. Some sank under the severity of their torments, and made confessions which many subsequently revoked: those who stood to their extorted confessions were absolved and reconciled to the Church ; those who retracted them were convicted of contumacy, and burned to death at slow fires; which, after five and a half years of secret imprisonment and unknown tortures, was the fate of the last Grand Master and the last Grand Preceptor. In England, as long as no torture was applied, not a shadow of any thing like guilt was elicited, though the inquiry was conducted by ecclesiastics without any regard to legal modes of procedure. When the King directed the Sheriffs and others having the custody of the prisoners to deliver them over to the inquisitors to be dealt with according to ecclesiastical usage—that is, tortured—two serving brethren and a chaplain only were induced to confessions; the substance of which was, that they had been made to deny Christ and spit up- on the cross. The main body of the English brethren, indeed, confessed to heresy in having fallen into erroneous notions re- specting the absolving power of the Grand Master : but the master of the Temple (in Fleet Street) persisted in denying that he had been guilty of heresy in pronouncing absolutions ; and remained in close confinement till the abolition of his Order, when he died of :a broken heart. In Spain, Portugal, and Germany, the results were much the same ; nor was a Templar condemned to death in any place beyond the influence of the Pope and PHILIP. Putting aside the charges relating to ecclesiastical discipline or theological niceties, the accusations against the Order are either so monstrous or so absurd and motiveless as to be incredible ; except the existence of Deism. The acquaintance with a variety of reli- gions and with various peoples, to which the service of the Temple introduced its members, might naturally induce a scep- ticism among the more inquiring, or an indifference among the more thoughtless. It is probable that secret infidelity exten- sively prevailed in the Order, though utterly absurd to suppose that they would adopt any methods of formally avowing it. The only trace of credible evidence refers to the point of scepti- cism; one of the witnesses, but after torture, declaring that he had many times heard BRIAN LE JAY, Master of the Temple in London, say "that Jesus Christ was not the true God, but a man," besides a contemptuous speech against the Virgin. There is, how- ever, a mystery over their destruction, which seems only resolvable in the popular belief of guilt of some kind, or a great popular odium. In France the blow was sudden, but everywhere else the armed and organized Templars had some time for resistance ; yet they were arrested, tortured, spoiled, and their order suppressed, without any difficulty. And should the reader think the conclusion un- charitable, in the absence of evidence, let him ask himself, if ED.. WARD the Second had designed the arrest of as many landlords as Knights-Templars, bolding several hundred manors, could the weak-minded and not popular monarch have accomplished his pur- • pose with the same ease and certainty ? The Knights- Templars of Mr. ADDISON will not supersede the necessity for a history of the Order ; not from any deficiency of industry or justness of view, but from a want of the higher qualities of the historian. He appears to have sought after original autho- rities with care, and to have examined them with attention ; and, though leaning to the side of the Templars, he is not a mere parti-an. His style is clear, but deficient in force, and in the marking of characteristic circumstances, unless his originals dis- tinctly present them—as in the extract from the narrative of the siege of Acre. But he wants the grasp and comprehension of the historical mind, the power of condensing many single acts into one illustrative principle, or of dwelling at length upon those larger events which more fully display it ; nor has he the art of arranging his matter so as to produce the strongest impression, or of seizing the different points of his subject. Hence his book is rather a selection of original materials connected by a commentary, than either a popular or a critical history ; and more useful to those who already wish to learn something about the Templars, than likely to stimulate a desire for that knowledge. His account of the Temple Church, &c., although less interesting in itself, except in parts that strictly belong to the history of the Tempters, will perhaps yield greater pleasure to many readers, for there the theme is more level to the mind of the author.