Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

CAMEO XXXIX. THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE. (1292-1316.)

_Kings of England_.

1272. Edward I.

1307. Edward II.

_King of Scotland_.

1306. Robert I.

_Kings of France_.

1285. Philippe IV.

1314. Louis X.

_Emperors of Germany_.

1292. Adolph.

1296. Albert I.

1308. Henry VII.

1314. Louis V.

_Popes_.

1296. Boniface VIII.

1303. Benedict XI.

1305. Clement V.

Crusades were over. The dream of Edward I. had been but a dream, and self-interest and ambition directed the swords of Christian princes against each other rather than against the common foe. The Western Church was lapsing into a state of decay and corruption, from which she was only partially to recover at the cost of disruption and disunion, and the power which the mighty Popes of the twelfth century had gathered into a head became, for that very cause, the tool of an unscrupulous monarch.

The colony of Latins left in Palestine had proved a most unsuccessful experiment; the climate enervated their constitutions; the _poulains_, as those were called who were born in the East, had all the bad qualities of degenerate races, and were the scorn, and derision of Arabs and Europeans alike; nor could the defence have been kept up at all, had it not been for the constant recruits from cooler climates. Adventurous young men tried their swords in the East, banished men there sought to recover their fame, the excommunicate strove to win pardon by his sword, or the forgiven to expiate his past crime; and, besides these irregular aids, the two military and monastic orders of Templars and Hospitallers were constantly fed by supplies of young nobles trained to arms and discipline in the numerous commanderies and preceptories scattered throughout the West.

Admirable as warriors, desperate in battle, offering no ransom but their scarf, these knightly monks were the bulwark of Christendom, and would have been doubly effective save for the bitter jealousies of the two orders against each other, and of both against all other Crusaders. Not a disaster happened in the Holy Land but the treachery of one order or the other was said to have occasioned it; and, on the whole, the greater degree of obloquy seems usually, whether justly or not, to have lighted on the Knights of the Temple. They were the richer and the prouder of the two orders; and as the duties of the hospital were not included in their vows, they neither had the same claims to gratitude, nor the softening influence of the exercise of charity, and were simply stern, hated, dreaded soldiers.

After a desperate siege, Acre fell, in 1292, and the last remnant of the Latin possessions in the East was lost. The Templars and Hospitallers fought with the utmost valor, forgot their feuds in the common danger, and made such a defence that the Mussulmans fancied that, when one Christian died, another came out of his mouth and renewed the conflict; but at last they were overpowered by force of numbers, and were finally buried under the ruins of the Castle of the Templars. The remains of the two orders met in the Island of Cyprus, which belonged to Henry de Lusignan, claimant of the crown of Jerusalem. There they mustered their forces, in the hope of a fresh Crusade; but as time dragged on, and their welcome wore out, they found themselves obliged to seek new quarters. The Knights of the Hospital, true to their vows, won sword in hand the Isle of Rhodes from the Infidel, and prolonged their existence for five centuries longer as a great maritime power, the guardians of the Mediterranean and the terror of the African corsairs. The Knights Templars, in an evil hour for themselves, resolved to spend their time of expectation in their numerous rich commanderies in Europe, where they had no employment but to collect their revenues and keep their swords bright; and it cannot but be supposed that they would thus be tempted into vicious and overbearing habits, while the sight of so formidable a band of warriors, owning no obedience but to their Grand Master and the Pope, must have been alarming to the sovereign of the country. Still there are no tokens of their having disturbed the peace during the twenty-two years that their exile lasted, and it was the violence of a king and the truckling of a pope that effected their ruin.

Philippe IV., the pest of France, had used his power over the French clergy to misuse and persecute the fierce old pontiff, Boniface VIII., and it was no fault of Philippe that the murder of Becket was not parodied at Anagni. Fortunately for the malevolent designs of the King, his messengers quailed, and contented themselves with terrifying the old man into a frenzied suicide, instead of themselves slaying him. The next Pope lived so few days after his election, that it was believed that poison had removed him; and the cardinals remained shut up for nine months at Perugia, trying in vain to come to a fresh choice. Finally, Philippe fixed their choice on a wretched Gascon, who took the name of Clement V., first, however, making him swear to fulfil six conditions, the last and most dreadful of which was to remain a secret until the time when the fulfilment should be required of him.

Lest his unfortunate tool should escape from his grasp, or gain the protection of any other sovereign, Philippe transplanted the whole papal court to Avignon, which, though it used to belong to the Roman empire, had, in the break-up after the fall of the Swabian house, become in effect part of the French dominions.

There the miserable Clement learned the sixth condition, and, not daring to oppose it, gave the whole order of the Templars up into his cruel hands, promising to authorize his measures, and pronounce their abolition. Philippe's first measure was to get them all into his hands, and for this purpose he proclaimed a Crusade, and actually himself took the Cross, with his son-in-law Edward II., at the wedding of Isabel.

Jacque de Molay, the Grand Master, hastened from Cyprus, and convoked all his chief knights to take counsel with the French King on this laudable undertaking. He was treated with great distinction, and even stood godfather to a son of the King. The greater number of the Templars were at their own Tower of the Temple at Paris, with others dispersed in numbers through the rest of France, living at ease and securely, respected and feared, if not beloved, and busily preparing for an onslaught upon the common foe.

Meanwhile, two of their number, vile men thrown into prison for former crimes-one French, the other Italian-had been suborned by Philippe's emissaries to make deadly accusations against their brethren, such as might horrify the imagination of an age unused to consider evidence. These tales, whispered into the ear of Edward II. by his wily father-in-law, together with promises of wealth and lands to be wrested from them, gained from him a promise that he would not withstand the measures of the French King and Pope; and, though he was too much shocked by the result not to remonstrate, his feebleness and inconsistency unfitted him either to be a foe or a champion.

On the 14th of September, 1307, Philippe sent out secret orders to his seneschals. On the 13th of October, at dawn of day, each house of the Templars was surrounded with armed men, and, ere the knights could rise from their beds, they were singly mastered, and thrown into prison.

Two days after, on Sunday, after mass, the arrest was made known, and the crimes of which the unfortunate men were accused. They were to be tried before the grand inquisitor, Guillaume Humbert, a Dominican friar; but in the meantime, to obtain witness against them, they were starved, threatened, and tortured in their dungeons, to gain from them some confession that could be turned against them. Out of six hundred knights, besides a much greater number of mere attendants, there could not fail to be some few whose minds could not withstand the misery of their condition, and between these and the two original calumnies, a mass of horrible stories was worked up in evidence.

It was said that, while outwardly wearing the white cross on their robe, bearing the vows of chivalry, exercising the holy offices of priests, and bound by the monastic rules, there was in reality an inner society, bound to be the enemies of all that was holy, into which they were admitted upon their reviling and denying their faith, and committing outrages on the cross and the images of the saints. It was further said that they worshipped the devil in the shape of a black cat, and wore his image on a cord round their waists; that they anointed a great silver head with the fat of murdered children; that they practised every kind of sorcery, performed mass improperly, never went to confession, and had betrayed Palestine to the Infidels.

For the last count of the indictment the blood that had watered Canaan for two hundred years was answer enough. As to the confessional, the accusation emanated from the Dominicans, who were jealous of the Templars confessing to priests of their own order. With respect to the mass, it appears that the habits of the Templars were similar to those of the Cistercian monks; who, till The Lateran Council, had not elevated the Host to receive adoration from the people.

The accusation of magic naturally adhered to able men conversant with the East. The head was found in the Temple at Paris. It was made of silver, resembled a beautiful woman, and was, in fact, a reliquary containing the bones of one of the 11,000 virgins of Cologne. But truth was not wanted; and under the influence of solitary imprisonment, hunger, damp and loathsome dungeons, and two years of terror and misery, enough of confessions had been extorted for Philippe's purpose by the year 1309.

Many had died under their sufferings, and some had at first confessed in their agonies, and, when no longer tortured, had retracted all their declarations with horror. These became dangerous, and were therefore declared to be relapsed heretics, and fifty-six were burnt by slow degrees in a great inclosure, surrounded by stakes, all crying out, and praying devoutly and like good Christians till the last.

Having thus horribly intimidated recusant witnesses, the King caused the Pope to convoke a synod at Paris, before which the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was cited. He was a brave old soldier, but no scholar, and darkness, hunger, torture, and distress had so affected him, that, when brought into the light of day, he stood before the prelates and barons, among whom he had once been foremost, so utterly bewildered and confused, that the judges were forced to remand him for two days to recover his faculties.

When brought before them again, he was formally asked whether he would defend his order, or plead for himself. He made answer that he should be contemptible in his own eyes, and those of all the world, did he not defend an order which had done so much for him, but that he was in such poverty that he had not fourpence left in the world, and that he must beg for an advocate, to whom he would mention the great kings, princes, barons, bishops, and knights whose witness would at once clear his knights from the monstrous charges brought against them.

Thereupon he was told that advocates were not allowed to men accused of heresy, and that he had better take care how he contradicted his own deposition, or he would be condemned as relapsed. His own deposition, as three cardinals avouched that he had made it before them, was then translated to him from the Latin, which he did not understand. In horror-struck amazement at hearing such words ascribed to himself, the old knight twice made the sign of the cross, and exclaimed, "If the cardinals were other sort of men, he should know how to deal with them!"

He was told that the cardinals were not there to receive a challenge to battle. "No," he said, "that was not what he meant; he only wished that might befall them which was done by the Saracens and Tartars to infamous liars-whose heads they cut off."

He was sent back to prison and brought back again, less vehement against his accusers, but still declaring himself a faithful Christian, and begging to be admitted to the rites of religion; but he was left to languish in his dungeon for two years longer, while two hundred and thirty-one witnesses were examined before the commissaries. In May, 1311, five hundred and forty-four persons belonging to the order were led before the judges from the different prisons, while eight of the most distinguished knights, and their agent at Rome, undertook their defence. Their strongest plea was, that not a Templar had criminated himself, except in France, where alone torture had been employed; but they could obtain no hearing, and a report was drawn up by the commissaries to the so-called Council of Vienne. This was held by Clement V. in the early part of 1312; and on the 6th of March it passed a decree abolishing the Order of the Temple, and transmitting its possessions to the Knights of St. John.

There were other councils held to try the Templars in the other lands where they had also been seized. In England, the confessions of the knights tortured in France were employed as evidence, together with the witness of begging friars, minstrels, women, and discreditable persons; and on the decision of the Council of Vienne, the poor knights confessed, as well they might, that their order had fallen under evil report, and were therefore pardoned and released, with the forfeiture of all their property to the hospital. Their principal house in England was the Temple in Fleet street, where they had built a curious round church in the twelfth century, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem. The shape was supposed to be like the Holy Sepulchre, to whose service they were devoted; but want of space obliged them to add a square building of three aisles beyond. This, with the rest of their property, devolved on the Order of St. John, who, in the next reign, let the Temple buildings for L10 per annum to the law-students of London, and in their possession it has ever since continued. The ancient seal of the knights, representing two men mounted upon one horse, was assumed by the benchers of one side of the Temple, though in the classical taste of later times the riders were turned into wings, and the steed into Pegasus; while their brethren bear the lamb and banner, likewise a remembrance of the Crusaders who founded the round church, eight of whom still lie in effigy upon the floor.

In Spain the bishops would hardly proceed at all against the Templars, and secured pensions for them out of the confiscated property. In Portugal they were converted into a new order for the defence of the realm. In Germany, they were allowed to die out unmolested; but in Italy Philippe's influence was more felt, and they were taken in the same net with those in France. There the King's coffers were replenished with their spoil, very little of which ever found its way to the Knights of St. John. The knights who half confessed, and then recanted, were put to death; those who never confessed at all, were left in prison; those who admitted the guilt of the order, were rewarded by a miserable existence at large. The great dignitaries-Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, and Guy, the son of the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Commander of Normandy, and two others-languished in captivity till the early part of 1314, when they were led out before Notre Dame to hear their sentence read, condemning them to perpetual imprisonment, and rehearsing their own confession once more against them.

The Grand Master and Guy of Auvergne, both old men, wasted with imprisonment and torture, no sooner saw the face of day, the grand old cathedral, and the assembly of the people, than they loudly protested that these false and shameful confessions were none of theirs; that their dead brethren were noble knights and true Christians; and that these foul slanders had never been uttered by them, but invented by wicked men, who asked them questions in a language they did not understand, while they, noble barons, belted knights, sworn Crusaders, were stretched on the rack.

The Bishops present were shocked at the exposure of their treatment, and placed them in the hands of the Provost of Paris, saying that they would consider their case the next morning. But Philippe, dreading a reaction in their favor, declared them relapsed, and condemned them to the flames that very night, the 18th of March. A picture is extant in Germany, said to have been of the time, showing the meek face of the white-haired, white-bearded Molay, his features drawn with wasting misery, his eyes one mute appeal, his hands bound over the large cross on his breast. He died proclaiming aloud the innocence of his order, and listened to with pity and indignation by the people. His last cry, ere the flames stifled his voice, was an awful summons to Pope Clement to meet him before the tribunal of Heaven within forty days; to King Philippe to appear there in a year and a day.

Clement V. actually died on the 20th of April; and while his nephews and servants were plundering his treasures, his corpse was consumed by fire caught from the wax-lights around his bier. His tyrant, Philippe le Bel, was but forty-six years of age, still young-looking and handsome; but the decree had gone forth against him, and he fell into a bad state of health. He was thrown from his horse while pursuing a wild boar, and the accident brought on a low fever, which, on the 29th of November, 1314, brought him likewise to the grave. He left three sons, all perishing, after unhappy marriages, in the flower of their age, and one daughter, the disgrace and misery of France and England alike.

So perished the Templars; so their persecutors! It is one of the darkest tragedies of that age of tragedies; and in many a subsequent page shall we trace the visitation for their blood upon guilty France and on the line of Valois. They were not perfect men. They have left an evil name, for they were hard, proud, often, licentious men, and the "Red Monk" figures in many a tradition of horror; but there can be no doubt that the brotherhood had its due proportion of gallant, devoted warriors, who fought well for the cross they bore. Their fate has been well sung by Lord Houghton:

"The warriors of the sacred grave,

Who looked to Christ for laws,

And perished for the faith they gave

Their comrades and the cause;

They perished, in one fate alike,

The veteran and the boy,

Where'er the regal arm could strike,

To torture and destroy:

While darkly down the stream of time,

Devised by evil fame,

Float murmurs of mysterious crime,

And tales of secret shame.

How oft, when avarice, hate, or pride,

Assault some noble hand,

The outer world, that scorns the side

It does not understand,

Echoes each foul derisive word,

Gilds o'er each hideous sight,

And consecrates the wicked sword

With names of holy right.

Yet by these lessons men awake

To know they cannot bind

Discordant will's in one, and make

An aggregate of mind.

For ever in our best essays

At close fraternal ties

An evil narrowness waylays

Our present sympathies;

And love, however bright it burns

For what it holds roost fond,

Is tainted by its unconcern

For all that lies beyond.

And still the earth has many a knight

By high vocation bound

To conquer in enduring tight

The Spirit's holy ground.

And manhood's pride and hopes of youth

Still meet the Templar's doom,

Crusaders of the ascended truth,

Not of the empty tomb."