Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

194 COMMANDER OF TEE TEMPLE.
tion of your last days, is the sincere wish of the members
of this Court. (Invests him with them.)
Grand Commander—Attention Commanders! Join
me in applauding our newly admitted Commander
among us. (All give the battery when Grand Commander
takes his seat.)
Grand Commander—Brother Senior Deacon, you will
now conduct the Commander to the post of honor.
(Senior Deacon seats him on the right of the Grand
Commander who delivers the following:)
HISTORY.’
When the St. Jean D’Acre, the ancient Ptohem.ais, on
the south side of whieb was Mount Carmel, was besieged
by the Christian forces for nearly two years under Guy
of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, Conrad, Marquis of
Mont Ferrat, and other princes and leaders from every
country in Europe, and especially by Uenr~r Sixth of
Germany, son of Frederic Barbarossa, joine , near the
end of the siege, by Philip Augustus of Franee, and
Richard Coeur de Leon of England, they were hong
afflicted with famine until they ate the flesh of horses
with joy. Men of high rank and the sons of great men
greedily devoured the gras~’; the starving fought together
hike dogs for the little bread baked at the ovens; they
gnawed the bones that had already been gnawed by the
dogs, and noblemen, ashamed to beg, were known to
steal bread. Constant rains added to their miseries and
Saladin, Sultan of the Saraeens, encamped near them
Tote 209.—’vasssi, Ragon, and Clavel are all wrong in connecting thu
degree with the Knights Tempisra. with which Order its own ritual
declares that it is not to be confounded, It is without a lecture. vami
azpreases the following opinion of thia deg,~e
‘The twenty.seventh degree does not deserve to be riameed in the
Scottish Rite as a degree, since It contains neither symbols nor sliegoruis
that connect It with inItiation. Ii demerves still less to be ranked among
the philosophic degrees. I Imagine that it has been intercalated only in
anppiy an hiatus, and sa a tnen,orlal of an Order once Justly eeiehra:ed
Xackeya Encyclopedia of fwcemaaony, Article loveweiga Ocinmaagsr of
the Temple.
INITIATION.
195
with a vast army from every portion of his dominions,
and all the Great Emirs of Islarnisni harassed them with
constant attacks. Sickness also, eaused by the rains and
the intense heat, decimated the Christian forces. The
wounded G~rman soldiers, whom none of the others
understood, could not make known their sickness nor
their necessities.
Certain German Nobles from the cities of Bremen
and Lubec, who had arrived at Acre by sea, moved by
miseries of their countrymen, took the sails of their ships
and made of them a large tent, in which for a time they
placed the wounded Germans and tended them with
great kindness. Forty nobles of the same nation united
with them and established a kind of hospital in the
midst of the camp, and this noble and charitable institution
and association, like the Knighta of the Temple and
of St. John of Jerusalem, soon and incessably, became a
new hospitaller and military order. This was in tbe
year 1191.
In 1 192 Pope Celestin Third, at the request of the
Emperor Henry Sixth, solemnly approved of the order
by his Bull of the 23rd of February. He prescribed as
regulations for the new Knights, those of St. Augustine,
and for special statutes, in all that regarded the poor and
the siek, those of the hospitallers of St. John; in regard
to military discipline the regulations of the Templars.
This noble order, exclusively composed of Germans, was
styled the order of Teutonic Knights of the House of
St. Mary of Jerusalem.
After the destruction of the Templars, they were also
known as Commanders of the Temple.
The first name was given them beeause while the city
of Jerusalem was under the government of the Latin
Christians, a German had erected there, at his own ex-