Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

896 KNIGHT
KNIGHT
suggestion of the author, the degree was unanimously
stricken from the Constitution ; but
at the session of 1862, in Columbus, Ohio, it
was, I think, without due consideration restored,
and is now communicated in the Commanderies
of Knights Templar .
There is no fact in history better known
than that there existed from their very birth
a rivalry between the two Orders of the Temple
and of St . John of Jerusalem, which sometimes
burst forth into open hostility . Porter
says (Hist . K . of Malta, i . 107), speaking of
the dissensions of the two orders "instead of
confining their rivalry to a friendly emulation,
whilst combating against their common foe,
they appeared more intent upon thwarting
and frustrating each other, than in opposing
the Saracen."
To such an extent had the quarrels of the
two Orders proceeded, that Pope Alexander
III . found it necessary to interfere ; and in
1179 a hollow truce was signed by the rival
houses of the Temple and the Hospital; the
terms of which were, however, never strictly
observed by either side. On the dissolution
of the Templars so much of their possessions
as were not confiscated to public use were
ven by the sovereigns of Europe to the
'ghts of Malta, who accepted the gift without
compunction . And there is a tradition
that the surviving Templars, indignant at the
spoliation and at the mercenary act of their
old rivals in willingly becoming a party to
the robbery, solemnly registered a vow never
thereafter to recognize them as friends .
The attempt at this day to make a modern
Knights Templar accept initiation into a
hated and antagonistic Order is to display a
lamentable ignorance of the facts of history .
Another reason why the degree of Knight of
Malta should be rejected from the Masonic
system is that the ancient Order never was a
secret association . Its rites of reception were
open and public, wholly unlike anything in
Masonry. In fact, historians have believed
that the favor shown to the Hospitalers, and
the persecutions waged against the Templars,
are to be attributed to the fact that the latter
Order had a secret system of initiation which
did not exist in the former . The ritual of reception,
the signs and words as modes of recognition
now practised in the modern Masonic
ceremonial, are all a mere invention of a very
recent date. The old Knights knew nothing
of such a system .
A third, and perhaps the best, reason for
rejecting the Knights of Malta as a Masonic
degree is to be found in the fact that the
Order still exists, although in a somewhat
decayed condition ; and that its members,
claiming an uninterrupted descent from the
Knights who, with Hompesch, left the island
of Malta in 1797 and threw themselves under
the protection oti Paul of Russia, utterly disclaim
any connection with the Freemasons,
and almost contemptuously repudiate the socalled
Masonic branch of the Order . In 1858,
a manifesto was issued by the supreme authority
of the Order, dated from "the Magisterial
Palace of the Sacred Order" at Rome which,
after stating that the Order, as it then existed,
consisted only of the Grand Priories
in the Langues of Italy and Germany, the
knights in Prussia, who trace descent from the
Grand Bailiwick of Brandenburg, and a few
other knights who had been legally received
by the Mastership and Council, declares that :
"Beyond and out of the above-mentioned
Langues and Priories, and excepting the
knights created and constituted as aforesaid,
all those who may so call or entitle themselves
are legally ignored by our Sacred Order ."
There is no room there provided for the
so-called Masonic Knights of Malta . But
a writer in Notes and Queries (3d Ser ., iii .,
413), who professes to be in possession of the
degree, says, in reply to an inquiry, that the
Masonic degree "has nothing whatever to do
with the Knights Hospitalers of St . John of
Jerusalem." This is most undoubted) true
in reference to the American degree . Neither
in its form, its ritual, the objects it professes,
its tradition, nor its historical relations, is it
in the slightest degree assimilated to the ancient
Order of Hospitalers, afterward called
Knights of Rhodes, and, finally, Knights of
Malta. To claim therefore, to be the modern
representativesdthat Order, to wear its dress
to adopt its insignia, to flaunt its banners, and
to leave the world to believe that the one is but
the uninterrupted continuation of the other,
are acts which must be regarded as a very
ridiculous assumption, if not actually entitled
to a less courteous appellation.
For all these reasons, I think that it is much
to be regretted that the action of the Grand
Encampment in repudiating the degree in
1856 was reversed in 1862 . The degree has no
historical or traditional connection with Masonry
; holds no proper place in a Comman.
dery of Templars, and ought to be wiped out
of the catalogue of Masonic degrees .'
Knight of Masonry, Terrible . (Chevalier
Terrible de la Magonnerie .) A degree contained
in the collection of Le Page .
Knight of Palestine . (Chevalier de la
Palestine .) 1 . The Sixty-third Degree of the
Rite of Mizraim . 2 . The Ninth Degree of
the Reform of St . Martin . 3 . One of the
series of degrees formerly iven in the Baldwyn
Encampment of England, and said to
have been introduced into Bristol, in 1800, by
some French refugees under the authority of
the Grand Orient of France .
* A different view is now generally held by
Templars regarding the Knights of Malta, and a
modified ritual has been adopted from the Canadian
work wherethe Malta istheprincipal degree
of their Priories . The adoption of this ritual
among the Commanderies of America is optional,
but when once adopted must be conformed to
in their work . This change was brought about
by the visiting influence from Canada and also
the reasons for the Malta being a degree of
chivalry. For a similar reason the Knights of
the Red Cross has been justly changed to Companion
of the Red Cross, and properly never deserved
a place in the degrees of chivalry, as the
ritual plainly shows . [E. E. C .1