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

KNIGHTS
KNIGHTS 409
The general direction of St . Bernard as to
clothing was afterward expanded, so that the
dress of a Templar consisted of a long, white
tunic, nearly resembling that of a priest's in
shape, with a red cross on the front and back ;
under this was his linen shirt clasped by a
girdle . Over all was the white mantle with
the red cross pattee . The head was covered by
a cap or hood attached to the mantle . The
arms were a sword, lance, mace, and shield .
Although at first the Order adopted as a seal
the representation of two knights riding on
one horse, as a mark of their poverty, subsequently
each knight was provided with three
horses, and an esquire selected usually from
the class of Serving Brethren .
To write the history of the Templar Order
for the two centuries of its existence would,
says Addison, be to write the Latin history of
Palestine, and would occupy a volume . Its
details would be accounts of glorious struggles
with the infidel in defense of the Holy Land,
and of Christian pilgrimage, sometimes successful
and often disastrous ; of arid sands
well moistened with the blood of Christian
and Saracen warriors ; of disreputable contests
with its rival of St . John ; of final
forced departure from the places which its
prowess had conquered, but which it had
not strength to hold, and of a few years of
luxurious, and it may be of licentious indolence,
terminated by a cruel martyrdom and
dissolution .
The fall of Acre in 1292, under the vigorous
assault of the Sultan Mansour, led at once
to the evacuation of Palestine by the Christians
. The Knights Hospitalers of St . John
of Jerusalem, afterward called Knights of
Rhodes, and then of Malta, betook themselves
to Rhodes, where the former, assuming a naval
character, resumed the warfare in their galleys
against the Mohammedans . The Templars,
after a brief stay in the island of
Cyprus, retired to their different Preceptories
in Europe.
Porter (Hist . K . of Malta, i ., 174) has no
panegyric for these recreant knights. After
eulogizing the Hospitalers for the persevering
energy with which, from their island home of
Rhodes, they continued the war with the infidels,
he says :
"The Templar, on the other hand, after a
brief sojourn in Cyprus, instead of rendering
the smallest assistance to his chivalrous and
knightly brethren in their new undertaking,
hurried with unseemly haste to his numerous
wealthy European Preceptories, where the
grossness of his licentiousness, the height of his
luxury, and the arrogance of his pride, soon
rendered him an object of the most invincible
hatred among those who possessed ample
power to accomplish his overthrow . During
these last years of their existence little can be
said in defense of the Order ; and although the
barbarous cruelty with which their extinction
was accomplished has raised a feeling of compassion
in their behalf, which bids fair to efface
the memory of their crimes, still it cannot be
denied that they had of late years so far de-
viated from the original purposes of their
Institution as to render them highly unfit depositaries
of that wealth which had been
bequeathed to them for purposes so widely different
from those to which they had appropriated
it."
The act of cruelty and of injustice by which
the Templar Order was dissolved in the fourteenth
century, has bequeathed an inglorious
memory on the names of the infamous king
and no less infamous pope, who accomplished
it. In the beginning of the fourteenth century,
the throne of France was filled by
Philip the Fair, an ambitious, a vindictive
and an avaricious prince . In his celebra
controversy with Pope Boniface, the Templars
had, as was usual with them, sided with the
pontiff and opposed the king ; this act excited
his hatred : the Order was enormously wealthy ;
this aroused his avarice ; their power interfered
with his designs of political aggrandizement
; and this alarmed his ambition . He,
therefore, secretly concerted with Pope Clement
V . a plan for their destruction, and the
appropriation of their revenues . Clement,
by his direction, wrote in June, 1306, to
De Molay, the Grand Master, who was then
at Cyprus, inviting him to come and consult
with him on some matters of great importance
to the Order . De Molay obeyed the
summons, and arrived in the beginning of
1307 at Paris, with sixty knights and a large
amount of treasure. He was immediately
imprisoned, and, on the thirteenth of October
following, every knight in France was, in consequence
of the secret orders of the king, arrested
on the pretended charge of idolatry,
and other enormous crimes, of which Squin de
Flexian, a renegade and expelled Prior of
the Order, was said to have confessed that
the knights were guilty in their secret
Chapters .
What these charges were has not been left
to conjecture . Pope Clement sent a list of the
articles of accusation, amounting to one hundred
and twenty in number, to all the archbishops,
bishops, and Papal commissaries
upon which to examine the knights who should
be brought before them . This list is still in
existence, and in it we find such charges as
these : 1 . That they required those who were
received into the Order to abjure Christ, the
Blessed Virgin, and all the saints . 7 . That
they denied that Christ had suffered for man's
redemptipn. 9. That they made their re
cipient spit upon the cross or the crucifix .
14. That they worshiped a cat in their assemblies
. 16 . That they did not believe in the
eucharistic sacrifice . 20 . That they said
that the Grand Master had the power of absolution
. 26. That they practised obscene
ceremonies in their receptions . 32. That
their receptions were secret ; a charge repeated
in articles 97, 98, 99, 100, and 101, in
different forms . 42 . That they had an idol,
which was a head with one or with three faces,
and sometimes a human skull . 52, 53 . That
they exercised magic arts .
On such preposterous charges as these the