The Origin of Freemasonry and Knights Templar ... - Lodge Prudentia

FREEMASONRY AND KNIGHTS TEMPLARlittle wealth ;men were thrown into slavery women;were outraged; children were stolen or murdered,and although, doubtless, there were enthusiasts whocourted these perils in the holy cause -yet the vast 7majority of Christendom were filled u it:h grief and!vengeance as returning pilgrims told the ghastly*tale of pagan atrocities.In this state of affairs, when there was scarcelya home circle that was not saddened or bereavedby the brutal treatment of the pilgrims,Peter theHermit, a monk and native of Amiens in France,having visited Palestine and witnessed the crueltyof the Turks, reported what he had seen to PopeUrban II., by whom encouraged, he traveledthrough Italy and France and began to preach the'first Crusade. .Peter had been educated in Paris/-yand in\Italy; had served in the army of Flanders,!but gave up the military career and married became;a monk after the death of his wife, and finally ahermit. /Possessed of no other power than the influenceof his character and his genius, this simpleunshod monk, a man of mean aspect, clad in acoarse cassock, around which a rude rope servedas a girdle, mounted on a mule, and holding agleaming crucifix in his hand, rode from town totown and from province to province rehearsing theindignities heaped upon the innocent pilgrims; ingraphic language he depicted the scenes of bloodof which he had been an eye-witness in the streetsof Jerusalem, appealing in turn to the piety, thecourage and the passions of his hearers. By hiseloquence he fired the popular heart to go forth toredress the wrongs and rescue a desecrated tombfrom the hands of the infidel. As a consequence130