The History of Chivalry

by G. P. R. James

Long previous to the crusade, some of the citizens of Amalfi having been led to Jerusalem,[532] partly from feelings of devotion, partly in the pursuit of commerce, had witnessed the misery to which pilgrims were exposed on their road to the Holy Land, and determined to found an hospital in which pious travellers might be protected and solaced after their arrival at the end of their journey. The influence which the Italian merchants possessed through their commercial relations at the court of the calif, easily obtained permission to establish the institution proposed. A piece of ground near the supposed site of the holy sepulchre was assigned to them, and the chapel and hospital were accordingly built, at different times, and placed under the patronage, the one of St. Mary, and the other of St. John the Almoner.

A religious house was also constructed for those charitable persons, of both sexes, who chose to dedicate themselves to the service of the pilgrims, and who, on their admission, subjected themselves to the rule of St. Benedict. All travellers, whether Greeks or Latins, were received into the hospital; and the monks even extended their charitable care to the sick or poor Mussulmans who surrounded them.

During the siege of Jerusalem by the crusaders, all the principal Christians of the town were thrown into prison; among others, the abbot (as he is called by James of Vitry)[533] of the monastery of St. John. He was a Frenchman by birth, named Gerard; and, after the taking of the city, was liberated, with other Christian prisoners, and returned to the duties of his office, in attending the sick and wounded crusaders who were brought into the Hospital. After the battle of Ascalon, Godfrey visited the establishment, where he still found many of the followers of the crusade, who, struck with admiration at the institution, and filled with gratitude for the services they had received, determined to embrace the order, and dedicate their lives also to acts of charity. Godfrey, as a reward for the benefits which these holy men had conferred on his fellow-christians, endowed the Hospital (now in a degree separated from the abbey of St. Mary) with a large estate, in his hereditary dominions in Brabant. Various other gifts were added by the different crusaders of rank; and the Poor Brothers of the Hospital of St. John began to find themselves a rich and flourishing community. It was at this period that they first took the black habit and the white cross of eight points, and subjected themselves, by peculiar vows, to the continual attendance on pilgrims and sick persons.[534] Pascal II. soon after bestowed upon the order several valuable privileges, among which were, exemption from all tithes, the right of electing their own superior, and absolute immunity from all secular or clerical interference. The constant resort of pilgrims to the Holy Land not only increased the wealth of the Hospitallers, but spread their fame to other countries. Princes and kings conferred lands and benefices upon them, and the order began to throw out ramifications into Europe, where hospitals, under the same rule, were erected, and may be considered as the first commanderies of the institution.

At the death of Gerard, which took place almost immediately after that of Baldwin I., Raimond Dupuy, one of the crusaders who had attached himself to the Hospital on having been cured of his wounds received at the siege of Jerusalem, was elected master, and soon conceived the idea of rendering the wealth and number of the Hospitallers serviceable to the state in other ways than those which they had hitherto pursued. His original profession of course led him to the thought of combining war with devotion, and he proposed to his brethren to reassume the sword, binding themselves, however, by a vow, to draw it only against the enemies of Christ. In what precise year the Hospitallers first appeared in arms is not very clearly ascertained; but it is a matter of no moment, and it is certain that they became a military body during the reign of Baldwin du Bourg.[535]

The order of St. John was then divided into three classes, knights, clergy, and serving brothers. Each of these classes still, when absent from the field, dedicated themselves to the service of the sick; but the knights were chosen from the noble or military rank of the Hospitallers, and commanded in battle and in the hospital. The clergy, besides the ordinary duties of their calling, followed the armies as almoners and chaplains; and the serving brothers fought under the knights in battle, or obeyed their directions in their attendance on the sick. At first, the garments and food of these grades were the same. The vows also were alike to all, and implied chastity, obedience to their superior and to the council, together with individual poverty.

The objects now proposed were war against the infidels, and protection and comfort to the Christian pilgrims. The knights were bound by strict and severe rules; they were enjoined to avoid all luxury, to travel two or three together, seeking only such lodging in the various towns as was provided for them by their community, and burning a light during the night, that they might be always prepared against the enemy. Their faults[536] were heavily punished by fasts, by imprisonments, and even by expulsion from the order; and they were taught to look for no reward but from on high. Nevertheless, before the good Bishop of Acre composed his curious work on the Holy Land, probably about the year 1228, the Hospitallers, he tells us, were buying for themselves castles and towns, and submitting territories to their authority like the princes of the earth.

The origin of the order of Red-cross Knights, or Templars, was very different, though its military object was nearly the same. The Christian power in Palestine was probably as firmly established at the time of Baldwin du Bourg, as during any other period of its existence; yet the mixture of the population, the proximity of a thousand inimical tribes, the roving habits of the Turks, who—generally worsted by the Christians in the defence of cities and in arrayed fields—now harassed their enemies with a constant, but flying warfare; all rendered the plains of the Holy Land a scene of unremitting strife, where the pilgrim and the traveller were continually exposed to danger, plunder, and death. Some French knights, who had followed the first crusade,[537] animated beyond their fellows with the religious and military fury which inspired that enterprise, entered into a solemn compact to aid each other in freeing the highways of the Holy Land, protecting pilgrims and travellers, and fighting against the enemies of the Cross. They embraced the rule of St. Augustin; renounced all worldly goods, and bound themselves by oath to obey the commands of their grand master; to defend the Christian faith; to cross the seas in aid of their brethren; to fight unceasingly against the infidel, and never to turn back from less than four adversaries.[538] The founders of this order were Hugh de Paganis and Geoffrey de St. Aldemar—or, according to some, de St. Omer—who had both signalized themselves in the religious wars. Having no fixed dwelling, the Templars were assigned a lodging in a palace in the immediate vicinity of the Temple, from whence they derived the name by which they have since been known. The number of these knights was at first but nine, and during the nine years which followed their institution, they were marked by no particular garb,[539] wearing the secular habit of the day, which was furnished to them by charity alone. The clergy of the temple itself conferred on their body a space of ground between that building and the palace,[540] for the purpose of military exercises, and various other benefices speedily followed. At the council[541] of Troyes, their situation was considered, and a white garment was appointed for their dress. Their vows became very similar to those of the knights of St. John; the numbers of the body rapidly augmented; possessions and riches flowed in upon them apace, as their services became extended and general. They added a red cross to their robe, and raised a banner of their own, on which they bestowed the name of Beauséant. The order, as it increased, was soon divided into the various classes of servants of arms, esquires, and knights; and, in addition to their great standard, which was white with the red cross—symbolical, like their dress, of purity of life, and courage, even to death—they bore to battle a banner composed of white and black stripes, intended to typify their tenderness to their friends and implacability towards their enemies.—Their valour became so noted, that, like that of the famous tenth legion,[542] it was a support to itself; and, according to James of Vitry, any Templar, on hearing the cry to arms, would have been ashamed to have asked the number of the enemy. The only question was, “Where are they?”

On entering the order, the grand master cautioned the aspirant that he was, in a manner, called upon to resign his individuality. Not only his property and his body, but his very thoughts, belonged, from the moment of his admission, to the institution of which he became a part. He was bound in every thing to obey the commands of his superior, and poverty of course formed a part of his vow. His inclinations, his feelings, his passions, were all to be rendered subservient to the cause he embraced; and he was exhorted to remember, before he engaged himself to the performance of so severe an undertaking, that he would often be obliged to watch when he desired to sleep, to suffer toil when his limbs required rest, and to undergo the pangs of thirst and the cravings of hunger when food would be most delightful.

After these and similar warnings of the painful and self-denying nature of the task which he was about to impose upon himself, he was asked three times if he still desired to enter into the order, and on giving an answer in the affirmative, he was invested with the robe, and admitted to the vows, after previous proof that he was qualified in other respects, according to the rules of the institution.

No possible means has ever been devised of keeping any body of men poor; and the Templars, whose first device was two knights riding on one horse, to signify their poverty and humility, were soon one of the richest, and beyond comparison the proudest, of the European orders. Their preceptories were to be found in every country, and as their vows did not embrace[543] the charitable avocations which, with the knights of St. John, filled up the hours unemployed in military duties, the Templars soon added to their pride all that host of vices which so readily step in to occupy the void of idleness. While the knights of St. John, spreading benefit and comfort around them, notwithstanding many occasional faults and errors, remained esteemed and beloved, on the whole, both by sovereigns and people; the knights of the Temple were only suffered for some centuries, feared, hated, avoided; and at last were crushed, at a moment when it is probable that a reform was about to work itself in their order.[544]