The Templars wore a long flowing white mantle with a red cross on the left breast. The Knights Hospitallers originally wore a black robe with a cross, but subsequently, when the Order was reconstructed on the model of the Templars, they wore a red mantle with a white cross on the shoulder. After Palestine was lost the original body passed (1) to Acre, (2) to Cyprus, (3) to Rhodes, and (4) to Malta.
The Templars left their beautiful church to continue for centuries one of the most interesting architectural relics of a past age. The buildings of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell passed through more vicissitudes, and when the religious houses were suppressed by Henry VIII. these were mostly destroyed. The gateway which was completed in 1504 by Prior Docwra still stands, but no portion of the church or other buildings remain above ground.
Friars
The enthusiasm which brought the great religious movement after the Conquest and produced the numerous monastic institutions of the country had cooled by the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the remarkable evangelical revival instituted almost simultaneously by St. Dominic and St. Francis swept over Europe.
The distinctive characteristics which at first marked them off from the monks were poverty and care for others. The monks lived apart from the world in order to attend first to their own souls, while the friars placed care for others first of all duties. They preached to and visited the masses; hence, instead of living in retired spots, they settled in the heart of the cities. In their humility they called themselves brothers rather than fathers, but in course of time they fell far short of the ideals of their founders. Their property increased, and their houses grew to be as rich as those of the monks, and in consequence they became singularly unpopular. Mr. Trevelyan writes in his Age of Wycliffe that, while the monks were despised by the reformer, the friars were hated.
Black Friars.—The Spaniard, St. Dominic, founded the Order of Preaching Friars at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Their rule, which was chiefly that of St. Augustine, was approved of by Pope Innocent III. in the Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, by word of mouth and by the Bull of Pope Honorius III., A.D. 1216. They were called Dominicans from their founder, Preaching Friars from their office to preach and convert heretics, and Black Friars from their garments. In France they were known as Jacobins from having their first house in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris. This name gained a portentous meaning in the eighteenth century from the French Revolutionists who met in the disused friary. At first the friars used the same habit as the Austin Canons, but about the year 1219 they took another, viz., a white cassock with a white hood over it, and when they went abroad, a black cloak with a black hood over their white vestments. They came to England in 1221, and their first house was at Oxford. Shortly after this they came to London, settled in Holborn near Lincoln’s Inn, where they remained for more than fifty years. In 1276 they removed to the neighbourhood of Baynard Castle, where they erected a magnificent house with the help of royal, clerical and other noble benefactors which has given a name to a London district that it still retains. The place is thus described by Stevens, the monastic historian: ‘This monastery enjoyed all the privileges and immunities that any religious
