For a thousand years nothing of importance was added to human knowledge, and mental confusion reigned supreme. At the end of this period all the original teachings of Christ were forgotten, and after passing through the hands and tongues of fanatics or deluded and ignorant men, Christianity was left with the semblance of a monotheistic basis on which had been crudely built up certain doctrines borrowed from Egyptian and Grecian sources, among which may be mentioned the Trinity, Immaculate Conception, Resurrection and Ascension, as well as certain practices like that of the Lord's Supper, plainly borrowed from pagan customs. There was in all this so much to challenge belief, and so much at first unacceptable to minds not trained to believe it, that, in order to be effective their propaganda had to be carried on with the sword. Moreover to the Christian mystic, anxious to unify himself with the hidden, unknown deity the idea of Moslem unbelievers in possession of the high places which they regarded with such reverence, was simply intolerable and repugnant beyond description.
Hence the Crusades undertaken in order to regain the Sepulchre; in which by Papal decree the Monks joined the Knights, and under command of emperors and the greatest generals of their day, made temporary conquest of the Holy Land, founding the kingdom of Jerusalem. The immediate outcome of the general movement was that alliance, made wise and even necessary, when theology and chivalry joined hands, from which resulted the foundation of such orders as those mentioned at the beginning of this paper. These allies of which they were composed, all took the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and for a time kept them, until the possession of power and the acquisition of wealth brought their inevitably accompanying temptations. Each of these orders and many of the others passed through the successive stages of poverty, with meekness and constant benefaction, succeeded sooner or later by temporal aggrandizement, selfishness, greed, and rapacity, with all the crimes in the calendar, and the inevitable ultimate downfall. Of them all the Hospital Knights bore by all means the least smirched record, on which account, partly, as well as because of their most prominent purpose, i. e., their work among the sick, wounded and distressed, I deem their careers worthy of more particular study.
For this purpose we may quickly dismiss the Teutonic knights from present consideration, simply reminding you that they were really the founders of modern Prussia. They had their own origin in the commendable public spirit of the merchants of Lübeck and Bremen, who during the siege of Acre made tents out of the sails of their ships, in which their wounded countrymen might be nursed and attended. Most of their active service against the Saracens was in Spain.
Of the Knights Templar a little must be said here. About 1119 two Knights, Hugo (or Hugh) of Payens, and Godfrey of St. Omers, associated with themselves six other French Knights in a league of military character, styling themselves "Poor Knights of Christ," and pledged themselves to keep safe for pilgrims the highways of the Holy Land. They prospered and grew, and came into the favor of Baldwin I, king of that kingdom of Jerusalem already mentioned. Inasmuch as their Monastery occupied a part of the site of Solomon's temple of old they were known as Templars. At the synod of Troyes, in 1128, they were recognized as a regular Order, and received monastic rules and habits, with a special banner. They were also known as "Poor Companions of the Temple of Jerusalem," a name which did not very long befit them. At first, like the Hospital Knights, they begged their food, fasted, kept vows, worshipped diligently, and cared for the poor and infirm. Beard and hair were cropped short, the chase was forbidden, and they took the usual vows of chastity. But as they acquired property they forgot the simple life and habit, as well as their vows of obedience and chastity, while their pledge to protect the pilgrim on his way became in time a farce, not alone through their indifference and negligence, but through their treasonable dealings with the Saracens, and even treacherous surrender of their strongholds.
Thus, whatever their pristine purpose, lucre and power became the later objects of their strife and the impelling motives of their lives. By the accession of so-called "affiliated members" they avoided the rule of celibacy, and admitted married knights and those engaged to be married.
Their Grand Masters in time ranked next after Popes and Monarchs. While the former favored them it was mainly because they feared them. They were exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to the Pope. So rich and powerful did they become that at the time of their suppression they controlled an Empire of five provinces in the East and sixteen in the West, while the Order possessed some 15,000 houses. They aimed to make all Christendom dependent upon themselves, with only the Pope as their nominal head.
Of their personal bravery, which was usually impeccable, of their affluence and intolerable effrontery, and of many of their traits and characteristics, one may form an excellent idea by reading Ivanhoe, where these seem to be quite faithfully depicted. It is, to me I confess, just a little amusing as well as saddening to see the men, who name their secret Masonic associations after the founders of the Order, displaying and imitating, at least in public where alone they can be judged by outsiders, only those features of Templar Knighthood which marked the period of their decadence or their downfall. As imitations they may be historically accurate, but as worthy of emulation, or even of imitation such displays are matters of questionable taste, at least, to those who read medieval history.
The Templars in their days of splendor and later downfall, were neither pious, nor learned, nor good Christians. Many of their secret doctrines were of heretical origin, taken from the Waldenses or the Albigenses, and they cared far more for their own possessions than for the Holy Land. They promulgated the shameful excuse that God evidently willed that the Saracen should win; that the defects of the Crusaders were evidently according to His decision, and that therefore they were released from their vows, and could return to Europe, where indeed they rested—after their fashion,—from their labors, and passed their time in doing everything their founders had vowed not to do.
But this is not intended to be an epitome of Templar history; rather a brief statement of the reasons why they went proudly and sometimes stoically to their final downfall, and why the Hospital Order, though not always keeping up to its earlier standards, nevertheless so far eclipsed them, as to become the recipients of very much of the Templars' enormous resources and wealth, being thought worthy to be thus entrusted. And so it happened that, in 1307, Philip of France had all the Templars in France arrested and their property sequestrated. This led to a tripartite dispute in which were involved the Templars, the Pope and the King. In 1310 fifty-four Templar Knights were burned alive in Paris. At last the Pope, to prevent their property from falling into secular hands, made over to the Hospitallers most of the Templar estates, excepting however those in Spain. The Grand Master Molay and another Templar were burned to death on an island in the Seine.