There were various offices in the society, hereafter to be noticed, which were appropriated to the serving-brethren, or to which they were eligible.
The knights, the chaplains, and the serving-brethren, were the proper members of the order, and it is to them alone that the name Templars applies. But both the Templars and the Hospitallers devised a mode of attaching secular persons to their interest, and of deriving advantages from their connexion with them, in which they were afterwards imitated by the mendicant orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans; the Jesuits also, who were always so keen at discerning what might be for the advantage of their society, adopted it; and it is, we believe, still practised in Catholic countries. This system is styled affiliation.
The affiliated were persons of various ranks in society, and of both sexes, who, without giving up their secular mode of life, or wearing any peculiar habit, joined the order, with a view to the advantages, both spiritual and temporal, which they expected to derive from it. These advantages will appear to have been very considerable when we recollect that all who joined the order were admitted to a share in the merits of its good works, which were what those times esteemed of the highest order. Nothing could have more contributed to the extent of affiliation than the exemption which the Templars enjoyed from the effects of interdict. At a time when it was in the power of every bishop to lay entire towns under this formidable sentence it must have been highly consolatory to pious or superstitious minds to belong to a society who disregarded this spiritual thunder, and who could afford them an opportunity of at least occasionally hearing mass and receiving the sacraments, and secured them, if they should die while the interdict continued, the advantage of Christian burial. In those days also, when club-law prevailed so universally, and a man's safety depended not so much on his innocence or the justice of his cause as on the strength of his party, it was a matter of no small consequence to belong to so powerful a body as the Templars, and it must have been highly gratifying to both the secular and spiritual pride of a lawyer or a burgher to be a member of the same body with the high-born soldier-monks of the Temple.
These important advantages were not conceded by the Templars without equivalent considerations. This ambitious and covetous order required that he who sought the honor of affiliation with them should, besides taking the three vows, pledge himself to lead a reputable life, to further the interests of the order to the best of his power, and leave it the entire of his property at his death. If he was married, and died before his wife, he might leave her a competent provision for life; but from the day of his admission into the order he was to abstain from her bed, though he might continue to reside in the same house with her; for were he to have children, he might provide for them to the disadvantage of the order, or on his death they might give trouble to it by claiming his property. For a similar reason the affiliated were forbidden to be sponsors, lest they might covertly or openly give some of their property to their godchildren. They were not even permitted to give offerings to the clergy. If they dared to violate these injunctions, a severe punishment—in general, confinement for life—awaited them.
All orders of men were ambitious of a union with this honourable and powerful society. We find among the affiliated both sovereign princes and dignified prelates: even the great Pope Innocent III., in one of his bulls, declares himself to stand in this relation to the order. Many of the knights who dwelt with the Templars, and fought under their banner, were also affiliated, and the history of the order more than once makes mention of the sisters—that is, women who were affiliated to it, for there were no nuns of the Temple similar to those of the order of Malta in later times.
In less intimate connexion with the order than the affiliated stood those who were styled Donates and Oblates. These were persons who, as their titles denote, were given or presented to the order. They were either children whom their parents or relations destined to the service of the order when they should have attained a sufficient age, or they were full-grown persons who pledged themselves to serve the order as long as they lived without reward, purely out of reverence to it, and with a view to enjoying its protection, and sharing in its good works. Persons of all ranks, princes and priests, as well as others, were to be found among the oblates of the Temple.