KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 



581 



annual income of the order has been estimated at 

 not, less than six millions sterling. 



Probably from the reasons assigned above, the 

 wealth, the consideration, and the influence of the 

 Templars greatly exceeded those of the Hospital- 

 lers, and in these points the Teutonic knights and 

 those of St Lazarus, the two other similar orders, 

 could far less stand in competition with them. The 

 valour of the Templars, too, though not perhaps 

 at all superior to that of the knights of the other 

 orders, was without reproach, and Bauseant was 

 rarely seen to give back in the fray. " The Tem- 

 plars," says de Vitry, "were always the first in 

 attack, the last in retreat." But envy or disap- 

 pointed expectation would occasionally lay the 

 blame of defeat on the treachery of the soldiers of 

 the temple ; even the defeat and capture of St 

 Louis, in his preposterous invasion of Egypt, is by 

 one writer charged on them ; most assuredly with- 

 out reason. The only act of the kind, with which 

 they may be perhaps justly charged, is in the case 

 of the emperor Frederic II. ; for when this mon- 

 arch in his expedition to the Holy Land was about to 

 pay a secret visit to the Jordan, the Templars wrote 

 to give the sultan information of it, that he might 

 seize him, but that prince sent the letter to Fre- 

 deric. Yet even in this instance the conduct of the 

 Templars was not wholly without excuse ; they 

 were not solitary in their opposition to the empe- 

 ror, who was then lying under the ban of the pope, 

 whose firm supporters these knights had ever been ; 

 and the Hospitallers are even said to have been 

 parties in writing to the sultan. Frederic, there- 

 fore, on his return, did all the injury in his power 

 to the order, by seizing its property in Sicily and 

 Naples ; but the heaviest charge he was able to 

 bring against them was, that of admitting infidel 

 sultans and their heirs within their walls, and suf- 

 fering them there to invoke their false prophet, a 

 charge that implies nothing more than a participa- 

 tion in the spirit of mutual tolerance and courtesy 

 which had grown up from acquaintance between 

 the warlike followers of the hostile religions. But 

 the history of the order, as far as we can recollect, 

 records only one instance of a Templar abjuring 

 his faith, and that was an English knight, Robert 

 of St Albans, who deserted to Saladin, who gave 

 him his sister in marriage on his becoming a Mos- 

 lem ; and in 1185, the ex-red-cross knight led a 

 Saracen army to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, 

 wasting and destroying the country with fire and 

 sword. 



Their enormous wealth, their overweening pride, 

 the disdainful neglect of the rules of their order, 

 their close attachment to the popes and their in- 

 terests, the excessive exemptions and privileges 

 they enjoyed, their luxury, their sensuality these 

 were the true causes of the enmity borne to them 

 by the secular clergy and the laity. In 1252 the 

 pious pope-ridden Henry III. of England said, that 

 the prelates and clergy in general, but especially 

 the Templars and Hospitallers, had so many liber- 

 ties and privileges, that their excessive wealth 

 made them mad with pride ; he added, that what 

 had been bestowed imprudently, ought to be pru- 

 dently resumed, and declared his intention of re- 

 voking the inconsiderate grants of himself and his 

 predecessors. The grand-prior of the Templars 

 replied, " What sayest thou, my lord the king ? 

 Far be it that so discourteous and absurd a word 

 should be uttered by thy mouth. So long as thou 

 observest justice thou mayest be a king, and as 



soon as thou infringest it, thou will cease to be a 

 king." A bold expression certainly, but the prior 

 knew his man well, and he would hardly have 

 spoken so to the son of Henry. The anecdote of 

 Richard I. bestowing his daughter Pride in mar- 

 riage on the Templars is well known ; and nume- 

 rous traits of their haughtiness, avarice, luxury, and 

 other of the current vices, may be found in the 

 writers of the thirteenth century; but till the 

 final attack was made, no worse charge was 

 brought against them, unless such is implied in a 

 bull of pope Clement IV. in 1265, which is, how- 

 ever, easily capable of a milder interpretation. Mr 

 Raynouard asserts, too, that the proverbial expres- 

 sion bibere Templariter is used by no writer of the 

 thirteenth century. In this he is preceded by 

 Baluze and Roquefort, who maintain, that, like 

 bibere Papaliter, it only signified to live in abun- 

 dance and comfort. 



When Acre fell in 1292, the Templars, having 

 lost all their possessions and a great number of their 

 members in the Holy Land, retired with the other 

 Christians to Cyprus. Having probably seen the 

 folly of all hope of recovering the Holy Land, they 

 grew indifferent about it; few members joined 

 them from Europe, and it is not unlikely that they 

 meditated a removal of the chief seat of the order 

 to France ; at least the circumstance of the last 

 master carrying so much treasure with him when 

 summoned to Europe by the pope, gives great pro- 

 bability to this conjecture. The Hospitallers, on 

 the other hand, with more prudence, as events 

 showed, resolved to continue the war against the 

 infidels, and they attacked and conquered Rhodes ; 

 while the Teutonic knights transferred the sphere 

 of their pious warfare to Prussia, against its hea- 

 then inhabitants. Thus, while the Templars 

 were falling under the reproach of being false and 

 worthless knights, their rivals rose in considera- 

 tion, and there was an active and inveterate enemy 

 ready to take advantage of their ill-repute. 



Philip the Fair, a tyrannical and rapacious 

 prince, was at that time on the throne of France. 

 His darling object was to set the power of the 

 monarchy above that of the church. In his cele- 

 brated controversy with pope Boniface, the Tem- 

 plars had been, as usual, on the side of the Holy 

 See. Philip, whose animosity pursued Boniface 

 even beyond the grave, wished to be revenged on 

 all who had taken his side ; moreover, the immense 

 wealth of the Templars, which he reckoned on 

 making his own if he could destroy them, strongly 

 attracted the king, who had already tasted of the 

 sweets of the spoliation of the Lombards and the 

 Jews; and he probably, also, feared the obstacle 

 to the perfect establishment of despotism which 

 might be offered by a numerous, noble, and weal- 

 thy society, such as the Templars formed. Boni- 

 face's successor, Clement V. was the creature of 

 Philip, to whom he owed his dignity, and at his 

 accession had bound himself to the performance of 

 six articles in favour of Philip, one of which was 

 not expressed. It was probably inserted without 

 any definite object, and intended to serve the in- 

 terest of the French monarch on any occasion 

 which might present itself. 



It had been the project of pope Boniface to form 

 the three military orders into one, and he had sum- 

 moned them to Rome for that purpose, but his 

 death prevented it. Clement wrote, June 6, 1306, 

 to the grand-masters of the Templars and the Hos- 

 pitallers, inviting them to come to consult with 



