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The Knights Templars,
BY
C. G. ADDISON ESQE.
BARRISTER AT LAW
DESIGNED & LITHOGRAPHED BY J. BRANDARD FROM SKETCHES BY C.G.ADDISON ESQRE.
THE ADMISSION OF A NOVICE TO THE VOWS OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE
M & N Hanhart, lith Printers 64 Charlotte St. Rathbone Pl.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Having some years ago, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Cityof Jerusalem, gained admission to the courts of the ancientTemple of the Knights Templars, which still exists on MountMoriah in a perfect state of preservation as a MussulmanMosque, and having visited many of the ruined fortresses andcastles of the ancient order of the Temple, whose shattered wallsare still to be seen at intervals in Palestine and in Syria, fromGaza to Antioch, and from the mountains of the Dead Sea to theshores of the Mediterranean, I naturally became greatly interestedin the history of the order, and in the numerous remains andmemorials of the Knights Templars still to be met with invarious stages of decay and ruin in almost every part of Europe.The recent restoration of the Temple Church at London, themost beautiful and the best preserved of all the ancient ecclesiasticaledifices of the western provinces of the Temple, firstsuggested to me the idea of writing a short historical account ofthe varied fortunes of that great religious and military fraternityof knights and monks by whom it was erected, and of their darkand terrible end.
Born during the first fervour of the Crusaders, the Templarswere flattered and aggrandized as long as their great military[Pg ii]power and religious fanaticism could be made available for the supportof the Eastern church and the retention of the Holy Land;but when the crescent had ultimately triumphed over the cross, andthe religious and military enthusiasm of Christendom had diedaway, they encountered the basest ingratitude in return for theservices they had rendered to the Christian faith, and were plundered,persecuted, and condemned to a cruel death by those whoought in justice to have been their defenders and supporters.
The memory of these holy warriors is embalmed in all our recollectionsof the wars of the cross; they were the bulwarks ofthe Latin kingdom of Jerusalem during the short period of itsexistence, and were the last band of Europe’s host that contendedfor the possession of Palestine. To the