citizen, gave it strength, and dignity, | next, though the intervening space of and grace. * dignity was considerable, the Teutonic In their origin, all the military orders knights. These religious orders of chiand most of the religious ones were en-valry by their principles and conduct are tirely aristocratice; proofs of gentility of strongly marked in the political history birth were scrupulously examined; and of the world, for they formed the firm no soldier by the mere force of his and unceasing bulwark of the Christian valiancy could attain the honors of an kingdom in Palestine during the middle order, though such a claim was allowed ages. They were its regular militia, for his admission into the general fra- and maintained the Holy Land in the ternity of knighthood. These requi- interval between the departure of one sites for nobleness of birth kept pace fleet of crusaders and the arrival of anwith the political state of different other. Generous emulation sometimes countries, for the sovereigns of Europe degenerated into envy, and the heats and and chivalry did not accord upon any feuds of the knights of Saint John and particular form. Thus a French candi- the Temple violated the peace of the date for the knighthood of Saint John of country; but these dissensions were Jerusalem must have shown four quar- usually hushed when danger approached ters of gentility on his coat-armour, but their charge, and the atabal of the Muselin the severer aristocracies of Spain and mans was seldom sounded in defiance Germany no less than eight heraldic on the frontier of the kingdom without emblazonings were requisite. In Italy, the trumpets of the military orders in however, where commerce checked the every preceptory and commandery rehaughtiness of nobility, it was not ex-ceiving and echoing the challenge. pected that the pedigree should be so proud and full, and at length the old families conceded, and the new families were satisfied with the concession, that the sons of merchants should be at liberty to enter into the religious order. It would be tedious and unprofitable to detail the history of all these chivalric societies; and were I to repeat or abridge the usual books on the topic I should in many cases be only assisting to give currency to fraud, for the title, a religious order of knighthood, was often improperly bestowed on an establishment, while in truth it was only a fraternity of monks who maintained some soldiers in their pay: other associations obtained a papal sanction, but they were small and insignificant, and their history did not affect the general state of any country. Not so, however, the noble fraternities of Saint John and the Temple,t and * "I was a Scotsman ere I was a Templar," is the assertion of Vipont in the dramatic sketch of Halidon Hill, --a sentiment confessedly borrowed from the story of the Venetian General, who, observing that his soldiers testified some unwillingness to fight against those of the Pope which they regarded as father of the church. addressed them in terms of similar encouragement: "Fight on -- we were Venetians before we were Christians." The valiancy of the Templars was particularly conspicuous in the moments of the kingdom's final fate; for when the Christians of the Holy Land were reduced to the possession of Acre, and two hundred thousand Mameluke Tartars from Egypt were encamped round its walls, the defence of the city was entrusted to Peter de Beaujeau, Grand Master of the Templars. And well and chivalrously did he sustain his high and sacred charge. Acre fell, indeed, but not until this heroic representative of Christian chivalry and most of the noble followers of his standard had been slain. The memory of the Templars is embalmed in all our recollections of the beautiful romance of the middle ages, for the red cross knights were the last band of Europe's host that contended for the possession of Palestine. A few survived the fall of Acre and retired to Sis in Armenia. They were driven to the island of Tortosa, whence they escaped to Cyprus, and the southern shores of the Mediterranean no longer rang with the cry of religious war. The origin and peculiar nature of these saders. He has imbibed all the vulgar prejudices against the order; and when he wants a villain to form the shadow of his scene, he as regularly and unscrupulously resorts to the fra†The Templars find no favour in the eyes of ternity of the Temple, as other novelists refer the author of Ivanhoe, and Tales of the Cru-to the church, or to Italy, for a similar purpose. three great religious orders have been detailed by me in another work, and also their history as far as it was connected with the crusades; but on one subject our present deductions may be carried further: for though the annals of the cavaliers of Saint John and also of the Teutonic knights are mixed with general European history, yet those of the Templars stand isolated. In the History of the Crusades, I described the circumstances of the iniquitous and sanguinary persecution of the brotherhood of the Temple, the consequent suspension of their functions,* and the spoliation of all those possessions with which the respect of the world had enriched them. headed by the bravest cavaliers of France, by men who, jealous of the dignity of knighthood, would admit no corruption, no base copies of the orders of chivalry, and who thought that the shield of their nobility was enriched by the impress of the Templars' red cross. Bertrand du Guesclin was the grand master from 1357 till his death in 1380, and he was the only French commander who prevailed over the chivalry of our Edward III. From 1478 to 1497, we may mark Robert Lenoncourt, a cavalier of one of the most ancient and valiant families of Lorraine. Phillippe Chabot, a renowned captain in the reign of Francis I., wielded the staff of power from 1516 to 1543. The illustrious family of Montmorency appear as Knights Templars, and Henry, the first duke, was the chief of the order from 1574 to 1614. At the close of the seventeenth century the grand master was James Henry de Duras, a marshal of France, the nephew of Turenne, and one of the most skilful soldiers of Louis XIV. The grand masters from 1734 to 1776 were three princes of the royal Bourbon family. The names and years of power of these royal personages who acknowledged the dignity of the order of the Temple were Louis Augustus Bourbon, Duke Maine, 1724- 1737 Louis Henry Bourbon Condé, 1737 - 1741; and Louis Francis Bourbon Conty, 1741 — 1746. The successor of these princes in the grand-mastership of the Temple was Louis Hercules Timoleon, Duke de Cosse Brissac, the descendant of an ancient family long celebrated in French history for its loyalty and gallant bearing. He accepted the office in 1776, and sustained it till he died in the cause of royalty of But the persecution of the Templars in the fourteenth century does not close the history of the order, for though the knights were spoliated the order was not annihilated. In truth, the cavaliers were not guilty, the brotherhood was not suppressed, and, startling as is the assertion, there has been a succession of Knights Templars from the twelfth century down even to these days; the chain of transmission is perfect in all its links. Jacques de Molai, the Grand Master at the time of the persecution, anticipating his own martyrdom, appointed as his successor, in power and dignity, Johannes Marcus Larmenius of Jerusalem, and from that time to the present there has been a regular and uninterrupted line of grand masters. The charter by which the supreme authority has been transmitted is judicial and conclusive evidence of the order's continued existtence. This charter of transmission, with signatures of the various chiefs of the Temple, is preserved at Paris, with the ancient statutes of the order, the rituals, the records, the seals, the stand-at the beginning of the French Revoluards, and other memorials of the early Templars. The brotherhood has been *The Pope (Clement V.) committed the glaring absurdity of making a provisional decree to be executed in perpetuity. The bull which he issued at the council of Vienne, without asking Thus the very ancient and sovereign the judgment of the assembled bishops and others, declares, that although he cannot of right, conorder of the Temple is now in full and sistently with the Inquisition and proceedings, chivalric existence, like those orders of pronounce a definitive sentence, yet by way of knighthood which were either formed in apostolical provision and regulation, he perpetu-imitation of it, or had their origin in the ally prohibited people from entering into the order and calling themselves Templars. The penalty of the greater excommunication was held out as a punishment for offending. tion. The order has now its grand master, Barnardus Raymundus Fabré Palaprat, and there are colleges in England and in many of the chief cities in Europe. same noble principles of chivalry. It has mourned as well as flourished; but there is in its nature and constitution a principle of vitality which has carried it through all the storms of fate. Its continuance, by representatives as well as by title, is as indisputable a fact as the existence of any other chivalric fraternity. The Templars of these days claim no titular rank, yet their station is so far identified with that of the other orders of knighthood, that they assert equal purity of descent from the same bright source of chivalry. Nor is it possible to impugn the legitimate claims to honourable estimation, which the modern brethren of the Temple derive from the antiquity and pristine lustre of their order, without at the same time shaking to its centre the whole venerable fabric of knightly honour.* The Holy Land was not the only country which gave birth to the religious orders of knighthood. Several arose in Spain, and their arms were mainly instrumental in effecting the triumph of the Christian cause over that of the Moors. War with the usurpers was the * 1 add a complete list of the grand-masters of the Temple, from the time of Jacques de Molai to these days. (Manuel des Chevaliers de l'Order du Temple, Paris, 1817.) pristine object of some of these societies, and in other cases it was based and pillared upon a foundation of charity. Perpetual enmity to the Arabian infidels was the motto of all. Unlike the Christian kings of Spain, the orders never relaxed in their hostility; they never mingled with the Moors in the delights of peace, and their character was formed by their own rules and principles, unaffected by the graceful softenings of oriental luxury and taste. The most considerable of these Spanish religious orders of knighthood was that of Saint James, of Compostella, which sprang from the association of some knights and monks in the middle of the twelfth century, for the protection of the pilgrims who flocked from all countries to bow before the relics of the tutelar saint of Spain.* The monks were of the society of St. Eloy, a holy person of great fame among our English ancestors; for Chaucer's demure prioress was wont to verify her assertions by appealing to his authority. "Her greatest oath n'as but by St. Eloy." The monks and knights lived in friendly communion, the prior of the convent regulating the spiritual concerns, and a grand master, chosen by the cavaliers, leading the soldiers. They were taken under the protection of the papal see, on their professing the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience; but afterwards Pope Alexander the Third sank the ascendancy of the monastic portion of their character, for he permitted an oath of connubial fidelity to be * 66 I would fain know," quoth Sancho, "why the Spaniards call upon that same St. James, the destroyer of the Moors: just when they are going to give battle, they cry St. Jago and close Spain. Pray is Spain open, that it wants to be closed up? What do you make of that ceremony?" "Thou art a very simple fellow, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. 66 Thou must know, that heaven gave to Spain this mighty champion of the Red Cross, for its patron and protector, especially in the desperate engagements which the Spaniards had with the Moors: and therefore they invoke him, in all their martial encounters, as their protector; and many times he has been personally seen cutting and slaying, overthrowing, trampling, and destroying the Moorish Squadrons: of which I could give thee many examples deduced from authentic Spanish histories." Don Quixote, part, ii., c. 58. substituted for that of chastity. descent of two degrees of gentle birth was required for admission into the order of Saint Jaines, and the Christian blood must have been uncontaminated with any Jewish or Moorish mixture. A commanderies, and the kings of Castile and Leon fomented them, thus preventing a union which might be dangerous to the state itself, and obtaining military aid in return for occasional interference. The gratitude of sovereigns enriched the order with various possessions; but it was its own good swords that won for it the best part of its territories. The guarding of the passages to the shrine of Saint James from the incursions of the Moors became extended into a general defence of the kingdom against the hostilities of those enemies of the Christian name; and in time their active military operations far exceeded their defensive wars in consequence and splendour. The simple object of their association being forgotten, their glories became associated with the earliest struggles of the Christians for the re-possession of their inheritance; and they pretended to trace their line up to the ninth century, when Saint James himself, riding on a white horse, and bearing a banner marked with a red cross in his hand, assisted them to discomfit the Moors. A cross, finished like the blade of a sword, and the hilt crossleted, became the ensign of the order, and the order was then appropriately called La Orden de Santiago de la Espada. The centre of the crosslet was orna mented with an escalop-shell, the badge of Saint James; and nothing can more strongly mark the popularity of his shrine in the middle ages than the fact of the escalop-shell being the usual designation of a European palmer. The cross was worn on a white cross mantle, and was painted red, agreeably, as it might seem, to that on the banner already alluded to. But Don Rodrigo Ximines, an archbishop of Toledo, who dealt in allegories, observed the reason to be that the sword was red with the blood of the Arabs, and that the faith of the knights was burning with charity. The grand master of the order of Saint James had precedence over the grand masters of other Spanish orders; but the internal government of the fraternity was in the hands of a council, whose decrees were obligatory, even on the grand master himself. The order of Saint James had two great commanderies, one in Leon and the other in Castile; and to them all other establishments were subordinate. There were perpetual disputes for precedency between these Notwithstanding that, like all other religious orders of knighthood, the order of Saint James had originally enjoyed independence of royal authority, yet in the course of time the kings of Castile acquired the right of delivering to every newly-elected grand master the standard of the order. The obedience was only titular till the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Emperor Charles V. obtained from Popes Leo X. and Adrian VI. the supreme direction of all the affairs of the order, and, consequently, the dignity of grand master became attached to the crown. But the power of the king was not suffered to be absolute; for the popes compelled him to consent that the affairs of the order should be managed by a council, with a right of appeal to the Pope himself. The power of the Spanish kings then became a species of influence, rather than of direct prerogative. The object of the association, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, being accomplished, this religious order became an order of merit—a feather in the plume of Spanish dignity. It could be gained only by the nobility; for it then behoved every knight to prove the gentility of his descent, maternal and paternal, for four degrees. The old vows of poverty, obedience and conjugal chastity, were preserved, with a mental reservation regarding the two former. In the year 1652, the knights of Saint James, as well as the knights of Calatrava and Alcantara, in the fervour of their zeal for what they called religion, added a vow to defend and maintain the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. The people of Madrid were invited to three churches to witness the taking of the vows by the knights. After the celebration of the mass, a cavalier, in the name of all his brothers, pronounced the vow,* and *The words are these: -- Y asi mesmo hago voto, detener, voto defender, y guuardar en pub every one repeated it, placing his hand on the cross and the Gospels. And thus an order, which in its origin was charitable, in its progress patriotic, had the bright glories of its days of honour sullied by superstition.* The next station in the dignity of rank was occupied by the knights of Calatrava, who, considering the circumstances of their origin, may be regarded as a more honourable fraternity than the brotherhood of St. James. About the year 1147, Alfonso, King of Spain, recovered from the Moors the fortress of Calatrava, which was the key of Toledo. The king committed it to the charge of the Knights Templars. That noble /order of Christian soldiers was then in the very infancy of its career of honour, and so few were the red crosses in Spain, that they could not drive back the swelling tide of Muselman power. After retaining it for only eight years, the Templars resigned it into the hands of Don Sancho, successor of Alfonso, who endeavored to secure it for its defenders, by proposing to accord Calatrava and its lands in perpetual possession to such knights as would undertake the guarding of the fortress. The chivalry of Spain, remembering that the brave militia of the Temple had quailed before the Moors, hung back in caution and dismay; and Sancho already saw the fate of Calatrava sealed in Arabian subjection, when the cloisters of a convent rang with a cry of war which was unheard in the baronial hall. The monastery of Santa Maria de Fetero in Navarre contained a monk named Diego Velasquez, who had spent the morning of his life in arms, but afterwards had changed the mailed frock for a monastic mantle, for in days of chivalry, when religion was the master-spring of action, such conversions were easy and natural. The gloom of a convent was calculated only to repress the martial spirit; but yet the surrounding memorials of military greatness, the armed warrior in stone, the overhanging banner lico, y en secreto, que la Vergen Maria Madre de Dios, y senora nuestra, fue concebida sin mancha de peccato original. Favyne, Theat. d'Honneur, 1. 6, c. 5. Carode Torres, Hist. de las Ordines Militares, 1, 7, c. 10. and gauntlet, while they proved the frail nature of earthly happiness, showed what were the subjects wherein men wished for fame beyond the grave. The pomp of the choir-service, the swelling note of exultation in which the victories of the Jews over the enemies of Heaven were sung, could not but excite the heart to admiration of chivalric renown, and in moments of enthusiasm many a monk cast his cowl aside, and changed his rosary for the belt of a knight. His And thus it was with Velasquez. chivalric spirit was roused by the call of his king, and he lighted a flame of military ardour among his brethren. They implored the superior of the convent to accept the royal proffer; and the king, who was at first astonished at the apparent audacity of the wish, soon recollected that the defence of the fortress of Calatrava could not be achieved by the ordinary exertions of courage, and he then granted it to the Cistertian order, and principally to its station at Santa Maria de Fetero, in Navarre. And the fortress was wisely bestowed; for not only did the bold spirits of the convents keep the Moors at bay in that quarter, but the valour of the friars caused many heroic knights of Spain to join them. To these banded monks and cavaliers the king gave the title of the Religious Fraternity of Calatrava, and Pope Alexander III. accepted their vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. The new religious order of knighthood, like that of Saint James of Compostella, was a noble bulwark of the Christian kingdom. Nothing could be more perfect than the simplicity of the knights of Calatrava. Their dress was formed from the coarsest woollen, and the edges were not like those of many a monk of the time, purfiled or ornamented with vair or gris, or other sorts of rich fur. Their diet, too, reproached the usual luxury of the monastery, for the fruits of the earth sustained them. They were silent in the oratory, and the refectory, one voice only reciting the prayers, or reading a legend of battle; but when the first note of the Moorish atabal was heard by the warder on the tower, the convent became a scene of universal uproar. The caparisoning of steeds, and the clashing of armour, broke the repose of the cloister, while |