bannerbanner
The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple
The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Templeполная версия

Полная версия

The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple

Язык: Английский
Год издания: 2017
Добавлена:
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля
На страницу:
20 из 32

A few months after the close of these proceedings, Brother William de la More, the Master of the Temple in England, died of a broken heart in his solitary dungeon in the Tower, persisting with his last breath in the maintenance of the innocence of his order. King Edward, in pity for his misfortunes, directed the constable of the Tower to hand over his goods and chattels, valued at the sum of 4l. 19s. 11d., to his executors, to be employed in the liquidation of his debts, and he commanded Geoffrey de la Lee, guardian of the lands of the Templars, to pay the arrears of his prison pay (2s. per diem) to the executor, Roger Hunsingon.411

Among the Cotton MS. is a list of the Masters of the Temple, otherwise the Grand Priors or Grand Preceptors of England, compiled under the direction of the prior of the Hospital of Saint John at Clerkenwell, to the intent that the brethren of that fraternity might remember the antient Masters of the Temple in their prayers.412 A few names have been omitted which are supplied in the following list: —

Magister

R. de Pointon.413

Rocelinus de Fossa.414

Richard de Hastings,415 A. D. 1160.

Richard Mallebeench.416

Geoffrey, son of Stephen,417 A. D. 1180.

Thomas Berard, A. D. 1200.

Amaric de St. Maur,418 A. D. 1203.

Alan Marcel,419 A. D. 1224.

Amberaldus, A. D. 1229.

Robert Mountforde,420 A. D. 1234.

Robert Sanford,421 A. D. 1241.

Amadeus de Morestello, A. D. 1254.

Himbert Peraut,422 A. D. 1270.

Robert Turvile,423 A. D. 1290.

Guido de Foresta,424 A. D. 1292.

James de Molay, A. D. 1293.

Brian le Jay,425 A. D. 1295.

William de la More the Martyr.

The only other Templar in England whose fate merits particular attention is Brother Himbert Blanke, the Grand Preceptor of Auvergne. He appears to have been a knight of high honour and of stern unbending pride. From first to last he had boldly protested against the violent proceedings of the inquisitors, and had fearlessly maintained, amid all trials, his own innocence and that of his order. This illustrious Templar had fought under four successive Grand Masters in defence of the christian faith in Palestine, and after the fall of Acre, had led in person several daring expeditions against the infidels. For these meritorious services he was rewarded in the following manner: – After having been tortured and half-starved in the English prisons for the space of five years, he was condemned, as he would make no confession of guilt, to be shut up in a loathsome dungeon, to be loaded with double chains, and to be occasionally visited by the agents of the inquisition, to see if he would confess nothing further!426 In this miserable situation he remained until death at last put an end to his sufferings.

A. D. 1313.

James de Molay, the Grand Master of the Temple, Guy, the Grand Preceptor, a nobleman of illustrious birth, brother to the prince of Dauphiny, Hugh de Peralt, the Visitor-general of the Order, and the Grand Preceptor of Aquitaine, had now languished in the prisons of France for the space of five years and a half. The Grand Master had been compelled to make a confession which he afterwards disowned and stigmatized as a forgery, swearing that if the cardinals who had subscribed it had been of a different cloth, he would have proclaimed them liars, and would have challenged them to mortal combat.427 The other knights had also made confessions which they had subsequently revoked. The secrets of the dark prisons of these illustrious Templars have never been brought to light, but on the 18th of March, A. D. 1313, a public scaffold was erected before the cathedral church of Notre Dame, at Paris, and the citizens were summoned to hear the Order of the Temple convicted by the mouths of its chief officers, of the sins and iniquities charged against it. The four knights, loaded with chains and surrounded by guards, were then brought upon the scaffold by the provost, and the bishop of Alba read their confessions aloud in the presence of the assembled populace. The papal legate then, turning towards the Grand Master and his companions, called upon them to renew, in the hearing of the people, the avowals which they had previously made of the guilt of their order. Hugh de Peralt, the Visitor-General, and the Preceptor of the Temple of Aquitaine, signified their assent to whatever was demanded of them, but the Grand Master raising his arms bound with chains towards heaven, and advancing to the edge of the scaffold, declared in a loud voice, that to say that which was untrue was a crime, both in the sight of God and man. “I do,” said he, “confess my guilt, which consists in having, to my shame and dishonour, suffered myself, through the pain of torture and the fear of death, to give utterance to falsehoods, imputing scandalous sins and iniquities to an illustrious order, which hath nobly served the cause of Christianity. I disdain to seek a wretched and disgraceful existence by engrafting another lie upon the original falsehood.” He was here interrupted by the provost and his officers, and Guy, the Grand Preceptor, having commenced with strong asseverations of his innocence, they were both hurried back to prison.

King Philip was no sooner informed of the result of this strange proceeding, than, upon the first impulse of his indignation, without consulting either pope, or bishop, or ecclesiastical council, he commanded the instant execution of both these gallant noblemen. The same day at dusk they were led out of their dungeons, and were burned to death in a slow and lingering manner upon small fires of charcoal which were kindled on the little island in the Seine, between the king’s garden and the convent of St. Augustine, close to the spot where now stands the equestrian statue of Henri IV.428

Thus perished the last Grand Master of the Temple.

The fate of the persecutors of the order is not unworthy of notice.

A year and one month after the above horrible execution, the pope was attacked by a dysentery, and speedily hurried to his grave. The dead body was transported to Carpentras, where the court of Rome then resided; it was placed at night in a church which caught fire, and the mortal remains of the holy pontiff were almost entirely consumed. His relations quarrelled over the immense treasures he left behind him, and a vast sum of money, which had been deposited for safety in a church at Lucca, was stolen by a daring band of German and Italian freebooters.

Before the close of the same year, king Philip died of a lingering disease which baffled all the art of his medical attendants, and the condemned criminal, upon the strength of whose information the Templars were originally arrested, was hanged for fresh crimes. “History attests,” says Monsieur Raynouard, “that all those who were foremost in the persecution of the Templars, came to an untimely and miserable death.” The last days of Philip were embittered by misfortune; his nobles and clergy leagued against him to resist his exactions; the wives of his three sons were accused of adultery, and two of them were publicly convicted of that crime. The misfortunes of Edward the Second, king of England, and his horrible death in Berkeley Castle, are too well known to be further alluded to.

To save appearances, the pope had published a bull transferring the property, late belonging to the Templars, to the order of the Hospital of Saint John,429 which had just then acquired additional renown and popularity in Europe by the conquest from the infidels of the island of Rhodes. This bull, however, remained for a considerable period nearly a dead letter, and the Hospitallers never obtained a twentieth part of the antient possessions of the Templars.

The kings of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, created new military orders in their own dominions, to which the estates of the late order of the Temple were transferred, and, annexing the Grand Masterships thereof to their own persons, by the title of Perpetual Administrators, they succeeded in drawing to themselves an immense revenue.430 The kings of Bohemia, Naples, and Sicily, retained possession of many of the houses and strongholds of the Templars in their dominions, and various religious orders of monks succeeded in installing themselves in the convents of the fraternity. The heirs of the donors of the property, moreover, claimed a title to it by escheat, and in most cases where the Hospitallers obtained the lands and estates granted them by the pope, they had to pay large fines to adverse claimants to be put into peaceable possession.431

“The chief cause of the ruin of the Templars,” justly remarks Fuller, “was their extraordinary wealth. As Naboth’s vineyard was the chiefest ground of his blasphemy, and as in England Sir John Cornwall Lord Fanhope said merrily, not he, but his stately house at Ampthill in Bedfordshire was guilty of high treason, so certainly their wealth was the principal cause of their overthrow… We may believe that king Philip would never have taken away their lives if he might have taken their lands without putting them to death, but the mischief was, he could not get the honey unless he burnt the bees.”432

King Philip, the pope, and the European sovereigns, appear to have disposed of all the personalty of the Templars, the ornaments, jewels, and treasure of their churches and chapels, and during the period of five years, over which the proceedings against the order extended, they remained in the actual receipt of the vast rents and revenues of the fraternity. After the promulgation of the bull, assigning the property of the Templars to the Hospitallers, king Philip put forward a claim upon the land to the extent of two hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of the prosecution, and Louis Hutin, his son, required a further sum of sixty thousand pounds from the Hospitallers, before he would consent to surrender the estates into their hands.433 “J’ignore,” says Voltaire, “ce qui revint au pape, mais je vois evidemment que les frais des cardinaux, des inquisiteurs déléguès pour faire ce procès épouvantable monterent à des sommés immenses.”434 The holy pontiff, according to his own account, received only a small portion of the personalty of the order,435 but others make him a large participator in the good things of the fraternity.436

On the imprisonment of the Templars in England, the Temple at London, and all the preceptories dependent upon it, with the manors, farms, houses, lands, and revenues of the fraternity, were placed under the survey of the Court of Exchequer, and extents437 were directed to be taken of the same, after which they were confided to the care of certain trustworthy persons, styled “Guardians of the lands of the Templars,” who were to account for the rents and profits to the king’s exchequer. The bishop of Lichfield and Coventry had the custody of all the lands and tenements in the county of Hants. John de Wilburgham had those in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, and there were thirty-two other guardians entrusted with the care of the property in the remaining counties of England.438 These guardians were directed to pay various pensions to the old servants and retainers of the Templars dwelling in the different preceptories,439 also the expenses of the prosecution against the order, and they were at different times required to provide for the exigencies of the public service, and to victual the king’s castles and strongholds. On the 12th of January, A. D. 1312, William de Slengesby, guardian of the manor of Ribbestayn in the county of York, was commanded to forward to the constable of the castle of Knaresburgh a hundred quarters of corn, ten quarters of oats, twenty fat oxen, eighty sheep, and two strong carts, towards the victualling of the said fortress, and the king tells him that the same shall be duly deducted when he renders his account to the exchequer of the rents and profits of the said manor.440 The king, indeed, began to dispose of the property as if it was wholly vested in the crown, and made munificent donations to his favourites and friends. In the month of February of the same year, he gave the manors of Etton and Cave to David Earl of Athol, directing the guardians of the lands and tenements of the Templars in the county of York to hand over to the said earl all the corn in those manors, the oxen, calves, ploughs, and all the goods and chattels of the Templars existing therein, together with the ornaments and utensils of the chapel of the Temple.441

On the 16th of May, however, the pope addressed bulls to the king, and to all the earls and barons of the kingdom, setting forth the proceedings of the council of Vienne and the publication of the papal decree, vesting the property late belonging to the Templars in the brethren of the Hospital of St. John, and he commands them forthwith to place the members of that order in possession thereof. Bulls were also addressed to the archbishops of Canterbury and York and their suffragans, commanding them to enforce by ecclesiastical censures the execution of the papal commands.442 King Edward and his nobles very properly resisted this decree, and on the 21st of August the king wrote to the Prior of the Hospital of St. John at Clerkenwell, telling him that the pretensions of the pope to dispose of property within the realm of England, without the consent of parliament, were derogatory to the dignity of the crown and the royal authority; and he commands him, under severe pains and penalties, to refrain from attempting to obtain any portion of the possessions of the Templars.443 The king, indeed, continued to distribute the lands and rents amongst his friends and favourites. At the commencement of the year 1313, he granted the Temple at London, with the church and all the buildings therein, to Aymer de Valence earl of Pembroke;444 and on the 5th of May of the same year he caused several merchants, from whom he had borrowed money, to be placed in possession of many of the manors of the Templars.445

Yielding, however, at last to the exhortations and menaces of the pope, the king, on the 21st of Nov. A. D. 1313, granted the property to the Hospitallers,446 and sent orders to all the guardians of the lands of the Templars, and to various powerful barons who were in possession of the estates, commanding them to deliver them up to certain parties deputed by the Grand Master and chapter of the Hospital of Saint John to receive them.447 At this period, however, many of the heirs of the donors, whose title had been recognized by the law, were in possession of the lands, and the judges held that the king had no power of his own sole authority to transfer them to the order of the Hospital.448 The thunders of the Vatican were consequently vigorously made use of, and all the detainers of the property were doomed by the Roman pontiff to everlasting damnation.449 Pope John, in one of his bulls, dated A. D. 1322, bitterly complains of the disregard by all the king’s subjects of the papal commands. He laments that they had hardened their hearts and despised the sentence of excommunication fulminated against them, and declares that his heart was riven with grief to find that even the ecclesiastics, who ought to have been as a wall of defence to the Hospitallers, had themselves been heinously guilty in the premises.450

At last (A. D. 1324) the pope, the bishops, and the Hospitallers, by their united exertions, succeeded in obtaining an act of parliament, vesting all the property late belonging to the Templars in the brethren of the Hospital of Saint John, in order that the intentions of the donors might be carried into effect by the appropriation of it to the defence of the Holy Land and the succour of the christian cause in the East.451 This statute gave rise to the greatest discontent. The heirs of the donors petitioned parliament for its repeal, alleging that it had been made against law and against reason, and contrary to the opinion of the judges;452 and many of the great barons who held the property by a title recognised by the common law, successfully resisted the claims of the order of the Hospital, maintaining that the parliament had no right to interfere with the tenure of private property, and to dispose of their possessions without their consent.

This struggle between the heirs of the donors on the one hand, and the Hospitallers on the other, continued for a lengthened period; and in the reign of Edward the Third it was found necessary to pass another act of parliament, confirming the previous statute in their favour, and writs were sent to the sheriffs (A. D. 1334) commanding them to enforce the execution of the acts of the legislature, and to take possession, in the king’s name, of all the property unjustly detained from the brethren of the Hospital.453

Whilst the vast possessions, late belonging to the Templars, thus continued to be the subject of contention, the surviving brethren of that dissolved order continued to be treated with the utmost inhumanity and neglect. The ecclesiastical council had assigned to each of them a pension of fourpence a day for subsistence, but this small pittance was not paid, and they were consequently in great danger of dying of hunger. The king, pitying their miserable situation, wrote to the prior of the hospital of St. John at Clerkenwell, earnestly requesting him to take their hard lot into his serious consideration, and not suffer them to come to beggary in the streets.454 The archbishop of Canterbury also exerted himself in their behalf, and sent letters to the possessors of the property, reproving them for the non-payment of the allotted stipends. “This inhumanity,” says he, “awakens our compassion, and penetrates us with the most lively grief. We pray and conjure you in kindness to furnish them, for the love of God and for charity, with the means of subsistence.”455 The archbishop of York caused many of them to be supported in the different monasteries of his diocese.456

Many of the quondam Templars, however, after the dissolution of their order, assumed a secular habit; they blended themselves with the laity, mixed in the pleasures of the world, and even presumed to contract matrimony, proceedings which drew down upon them the severe indignation of the Roman pontiff. In a bull addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury, the pope stigmatises these marriages as unlawful concubinages; he observes that the late Templars remained bound, notwithstanding the dissolution of their order, by their vows of perpetual chastity, and he orders them to be separated from the women whom they had married, and to be placed in different monasteries, where they are to dedicate themselves to the service of God, and the strict performance of their religious vows.457

The Templars adopted the oriental fashion of long beards, and during the proscription of the fraternity, when the fugitives who had thrown off their habits were hunted out like wild beasts, it appears to have been dangerous for laymen to possess beards of more than a few weeks’ growth.

Papers and certificates were granted to men with long beards, to prevent them from being molested by the officers of justice as suspected Templars, as appears from the following curious certificate given by king Edward the Second to his valet, who had made a vow not to shave himself until he had performed a pilgrimage to a certain place beyond sea.

“Rex, etc. Cum dilectus valettus noster Petrus Auger, exhibitor præsentium, nuper voverit quod barbam suam radi non faciat, quousque peregrinationem fecerit in certo loco in partibus transmarinis; et idem Petrus sibi timeat, quod aliqui ipsum, ratione barbæ suæ prolixæ fuisse Templarium imponere sibi velint, et ei inferre impedimenta seu gravamina ex hac causa; Nos veritati volentes testimonium pertulere, vobis tenore præsentium intimamus, quod prædictus Petrus est valettus cameræ nostræ, nec unquam fuit Templarius, sed barbam suam sic prolixam esse permittit, ex causa superius annotata, etc. Teste Rege, &c.”458

CHAPTER XI.

THE TEMPLE CHURCH

The restoration of the Temple Church – The beauty and magnificence of the venerable building – The various styles of architecture displayed in it – The discoveries made during the recent restoration – The sacrarium – The marble piscina – The sacramental niches – The penitential cell – The ancient Chapel of St. Anne – Historical matters connected with the Temple Church – The holy relics anciently preserved therein – The interesting monumental remains.

“If a day should come when pew lumber, preposterous organ cases, and pagan altar screens, are declared to be unfashionable, no religious building, stript of such nuisances, would come more fair to the sight, or give more general satisfaction to the antiquary, than the chaste and beautiful Temple Church.” —Gentleman’s Magazine for May, 1808, p. 1087.

“After three centuries of demolition, the solemn structures raised by our Catholic ancestors are being gradually restored to somewhat of their original appearance, and buildings, which, but a few years since, were considered as unsightly and barbarous erections of ignorant times, are now become the theme of general eulogy and models for imitation.”459

It has happily been reserved for the present generation, after a lapse of two centuries, to see the venerable Temple Church, the chief ecclesiastical edifice of the Knights Templars in Britain, and the most beautiful and perfect relic of the order now in existence, restored to the simple majesty it possessed near seven hundred years ago; to see it once again presenting the appearance which it wore when the patriarch of Jerusalem exercised his sacred functions within its walls, and when the mailed knights of the most holy order of the Temple of Solomon, the sworn champions of the christian faith, unfolded the red-cross banner amid “the long-drawn aisles,” and offered their swords upon the altar to be blessed by the ministers of religion.

From the period of the reign of Charles the First down to our own times, the Temple Church has remained sadly disfigured by incongruous innovations and modern embellishments, which entirely changed the antient character and appearance of the building, and clouded and obscured its elegance and beauty.

Shortly after the Reformation, the Protestant lawyers, from an over-anxious desire to efface all the emblems of the popish faith, covered the gorgeously-painted ceiling of this venerable structure with an uniform coating of simple whitewash; they buried the antique tesselated pavement under hundreds of cart-loads of earth and rubbish, on the surface of which, two feet above the level of the antient floor, they placed another pavement, formed of old grave-stones. They, moreover, disfigured all the magnificent marble columns with a thick coating of plaster and paint, and destroyed the beauty of the elaborately-wrought mouldings of the arches, and the exquisitely-carved marble ornaments with thick incrustations of whitewash, clothing the whole edifice in one uniform garb of plain white, in accordance with the puritanical ideas of those times.

Subsequently, in the reign of Charles the Second, the fine open area of the body of the church was filled with long rows of stiff and formal pews, which concealed the bases of the columns, while the plain but handsome stone walls of the sacred edifice were encumbered, to a height of eight feet from the ground, with oak wainscoting, which was carried entirely round the church, so as to shut out from view the elegant marble piscina on the south side of the building, the interesting arched niches over the high altar, and the sacrarium on the eastern side of the edifice. The elegant gothic arches connecting the Round with the oblong portion of the building were filled up with an oak screen and glass windows and doors, and with an organ-gallery adorned with Corinthian columns and pilastres and Grecian ornaments, which divided the building into two parts, altogether altered its original character and appearance, and sadly marred its architectural beauty. The eastern end of the church was, at the same time, disfigured with an enormous altarpiece in the classic style, decorated with Corinthian columns and Grecian cornices and entablatures, and with enrichments of cherubims and wreaths of fruit, leaves, and flowers, exquisitely carved and beautiful in themselves, but heavy and cumbrous, and quite at variance with the gothic character of the edifice. A huge pulpit and sounding-board, elaborately carved, were also erected in the middle of the nave, forming a great obstruction to the view of the interior of the building, and the walls and all the columns were thickly clustered and disfigured with mural monuments.

На страницу:
20 из 32