§ (50. THE MILITARY ORDERS. 301
nificent until Europe felt the thrill of relief caused by the memorable defeat of the Turkish fleet by Don John at Lepanto, 1571. From that time the order continued to decay.1
II. The Knight Templars2 before the fall of Acre had, if possible, a more splendid fame than the Knights of St. John; but the order had a singularly tragic ending in 1312, and was dissolved under moral charges of the most serious nature. From the beginning they were a military body. The order owes its origin to Hugo de Payens (or Payns) and Godfrey St. Omer, who entered Jerusalem riding on one horse, 1119. They were joined by six others who united with them in mak ing a vow to the patriarch of Jerusalem to defend by force of arms pilgrims on their way from the coast to Jerusalem.
Baldwin II. gave the brotherhood quarters in his palace on Mount Moriah, near the site of Solomon's temple, whence the name Templars is derived. Hugo appeared at the council of Troyes in 1128,3 and made such persuasive ap peals at the courts of France, England, and Germany, that three hundred knights joined the order. St. Bernard wrote a famous tract in praise of the " new soldiery." 4 He says : " Never is an idle word, or useless deed, or immoderate laughter or murmur, if it be but in a whisper, among the Templars allowed to go unpunished. They take no pleasure in the absurd pastime of hawking. Draughts and dice they abhor. Ribald songs and stage plays they eschew as insane follies. They cut their hair close ; they are begrimed
1 On October 31, 1898, the emperor William II. of Germany, while on a visit to Jerusalem, dedicated the Protestant church of the Bedeemer, built on the ancient site of the hospital of the Knights of St. John, opposite the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
2 Templarii, fratres militice templi, equites templarii, pauper es commilitiones Christi templique Salamonis, are some of the titles by which they were known. There was not nearly as much resemblance between the Hos pitallers and Templars as between the Templars and Teutonic knights. Curzon, p. xi.
8 William of Tyre. See Hefele, V. 401 sq. * De laude novce militice.
302 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
with dirt and swarthy from the weight of their armor and the heat of the sun. They never dress gayly, and wash sel dom. They strive to secure swift and strong horses, but not garnished with ornaments or decked with trappings, thinking of battle and victory, not of pomp and show. Such has God chosen to vigilantly guard the Holy Sepulchre." l
The order spread with great rapidity.2 Matthew Paris, no doubt, greatly exaggerates when he gives the number of their houses in the middle of the thirteenth century as nine thou sand.3 Their annual revenues have been estimated as high as 54,000,000 francs.4 The order was divided into provinces, five of them in the east — Jerusalem, Tripolis, Antioch, Cyprus, and the Morea ; and eleven in the west — France, Aquitaine, Provence, Aragon, Portugal, Lombardy, Hun gary, England, Upper and Lower Germany, Sicily, and perhaps a twelfth, Bohemia. Popes, beginning with Honorius II., heaped favors upon them. They were relieved from paying taxes of all sorts. They might hold services twice a year in churches where the interdict was in force. Their goods were placed under the special protection of the Holy See. In 1163 Alexander III. granted them permission to have their own priests.5
Like the Hospitallers, the Templars took the triple vow and, in addition, the vow of military service and were di-
1 On St. Bernard's services to the order, see the biographies by Morison, 141 sqq., and Storrs, 567-574.
2 In England they settled at the old Temple outside of Holborn, whence they removed to the new Temple on the Thames, 1185. The Temple church was completed in 1240. M. Paris gives an account of the dedication and the banquet which was provided by the Hospitallers. Stephen and his queen gave the Templars several places about 1150. Woodhouse, p. 260, gives a list of twenty-seven English houses. 3 An. 1244.
4 At the end of the thirteenth century. This is the estimate of de Chambure. Schottmiiller estimates them at 40,000,000 francs. William of Tyre, XII. 7, speaks of their possessions as " immense." Their wealth and greed were proverbial.
6 Funk calls Alexander's bull the Magna Charta of the order. Wetzer- Welte, XL 1315.