Heroines of the CrusadesBloss, C. A. (Celestia Angenette)
History
Heroines of the Crusades
Bloss, C. A. (Celestia Angenette)
Crusades; Crusades -- Biography; Women -- Biography
In A.D. 1113, the Hospital was put under the protection of the Holy See,
and their revenues increasing beyond the demands of charity, about A.D.
1130, they determined to draw the sword against the enemies of the faith.
The Hospitallers were accordingly arranged into three classes, nobility,
clergy, and serving brothers, who divided their duties between making
deadly war upon the Infidels, healing the wounds of the Christian soldier,
and praying for the souls of the departed. The admirers of valor and
piety either joined their standard or enriched their coffers. Great men
sent their sons to them for instruction, and the Knights Hospitallers soon
became a powerful monastic and military order.
A few years later, some French gentlemen founded the equally honorable
institution of the Red Cross Knights. The original design of this order,
was to watch the road and keep open the communication between Europe and
the Holy Land. At first they were fed and clothed by the Hospitallers, and
to indicate their poverty, adopted a seal with the figures of two men on
one horse. They bound themselves to the three great monastic virtues, and
added some austerities, which were supposed to give them power with God
and man. They were originally styled Milites Christi, but when Baldwin I.
assigned them a residence in the royal palace, adjacent to the Temple of
Solomon, they assumed the title of Templars, or Knights of the Temple.
They wore linen coifs with red caps close over them, shirts and stockings
of twisted mail, sapra vests and broad belts with swords inserted, and
over the whole was a white cloak touching the ground. This order, too,
rose into dignity and power; and the military friars of the Hospital, and
the Red Cross Knights of the Temple, soon became the bulwark of
Christendom, "the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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