Secret Societies of the Middle AgesKeightley, Thomas
History
Secret Societies of the Middle Ages
Keightley, Thomas
Secret societies
Another account says that Squin Flexian and Noffo Dei, who were both
degraded Templars, had been actively engaged in an insurrection of the
people some time before, from which the king was obliged to take shelter
in the Temple. They had been taken, and were lying in prison without any
hope of their lives, when they hit on the plan of accusing their former
associates. They were both set at liberty; but Squin was afterwards
hanged, and Noffo Dei beheaded, as was said with little probability, by
the Templars.
It is also said, that, about the same time, Cardinal Cantilupo, the
pope's chamberlain, who had been in connexion with the Templars from his
eleventh year, made some discoveries respecting it to his master.
The charges made by Squin Flexian against the order were as follows:--
1. Each Templar, on his admission, was sworn never to quit the order;
and to further its interests, by right or by wrong.
2. The heads of the order are in secret alliance with the Saracens; and
have more Mahommedan infidelity than Christian faith; in proof of which,
they make every novice spit and trample on the cross of Christ, and
blaspheme his faith in various ways.
3. The heads of the order are heretical, cruel, and sacrilegious men.
Whenever any novice, on discovering the iniquity of the order, attempts
to quit it, they put him to death, and bury him privately by night. They
teach the women who are pregnant by them how to procure abortion, and
secretly murder the new-born babes.
4. The Templars are infected with all the errors of the Fraticelli; they
despise the pope and the authority of the Church; they contemn the
sacraments, especially those of penance and confession. They feign
compliance with the rites of the Church merely to escape detection.
5. The superiors are addicted to the most infamous excesses of
debauchery; to which, if any one expresses his repugnance, he is
punished by perpetual captivity.
6. The temple-houses are the receptacles of every crime and abomination
that can be committed.
7. The order labours to put the Holy Land into the hands of the
Saracens; and favours them more than the Christians.
8. The installation of the Master takes place in secret, and few of the
younger brethren are present at it; whence there is a strong suspicion
that he denies the Christian faith or promises, or does something
contrary to right.
9. Many statutes of the order are unlawful, profane, and contrary to the
Christian religion; the members are, therefore, forbidden, under pain of
perpetual confinement, to reveal them to any one.
10. No vice or crime committed for the honour or benefit of the order is
held to be a sin.
Such were the charges brought against the order by the degraded prior of
Montfaucon--charges in general absurd, or founded on gross exaggeration
of some of the rules of the society. Others, still more incredible, were
subsequently brought forward in the course of the examinations of
witnesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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