The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the TempleAddison, C. G. (Charles Greenstreet)
History
The History of the Knights Templars, the Temple Church, and the Temple
Addison, C. G. (Charles Greenstreet)
Templars -- History
The site of the remaining buildings of the antient Temple cannot now be
determined with certainty.
The mansion-house, (_Mansum Novi Templi_,) the residence of the Master and
knights, who were lodged separately from the serving brethren and ate at a
separate table, appears to have stood at the east end of the hall, on the
site of the present library and apartments of the masters of the bench.
The proud and powerful Knights Templars were succeeded in the occupation
of the TEMPLE by a body of learned lawyers, who took possession of the old
hall and the gloomy cells of the military monks, and converted the chief
house of their order into the great and most antient Common Law University
of England.
For more than five centuries the retreats of the religious warriors have
been devoted to "the studious and eloquent pleaders of causes," a new kind
of Templars, who, as Fuller quaintly observes, now "defend one Christian
from another as the old ones did Christians from Pagans." The modern
Templars have been termed _milites justitiæ_, or "_soldiers of justice_,"
for, as John of Salisbury, a writer of the twelfth century, saith, "neque
reipublicæ militant soli illi, qui galeis thoracisque muniti in hostes
exercent tela quælibet, sed et patroni causarum, qui lapsa erigunt,
fatigata reparant, nec minus provident humano generi, quam si laborantium
vitam, spem, posterosque, armorum præsidio, ab hostibus tuerentur." "They
do not alone fight for the state who, panoplied in helmets and
breastplates, wield the sword and the dart against the enemy, for the
pleaders of causes, who redress wrongs, who raise up the oppressed, do
protect and provide for the human race as much as if they were to defend
the lives, fortunes, and families of industrious citizens with the
sword."[544]
"Besides encounters at the bar
Are braver now than those in war,
In which the law does execution
With less disorder and confusion;
Has more of honour in't, some hold,
Not like the new way, but the old,
When those the pen had drawn together
Decided quarrels with the feather,
And winged arrows killed as dead,
And more than bullets now of lead:
So all their combats now, as then,
Are managed chiefly by the pen;
That does the feat, with braver vigours,
In words at length, as well as figures."
The settlement of the lawyers in the Temple was brought about in the
following manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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