Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 44376-h.htm or 44376-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44376/44376-h/44376-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44376/44376-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/knightstemplars00addirich Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). Chapter III contains a Greek name, the letters of which might not display properly. A transliteration is contained in the iso-8859-1 (Latin1) version of this text file. See http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44376/44376-8.txt or http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44376/44376-8.zip THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS, by C. G. ADDISON ESQE. Barrister at Law [Illustration] THIRD EDITION. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. Paternoster Row, 1852. [Illustration: THE ADMISSION OF A NOVICE TO THE VOWS OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE] PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. Having some years ago, during a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem, gained admission to the courts of the ancient Temple of the Knights Templars, which still exists on Mount Moriah in a perfect state of preservation as a Mussulman Mosque, and having visited many of the ruined fortresses and castles of the ancient order of the Temple, whose shattered walls are still to be seen at intervals in Palestine and in Syria, from Gaza to Antioch, and from the mountains of the Dead Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean, I naturally became greatly interested in the history of the order, and in the numerous remains and memorials of the Knights Templars still to be met with in various stages of decay and ruin in almost every part of Europe. The recent restoration of the Temple Church at London, the most beautiful and the best preserved of all the ancient ecclesiastical edifices of the western provinces of the Temple, first suggested to me the idea of writing a short historical account of the varied fortunes of that great religious and military fraternity of knights and monks by whom it was erected, and of their dark and terrible end. Born during the first fervour of the Crusaders, the Templars were flattered and aggrandized as long as their great military power and religious fanaticism could be made available for the support of the Eastern church and the retention of the Holy Land; but when the crescent had ultimately triumphed over the cross, and the religious and military enthusiasm of Christendom had died away, they encountered the basest ingratitude in return for the services they had rendered to the Christian faith, and were plundered, persecuted, and condemned to a cruel death by those who ought in justice to have been their defenders and supporters.