The Knights TemplarsAddison, C. G. (Charles Greenstreet)
History
The Knights Templars
Addison, C. G. (Charles Greenstreet)
Templars
&c.) were sung, and prayers were offered up, and then the
ceremony was concluded.
On the 1st of July, an avowal of guilt was wrung by the inquisitors
from Brother John de Stoke, chaplain of the order, who, being brought
before the bishops of London and Chichester in St. Martin’s Church,
deposed that he was received in the mode mentioned by him on his first
examination; but a year and fifteen days after that reception, being at
the preceptory of Garwy in the diocese of Hereford, he was called into
the chamber of Brother James de Molay, the Grand Master of the order,
who, in the presence of two other Templars of foreign extraction,
informed him that he wished to make proof of his obedience, and
commanded him to take a seat at the foot of the bed, and the deponent
did so. The Grand Master then sent into the church for the crucifix,
and two serving brothers, with naked swords in their hands, stationed
themselves on either side of the doorway. As soon as the crucifix
made its appearance, the Grand Master, pointing to the figure of our
Saviour nailed thereon, asked the deponent whose image it was, and he
answered, “The image of Jesus Christ, who suffered on the cross for the
redemption of mankind;” but the Grand Master exclaimed, “Thou sayest
wrong, and art much mistaken, for he was the son of a certain woman,
and was crucified because he called himself the Son of God, and I
myself have been in the place where he was born and crucified, and thou
must now deny him whom this image represents.” The deponent exclaimed,
“Far be it from me to deny my Saviour;” but the Grand Master told him
he must do it, or he would be put into a sack and be carried to a place
which he would find by no means agreeable, and there were swords in
the room, and brothers ready to use them, &c. &c.; and the deponent
asked if such was the custom of the order, and if all the brethren
did the same; and being answered in the affirmative, he, through fear
of immediate death, denied Christ with his _tongue_, but not with his
_heart_. Being asked in whom he was told to put his faith after he had
denied Christ Jesus, he replies, “In that great Omnipotent God who
created the heaven and the earth!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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