Part 18 (1/2)
[Footnote 103: Almost every charge brought against the Templars had been previously made against the Albigenses, with how much truth every one is aware.]
The real guilt of the Templars was their wealth and their pride[104]: the last alienated the people from them, the former excited the cupidity of the king of France. Far be it from us to maintain that the morals of the Templars were purer than those of the other religious orders. With such ample means as they possessed of indulging all their appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions, it would be contrary to all experience to suppose that they always restrained them, and we will even concede that some of their members were obnoxious to charges of deism, impiety, breaches of their religious vows, and gross licentiousness. We only deny that such were the rules of the order. Had they not been so devoted as they were to the Holy See they would perhaps have come down to us as unsullied as the knights of St. John[105]; but they sided with Pope Boniface against Philip the Fair, and a subservient pontiff sacrificed to his own avarice and personal ambition the most devoted adherents of the court of Rome[106].
[Footnote 104: Our readers will call to mind the well-known anecdote of King Richard I. When admonished by the zealous Fulk, of Neuilly, to get rid of his three favourite daughters, pride, avarice, and voluptuousness,--”You counsel well,” said the king, ”and I hereby dispose of the first to the Templars, of the second to the Benedictines, and of the third to my prelates.”]
[Footnote 105: Similar charges are said to have been brought against the Hospitallers in the year 1238, but without effect. There was no Philip the Fair at that time in France.]
[Footnote 106: Clement, in a bull dated but four days after that of the suppression, acknowledged that the whole of the evidence against the order amounted only to suspicion!]
We make little doubt that any one who coolly and candidly considers the preceding account of the manner in which the order was suppressed will readily concede that the guilt of its members was anything but proved.
It behoves their modern impugners to furnish some stronger proofs than any they have as yet brought forward. The chief adversary of the Templars at the present day is a writer whose veracity and love of justice are beyond suspicion, and who has earned for himself enduring fame by his labours in the field of oriental literature, but in whose mind, as his most partial friends must allow, learning and imagination are apt to overbalance judgment and philosophy[107]. He has been replied to by Raynouard, Munter, and other able advocates of the knights.
[Footnote 107: We mean the ill.u.s.trious Jos. von Hammer, whose essay on the subject is to be found in the sixth volume of the Mines de l'Orient, where it will be seen that he regards Sir W. Scott, in his Ivanhoe, as a competent witness against the Templars, on account of his _correct and faithful_ pictures of the manners and opinions of the middle ages. We apprehend that people are beginning now to entertain somewhat different ideas on the subject of our great romancer's fidelity, of which the present pages present some instances.]
We now come to the question of the continuance of the order to the present day. That it has in some sort been transmitted to our times is a matter of no doubt; for, as we have just seen, the king of Portugal formed the Order of Christ out of the Templars in his dominions. But our readers are no doubt aware that the freemasons a.s.sert a connexion with the Templars, and that there is a society calling themselves Templars, whose chief seat is at Paris, and whose branches extend into England and other countries. The account which they give of themselves is as follows:--
James de Molay, in the year 1314, in antic.i.p.ation of his speedy martyrdom, appointed Johannes Marcus Lormenius to be his successor in his dignity. This appointment was made by a regular well-authenticated charter, bearing the signatures of the various chiefs of the order, and it is still preserved at Paris, together with the statutes, archives, banners, &c., of the soldiery of the Temple. There has been an unbroken succession of grand-masters down to the present times, among whom are to be found some of the most ill.u.s.trious names in France. Bertrand du Guesclin was grand-master for a number of years; the dignity was sustained by several of the Montmorencies; and during the last century the heads of the society were princes of the different branches of the house of Bourbon. Bernard Raymond Fabre Palaprat is its head at present, at least was so a few years ago[108].
[Footnote 108: See Manuel des Templiers. As this book is only sold to members of the society, we have been unable to obtain a copy of it. Our account has been derived from Mills's History of Chivalry. That this writer should have believed it implicitly is, we apprehend, no proof of its truth.]
This is no doubt a very plausible circ.u.mstantial account; but, on applying the Ithuriel spear of criticism to it, various ugly shapes resembling falsehood start up. Thus Molay, we are told, appointed his successor in 1314. He was put to death on the 18th March of that year, and the order had been abolished nearly a year before. Why then did he delay so long, and why was he become so apprehensive of martyrdom at that time, especially when, as is well known, there was then no intention of putting him to death? Again, where were the chiefs of the society at that time? How many of them were living? and how could they manage to a.s.semble in the dungeon of Molay and execute a formal instrument! Moreover, was it not repugnant to the rules and customs of the Templars for a Master to appoint his successor? These are a few of the objections which we think may be justly made; and, on the whole, we feel strongly disposed to reject the whole story.
As to the freemasons, we incline to think that it was the accidental circ.u.mstance of the name of the Templars which has led them to claim a descent from that order; and it is possible that, if the same fate had fallen on the knights of St. John, the claim had never been set up. We are very far from denying that at the time of the suppression of the order of the Temple there was a secret doctrine in existence, and that the overthrow of the papal power, with its idolatry, superst.i.tion, and impiety, was the object aimed at by those who held it, and that freemasonry may possibly be that doctrine under another name[109]. But we are perfectly convinced that no proof of any weight has been given of the Templars' partic.i.p.ation in that doctrine, and that all probability is on the other side. We regard them, in fine, whatever their sins may have been, as martyrs--martyrs to the cupidity, blood-thirstiness, and ambition of the king of France.
[Footnote 109: This has, we think, been fully proved by Sr. Rossetti. It must not be concealed that this writer strongly a.s.serts that the Templars were a branch of this society.]
THE
SECRET TRIBUNALS OF WESTPHALIA[110].
[Footnote 110: Dr. Berck has, in his elaborate work on this subject (_Geschichte der Westphalischen Femgerichte_, Bremen, 1815), collected, we believe, nearly all the information that is now attainable. This work has been our princ.i.p.al guide; for, though we have read some others, we cannot say that we have derived any important information from them. As the subject is in its historical form entirely new in English literature, we have, at the hazard of appearing occasionally dry, traced with some minuteness the construction and mode of procedure of these celebrated courts.]
CHAPTER I.
Introduction--The Original Westphalia--Conquest of the Saxons by Charlemagne--His Regulations--Dukes of Saxony--State of Germany--Henry the Lion--His Outlawry--Consequences of it--Origin of German Towns--Origin of the Fehm-gerichte, or Secret Tribunals--Theories of their Origin--Origin of their Name--Synonymous Terms.
We are now arrived at an a.s.sociation remarkable in itself, but which has been, by the magic arts of romancers, especially of the great archimage of the north, enveloped in darkness, mystery, and awe, far beyond the degree in which such a poetical invest.i.ture can be bestowed upon it by the calm inquirer after truth. The gloom of midnight will rise to the mind of many a reader at the name of the Secret Tribunals of Westphalia: a dimly lighted cavern beneath the walls of some castle, or peradventure Swiss _hostelrie_, wherein sit black-robed judges in solemn silence, will be present to his imagination, and he is prepared with breathless anxiety to peruse the details of deeds without a name[111].
[Footnote 111: The romantic accounts of the Secret Tribunals will be found in Sir W. Scott's translation of Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen, and in his House of Aspen and Anne of Geierstein. From various pa.s.sages in Sir W. Scott's biographical and other essays, it is plain that he believed such to be the true character of the Secret Tribunals.]
We fear that we cannot promise the full gratification of these high-wrought expectations. Extraordinary as the Secret Tribunals really were, we can only view them as an instance of that compensating principle which may be discerned in the moral as well as in the natural empire of the Deity; for, during the most turbulent and lawless period of the history of Germany, almost the sole check on crime, in a large portion of that country, was the salutary terror of these Fehm-Gerichte, or Secret Tribunals. And those readers who have taken their notions of them only from works of fiction will learn with surprise that no courts of justice at the time exceeded, or perhaps we might say equalled, them in the equity of their proceedings.
Unfortunately their history is involved in much obscurity, and we cannot, as in the case of the two preceding societies, clearly trace this a.s.sociation from its first formation to the time when it became evanescent and faded from the view. While it flourished, the dread and the fear of it weighed too heavily on the minds of men to allow them to venture to pry into its mysteries. Certain and instantaneous death was the portion of the stranger who was seen at any place where a tribunal was sitting, or who dared so much as to look into the books which contained the laws and ordinances of the society. Death was also the portion of any member of the society who revealed its secrets; and so strongly did this terror, or a principle of honour, operate, that, as aeneas Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.), the secretary of the Emperor Frederick III., a.s.sures us, though the number of the members usually exceeded 100,000, no motive had ever induced a single one to be faithless to his trust. Still, however, sufficient materials are to be found for satisfying all reasonable curiosity on the subject.
To ascertain the exact and legal sphere of the operation of this formidable jurisdiction, and to point out its most probable origin, are necessary preliminaries to an account of its const.i.tution and its proceedings. We shall therefore commence with the consideration of these points.
Westphalia, then, was the birth-place of this inst.i.tution, and over Westphalia alone did it exercise authority. But the Westphalia of the middle ages did not exactly correspond with that of the later times. In a general sense it comprehended the country between the Rhine and the Weser; its southern boundary was the mountains of Hesse; its northern, the district of Friesland, which at that time extended from Holland to Sleswig. In the records and law-books of the middle ages, this land bears the mystic appellation of the _red earth_, a name derived, as one writer thinks, from the _gules_, or red, which was the colour of the field in the ducal s.h.i.+eld of Saxony; another regards it as synonymous with the _b.l.o.o.d.y earth_; and a third hints that it may owe its origin to the _red_ colour of the soil in some districts of Westphalia.
This land formed a large portion of the country of the Saxons, who, after a gallant resistance of thirty years, were forced to submit to the sway of Charlemagne, and to embrace the religion of their conqueror.