CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
THE history of the religio-military Orders, such as the
Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights, is
bound up with the history of the Crusades, For two
centuries after Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in
his famous speech at Clermont in 1095, most of his successors
in the papal chair preached the holy war against the infidel
with a frantic insistence. The fighting Orders were the back-
bone of the crusading movements, and of these Orders none
struggled more tenaciously to achieve the ambition of the
pontiffs than the Knights of the Temple, who acknowledged
no superior on earth but the Pope. Yet, after a strange and
terrible persecution, the Templars were sacrificed by this
Church for which they had battled so desperately.
Jerusalem was won for Christendom by the men of the
First Crusade on Friday, July I5th, 1099. ^e §reat con~
quest was celebrated by scenes of the grossest carnage. " If
you would hear how we treated our enemies at Jerusalem ",
the leaders wrote proudly to the Pope, " know that in the
portico of Solomon and in the Temple our men rode through
the unclean blood of the Saracens, which came up to the knees
of their horses". The Moslems " longed for wings to fly
away ", reports the chronicler, Robert the Monk," but nature
having denied them wings, they could not escape a terrible
death ", The news of the massacre was received with jubila-
tion throughout Europe, and the Pope proclaimed his
satisfaction that Jesus Christ had accounted His people worthy