THE LATER RULE IN THE TEMPLE 169
Christendom had at first been glad to see the military
Orders grow in wealth and numbers. Though the people
lost the desire to fight the infidel, they still set great store
on the possession of Jerusalem and gave their warmest appro-
bation to organisations vowed to carry on the war against
Islam. When the Christian territory in the Holy Land
began to shrink, the provision of further men and more
money for the Orders was for a time generally approved, but
Christendom gave freely to the Temple and the Hospital
only because it confidently expected that the Moslems would
be crushed for ever. Repeated demands by the military
Orders were bound to cause criticism, especially when the
Temple and the Hospital flaunted their wealth in Europe
and had non-combatant members everywhere. Matthew
Paris, writing of the year 1244, says that the Temple could
easily have raised nine thousand soldiers from its houses
outside the Holy Land and equipped them for war at the
expense of the Order. And, he points out, as the Temple
had so many men, some of them ranking among the best
knights in Christendom, people began to wonder why
reverses in the East were so frequent. The West had little
knowledge of the situation of the Franks, and failed to
realise that brilliant successes were possible only when the
infidels were divided, and that it was hopeless to expect the
Orders to withstand the assault of a united Islam or even
of a single one of the strong Moslem princes. Matthew
Paris, for instance, was convinced that the Temple could
have defeated the whole of Islam " if there had not been
treachery and fraud ".
The loss of territory in the Holy Land and the luxury
and arrogance shown in Europe by members of the Order
were in themselves sufficient to cause criticism of the Temple,
but there was another reason for complaint. The early
history of the Temple is a record of war and war alone, and
Christendom looked to the Temple to maintain a perpetual