knights commonly were either lovers or married men—or both. Yet even in the Arthurian literature there is the monkish Galahad, and many a sinful knight becomes a hermit in the end; and among real and living knights, the Templars and Hospitallers were vowed to celibacy. In these crusading orders the orbits of knighthood and monasticism cross; and it will not be altogether a digression to review the foundation and constitution of one of them.
The Order of the Temple was founded in the year 1118 by Hugh of Payns (Champagne) and other French knights; who placed their hands within those of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and vowed to devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. Probably they also bestowed their lands for the support of the nascent Order. Ten years afterwards Hugh passed through France and England, winning new recruits and appearing at the Council of Troyes. With the authority of that Council and of Pope Honorius II. the Regula pauperum commilitonum Christi Templique Salomonici was promulgated. St. Bernard, to whom it is ascribed, was in large part its inspiration and its author. It still exists in some seventy-two chapters; but one cannot distinguish between those belonging to the original document of 1128 and those added somewhat later.[1]
This regula with its amendments and additions was translated from Latin into Old French (par excellence the tongue of the Crusades), and became apparently the earliest form of the Regle dou Temple, upon which was grafted a mass of ordinances (retrais et establissemens). Apparently the whole of the extant Latin regula was prior to everything contained in the French regle; and accordingly we shall simply regard the Latin as containing the earliest regulations of the Temple, and the French as exhibiting the modifications of tone and interest which came in the course of years.
The hand of St. Bernard ensured the dominance of the monastic temper in the original regula; and Hugo, the first
- ↑ The following remarks upon the regula of the Templars, and the extracts which are given, are based on the introduction and text of La Règle du Temple, edited by Henri de Curzon for the Société de l'Histoire de France (Paris, 1886).
