The Templar

THE TEMPLARS



  FOUNDATION of Order.— The Order of the Knights of the Temple arose out of the Crusades. In 1118 nine valiant and pious knights formed themselves into an association which united the characters of the monk and the knight. They selected for their patroness " La douce mere de Dieu," and bound themselves to live according to the rules of St. Augustine, swearing to consecrate their swords , arms, strength, and lives, to the defence of the mysteries of the Christian faith; to pay absolute • obedience to the Grand Master ; to encounter the dangers of the seas and of War, whenever commanded, and for the love of Christ ; and even when opposed singly to three infidel foes not to retreat. They also took upon themselves the vows of chastity and poverty, promised not to go over to any other Order, nor to surrender any wall or foot of land. King Baldwin II. assigned them a portion of his palace, and, as it stood near the Church of the Templar the abbot gave them a street leading from it to the palace, and hence they styled themselves " Soldiery of the Temple " (militia templi).

   Progress of the Order. — The first nine years which elapsed after the institution of the Order, the Templars lived in great poverty ; Hugh des Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, the founders, had but one war-horse between them, a fact commemorated on the seal of the Order, which represents two knights seated on one charger. Soon after. Pope Honorius confirmed the Order, and appointed a white mantle —to which Bugenius III. afiaxed a red cross on the breast—to be the distinguishing dress of the Templars. The Order also assumed a banner formed of cloth, striped white and black, called Beauseant (in old French a piebald horse) , which word became the battle-cry of the knights. The banner bore a cross and the inscription, " Non nobis, Domme, sed nomini tuo da gloriam." Thenceforth many knights joined the Order, and numerous powerful princes bestowed considerable possessions upon it. Alfonso, king of Arragon and Navarre, even appointed the Templars his heirs, though the country refused to ratify the bequest. Thus they became the richest proprietors in Europe, until they possessed about nine thousand commanderies, situated in various countries of Europe and in Palestine, with an annual rental of one hundred and twelve million francs.

  Account of Commanderies.—^Theircommanderies were situate in their eastern and western provinces, the former embracing Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, Cyprus, the latter, Portugal, Castile and Leon, Arragon, France, including Flanders and the Netherlands, England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Sicily. Whilst Jerusalem was in the hands of the Christians, the chief seat of the Templars was in that city ; afterwards it was transferred to Paris, where they erected the large building until lately known as the Temple. It was in this building that Philip the Fair took refuge on the occasion of a riot which took place in 1306, where the Templars protected him until the fury of the people had calmed down. The Knights, it is said, incautiously displayed to the royal cupidity their immense treasures. On a subsequent, but far more momentous rising, the pile which served an ungrateful King for an asylum, became the prison of an unfortunate successor ; recently this memento of royal perfidy, and of an avenging fate that struck the innocent, has been levelled to the ground.

   Imputations against the Order.—Towards the end of the twelfth century the Order counted about thirty thousand members, mostly French, and the Grand Master was generally chosen from among the French. Through the great number of their affiliated members they could raise a large army in any part of the Eastern world; and their fleet monopolized the commerce of the Levant. Hence they departed from their original humility and piety. Palestine was lost, and they made no effort to recover it ; but frequently drew the sword—which was only to be used in the service of God, as they understood the phrase—in the feuds and warfares of the countries they inhabited. They became proud and arrogant. When dying Richard Cceur de Lion said, "I leave avarice to the Cistercian monks, luxuriousness to the begging friars, pride to the Templars;" and yet perhaps they only felt their own power. The English Templars had dared to say to Henry lll., " You shall be king as long as you are just;" portentous words which supplied matter for meditation to that Philip of France who, like many other princes, wished to be unjust with impunity. In Castile, the Templars, Hospitallers, and Knights of St. John, combined against the King himself. Perhaps they aimed at universal dominion, or at the establishment of a Western sovereignty, Hke the Teutonic Knights of Prussia, the Hospitallers in Malta, or the Jesuits in Paraguay ? But there is scarcely any ground for these imputations, especially the first, considering that the members of the Order were scattered all over the earth, and might at the utmost have attempted to seize the government of some individual state, as that of Arragon for instance ; but not to carry out a scheme for which even the forces of Charlemagne had been inadequate.

  Accusations better founded -weve, that they had disturbed the kingdom of Palestine by their rivalry with the Hospitallers ; had concluded leagues withthe infidels ; had made war upon Cyprus and Antiochia; had dethroned the King of Jerusalem, Henry II. ; had devastated Greece and Thrace ; had refused to contribute to the ransom of Saint Louis ; had declared for Arragon against Anjou—an unpardonable crime in the eyes of France—with many other accusations. But their greatest crime was that of being exceedingly wealthy ; their downfall was therefore determined upon.

  Plots against the Order.—Philip the Fair had spent his last sou. The victory of Mons, worse than a defeat, had ruined him. He was bound to restore Guyenne, and was on the point of losing Flanders. Normandy had risen against a tax which he had been, obliged to withdraw. The people of the capital were so opposed to the government, that it had been found necessary to prohibit  meetings of more than five persons. How was money to be obtained under these circumstances ? The Jews could give no more, because all they had had been extorted from them by fines, imprisonment, and torture. It was necessary to have recourse to some grand confiscation, without disgusting the classes on whom the royal power relied, and leading them to believe, not that booty was aimed at, but the punishment of evil doers, to the greater glory of religion and the triumph of the law. At the instigation of Philip the Fair libels were published against the Order of the Knights Templars, in which the most absurd charges were made against the members, accusing them of heresy, impiety, and worse crimes. Great weight was attached to the statements made against the Templars by two renegades of the Order, the Florentine Roffi Dei, and the prior of Montfaucon, which latter, having been condemned by the Grand Master to imprisonment for life for his many crimes, made his escape, and became the accuser of his former brethren.

  Attentions paid to Grand Master.—Bertrand de Got, who by the influence of the French King had become Pope under the title of Clement V., was now urged by the former to fulfil the last of the five conditions on which the King had enabled him to ascend the chair of St. Peter. The first four conditions had been named, but Philip had reserved the naming of the fifth till the fit moment should arrive ; and from his subsequent conduct there can be no doubt that the destruction of the Order of the Temple was the condition that was in the King's mind when he thus alluded to it. The first step was to get the Grand Master, James de Molay, into his power. At the request of the Pope that he would come to France to concert measures for the recovery of the Holy Land, he left Cyprus and came to Paris in 1307, accompanied by sixty knights, and bringing with him 150,000 florins of gold, and so much silver that it formed the lading of twelve horses, which he deposited in the Temple in that city. To lull him into false security, the King, whose plan was not yet quite ripe for execution, treated the Grand Master with the greatest consideration, made him the godfather of one of his sons, and chose him with some of the most distinguished persons to carry the pall at the funeral of his sister-in-law. The following day he was arrested with all his suite, and letters having in the meantime been sent to the King's officers in the provinces on the 13th of October, 1307, to seize upon all the Templars, their houses and property throughout the kingdom, many thousand members of the Order, knights and serving brothers, were thus made prisoners.

  Charges against the Templars. — The Templars were accused of denying Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints, and of spitting and trampling on the cross ; of worshipping in a dark cave an idol in the figure of a man covered with an old human skin, and having two bright and lustrous carbuncles for eyes, of anointing it with the fat of young children roasted, of looking upon it as their sovereign God ; of worshipping the devil in the form of a cat; of burning the bodies of dead Templars and giving the ashes to the younger brethren to eat and drink mingled with their food. They were charged with various unnatural crimes, frightful debaucheries, and superstitious abominations, such as only madmen could have been guilty of. To make them confess these crimes they were put to the torture, not only in France, but also in England, for Edward II. leagued with Philip to destroy the Order. Many knights in the agonies of the torture confessed to the crimes they were charged with, hundreds expired under it without making any confession, many starved or killed themselves in other ways in prison. The trial was protracted for years ; the persecution extended to other countries ; in Germany and Spain and Cyprus the Order was acquitted of all guilt ; in Italy, England, and France, however, their doom was sealed, though for a moment there seemed a chance of their escaping, for the Pope seeing that Philip and Edward had seized all the money and estates of the Templars, and seemed inclined to deprive him of his share of the spoil, began to side with the Order. But on some concessions being made to him by the two Kings, he again supported them ; though in the end we find him complaining of the small share of the booty that came into his hands.

  Burning of Knights.—The tedious progress of the sham trial was occasionally enlivened by the public execution of knights who refused to acknowledge crimes of which they were not guilty. Fifty-nine gallant knights were led forth, in one day to the fields at the back of the nunnery of St. Antoine, where stakes had been driven into the ground, and fagots and charcoal collected. The knights were offered pardon if they would confess ; but they all refused and were burned by slow fires. At Senlis nine were burned, and many more in other places. On all these occasions, as well as in the awful scenes of the torture-chamber, the Dominican friars were the mocking witnesses.

  James de Molay.—The Grand Master remained in prison five years and a half; and there is no doubt that he was repeatedly put to the torture. The confession he was said to have made was probably a forgery. Finally, on the 18th March, 1313, he and Guy, the Grand Preceptor of the Order, were burnt by a slow fixe on a small island in the Seine, 'between the royal gardens and the church of the Hermit Brethren, where afterwards the statue of Henry IV. was erected, both to the last moment asserting the innocence of the Order.

   Mysteries of the Knights Templars. — Without laying too much stress on confessions extorted by violence, or denunciations proceeding from revenge, cupidity, and servility, it is manifest that the Templars, in their ordinances, creed, and rites, had something which was peculiar and secret, and totally different from the statutes, opinions, and ceremonies of other religio-military associations. Their long sojourn in the East, in that dangerous Palestine which overflowed with schismatic Greeks and heretioSj whoj driven from Constantinople, took refuge with the Arabs ; their rivalry with the Hospitallers ; their contact with the Saracen element ; finally, the loss of the Holy Land, which injured them in the opinion of the world, and rendered their lives idle all these and many other circumstances would act on this institution in an unforeseen manner, differing from the tendencies of the original constitution, and mix up therewith ideas and practices little in accordance with, nay, in total antagonism to, the orthodox thought that had originated, animated, and strengthened this military brotherhood.

   The Temple and the Church.—The very name may in a certain manner point to a rebellious ambition. Temple is a more august, a vaster and more comprehensive denomination than that of Church. The Temple is above the Church ; this latter has a date of its foundation, a local habitation ; the former has always existed. Churches fall ; the Temple remains as a symbol of the parentage of religions, and the perpetuity of their spirit. The Templars might thus consider themselves as the priests of that religion, not transitory, but permanent; and the aspirants could believe that the Order constituting them the defenders of the Temple, intended to initiate them into a second and better Christianity, into a purer religion. Whilst the Temple meant for the Christian the Holy Sepulchre, it recalled to the Mussulman the Temple of Solomon; and the legend which referred to this latter served as a bond to the rituals of the Freemasons and other secret societies.

   The Temple the Symbol of the Holy Spirit.— In another sense, the Church may be called the house of Christ ; but the Temple is the house of the Holy Spirit. It is that religion of the Spirit which the Templars inherited from the Manichseans, from the Albigenses, from the sectarian chivalry that had preceded them. Defenders of the Sepulchre of Christ, they remained faithful to their trust, but considered that He had come on earth only to preach in the name of the Eternal Spirit, to whom their principal worship was addressed ; and, like the Gnostics and Manichseans, they celebrated Pentecost rather than Easter, because in the former the Divine Spirit itself had descended and spread itself over the face of the earth. This, in a certain sense, was an amplification, and in another a denial, of the Catholic dogma. The Holy Spirit is the universal conscience.

  Doctrines of Templars.--The initiatory practices, the monuments, even the trial, show this prevalence of the religion of the Spirit in the secret doctrines of the Temple. The Templars drew a great portion of their sectarian and heterodox tendencies from the last epic cycle of the middle ages—from that period in which chivalry, purified and organized, became a pilgrimage in search of the San Greal, the mystic cup that received the blood of the Saviour ; from that epoch in which the East, in invasions, armed and unarmed, with the science of the Arabs, with poetry and heresies, had turned upon the "West.

   Initiation.—Much has been said about the mode of initiation—that it took place at night in the chapel, in the presence of the chapter, all strangers being strictly excluded; that licentious rites attended it, and that the candidate was compelled to deny, curse, and spit upon the cross—that cross for which they had shed so much of their own blood, sacrificed so many of their own lives. We have seen that this was one of the chief accusations brought against the Order. Was there any truth in it ? It seems most probable there was ; but the practice may be explained as in the following paragraph.

   Cursing and Spitting on the Cross Explained. — Such a practice need not surprise us in an age in which churches were turned into theatres, in which sacred things were profaned by grotesque representations, in which the ancient mysteries were reproduced to do honour, in their way, to Christ and the saints. The reader may also bear in mind the extraordinary scenes afterwards represented in the Miracle Plays. Now the aspirant to the Templar degree was at first introduced as a sinner, a bad Christianj a renegado. He denied, in fact, after the manner of St. Peter ; and the renunciation was frequently expressed by the odious act of spitting on the cross. The fraternity undertook to restore this renegado, to raise him all the higher the greater his fall had been. Thus at the Festival of the Idiots, the candidate pre-. sented himself as it were in a state of imbecility and of degradation, to be regenerated by the Church. These comedies, rightly understood at first, were in course of time falsely interpreted, scandalizing the faithful, who had lost the key of the enigma. The Templars had adopted similar ceremonies. They were scions of the Cathari (123) and Manichseans. Now the Cathari despised the cross (124), and considered it meritorious to tread it under foot. But with the Templars this ceremony was symbolical, as was abundantly proved during their trial ; and had indeed reference to Peter's thrice-repeated denial of Christ.

  The Templars the Opponents of the Pope.— But there may have been another and special reason for introducing this ceremony, and ever keeping the treachery of Peter before the mind of the members of the Order. We have seen that the Templars, during and in consequence of their sojourn in the Bast, attached themselves to the doctrines of the Gnostics and Manichseans,—as is sufficiently attested, were 'other proofs wanting, by the Gnostic and cabalistic symbols discovered in and on the tombs of Knights Templars,—which appeared to them less perverted than those of the priests of Rome. They also knew the bad success the proclamation of Christ's death on the cross had had at Athens, in consequence of AEschylus' tragedy, "Prometheus Vinctus," wherein Oceanus denied his friend, when God made him the sacrifice for the sins of mankind, just as Peter, who lived by the ocean, did with regard to Christ. The Templars, therefore, came to the conclusion that all these gods, descended from the same origin, were only religious and poetic figures of the sun ; and, seeing the bad use made of the doctrines connected therewith by the clergy, they renounced St. Peter, and became Johannites, or followers of St. John. There was thus a secret schism, and according to some writers, it was this, together with the opposition to Roman Catholicism which it implied, as well. as their great wealth, which was among the causes of their condemnation by the court of Rome.

  Baphomet. — The above explanation may also afford a clue to the meaning and name of the idol the Templars were accused of worshipping. This idol represented a man with a long white beard, and the name given to it was Baphomet, a name which has exercised the ingenuity of many critics, but the only conclusions arrived at by any of them as to its origin and meaning, and deserving consideratioiij are those of Kieolai, who assuines that it was derived from (Sacpn^ fAijTio?, the ''baptism of wisdom," and that the image, which sometimes had three heads, represented God, the universal Father ; and that of De Quincey, to which latter I myself incline, that the figure, sometimes represented with two heads only, meant the two chiefs against whom the Templars directed their hostility, viz. the Pope and Mahomet, and in the name Baphomet they intertwisted the names of both, by cutting off the first two letters of Mahomet, and substituting Bap or Pap, the first syllable of Papa. Thus by this figure the Templars expressed their independence of the Church and the Church creed ; and an initiated member was called a " friend of God, who could speak with God, if he chose ; " that is, without the intermediation of the Pope and the Church. Hence it becomes sufficiently plain why the secret w;as looked upon as inviolable, and was so well kept that we can only conjecture its import.

  Effects of the Downfal of the Knights of the Temple. — With the Templars perished* a world ; chivalry, the crusades, ended with them. Even the Papacy received a tremendous shock. Symbolism was deeply affected by it. A greedy and arid trading spirit rose up. Mysticism, that had sent sach a glow through past generations, found the souls of men cold, ihcredulous. The reaction was violent, and the Templars were the first to fall under the rude blows of the West, that longed to rebel against the Bast, by which it had hitherto been in so many ways permeated, ruled, and oppressed.

  Connection with Freemasonry. —The Freemasons assert a connexion with the Templars ; and there is a society calling themselves Templars whose chief seat is at Paris, and whose branches extend into. England and other countries. They say that James de Moulay before his death appointed a successor, and that since then there has been anunbroken line of Grand Masters down to the present time, a list of whichi is given by the Order of the Temple at Paris. But true Freemasonry, of which Freemasons, as a rule, know nothing, existed before the Templars, as I shall show when speaking of the Masonic Orders. A simple allusion to the alleged connexion therefore is all that is needed here.



THE HOLY VEHM


OIRIGIN and object of Instiiution.—In this book we are introduced to an order of secret societies altogether different from preceding ones. Hitherto they were religious or military in their leading features ; but those we are now about to give an account of were judicial in their operations, and arose during the period of violence and anarchy that distracted the German empire after the outlawry of Henry the Lion, somewhere about the middle of the thirteenth century. The most important of these were the secret tribunals of Westphalia, known by the name of Vehm-Oerichte, or the Holy Vehm. The supreme authority of the emperor had lost all influence in the country ; the imperial as sizes were no longer held ; might and violence took the place of right and justice ; the feudal lords tyrannized over the people ; whosoever dared, could. To seize the guilty, who ever they might be, to punish them before they were aware of the blow with which they were threatened, and thus to secure the chastisement of crime—such was the object of the Westphalian judges, and thus the existence of this secret society, the instrtanent of public vengeance, is amply justified, and the popular respect it enjoyed, and on which alone rested its authority, explained.

  Officers and Organization.—The Westphalia of that period comprehended the country between the Rhine and the Weser; its southern boundary was formed by the mountains of Hesse, its northern, by Friesland. Vehm or Fehm is according to Leibnitz derived from fama, as the law founded on common fame. But fern is an old German word, signifying condemnation, which may be the proper radix, of Vehm. These courts were also called Fehmding, Freistuhle, free courts," heimliche Gerichte, heimliche Achten, heimliche _ ieschlossene Achten, ''secret courts," "free bann," and verhotene Gerichte, "prohibited courts." No rank of life excluded a person from the right of being initiated, and in a Vehmic code discovered at Dortmund, and whose reading was forbidden to the profane under pain of death, three degrees are mentioned ; the affiliated of the first were called Stuhlherren, " lords justices;" those of the second, Schoppen (scahini, echevins) j those of the third, Frohnhoten, "messengers." Two courts were held, an offenbares Ding, " open court," and the heimliche Acht, " secret court." The members were called Wissende, " the knowing ones” or the initiated. The clergy, women and children, Jews and heathens, and as it would appear the higher nobility, were exempt from its jurisdiction. The courts took cognizance of all offences against the Christian faith, the Gospel, and the Ten Commandments.

  Language and Rules of Initiated.—The initiated had a secret language; at least we may infer so from the initials S. S. S. G. G., found in Vehmic writings preserred in the archives of Herfort, in Westphalia, that have puzzled the learned, and by some are explained as meaning, Stock, Stein, Stride, Oras, Grein, stick, stone, cord, grass, woe. At meals the members are said to have recognized each other by turning the points of their knives towards the edge, and the points of their forks towards the centre, of the table. A horrible death was prepared for a false brother, and the oaths to be taken were as fearful as some prescribed ia the higher degrees of Freemasonry. The affiliated promised, among other things, to serve the secret Vehm before anything that is illumined by the sun or bathed by rain, or to be found between heaven and earth ; not to inform any one of the sentence passed against him; and to denounce, if necessary, his parents and relations, calling down upon himself, in case of perjury, the malediction of all, and the punishment of being hanged seven feet higher than all others. One form of oath, contained in the archives of Dortmund, and which the candidate had to pronounce kneeling, his head uncovered, and holding the forefinger and the middle finger of his right hand upon the sword of the president, runs thus : " I swear perpetual devotion to the secret tribunal, to defend it against myself, against water, sun, moon and stars, the leaves of the trees, all living beings to uphold its judgments and promote their execution. I promise moreover that neither pain, nor money, nor parents, nor anything created by God, shaller me perjured."

  Procedure. —The first act of the procedure of the Vehm was the accusation, made by a Freischqppe. The person was then cited to appear ; if not initiated, before the open court, and woe to the disobedient ! The accused that belonged to the order was at once condem.ned ; and the case of the unaffiliated was transferred to the secret tribunal. A summons was to be written on parchment and sealed with at least seven seals ; six weeks and three days were allowed for the first, six weeks for the second, and six weeks and three days for the third. When the residence of the accused was not known, the summons was exhibited at a cross-road of his supposed county, or placed at the foot of the statue of some saint or affixed to the poor-box, not far from some crucifix or humble wayside chapel. If the accused was a knight, dwelling in his fortified castle, the Schoppen were to introduce themselves at night, under any pretence, into the most secret chamber of the building and do their errand. But sometimes it was considered sufficient to affix the summons, and the coin that always accompanied it, to the gate, to inform the sentinel of the fact that the citation had been left, and to cut three chips from the gate, to be taken to the Freigraf, as proofs. If the accused appeared to none of the summonses, he was sentenced in contumacia, according to the laws laid down in the " Mirror of Saxony ; " the accuser had to bring forward seven witnesses, not to the fact charged against the absent person, but to testify to the well-known veracity of the accuser, whereupon the charge was considered as proved, and the Imperial ban was pronounced against the accused, which was followed by speedy execution. The sentence was one of outlawry, degradation, and death; the neck of the convict was condemned to , the halter, and his body to the birds and wild beasts ; his goods and pstates were declared forfeited, his wife a widow, and his children orphans. He was declared fembar, i. e. punishable by the Vehm, and any three initiated that met with him were at liberty, nay, enjoined, to hang him on the nearest tree. If the accused appeared before the court, which was presided over by a count, who had on the table before him a naked sword and a withy halter, he, as well as his accuser, could each bring thirty friends as witnesses, and be represented by their attorneys, and also had the right of appeal to the general chapter of the secret closed tribunal of the Imperial chamber, generally held at Dortmund. When sentence was once definitively spoken for death, the culprit was hanged immediately.

   Execution of Sentences.—Those condemned in their absence, and who were pursued by at least a hundred thousand persons, were generally unaware of the fact. Every information thereof conveyed to him was high treason, punishable by death ; the emperor alone, was excepted from the law of secresy ; merely to hint that " good bread might be eaten elsewhere," rendered the speaker liable to death for betraying the secret. After the condemnation of the accused a document bearing the seal of the count was given to the accuser, to be used by him when claiming the assistance of other members to carry out the sentence, and a the all initiated were bound to grant him theirs, were it even against their own parents. A knife was stuck in the tree on which the person had been hanged, to iadicate that he had suffered death at the hands of the Holy Vehm. If the victim resisted, he was slain with daggers ; but the slayer left his weapon in the wound to convey the same information,

  Decay of the Institution.—These secret tribunals inspired such terror that the citation by a Westphalian free count was even more dreaded than that of the emperor. In 1470 three free counts summoned the emperor himself to appear before them, threatening him with the usual course in case of contumacy ; the emperor did not appear, but pocketed the affiront. By the admission of improper persons, and the abuse of the right of citation, the institution—which in its time had been a corrective of public injustice—gradually degenerated. The tribunals were, indeed, reformed by Rupert; and the Arensberg reformation and Osnaburgh regulations modified some of the greatest abuses, and restricted the power of the Vehm. Still it continued to exist, and was never formally abolished. But the excellent civil institutions of Maximilian and of Charles V., the consequent decrease of the turbulent and anarchic spirit, the introduction of the Eoman law, the spread of the Protestant rehgion, conspired to give men an aversion for what appeared now to be a barbarous jurisdiction. Some of the courts were abolished, exemptions and privileges against them multiplied, and they were prohibited all summary proceedings. But a shadow of them remained, and it was not till French legislation, in 1811, abolished the last free court in the county of Miinstfer, that they may be said to have ceased to exist. But it is not many years since that certain citizens in that locality assembled secretly every year, boasting of their descent from the ancient free judges.

  Kissing the Virgin.—There is a tradition that one of the methods of putting to death persons condemned to that fate by the secret tribunals was the following :—The victim was told to go and kiss the statue of the Virgin which stood in a subterranean vault. The statue was of bronze and of gigantic size. On approaching it, so as to touch it, its front opened with folding doors and displayed its interior set full with sharp and long spikes and pointed blades. The doors were similarly armed, and on each, about the height of a man's head, was a spike longer than the rest, the two spikes being intended when the doors were shut to enter the eyes and destroy them. The doors having thus opened, the victim by a secret mechanism was drawn or pushed into the dreadfal statue, and the doors closed upon him. There he was cut and hacked by the knives and spikes, and in about half a minute the floor on which he stood—which was in reality a trap-door—opened, and allowed him to fall through. But more horrible torture awaited him ; for underneath the trap –door were six large wooden cylinders, disposed in pairs one below the other. There were thus three pairs. The cylinders were furnished all round with sharp blades ; the distance between the uppermost pair of parallel cylinders was such that a human body could just lie between them; the middle pair was closer together, and the lowest very close. Beneath this horrible apparatus was an opening in which could be heard the rushing of water. The mechanism that opened the doors of the statue also set in motion the cylinders, which turned towards the inside. Hence when the victim, already fearfully mangled and blinded, fell through the trap-door he fell between the upper pair of cylinders and was thus drawn in between them, his body being cut on all sides by the knives set round the cyliciders. In this mutilated condition, the quivering mass feU between the second and more closely approaching pair of cylinders, and was now actually hacked through and through and thrown on the lowest and closest pair, where it was reduced to small pieces which fell into the brook below, and were carried away; thus leaving no trace of the awful deed that had been accomplished.



THE BEATI PAOLI


  CARACTER of the Society.—The notices I of this sect, which existed for many years in Sicily. are so scanty, that we may form a high idea of the mystery ia which it shrouded itself. It had spread not only over the island, where it created traditional terror, hut also over Calabria, where it was first discoyered, and cruelly repressed and punished by the feudatories, who saw their power assailed by it. Apopular institution, in opposition to the daily arrogance of baronial or kingly power, it knew not how to restrain itself within the prescribed limits, and made itself guilty of reprehensible acts, so that it was spoken of in various ways by its contemporaries.

  Tendencies and Tenets.—We have already seen that it had connections with the Holy Vehm, and its statutes were somewhat similar to this tribunal ; but it is to be observed that it proceeded from that spiritual movement whicli produced the reaction of the Albigenses, the propaganda of the Franciscans, and the reformatory asceticism of the many heretics who roamed through Italy and the rest of Europe, preaching opposition to Rome, and organizing a crusade against the fastuous and corrupt clerocracy. Among these heretics we must remember the abbot Gioachimo, whose propheciesand strange sayings reappear in the Evangelium Sternum of John of Parma, a book which was one of the text-books of the Sicilian judges.' The Evangelium, AEternum, a tissue of cabalistic and Gnostic eccentricities, was, by the Beati Paoli, preferred to the Old and New Testaments ; they renounced belief in duaHsm, and made God the creator of evil and death—of evil, because he placed the mystical apple in the mystical garden ; of death, because he ordained the deluge, and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

   Account of a Sicilian Writer.—Amidst the general silence of historians, the account of a Sicilian writer, which was published only in 1840, and is still generally unknown, may be considered the only document concerning this family of Avengers, who at the extreme end of Italy reproduced the struggles and terrors of the Westphalian tribunals. This writer says: — " In the year 1185, at the nuptials of the Princess Constance, daughter of the first King Roger of Sicily, with Henry, afterwards Henry VI, Emperor of Germany, there was discovered the existence of a new and impious sect, who called themselves the Avengers, and in their . nocturnal assemblies declared every crime lawful committed on pretence of promoting the public good. Of this we find an account in an ancient writer, who does not enter into further details. The King ordered strict inquiry to be made, and their chief, Arinulfo di Ponte Corvo, having been arrested, he was sentenced to be hanged with some of his most guilty accomplices ; the less guilty were branded with a red-hot iron. The belief exists among the vulgar that this secret society of Avengers still exists in Sicily and elsewhere, and is known by the name of the Beati Paoli. Some worthless persons even go so far as to commend the impious institution. Its members abounded especially at Palermo, and Joseph Amatore, who was hanged on Dec. 17, 1704, was one of them. Girolamo Ammirata, comptroller of accounts, also belonged to this society, and suffered death on 27th April, 1725. Most came to a bad end, if not by the hands of justice, by the daggers of their associates. The famous vetturino, Vito Vituzzo of Palermo, was the last of the wretches forming the society of the Beati Paoli. He escaped the gallows, because he turned in time from his evil courses; and thenceforward he passed all day in St. Matthew's Church, whence he came to be known by the Surname of the church, mouse. The preceptors and masters of these vile men were heretics and apostates from the Minor Brethren of St. Prancis, who pretended that the power of the pontiff and the priesthood had been bestowed on them by an angelic revelation. The house where they held their meetings is still in existence in the street de' Canceddi, and I paid it a visit. Through a gateway you pass into a courtyard, under which is the vault where the members met, and which receives its light through a grating in the stone pavement. At the bottom of the stairs is a stone altar, and at the side a small dark chamber, with a stone table, on which were •written the acts and sentences of these murderous judges. The principal cave is pretty large, surrounded with stone seats, and furnished with niches and recesses where the arms were kept. The meetings were held at night by candle, light. The derivation of the name, the Beati Paoli (Blessed Pauls) , is unknown ; but I surmise that it was adopted by the sect, because either the founder's name was Paul, or that he assumed it as that of a saint who, before his conversion, was a man of the sword, and, imitating him, was, during the day, a Blessed Paul, and at night at the head of a band of assassins, like Paul persecuting the Christians." Such is the author's account, which I have greatly abbreviated, omitting nearly all his invectives against the sect, of which very little is known, and whose existence evidently, in its day, was to some extent beneficial ; for Sicilians, on suffering any injury or loss, for which they cannot apply to justice, are often heard to exclaim :— " Ah, if the Beati Paoli were still in being “.