Discourse of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre

They communicated their signs of recognition to several Christians in whom they found the necessary qualities to embrace their Statutes.

Their goods were held in common. They composed only one family, and when they found an occasion to assist their neighbor or to relieve him in his need, nothing seemed difficult to them. All their care was limited to receiving among them only those with gentle, affable, humble, and charitable characters. They made progress and increased, but they only sustained themselves until the 9th century. Little by little, they moved away from their practices, and it was only in the year 1118 that Hugues de Pagani Hugh of Payens and Godefroy de St. Amour, having determined to revive the order, chose 7 gentlemen of their own character with whom they presented themselves to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, into whose hands they pronounced their vows a depiction of a pelican with 7 chicks by which they committed themselves to observe the most ardent charity toward their neighbor, to go before those who came to visit the Holy Sepulchre of N. S. J. C. in Palestine in order to escort them, to shelter them from the insults of the Saracens, and to provide them with what they needed as much as it was in their power. They also promised solemnly to fight and not to retreat even if they were alone against three infidels.

The various battles in which they were employed and from which they emerged victorious caused them to be regarded as invincible for ten consecutive years of campaigns. Not one of them was killed. The eagerness to enter this holy militia compelled Pope Honorius II to confirm the order by the apostolic authority of the Council of Troyes and to give the white habit (the apprentice's apron), to which Eugene III added the red cross, and St. Bernard prescribed for them a rule conforming to the profession to which they had committed themselves.

Many Princes having made a profession in the order, William of Tyre historian of the Crusades assures us that in his time there were more than 300 Knights of this first rank, without counting the others and the servants-at-arms (heralds-at-arms), who were without number. They possessed immense wealth; there was not a place in Christendom where there were not Knights who went on equal footing with Kings and Princes through their riches. They had more than 9,000 Houses and first made very good use of their riches; they were qualified as Treasurers of the poor, the widows, and the Orphans. They were reproached for having used the blackest treachery toward Frederick II, Emperor of the West, whom they wanted to deliver to the Sultan of Egypt, for having refused to obey the Patriarch of Jerusalem, for having risen against several crowned heads, and for having bought the Kingdom of Cyprus from Richard VII, King of England. The title of King having caused them to commit (as one accuses them) the act of refusing the Old Man of the Mountain, Prince of the Assassins the Nizari Isma'ili leader, who wanted to embrace Christianity, and this in order not to lose the tribute they had to pay them every year; their and their communal Discord, the true cause of their total ruin, derived from their goods and their power in the famous dispute between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair. They had taken the side of the Pope against this Prince, who was vindictive beyond all expression. From the beginning, he determined their ruin, and finding the means to satisfy his vengeance and his ambition, he required of Bertrand de Gault, Archbishop of Bordeaux, whom he caused to ascend to the chair of St. Peter, a solemn promise to destroy the order and to serve him for this. The new Pope promised it, but seeing all the injustice of such a process, he dragged the affair out, and the King, unable to suffer a longer delay, took arrangements so well concerted that on October 3, 1307 (from whence comes that the 3 forms the a square/masonry symbol by making it perfect)