Knights
of St. John of Jerusalem this Christian interpretation was preserved,
and finally that it was this pure doctrine which passed into
Freemasonry. According to early masonic authorities, the adoption of the
two St. Johns as the patron saints of Masonry arose, not from Johannism,
but from the alliance between the Templars and the Knights of St. John
of Jerusalem.[318]

It is important to remember that the theory of the Templar connexion
with Freemasonry was held by the Continental Freemasons of the
eighteenth century, who, living at the time the Order was reconstituted
on its present basis, were clearly in a better position to know its
origins than we who are separated from that date by a distance of two
hundred years. But since their testimony first comes to light at the
period of the upper degrees, in which the Templar influence is more
clearly visible than in Craft Masonry, it must be reserved for a later
chapter. Before passing on to this further stage in the history of the
Craft, it is necessary to consider one more link in the chain of the
masonic tradition--the "Holy Vehm."

The Vehmgerichts[319]

These dread tribunals, said to have been established by Charlemagne in
772[320] in Westphalia, had for their avowed object the establishment of
law and order amidst the unsettled and even anarchic conditions that
then reigned in Germany. But by degrees the power arrogated to itself by
the "Holy Vehm" became so formidable that succeeding emperors were
unable to control its workings and found themselves forced to become
initiates from motives of self-protection. During the twelfth century
the Vehmgerichts, by their continual executions, had created a veritable
"Red Terror," so that the East of Germany was known as the Red Land. In
1371, says Lecouteulx de Canteleu, a fresh impetus was given to the
"Holy Vehm" by a number of the Knights Templar who, on the dissolution
of their Order, had found their way to Germany and now sought admission
to the Secret Tribunals.[321] How much of Templar lore passed into the
hand of the Vehmgerichts it is impossible to know, but there is
certainly a resemblance between the methods of initiation and
intimidation employed by the Vehms and those described by certain of the
Templars, still more between the ceremony of the Vehms and the ritual of
Freemasonry.

Thus the members of the Vehms, known as the _Wissende_ (or Enlightened),
were divided into three degrees of initiation: