from the
piety of the faithful, ample possessions in every country of Europe,
especially in France. Their great riches, joined to the course of time,
had, by degrees, relaxed the severity of these virtues; and the templars
had, in a great measure, lost that popularity which first raised them to
honor and distinction. Acquainted from experience with the fatigues and
dangers of those fruitless expeditions to the East, they rather chose
to enjoy in ease their opulent revenues in Europe: and being all men
of birth, educated, according to the custom of that age, without any
tincture of letters, they scorned the ignoble occupations of a monastic
life, and passed their time wholly in the fashionable amusements of
hunting, gallantry, and the pleasures of the table. Then rival order,
that of St. John of Jerusalem, whose poverty had as yet preserved
them from like corruptions, still distinguished themselves by their
enterprises against the infidels, and succeeded to all the popularity
which was lost by the indolence and luxury of the templars. But though
these reasons had weakened the foundations of this order, once so
celebrated and revered, the immediate cause of their destruction
proceeded from the cruel and vindictive spirit of Philip the Fair, who,
having entertained a private disgust against some eminent templars,
determined to gratify at once his avidity and revenge, by involving the
whole order in an undistinguished ruin. On no better information
than that of two knights, condemned by their superiors to perpetual
imprisonment for their vices and profligacy, he ordered on one day all
the templars in France to be committed to prison, and imputed to them
such enormous and absurd crimes as are sufficient of themselves
to destroy all the credit of the accusation. Besides their being
universally charged with murder, robbery, and vices the most shocking
to nature, every one, it was pretended, whom they received into their
order, was obliged to renounce his Savior, to spit upon the cross,[*]
and to join to this impiety the superstition of worshipping a gilded
head, which was secretly kept in one of their houses at Marseilles.

* Rymer, vol. iii. p. 31, 101.

They also initiated, it was said, every candidate by such infamous rites
as could serve to no other purpose than to degrade the order in his
eyes, and destroy forever the authority of all his superiors over
him.[*] Above a hundred of these unhappy gentlemen were put to