Templars

Of peculiar importance were the chaplains (fratres capellani). These did not originally form part of the order, which was served by priests from outside. The bull Omne datum optimum of 1163 imposed on clerics attaching themselves to the order an oath of life-long obedience to the grand master; by the middle of the 13th century the chaplains took the same oath as the other brothers and were distinguished from them only by their orders and the privileges these implied (e.g., they were spared the more humiliating punishments, shaved the face, and had a separate cup to drink out of). The order thus had its own clergy, exempt from the jurisdiction of diocesan bishops and parish priests, owing obedience to the grand master and the pope alone.

It remains to be said that the brethren were admitted either for life or for a term of years. Married men were also received, but on condition of bequeathing one half of their property to the order.

History.

Long before St. Bernard's death (1153) the new order was established in almost every kingdom of Latin Christen dom, and every establishment was the recipient of rich endow ments. Henry I., for example, granted them lands in Normandy; and Louis VII. in the latter years of his reign gave them a piece of land outside Paris, which in later times became known as the Temple, and was the headquarters of the order in Europe, and Stephen of England granted them the manors of Cressing and Witham in Essex, and his wife Matilda that of Cowley, near Oxford. Spiritual privileges were granted to them by the

popes as lavishly as temporal possessions by the princes and people. Pope Adrian IV. allowed them to have their own churches; Eugenius III. added to these the right to have church yards. They were, moreover, as defenders of the Church ex empted from the payment of tithes. Finally, they were exempted from the action even of general censures and decrees of the popes, unless mentioned in them by name. Very soon the or der refused to submit in any way to the ordinary jurisdiction of the diocesan bishops and formed in effect a separate eccle siastical organization under the pope as supreme bishop. The result was that, scarce twenty-five years after its foundation, the order was at open feud with bishops and parish priests, and the popes found it necessary to issue decree after decree to pro tect it from violence and spoliation.

So long, however, as the attention of the papacy and of Christendom was fixed on the problem of recovering and safe guarding the Holy Land, the position of the Templars was un assailable and all efforts to curb the growth of their power vain. The later history of the Templars is therefore the history of the