TEMPLARS', or Yin i,ghts of the Tem ple, a military order of religious persons It was founded by an association of knights, in the beginning of the 12th century, for the protection of pilgrims on the roads in Palestine : afterwards it took for its chief object the protection of the lily Sepulchre at Jerusalem against the Saracens. Knights were fixed at Jerusa lem by King Baldwin II., who gave them the ground on the east of the Temple. Their rules were taken from those of the Benedictine monks : they took the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty. The classes of the order were knights, esquires, servitors, and chaplains ; the universal badge of the order was a girdle of linen thread. The officers of the order were eho. sen by the chapter from among the knights: they were, for military affairs, marshals, and bannerets : for purposes of government, priors, who superintended single priories or preceptories ; abbots, commanders, and grand priors, who gov erned the possessions of the order within separate provinces; and the grand master, who, in some respects, assumed the dignity of a sovereign prince, being independent in secular matters, and depending solely on the pope in spiritual. The chief part of the 9000 estates. lordships, Ate., which the society possessed in the 13th century, was situated in France ; and the grand master was usually of that nation. The
Templars were driven from Palestine by the Saracens, with the rest of the Chris tians, and then fixed the chief seat of their order in Cyprus. Their exorbitant power and wealth, and the haughty man ner in which they endeavored to keep aloof from the control of European sov ereigns, and act as a military republic independent of their authority, were probably the principal reasons which in duced Pope Clement V. and Philip the Fair of France to concert their overthrow. The charges of heresy and idolatry, which were preferred against them, were at least unsupported by evidence. In 1307, Ja ques de Molay, the grand master, having been enticed into France, was arrested by Philip; the templars' estates were seized; many of them burned alive, after the mockery of a trial ; and, in 1312, the order was abolished by a bull of Clement V. Its vast estates fell partly into the hands of the sovereigns of the countries in which they were situated, partly into those of the Hospitallers and other mili tary orders. Detached bodies of the order, however. continued to subsist for some time in different countries.