hand or through the depositions of Franciscans and Dominicans. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the "spuitio super crucem” did form a part of the initiation ceremony. Even the English Templars admitted that the statutes of the order were one and the same all the world over; and there is no setting aside the consistent evidence of almost every French Templar as to his guilt in this matter. Of the other charges the most revolting may have originated in the abuse and misinterpretation of a licence primarily intended for military emergencies. Such at least is the form it seems to take in the evidence of John Senand (ap. Mich., ii. p. 137). A debased mind might misinterpret this concession and translate it into coarser words, till (this part of the initiation ceremony being probably conducted in private, as, most certainly, was the spitting on the cross) there might be two formularies current in the order, of which the second was plainly immoral, whereas the first was perfectly harmless unless coupled with a sous-entendre. So too with regard to the spuitio. One Templar says plainly that he took it for a joke,—pro trufa; others regarded "it as an imitation of St Peter’s denial; a modern writer has suggested that the custom was intended as a symbol of absolute obedience (ap. Mich., ii. 260). There is little doubt that most members looked upon the ceremony with disgust. Some salved their consciences by the excuse that they were denying Jesus and not Christ; another when shown the crucifix denied his belief in the painted figure. Nearly all declared that they had spat near but not upon the cross, and denied Christ “non corde sed ore.” Men who could thus play with their own consciences at their initiation might well, when their lives were in peril, clothe a falsehood in the garb of truth by denying “spuitio super crucem” instead of confessing to “spuitio juxta crucem.”
The other charges stand upon a somewhat similar footing. The power of lay absolution might easily be developed out of the harmless words with which the master or preceptor dismissed his chapter. The cordulæ which Templars were accused of wearing in honour of their idol take a very different appearance as the “zones of chastity” or “belt of Nazareth” worn in accordance with St Bernard’s precept. With regard to the charge of idolatry the evidence is very conflicting. In France and at Florence a large proportion of the members confessed to indecent kissing (oscula inhonesta) at their initiation ; but hardly a single English Templar admitted the charge, and one French witness suggested an almost ludicrous explanation of the rumour. Here also a simple ceremony of respect or humiliation seems to have been expanded into one of shamelessness; but the evidence is too strong to admit of its being explained away, at least in France.
Doctrinal errors.Not a few witnesses confessed that they had been called upon to declare Christ a false prophet, who suffered for His own sins and not for the race, and to believe only in a superior God of the heavens (Deum cœi superiorem). One Florence witness admits that the idol was worshipped as God and Saviour. It was this head, according to one of the witnesses, that could make the order rich and cause the earth to bud and the trees to blossom. A Carcassonne Templar spoke of the idol (Raynouard, 241) as friend of God, who converses with God when he wishes. On such evidence M. Loiseleur holds that the Templars were members of a secret religion, which combined the heretical teachings of the Bogomilians and the Luciferians. The former, “the friends of God,” believed in a Supreme Deity, whose eldest son Satanael was the creator of our world after his revolt against his father, and whose younger son Jesus was made man to counteract the evil deeds of his brother. They did not venerate the cross, regarding it as the instrument of Christ’s passion. The Luciferians, on the other hand, worshipped the eldest son, who had power over all the riches of this world. M. Loiseleur has shown some remarkable coincidences, verbal and otherwise, between the creed of these two sects and that of the Templars, who, according to him, borrowed from the former their belief in the Supreme Deity and from the latter their devotion to the God of this earth. It seems, however, doubtful whether he is justified in combining the several items of such scattered evidence into a complete doctrinal system. His argument might be turned against himself; for, if these heresies were so widely spread in mediæval Europe, are they not for that reason those most likely to be ascribed to an unpopular order?
On the whole it may perhaps be admitted that the charges of “spuitio” and "osculatio inhonesta” were current, at least sporadically, for fifty years before the suppression of the order. [1] They may have become more general in the time of Thomas Beraud, the grand-master (who died 1273), according to the evidence of the preceptor of Aquitaine. On the death of William de Beaujeu (1291) there were two rivals for the office of grand-master,—Hugh de Peraud, the visitor of France, and James de Molai. The latter in 1291, at a general chapter, had declared his intention of extirpating certain practices in the order of which he did not approve[2]; while, if we may trust the French witnesses, the most vigorous initiator according to the new method was Hugh de Peraud. This exactly fits in with the account [3] that the errors were introduced after William de Beaujeu’s death. In other words, it is probable that the party of Hugh de Peraud between 1290 and 1307 made a desperate effort to enforce the new ceremonies and the new doctrines throughout France and England. The custom of “spuitio,” at all events, was very ancient, and Hugh de Peraud devoted his energies to the propagation of the “osculatio inhonesta.” This would explain the omission of all allusion to the latter ceremony when the English Templars were absolved; for they would not confess to a practice of which they were innocent. This theory likewise goes a long way towards interpreting both the confession and the denial of James de Molai and the general acquittal of the Templars in nearly all the councils outside France. (t. a. a.)
Meaning.
TEMPLE.The temple is an institution common to religions of natural growth which have reached a certain stage, and in most languages bears a name expressing that it is the house or palace erected by men as a habitation for their god [4] (Greek, ναός; Hebrew, hēkal, “palace,” or bēth ĕlōhīm, “house of God”; Latin, ædes sacræ). In this connexion the term “house of God” has quite a different sense from that which we connect with it when we apply it to a Christian place of worship. A temple is not a meeting-place for worshippers; for many ancient temples were open only to priests, and as a general rule the altar, which was the true place of worship, stood not within the house but before the door. The temple is the dwelling-house of the deity to which it is consecrated, whose presence is marked by a statue or other sacred symbol; and in it his sacred treasures, the gifts and tribute of his worshippers, are kept, under the charge of his attendants or priests. Again, a temple implies a sanctuary; but a sanctuary or holy spot does not necessarily contain a temple. A piece of land may be reserved for the deity without a dwelling-house being erected to him upon it, and a sacred tree, stone, or altar, with the holy precinct surrounding it, may be recognized as a place where the worshipper can meet his god and present his offerings, although no temple is attached. Indeed the conception of a holy place, separated from profane use, is older than the beginnings of architecture; and natural objects of worship, such as trees and stones, which need no artificial protection or official keeper, are older than images enshrined under roofs and protected by walls and doors. All antique religion is essentially altar-worship (see Sacrifice), and for ritual purposes the altar always continued to be the true centre of the sanctuary. But the altar is only a modification of the sacred stone (comp. Priest, vol. xix. p. 726), and it has already been observed that, even in later times, the chief altar of a sanctuary stood outside the temple. In the oldest and most primitive forms of religion the sacred stone is at once the place where gifts are offered and the material sign of the presence of the deity; thus the temple with its image belongs to a later development, in which the significance of the sacred stone is divided between the altar outside the door and the idol, or its equivalent, within. But in many very ancient sanctuaries the place of a temple is taken by a natural or artificial grotto (e.g., the Phœnician Astarte grottoes, the grotto of Cynthus in Delos), or else the temple is built over a subterranean opening (as at Delphi); and, while this may be in part explained as connected with the cult of telluric deities, or the worship of the dead, it seems not unreasonable to think that in their origin cave temples may date back to the time when caves were commonly used as human habitations, that the altar in front of the temple had its prototype in altars at the mouths of sacred caves, which were approached with holy fear and not entered by ordinary worshippers, and that thus some of the main features of the ancient temple were fixed from the first by the analogy
