Ever since mentality has been an attribute of mankind, man has appreciated that he is surrounded by a vast incomprehensible mystery which ever closes in upon him, and from whose environment he may never free himself. The endeavor to solve this mystery has on one hand stimulated his reasoning power, and on the other nearly paralyzed it. Having no better guidance he has in all time attributed to a Great First Cause powers and faculties, even shape and form, more or less human; thus from time immemorial God or the Gods have been given a kingdom, a throne, some definite form, and even offspring. To him or them have been given purely human attributes, and they have been supposed to possess human passions and to be capable of love, wrath, strength, etc. In nearly all ages lightning, for instance, has been regarded as an expression of divine fury. As intelligence advanced the number of Gods was reduced and their manifestations classified and studied more or less imaginatively; and so while men have always acknowledged the impossibility of explaining the great mysteries of creation and of space, they have seemed to find it necessary to create other equally inscrutable mysteries of purely human invention, such as the incarnation, the trinity, the resurrection, vicarious salvation, metempsychosis, and the like.
History shows the love of mystery to be contagious as well as productive of its kind, and the origin of mystic teachings as well as of most secret societies bears out these statements. Secrets, guarded by fearful oaths, personified by meaningless emblems, concealed either in language unintelligible to others, or else hidden in terms whose special meaning is known only to the initiated, made attractive by special signs, symbols, innocent rites, or barbarous observances,—all of these means were designed solely to keep men banded together for the purpose of forming a propaganda intended to perpetuate yet other mysteries in which the initiates were especially interested. Since history began such associations of men have existed for most diverse ends, all having this in common, that only by this means could they secure and maintain influence and power.
And so the series of pictures which represent man in this role may be regarded as a panorama, led by garlanded priests carrying images of Isis or droning hymns to Demeter of Eleusis, or Druids preparing for their human sacrifices; followed by gay and voluptuous Bacchantes, succeeded by white-robed Pythagoreans; next may come the suffering Essenes bearing crosses, then the Latin Brotherhoods, followed by the German and English Guilds, the Stone Masons with their implements, the Crusader Knights, those coming first having an appearance of actual humility and devotion, while those who follow are haughty and contemptuous to a degree. Then would follow the black-robed Penitentes and the members of the Society of Jesus, sanctimonious, with eyes cast down, human machines, mere tools in the hands of their superiors; the panorama continuing with a widely assorted lot of scholars, artisans and men of all conditions in various regalia, and terminated with an indistinguishable multitude of variously adorned men, some sleek and fat, others ill-conditioned, some devout and sincere, others mere jesters and knaves from every walk of life.
It was most natural and to be expected that primitive man should be most profoundly impressed with the forces of nature, often terrifying and frightful, often winsome and attractive, and that he should bow himself down to the unknown cause of these manifestations. With his extremely finite mind he necessarily personified them; after having done this he proceeded to propitiate them by worship with certain forms of ritual. Perhaps fire first and most of all attracted him in this way, and drew from him the earliest acts of worship, for in spite of the general views to the contrary fire is often of natural origin, and must have been known to men before they became able to produce it by their own efforts. From practical to generalized concepts was a natural step, and thus mythology had its beginnings; the earliest distinctions were as between that which is overhead, i. e. Heaven, and that which is beneath, namely, the earth; these are the beginnings of all cosmogonies. Next the Gods were given the attributes of sex; Heaven was represented as masculine, fructifying, powerful; Earth as conceptive, female and gentle. By the union of these two were produced sun, moon and their progeny—the stars. Later the sun became Poseidon or Neptune, because he appeared from and disappeared into the sea. Then the imagination began to run riot, and gave rise to many individual divinities, gods and goddesses, all with human passions and attributes, mingling and propagating after human fashion, and begetting dynasties and half human races, whose doings were the subject of countless epics, dramas, myths and romances.
Thus time passed on and the original sense or meaning of these myths, descending slowly by oral tradition, became lost, while the myths themselves were for a long time accepted as historical facts. Nevertheless in all ages there have been men who, like Aristotle, Cicero and Plutarch, have questioned the accuracy of these statements and shown themselves intelligent and active sceptics. During all these times, however, a wily priest-craft had lived and thrived on the superstitions of the common people and the practices in which they have indulged; by these men, thus conditioned, any active doubt was regarded as subversive of the system by which they were supported, and as one not to be tolerated;—this condition pertaining not only to antiquity, since it is too significant a feature even of the early years of this twentieth century. A more or less honest though misinformed priesthood has, in all times, been in favor of the purification of the theology in vogue in their times and among their inner circles, and has in the main given the most rationalistic interpretation to the obscure things which they taught, and practised what their education and environment would permit. But in order to preserve the mysteries, to maintain them as such, and save themselves from becoming superfluous, not to say intolerable, these same mysteries have been tricked out with mysticism, symbolism of the most fantastic character, and allegory of the most bewildering kind; moreover this has often been accomplished by dramatic representations and by moralizing or demoralizing ceremonies. The countries in which these "mysteries," as they have since been known, were most commonly practised and most widely believed were Egypt, Chaldea and Greece.
The sources of the Egyptian mysteries, like those of Egyptian civilization, are the most difficult to discover. The Nile is necessarily the basis of Egyptian history, geography, activity and habits, and consequently must be also of the Egyptian cult. The people who were known as Egyptians invaded the land of the Nile from the direction of Asia, and found there a race of negro type whom they subdued and with whom they later mingled. The Semites called the land Misraim; the Greeks finally changed the name of its great river to Neilos. The country is a land of enigmas. Who built those pyramids, and why? Who originated the system of pictorial writing which we call the hieroglyphic? Who planned those wonderful temples now either in ruins, as in upper Egypt, or buried beneath the desert sands, as in lower Egypt? Who brought and erected those mighty blocks of stone or massive slabs from enormous distances, and handled them as we could scarcely do to-day with the best of modern machinery?
In course of time two hereditary classes were formed, the priests who dominated the minds, and the warriors who controlled the bodies of the conquered people and the lower classes. The latter kept the throne of Egypt occupied, while the former, having a monopoly of the knowledge of the time, prescribed for the people what they must believe, yet were very far from accepting these precepts for themselves, and in their inner circles made light of that which they preached to the despised classes without.
The Egyptians named their Sun God RE, but assigned the various attributes of the sun to different personalities; they had moreover not only Gods for the whole land, but Ptah was God of Memphis, Ammon God of Thebes, etc. Local deities were often constructed out of inspiring objects or from animals inhabited by spirits, and thus the fetichism of the original negro race exerted no little influence upon the higher cult of their lighter colored conquerors. Worship was paid to animals not for their own sake but because of the Gods who were supposed to reside within them; thus their prominent Gods were represented with the head of some animal. This honor belonged not to any individual animal but of necessity to the entire species, certain representatives of which were maintained at public expense in the temples, where they were carefully guarded and waited upon by the faithful. To harm one of these animals was to be severely punished, to kill one of them was to die. Conversely when a God failed in responding to the prayers of the faithful his fetich had to suffer, and the priests first threatened the animal, and if menaces were unavailing they killed the sacred beast, albeit in secret, lest the people should learn of it.
As time went on there was less of zoölatry, and the Sun-Gods and their associates figured more largely among the cult of the people. The sun's course was not represented as that of a chariot, as among the Persians and Greeks, but rather as the voyage of a Nile boat, upon which the God Re navigated the heavens; from which it will appear that the priestly religion was making slow progress to monotheism by means of oligotheism. The secret teaching of the priests was now more and more to the effect that the Gods stood not so much for themselves as for something else. During the fourth dynasty the lower Egyptian city Anu was known as the City of the Sun, hence the Greek name for the place, Heliopolis. Still more characteristic was the giving of the name of Osiris, who figured as God of Abdu, which the Greeks called Abydos, in upper Egypt, to the God of the Sunset, who was king of the lower domains and of death, brother and at the same time husband of Isis, brother also of Set, who slew him, and father of Horus, i. e. God of the new sun, who figures after each sunset. Horus fought with Set, but being unable to completely destroy him left him the desert as his kingdom, while himself holding to the Nile valley. This story of the Gods was publicly represented in various scenes on certain holidays, but only the priests, i. e., the initiated, knew the real meaning of the representations. Even the name of Osiris and his abode were kept secret, and outsiders heard only of the "great God" dwelling somewhere in "the West."
These were the most famous of all the old Egyptian mysteries, though to them were added many others, including that of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, who served also as the symbol of the Sun and of the fructifying Nile; beneath his tongue was to be seen the sacred beetle, and the behavior of the great animal was supposed to be prophetic and his actions to mean oracular sayings. The Sphinx again was a sun-God, his image being repeated throughout the Nile region, and was always thought of as a male; the head was represented as that of some king, while the whole figure stood for the Sun-God Harmachis; although the sphinx later introduced into Greece was always female.
While the Egyptians did not attribute to their numerous Gods divine perfection, they nevertheless regarded religious practices as a means of currying favor with their divinities, a custom apparently still in favor. The priests believed in a Sun-God as the only true deity, but not so the people; thus the priests in the various cities praised their local and tutelary God as supreme and made him identical with Re, whose name they appended to the original, as for instance Amon-Re. The king, no matter where he was, prayed always to the local deity as lord of heaven and earth, yet in words always the same.
At last during the eighteenth dynasty, about 1460 B. C., Amenhotep IV realized that the power of the priesthood was a menace to the crown and therefore proclaimed the Sun as the sole God, not in human shape, but in that of a disk. He ordered all other images of other Gods associated with the sun to be destroyed; the priests of these deposed Gods lost their places and estates, which latter were confiscated. But his sons-in-law who succeeded him restored the deposed monarchs. Nevertheless they were marked as heretics by those priests who were reinstated in their former power. In consequence of this conflict, which was violent and prolonged, the intellectual life of Egypt was paralyzed and the mystic teachings of the priests were henceforth not disturbed by any wave of progress or advance.
The people again sank into a stupid and unredeemable formalism, demonism and sorcery. With the purpose of amusing them the priests furnished gorgeous sacrificial processions and festivals, while at the same time drawing them away from the true God by teaching them a worship of deceased kings and queens. They also built temples, to only the outer portion of which were the people generally admitted, while the innermost portions were guarded by these priests lest the mysteries thus protected be such no longer. They also procured the building of the ancient Labyrinth, near Lake Moeris, of which Herodotus tells us that there were fifteen hundred chambers above ground and as many more under ground, which latter were never shown except to the initiated, and which contained the remains of sacred crocodiles and of the Pharaohs.
The Egyptian priests taught that man was made up of body, a material essence or the soul, which in the shape of a bird left the body at death, and an immaterial spirit which held to the man the same relation which a God held to the animal in which he dwelt, and which at death departed from the body like the image of a dream. They taught also that, if the soul and spirit were to live on, the body should be embalmed and laid in a rock chamber, and that then the relatives must supply meat, drink, and clothing for its use. The spirit took its way to Osiris and by means of a magic formula the dead would be made one with Osiris; hence in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" the deceased was addressed as Osiris with his own name added, and could now lead a happy life in the other world, which life was portrayed on the walls of the Sepulchres in pictures which are still to be seen, showing how the creature comforts of this world were to be enhanced in the next. Having reached the outer world, and having escaped the host of demons that threatened him on his passage, he could then revisit this earth at will in any form.
The Egyptian priests also taught that there was a judgment of the dead, and that new comers had to appear before Osiris, with his forty-two Assessors, and disclaim the commission of each one of forty-two sins; all of which was a magic formula for obtaining bliss according to their notion rather than anything intended as a true statement. The hippopotamus figured as an active agent in the Book of the Dead, appearing always as the accuser, when the sins and the good deeds were being weighed in the balance, while the God Thot was the "attorney for the defense."
All these secret doctrines of a priestcraft necessitated secret associations, at least of the higher priests, to which the king was always admitted, the only Egyptian outside of the priesthood to be thus taught their secrets. This was purely for protection; having less fear of foreigners these priests often initiated distinguished men from foreign lands, Greeks especially. Thus Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Herodotus, Pythagoras, Plato, Archimedes, and many others, received the secret doctrine. The ritual was a long and tedious but significant ceremony, taught by degrees like the Masonry of to-day, and necessitated in some cases the right of circumcision; all who passed it were pledged to the most strict silence. According to Diodorus the Orphic Mysteries were in large degree a repetition of the Egyptian, while the Greek legislators, philosophers and mathematicians whom I have named drew their knowledge from the same source; all of which is probably a very gross exaggeration. Nevertheless it would appear from the hieroglyphic remains that high grade schools were conducted by the Egyptian priests, and that foreign scholars could obtain for themselves instruction in the exact sciences of the day. Only the priests, however, were able to write the hieroglyphics, at least in the earlier centuries of Egyptian history.
There can be no doubt but that the secret doctrine of the Egyptian priests was both philosophic and religious, and was sharply distinguished from the popular belief which mistook tradition for truth; that it was monotheistic, that it rejected polytheism and zoölatry, and that the true signification of Egyptian mythology was expounded in private. Moreover an essential part of this mystery concerned the interpretation of myths as allegorical accounts of personified natural phenomena. For instance Plutarch ("Isis and Osiris") writes—"When we hear of the Egyptian myths of the Gods, their wanderings, their dismemberment and other like incidents, we must recall the remarks already made, so as to understand that the stories told are not to be taken literally as recounting actual occurrences."
Without now going into the subject of the relative age of the Egyptian and Chaldean cults, I will remind you that the secret wisdom of one race was not excelled by that of the other. The Chaldean races are undoubtedly of Turanian origin, and their form of religion was peculiar to the Ural-Altaic stock and the Turkic races, who originated the Cuneiform writing. Their most ancient writings represented evil spirits as coming from the desert in groups of seven, and contained formulas for exorcising them; they were presided over by the heavens, while from the higher spirits evolved Gods and Goddesses in countless number. Upon the original ground work of Chaldean ideas a Semitic race built a superstructure, and the first traces of the Babylonians and Assyrians appeared some four thousand years B. C. Their highest God was an individual whom they named Baal, while the sun and moon were his images. As in Egypt the priests were held in great reverence, standing next after the king, who was ex officio high priest; they too had a secret doctrine withheld from the vulgar. Although the Chaldeans were astrologers rather than astronomers, they were yet familiar enough with the heavens to estimate astral phenomena for what they really were, instead of holding them to be Gods, though they may have represented them as such to the common people. Their literature contained numerous mythological poems, so obscure that to understand them a key was required, which key was only in the possession of the priests. Inasmuch as Abraham came from Ur in Chaldea, with him crept into biblical literature much of the Chaldean tradition and folklore. The Chaldeans had also their Noah, and their deluge, in which the dove figured as in the biblical account. When the proprietor of the Ark finally freed the animals he erected an altar and offered sacrifice, to which the Gods gathered "like masses of flies." This story contributes but one section of the great Chaldean epic in which are recounted the exploits of a hero corresponding with the Nimrod of the Hebrew Bible, dating from the twenty-third century B. C., and reminding one forcibly of the Herculean and many other myths recounted in other ancient languages.
An off-shoot of the Chaldean culture was that of Persia, whose priestly class were far removed above the warriors and farmers that constituted the other two classes. Priests married only among their own race, possessed all the knowledge, made their king ex officio one of themselves, and practised itinerant teaching, but solely among their own caste. In the holy city, Ragha, the priests alone held rule and no secular power prevailed; Zoroaster was their founder; they were the physicians, astrologers, interpreters of dreams, scribes and officers of justice, while they impressed upon the minds of the people their exclusive duties;—to reverence the holy fire, which was their greatest mystery, to listen to the teaching of passages from the sacred book, and to perform numerous ceremonies of purification. Only the initiated were taught the meaning of the strife between the good Ormuzd and the evil Ahriman, which was probably the alternation of day and night, and of summer and winter.
In India the intense feeling with regard to caste but little altered the condition of things from that obtaining as above described, though the Brahmins were further away from the other castes than in other countries where the priests came from the common people; by the latter the Brahmins used to be regarded as Gods and did all they could to perpetuate this feeling. By this fact alone they became a self-constituted mystic organization, being themselves pantheists while the people were idolators. Though they taught pantheism in their sacred books, the second and third castes, namely the warriors and farmers, did not understand the teaching, and the fourth caste dared not read them at all.
In this pantheism penitents and hermits were esteemed as above kings and heroes; but even the life of a hermit was not exacting enough for them, so they organized the idea of a soul of the universe so incomprehensible that, as they themselves acknowledged, no man could comprehend it or instruct another in it. Despairing of solving the problem they finally fancied that the universe was a phantasm, and that the earth and all things earthly were nothing. They taught that through countless aeons of time men grew always worse, and were born only to suffer and die, or to do penance in the torments of an indescribable Hell. Naturally of all these things the people could only understand the teachings pertaining to hell and future punishment, and so the Brahmins contrived for them a supreme deity, having the same name as their Soul of the Universe, namely Brahma, whom they made the creator but playing a passive part. The people were not content, however, with an absentee passive God, but paid much more attention to Vishnu the preserver, and the dreaded Siva, the destroyer. After a while these three Gods were united in a sort of trinity, represented by a three headed figure, but without temples or sacrifices. The Brahmins continued their subtleties and divided the people into parties, like the scholiasts and disputants of the middle centuries of our present Christian era, and so the Hindoo religion became more and more debased. However, in the sixth century B. C., Buddha, that great figure in early history, endeavored to save it by a reform which found much more encouragement in the West, and to the far East of India, than in India itself, and which has since assumed a more composite character by fusion with the religions of the surrounding countries.
Buddha formed first a monastic society based upon ethical doctrines, whose underlying principle was that only by a renunciation of everything can man find safety, peace and comfort. Buddha's first teachings were mystic and for the initiated only; his followers believed also in reincarnation. After his death and that of those who were supposed to have lived before him, and who were expected to appear again, and who had been raised to the dignity of Gods, (and after their number had been added to that of the popular Hindoo Gods and to the Gods of the other people), then Buddhism became a polytheism, and because of the variety of possible explanations and the necessary exegesis, assumed in the end the dimensions of a secret mystic doctrine.
The Hellenes undoubtedly did, in the beginning, worship natural forces under the form of animals, especially of serpents; later human and animal forms were united, and so they had deities with heads of animals, or with the bodies of horses like the Centaurs, or with the hoofs of goats like the Satyrs. But the natural Greek taste for the beautiful early asserted itself; the figures of Gods came by degrees to express the ideal of physical perfection, that is the human shape, and the Grecian religion became essentially a worship of the beautiful, and not as among Oriental religions a worship of the unnatural or hideous. They forgot the astronomic and cosmic significance of the early myths and held rather to personifications of the normal forces, of which their poets sang as of mortal heroes. They never dreamt of dogma, creed or revelation, demanded only that man honor the Gods, but left it to the taste of each one how he should suitably perform his acts of reverence. It must be confessed, however, that in candor and chastity they left much to be desired; but this may be explained when we remember that their own Gods set them a very poor example in these respects. Still history will forgive them much because they loved much. The Greeks were exceedingly liberal in their interpretations concerning the Gods, while the various peoples constituting the Greek race were not at all agreed as to the number and respective rank of the Gods whom they worshiped. Thus one would be disowned here, another there; while in one place greater honor would be paid to one, or elsewhere to another; exactly as in the case of the Saints among the Catholic people of to-day. They went so far in their worship of the beautiful as to divide the Gods among the localities which possessed statues of them, which Gods came to be regarded as distinct individuals; so that even Socrates doubted whether Aphrodite of the sky and Aphrodite of the people were or were not the same person.
Furthermore in their liberality they made Gods to hand for every emergency, and even worshiped the unknown Gods, as St. Paul long ago recorded. For the Greeks these Gods were neither monsters like those of Egypt, India and Chaldea, nor incorporeal spirits like the Gods of Persia and of Israel, but human beings with all the human attributes. For the Greeks neither Jehovah existed, nor a personal devil in any form. Like the Greeks themselves their Gods had many human failings, though in them religion survived many mythological creations like the Centaurs, the Satyrs, etc. These were merely folklore beings enacting parts ranging from terror to farce, and never receiving divine honors.
Grecian religion was, so to speak, the established church of the Greek states, but came to be in time a cloak for the designs of the politicians; in which respect history has many times repeated itself. For instance Socrates was made to drink his cup of hemlock on the pretext that he had apostatized from the state religion. Still even in his day heresy played no part except among politicians. Every one could plainly state his convictions, and Aristophanes in his comedies introduced Gods in the most ridiculous and compromising situations. So long as the public worship of the Gods went on the state cared little for the upholding of positive or suppressing of negative beliefs. The Gods were entitled to sacrifices and the people to divine aid, but they could regulate the interchange to suit themselves. The greatest public crimes were violation of temples and profanation of sacred things; one must leave the images alone even if he did not believe in the Gods they represented. Punishment of blasphemy was only inflicted when complaint was made. Foreign Gods could be introduced and worshiped at will, providing only that the customary honors were rendered to those at home.
Such religious freedom could naturally only exist during the minority or the absence of a priestly class. Anyone could transact business with the Gods or conduct sacrifices; priests were employed only in the temples, and outside of them they had neither business, influence nor privileges. Their pantheism was comprehensive; the Gods were everywhere, and the honor done to them consisted in invocations, votive offerings and sacrifices. The Grecian religion recognized no official revelation which all were required to believe, though it did not deny the possibility of revelations at any time. Their oracles were obtainable only in particular places and through duly qualified individuals. At one time in ancient Greece conjuration was in vogue, but the Gods and demons who indulged in it were all borrowed from foreign sources, and in time it degenerated into pure magic.
The Greeks, however, could not get away from the sentimental notion that belief in the Gods must have an ethical side and must be subordinate to their faith; in other words that human nature was something entirely different from the divine to which it was subject. Alienation from the God in which they believed led necessarily to the impulse to seek him, which was the leading motive in the institution of the Grecian mysteries,—Gods who were man's equals were not sufficient for the Greeks. In the beginning of these mysteries they borrowed the art of the popular religion, disregarded the science of the day as well as the philosophic doctrines of their great men, held in contempt both human power and human knowledge, and devoted themselves almost entirely to self-introspection, meditation on revelation, incarnation and resurrection, and presented these things in dramatic forms and ceremonies, by which illusions they hoped to make more or less impression upon the senses. The Grecian mysteries were the opposite of genuine Hellenism. The true Greek was cheerful, happy, clear in perception, and his Gods appeared to him as do their statues to us to-day. But Greek mysticism was full of gloom, symbolism and fantastic interpretations; in every way it was unhellenic and abnormal, having no fit place in their soil nor in their age. It always has been the case that sentimental, romantic or mystical dispositions find delight in the mysterious, while logical minds are unmoved by it. From the Mysteries no man was excluded, save those who had shown themselves unworthy of initiation. They had their origin in the early rites of purification and atonement; the former being at first only bodily cleansing, which later took on a moral significance; while the atonement was a sort of expiation which came with the consciousness of sin and desire for forgiveness. Atonement was most called for in case of blood guiltiness, and consisted largely in the sacrifices of animals, burning of incense, etc. In all the ancient mysteries these two features of purification and expiation played a great part.
Of them all the oldest and most celebrated were those instituted at Eleusis, in Attica, in honor of the Goddess Demeter (Latin Ceres), and her daughter Persephone (Latin Proserpina). To these were added later a masculine deity, known at first as Iacchos, whose name is probably related to Jao, which appears in Jovispater or Jupiter, and to the Hebrew Yahve or Jehovah. Later, however, B was substituted for I and Iacchos was made to read Bacchus. Jao was the Harvest God, and consequently God of the grape, hence the close relation to Bacchus. The Greek word Eleusis means advent, and commemorates the visit of Demeter while wandering in search of her daughter,—which reminds one of the Egyptian story of Isis. Moved by gratitude, Demeter bestowed upon the people of Eleusis the bread-grain and the mysteries. From this city the cult of these two deities spread over all Greece and most of Asia Minor, passed into Italy in modified form, and thus became widely accepted. The people built at Eleusis a temple in pure Doric style and a Mystic House in which the secret festivals were held. The city was connected with Athens by a Sacred Way, which was flanked with temples and sanctuaries, while in Athens itself was a building, the Eleusinion, in which a portion of the mysteries were celebrated. The buildings at Eleusis were in good preservation until the fourth century A. D., when they were destroyed by the Goths under Alaric, and at the instigation of monkish fanatics. You will see, then, that the mysteries were widely observed in Asia Minor, and at a time when they must have deeply tinged the religious views and habits of a large portion of the population prior to the beginning of the Christian Era.
The Eleusinian mysteries were always under the direction of the Athenian government, and the report of their celebration was always rendered to the grand council of Athens. The function of the priests was an hereditary and exclusive privilege and the mysteries as a whole were under the immediate care of a sacred council. The people contented themselves mainly with honoring the Gods, while in these mysteries the original endeavor was to emphasize the preëminence of the divine over the human, hence their careful guardianship by the authorities of the state. Both were offshoots of pantheism, one seeing the divine in all earthly things, the other constantly searching for it there, and striving to unite with it. Monotheism, that is absolute separation of the human from the divine without hope of union, is a purely Oriental conception, quite incomprehensible to the Greek mind. No ancient Greek ever conceived of a creative deity in the Egyptians' sense, nor of a vengeful Jehovah like that of the Hebrews.
The Eleusinian mysteries were most highly venerated among the Greeks; so much so that during their celebration hostilities were suspended between opposing armies, while those who witnessed them uninvited or betrayed the secret teaching, or ridiculed them, were executed or banished. So late even as the period of the Roman supremacy the Roman Emperors took an interest in maintaining these mysteries, and some of the early Christian Emperors, like Constantius II. and Jovian, while forbidding nocturnal festivals made an exception of these.
The sum of the original Eleusinian doctrine is a myth based upon the rape of Demeter's daughter Persephone by Pluto, all of which is the old story of the seasons and the changes brought about in their regular succession; and as Persephone was ultimately united with Bacchus but returned to the lower world for the winter, we see typified first, the fruitfulness of the Sun God; secondly, the fecundity of the soil, and, thirdly, the resurrection of the body, which having been dropped like the grain into the earth was supposed to rise from it again after a similar fashion. How much this may have to do with present Christian beliefs concerning the resurrection may not be easily decided. Nevertheless it is of interest that the doctrine of the resurrection is of pre-Christian origin and is traceable through heathen teachings, even if having no greater support than the analogy above cited. The central teaching of the mysteries was probably that of a personal immortality analogous to the return of bloom and blossom to plants in the spring.
There were two festivals held at Eleusis, the lesser in March, when the ravished Persephone came up out of the nether world into the sunlight; and the greater in October when she had to follow her sullen spouse into Hades again. The preliminary celebration was held at Athens, and lasted six days, from October 15th to 20th. They all assembled upon that day and went down to the seashore for the rite of purification, the other days being spent in sacrificing and marching in solemn procession. On the last of them came the grand Bacchic procession, when thousands of both sexes wended their way along the sacred road to Eleusis; the distance to be traveled was fourteen miles, but many stops were made. Arrived at Eleusis the first evening was devoted to drinking the decoction called kykeon, by which Demeter was originally comforted during her wanderings. During the first days the initiated feasted and performed their mystic rites, consisting largely of torch light processions at night. After these were over the festival became a scene of merriment and athletic competition. The fasting and solemn cup, along with others of their rites, remind one of certain Christian observations perpetuated to the present day, while the severe tests to which those desiring initiation were subject have been more or less imitated by the Free Masons and other secret societies of mediaeval or modern times. The Mystic House must have been furnished with all the resources of the stage and the most ingenious stage carpentry of that day, and makes one think of Scottish Rite Masonry of this. The initiates regarded their chances in the next world as much better than those of the common people, as all the ancient Greek writers acknowledge.
In age and renown the mysteries of the Cabiri, in the island of Samothrace, rank next to those of Eleusis. They date back to a time preceding the evolution of several of the Grecian deities. These Mysteries implied originally an astro-mythology, losing in time its astral meaning. In these Samothracian mysteries the reproductive forces of nature figured most prominently, and through them the Phallic worship of the Orientals was transmitted to the Greeks. Into these mysteries women and even children were initiated. There were also Cabirian mysteries in several other Islands in the Grecian Archipelago, as well as on the continent.
Mysteries were also celebrated in the Island of Crete, in honor of Zeus. We know but little concerning them save that in the spring time the birth of the God was commemorated in one place, and his death at another, and that amid loud noises the story of the childhood of Zeus was enacted by the young.
As already remarked the worship of Bacchus was imported and in him was personified the influence of the sun upon the growth of the vine, while the ultimate tendency was to the glorification of life and force; in other words, it was eminently materialistic and appealed to the grosser senses. The Dionysian mysteries originated in Thrace, and among a people of Pelasgian stock, who were naturally gloomy save when aroused, when their enthusiasm became exaggerated into transports of frenzy. In time a distinction obtained between the Dionysian mysteries and the festivals. At least seven different non-mystic festivals occurred in Attica during the year, which were of popular character, during which the Phallic worship, if any, predominated. The fabled adventures of Bacchus were enacted and the dramatic stage originated at this time and from this beginning. On the other hand, a triennial festival of Dionysos was held in which women participated who, saturated with wine, lost all restraint and humility and were called maenades or mad women, while their festivals were spoken of as orgia, whence our modern term orgies. These were conducted at night, upon the mountains, by torch-light, in mid-winter, while the women, who were clothed in skins, shunned all association with men, and drank, danced, sang and committed all sorts of excesses, finally sacrificing a bull, in honor of the god, whose flesh they devoured raw. They then raved about the death of their god and how he must be found again; all hope in rediscovering him centering in the quickening springtime.
Bacchus worship, bad as it was in Greece, was surpassed in Rome, Livy even comparing the introduction of the Bacchic cult into Rome to a visitation of the plague. In its Etruscan and Roman form it became simple debauchery with a thin veneering of religion. So abominable did it become in time that in 186 B. C., the Consul Albinus was compelled to suppress it. Seven thousand persons were implicated at that time, and the ringleaders and a multitude of their accomplices were condemned to death or exile. The senate decreed that the Bacchanalia should never again be held in Rome or Italy, and the places sacred to Bacchic worship were to be destroyed. These orgies continued unchecked outside of Italy, and in time reappeared again even upon Italian soil, until the days of the Roman Emperors, when they reached a pitch of absolute shamelessness, as in the case of the notorious Messalina.
Time fails in which to mention all of the other debased mysteries which were met with in the various parts of Greece and Italy. Among them, however, must be recorded those of the mother of Rhea, those of Sebazios, and those of Mithras, all of which were finally collected by the sect of Orpheans. Among the Persians Mithras was the Light, and his worship was perhaps the purest cult that could be imagined. Later it was combined with sun worship, and Mithras became a Sun God, and as such generally recognized among the different peoples. To the early Greeks Mithras was unknown, but in the later days of the Roman Empire his mysteries made their appearance and gained great prominence. The monuments represented a young man in the act of slaying a bull with a dagger, while all around are human and animal figures, the youth standing for the Sun God who, on subduing Taurus in May, begins to develop his highest power. The original beautiful rites later degenerated and became orgies. Among the original rites was a form of baptism and the drinking of a potion made of meal and water. Human sacrifices were in some places a part of the cult.
The most disreputable of all these mysteries appear to have been the Sabazian, which were made up of several earlier forms, and were mere excuses for gluttony and lewdness, while the priests of the cult were most impudent beggars.
Thus in time the mysteries were stripped of all the beauties of a heavenly origin and became of earth exceedingly earthy, while their initiates, lost to all shame and decency, persisted nevertheless in their sacred hypocrisy, until the hideous night of the Gods disappeared before the glow of a brighter morning.
After this rather long preliminary portion, we are now prepared, as otherwise we could not be, to consider the relation between the Christian religion and these ancient mysteries. Granting that Jesus was the founder of the Christian religion, we must remember, nevertheless, that he was distinctly a Jew, spent his life in Judea, and based his teachings upon Judaism; also that long before his day Judaism was thoroughly indoctrinated with Greek elements, and that after his crucification the propaganda was carried on not so much by Jews as by Greeks and men of Grecian education. Between the Greeks and the Jews there were then, as now, the greatest differences; differences which have already been epitomized, but which may be thus summarized. On one side the closest union between God or the Gods and man, most lofty sentiments and finest sense of art-form, a priesthood making no pretentions and exerting little influence, a nation sustaining active commercial relations with the world, and all imbued with eagerness to adopt whatever was novel; on the other side, the widest separation between Jehovah and man, a substitution of theology and religious poetry for a study of nature, a nation ruled by priests and protected against all access from without, either by sea or caravan, adhering determinedly to the old and distrusting whatever was new.
After the Jews were liberated from Babylon, by Cyrus, they dispersed widely, living largely under Persian rule, and subjected after Alexander's conquest to Greek influences. Later they were scattered still more widely, becoming in time a mercantile race. In Egypt they enjoyed greater privileges than elsewhere, and in Alexandria saw the acme of Grecian art and teaching. While retaining their reverence for their scriptures and for the temple at Jerusalem, they quite generally adopted the language of the country, and particularly was this true of the Jews living in Alexandria in the third century, B. C., during which the Pentateuch was translated into the Septuagint, the remainder of the Hebrew bible being translated about 125 B. C. Thus the Greeks gained an introduction to Jewish theology, while the Hellenist Jews learned for the first time a Grecian philosophy; thus, too, among the scholars of one race was begotten a high esteem for the sages and philosophers of the other, while from the polytheism of one and the monotheism of the other was constructed a new mysticism. In this Alexandrian mysticism appeared in particular and for the first time the new idea of divine revelation, which was applied by enthusiasts alike to the Old Testament and to the Grecian writings. The Jew Aristobulus devised a most ingenious allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, and traced to it all the wisdom of the Greeks, who until recently had never heard of it; and Philo, another Hebrew philosopher, contemporary with Christ, yet of whom he knew nothing, so construed the traditions of his race as to see in the four rivers of Eden the four cardinal virtues, in the trees of paradise the lesser virtues, and in the great figures of Jewish history personifications of various moral conceptions, all of which was out-doing the manner in which his Grecian friends had developed their own mysteries. Moreover, and this is very important, Philo taught that God had made a world of ideas and according to this model had subsequently made a corporeal world; the former having for its central point the Word. This statement that the Word was the first and the World his second deed passed later into the gospel of St. John, which opens "In the beginning was the word, and the word was God."
Philo founded a sect based upon the doctrine that the soul's union with the body is to be regarded as a punishment from which man should free himself, for his soul's sake. This sect was known as the Essenes, who in spite of claims to the highest antiquity really were founded during the first century B. C., and who constituted in effect a secret society. They were the true socialists of their day, and held things in common. They invented a peculiar nomenclature for the angels and imposed upon their new members to keep these names secret. As a society they did not long survive the beginning of the Christian era, being made superfluous by Christian asceticism. The Essenes, however, were of importance in this regard that they constituted the middle terms between the Grecian mysteries and Christianity, as they did between Grecian philosophy and Judaism. They were, in effect, a Jewish imitation of the Pythagorean league. When with Grecian mysticism were associated the nobility of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, the science of Aristotle and the Jewish belief in one God, it is not strange that out of these elements, combined with the teachings of simple humanity enunciated by Christ, there resulted a power which transformed the world. The view that all mankind are brothers, originally Jewish, was also of independent Greek origin and came especially from the Stoics, who had to lie dormant until some tie stronger than mere political association held men together. This tie subsequently became a religious one. Polytheism had nothing more to give up; all the forces had been worked over in the God-making process, the Pantheon was full, and men ridiculed alike the Gods, their oracles and their priests. These same priests smiled at each other when they met, and forfeited all public respect by the lives they led. Olympic wantoning and derision of the Gods must necessarily have ended so soon as anything better could be substituted therefor.
The long felt want was for a God of definite character, of approved prowess, with human feelings, human wrath, and human love, made after man's own likeness, who should stand for a doctrine of personal immortality, and give some promise of a hereafter. The Jews, the only monotheists of the time, were prepared to furnish such a God, but he was too spiritual, and was worshiped by altogether too indefinite rites and peculiar usages. Nevertheless the God of the Jews was utilized for this purpose while the mystic elements with which he was to be surrounded were furnished by the ancient Grecian mysteries and the doctrines of the Pythagoreans and Essenes. So completely did the Jews and Greeks mingle in Egypt and in Judea, that the idea prevailed among both races that the time had come for something new in the desired direction. The various secret leagues demanded a separation of the divine from the human and their subsequent reconciliation, all of which was subsequently furnished to their satisfaction in the accounts of the origin and death of Christ. Even during the early years of the Roman Empire men looked for a new kingdom in the East, and both Jews and Heathen awaited some divine intervention. This took more definite form in the Jewish expectation of a Messiah who should restore the kingdom of Israel, and in their worship of Jehovah, while the Greeks yearned for something to take the place of their degenerate polytheism.
The times were thus ready for the appearance of Jesus, who lived for most of his life in obscurity, and of whose career no mention is made by contemporary Greek and Roman writers. This was perhaps fortunate for his followers, for none could contradict what any other might choose to say of Him who rose above the bigotry of his day and people, who was executed because of his independence of the priests and scribes, and who was thus regarded as the longed for Messiah. On the Jewish branch of his real origin were grafted Grecian mystical off-shoots of superhuman origin;—an immaculate conception, a vicarious sacrifice, a resurrection and an assumption of a portion of the God-head. Thus, in what has come down to us concerning the Founder of the Christian church, truth and fiction mingle; the former being that which is consistent with highest laws and natural phenomena; and the latter that which conflicts with these. Jesus himself never made pretentions to being more than a man. When he spoke of his father he spoke of him as equally the father of all mankind; he was the greatest moral reformer that ever lived, and he differed widely from the Essenes in that he sought to save man, not by Essenism and withdrawing him from the world, but by living with him and setting him a beautiful example.
The ancients were firm believers in signs and portents from the heavens which were supposed to serve both for the instruction and warning of mankind. Stars, meteors, the aurora, comets and sudden lights of any kind were regarded as presaging events like the birth of Gods, heroes, etc. Great lights were supposed to have appeared both at the conception and birth of Buddha, and of Crishna. The sacred writings of China tell of like events in the history of the founder of her first dynasty, Yu, and of her inspired sages. The Greeks and Romans had similar traditions regarding the birth of Aesculapius and several of the Caesars. In Jewish history we read that a star appeared at the birth of Moses, and of Abraham—for whom an unusual one appeared in the East. The prominence which a similar star in the East played in the legends of the Founder of Christianity and the effect which, as also in the case of Moses it had upon Magi, needs here no rehearsing. A very different significance was attached to eclipse or to any phenomena by which unexpected darkness is produced. The Greeks held that at the deaths of Prometheus, Hercules, Aesculapius and Alexander, a great darkness overspread the earth. In Roman history the earth was shadowed in darkness for six hours when Romulus died. Much the same thing is reported to have occurred when Julius Caesar died. So also one of the most conspicuous features attending the crucifixion of Jesus was a similar phenomenon which is made to play a most conspicuous part, for we read in three of the gospels that "darkness spread over the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour;" although the only evangelist who claims to have been present says nothing about it, nor do historians of that time, like Seneca and Pliny, make note of any such event in Judea.
In view of all this, however, to deny the star in the East, and the hours of darkness following the crucifixion, is regarded by many pious people as rank blasphemy or heresy of the deepest dye.
The parables in which Jesus taught so unmistakably were similes adapted to the simple comprehension of his people, who likewise often made use of such figurative language. Those who followed him used this form of speech much more freely, and quickly erected his personality into the dignity of a God, magnified him and his mission, and soon saw him generally accepted as the equivalent of the Messiah, for whom Greeks and Jews alike had longed. His alleged miracles were unnecessary, in addition to being contradictory to all known natural sequences, because the simple and sublime truths which he preached could not be made more expressive by any such help. In the light of to-day they seem unnecessary juggleries, quite unworthy of so grand a character. They probably represent the effort of his followers, who portrayed his life and personality in colors which would make them more generally acceptable.
Of such transformations as that by which the son of a carpenter was made to appear of divine origin history has no lack. The Grecian polytheism furnished numerous illustrations; Apollo appeared on earth as a shepherd, Herakles, the son of Zeus, and Romulus (who was also the son of a virgin and of Mars), were founders of cities, states and nations. The Jewish accounts of creation stated that God walked the earth, and why not in human form? Why also should not the founder of a religion be the son of God and of a virgin? The rest of the beautiful story upon which we were all brought up must be regarded as fanciful embellishment, beautiful in its imagery, but having no foundation in fact or scientific possibility. The annunciation, the star in the East, the slaughter of the innocents, etc., can only be regarded in this light.
The stories of the miracles are probably distinctively purposive. In the Grecian mysteries Demeter and Dionysos figured as givers of bread and wine; Jesus, too, was made lord and giver of these two sacred viands, all of which appears in his changing water into wine, multiplying the loaves, and later in the institution of the Last Supper, at which bread and wine became a part of these Christian mysteries which are still widely perpetuated. In his quieting the storm, walking upon the water, finding the penny in the fishes' mouth, and the draught of fishes, are portrayed his power over the forces of nature and lower forms of life. His power over disease was personified by stories of healing paralytics, lepers, blind, deaf and dumb people, casting out devils, and even by restoring the dead to life. Apparitions were common according to the history of his life, as of the holy spirit in form of a dove, his encounter with Satan, the appearance of Moses and Elias, etc. The ancient tendency to personify appears again in the form of Satan or a personal devil, namely the power of evil, while in the Transfiguration is personified the superiority of the new law over the old. Finally the miracles attending his last days, the darkening of the sun, the rending of the veil and the Resurrection, were all occurrences which it would be impossible to omit from the closing scenes in the life of anyone who has figured as a God. They betoken the mourning of nature, while the Ascension personified the belief in an everlasting Redeemer and the individual immortality of those who believed in him.
In thus epitomizing the events in the life of Jesus upon which, from his day until now, men have laid such fearful stress, and upon whose acceptance the present life as well as the future of all men has been conditioned, I should be far from doing justice to myself should I fail to point out my own attitude in the matter. I hold it true that the self-evident truth, as well as the wonderful sublimity of Christ's teachings, become apparent upon the study of the same, and are weakened rather than strengthened by insistence upon all that is supernatural, mysterious and inconceivable in the generally accepted account of his life and labor. My mind is freed from the necessity for the mysterious which the Graeco-Jewish people demanded, and which the superstitious people of to-day still demand, and I prefer to let him stand for what he seems to me to be,—the greatest moralist and teacher of all time, rather than to surround him with a veil of imagery and with statements so impossible of belief as to make it impossible to accept one part without accepting them all. The Jews already had doctrines of unity of God and love for others; the Grecian philosophy antedated him in insisting upon elevation of life to a higher plane than that of mere gratification of the senses, and everywhere his predecessors and contemporaries could furnish miracles by the hundred, but in force, grandeur and simplicity of his teachings, in his comprehensive humanity, in his directness of appeal, in his condemnations of those who departed from the model which he set, he never has had and probably never will have an equal. In his self-abasement and love for others he was as irresistible as have been these principles in civilizing and, in this sense, christianizing the world.
In Jesus' own day there was no hair-splitting theology; devotion, love of fellow-men, charity, repentance, these were all that were needed. But the beautiful simplicity of his teaching was lost with the death of his first disciples. The system was esteemed too simple, too unadorned to appeal to the people used to something quite the contrary. And so Stephen the Martyr, who was of Grecian education, was stoned because he demanded a repudiation of certain Jewish teachings, although the congregation at Antioch adopted his views.
Paul the great leader was an epileptic and had frequent fits and visions, and these made a strong impression, not only on himself but on his followers. On the creations of his imagination the doctrine of the resurrection is largely based. He set up the God-man Jesus as the counterpart of the first man Adam, who represented sin and death, and who was to be crucified and born anew in Christ. Between Paul, the great Gentile Christian, and Peter, the Jewish Christian, the church was quickly split into two parties; these two soon subdividing into others, and among them all arose the New Testament literature, whose Alexandrine dialect establishes the influence of Greek education.
Thus did Christianity develop out of the secret associations of the ancient world. The early Christians themselves constituted, at least while under persecution, a sort of secret society. Their worship was mystical, but not because Jesus so taught;—rather because of their environment and traditions. The practice of baptism, the last supper and the doctrines of incarnation and resurrection have been as certainly added to the Nazarene's sublime code of ethics as to them in turn, in the centuries to follow, were added every conceivable notion, mystery and stupid absurdity which the diseased minds of men could imagine, and which have been the cause of more departure from Christ's original teachings, and of more strife and bloodshed than any other feature in the history of mankind.
Indeed it is one of the greatest inconsistencies of history that the doctrines of love, unity and peace, taught by the Founder of Christianity, should have been the greatest of all factors to rend mankind apart, beget feelings of hatred, and result in the death, from this cause, of millions of men such as Jesus himself most loved.
The three great militant, mendicant and monastic orders of the middle ages were the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, the Knights Templar, and the Teutonic Order. In addition were numerous others, smaller, shorter lived, less important in every respect, scarcely mentioned in even the larger histories, like the knights of Calatrava, Alcantara, Santiago de Compostella, and the English Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. These orders were the immediate as well as the indirect outgrowth of mediaeval conditions for which both the Church and the State were responsible. The secret tenets of the Christians had been made public, and those who held to them had for some time ceased to be a secret society; their faith was now a part of that church which was essentially the State, and which occupied a goodly part of Europe.
Sad to say the Church was rent, and the State suffered accordingly from constant strife between sects and parties, who contested, even to the death, over interpretations to be given to the scriptures, and the matter of creeds. Thus while discussing at point of the sword whether the soul is to be saved by good works, or by grace of God, they disregarded the very essence of the simple teachings of Jesus, and brought upon theology, even in those days, the contempt and ridicule of the liberal minded and the non-believer, so that even to-day it suffers because of the unfortunate light in which it was made to appear. That theology should lead to war is the antithesis of the Christian doctrine, yet no wars have been so fierce and bloody as those waged in "spreading the cross" and propagating a misinterpreted gospel. And so theology suffered doubly from the Monks who perverted it, and from the Knights and the State that inculcated it with fire and sword.
For a thousand years nothing of importance was added to human knowledge, and mental confusion reigned supreme. At the end of this period all the original teachings of Christ were forgotten, and after passing through the hands and tongues of fanatics or deluded and ignorant men, Christianity was left with the semblance of a monotheistic basis on which had been crudely built up certain doctrines borrowed from Egyptian and Grecian sources, among which may be mentioned the Trinity, Immaculate Conception, Resurrection and Ascension, as well as certain practices like that of the Lord's Supper, plainly borrowed from pagan customs. There was in all this so much to challenge belief, and so much at first unacceptable to minds not trained to believe it, that, in order to be effective their propaganda had to be carried on with the sword. Moreover to the Christian mystic, anxious to unify himself with the hidden, unknown deity the idea of Moslem unbelievers in possession of the high places which they regarded with such reverence, was simply intolerable and repugnant beyond description.
Hence the Crusades undertaken in order to regain the Sepulchre; in which by Papal decree the Monks joined the Knights, and under command of emperors and the greatest generals of their day, made temporary conquest of the Holy Land, founding the kingdom of Jerusalem. The immediate outcome of the general movement was that alliance, made wise and even necessary, when theology and chivalry joined hands, from which resulted the foundation of such orders as those mentioned at the beginning of this paper. These allies of which they were composed, all took the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and for a time kept them, until the possession of power and the acquisition of wealth brought their inevitably accompanying temptations. Each of these orders and many of the others passed through the successive stages of poverty, with meekness and constant benefaction, succeeded sooner or later by temporal aggrandizement, selfishness, greed, and rapacity, with all the crimes in the calendar, and the inevitable ultimate downfall. Of them all the Hospital Knights bore by all means the least smirched record, on which account, partly, as well as because of their most prominent purpose, i. e., their work among the sick, wounded and distressed, I deem their careers worthy of more particular study.
For this purpose we may quickly dismiss the Teutonic knights from present consideration, simply reminding you that they were really the founders of modern Prussia. They had their own origin in the commendable public spirit of the merchants of Lübeck and Bremen, who during the siege of Acre made tents out of the sails of their ships, in which their wounded countrymen might be nursed and attended. Most of their active service against the Saracens was in Spain.
Of the Knights Templar a little must be said here. About 1119 two Knights, Hugo (or Hugh) of Payens, and Godfrey of St. Omers, associated with themselves six other French Knights in a league of military character, styling themselves "Poor Knights of Christ," and pledged themselves to keep safe for pilgrims the highways of the Holy Land. They prospered and grew, and came into the favor of Baldwin I, king of that kingdom of Jerusalem already mentioned. Inasmuch as their Monastery occupied a part of the site of Solomon's temple of old they were known as Templars. At the synod of Troyes, in 1128, they were recognized as a regular Order, and received monastic rules and habits, with a special banner. They were also known as "Poor Companions of the Temple of Jerusalem," a name which did not very long befit them. At first, like the Hospital Knights, they begged their food, fasted, kept vows, worshipped diligently, and cared for the poor and infirm. Beard and hair were cropped short, the chase was forbidden, and they took the usual vows of chastity. But as they acquired property they forgot the simple life and habit, as well as their vows of obedience and chastity, while their pledge to protect the pilgrim on his way became in time a farce, not alone through their indifference and negligence, but through their treasonable dealings with the Saracens, and even treacherous surrender of their strongholds.
Thus, whatever their pristine purpose, lucre and power became the later objects of their strife and the impelling motives of their lives. By the accession of so-called "affiliated members" they avoided the rule of celibacy, and admitted married knights and those engaged to be married.
Their Grand Masters in time ranked next after Popes and Monarchs. While the former favored them it was mainly because they feared them. They were exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to the Pope. So rich and powerful did they become that at the time of their suppression they controlled an Empire of five provinces in the East and sixteen in the West, while the Order possessed some 15,000 houses. They aimed to make all Christendom dependent upon themselves, with only the Pope as their nominal head.
Of their personal bravery, which was usually impeccable, of their affluence and intolerable effrontery, and of many of their traits and characteristics, one may form an excellent idea by reading Ivanhoe, where these seem to be quite faithfully depicted. It is, to me I confess, just a little amusing as well as saddening to see the men, who name their secret Masonic associations after the founders of the Order, displaying and imitating, at least in public where alone they can be judged by outsiders, only those features of Templar Knighthood which marked the period of their decadence or their downfall. As imitations they may be historically accurate, but as worthy of emulation, or even of imitation such displays are matters of questionable taste, at least, to those who read medieval history.
The Templars in their days of splendor and later downfall, were neither pious, nor learned, nor good Christians. Many of their secret doctrines were of heretical origin, taken from the Waldenses or the Albigenses, and they cared far more for their own possessions than for the Holy Land. They promulgated the shameful excuse that God evidently willed that the Saracen should win; that the defects of the Crusaders were evidently according to His decision, and that therefore they were released from their vows, and could return to Europe, where indeed they rested—after their fashion,—from their labors, and passed their time in doing everything their founders had vowed not to do.
But this is not intended to be an epitome of Templar history; rather a brief statement of the reasons why they went proudly and sometimes stoically to their final downfall, and why the Hospital Order, though not always keeping up to its earlier standards, nevertheless so far eclipsed them, as to become the recipients of very much of the Templars' enormous resources and wealth, being thought worthy to be thus entrusted. And so it happened that, in 1307, Philip of France had all the Templars in France arrested and their property sequestrated. This led to a tripartite dispute in which were involved the Templars, the Pope and the King. In 1310 fifty-four Templar Knights were burned alive in Paris. At last the Pope, to prevent their property from falling into secular hands, made over to the Hospitallers most of the Templar estates, excepting however those in Spain. The Grand Master Molay and another Templar were burned to death on an island in the Seine.
So much then in brief, for purposes of contrast. Now to the avowed subject of this paper.
During the seventeenth century there rose a controversy as to the foundation of a hospital already in existence in Jerusalem, named after the Asmorean prince John Hyrcanus, (the son and successor of Simon Maccabaeus, who restored the independence of Judea and founded a monarchy over which his descendants reigned till the accession of Herod. He died 105 B. C.). This was at a time when the pious merchants of Amalfi planned a refuge for their pilgrims. It was this John whom many suppose to have been the patron of the order, though it seems now clearly established that the first sponsor or the first St. John, in this connection, was the Greek patriarch John surnamed Eleëmon, or the Charitable, because of his practical philanthropy. (See "St. John the Almsgiver," Rev. H. T. F. Duckworth, 1901). But by the time the Crusaders, under Godfrey of Bouillon, had taken Jerusalem from the Saracens, St. John Baptist seems to have become the acknowledged patron saint of the hospital, his image being worn by epileptic patients, and being later adopted as the regular badge for those engaged in hospital work.
But this term hospital must not be regarded in its present acceptance; it was used in a broader sense to imply any house of refuge, even from wild animals; in fact a hospice.
This particular hospice seems to have been erected on the ruins of one founded by St. Gregory in 603, where it is known that the French Benedictines worked. Two centuries later Charlemagne had claimed the title of Protector of the Pilgrims. ("De Prime Origine Hospitaliorum," by La Roulx. Paris. 1885).
This institution was naturally located in close proximity to the most sacred places, which early Christian traditions made such to the pilgrims who came from all over Western Europe. It was in existence in 1099. It was made doubly necessary by not only the hardships of travel, but by the ill usage of the natives, at a time when the Holy City was in the hands of the Moslems, who demanded an entrance fee often beyond the pilgrims' means. Thus subjected to indignities indescribable, robbed often before their arrival, these misguided pilgrims often died of want, or returned with their primary pious object unattained. Had it not been for one Gerard, the first administrator of the hospice, their hardships had been even greater.
The buildings of the Order, at first meagre, were finally enlarged to cover a square, nearly 500 ft. on each side, with one side on the Via Dolorosa and another fronting the Bazaar, and all a little south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Nearby were other churches and hospices. This was the arrangement before the establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099. During the next century the Order, under Raymond du Puy, had enlarged the church of St. John Eleëmon into the conventual church of St. John Baptist, while along the south of the square above mentioned ran an excellent building, the hospital of St. John. When Saladin recaptured Jerusalem, in 1187, this church was converted by the Turks into a mad-house, known as the "Muristan," this being finally ceded to Germany in 1869.
From the new kingdom of Jerusalem the Hospitallers obtained a constitution, and the Gerard above mentioned was made their first "Master." He was succeeded in 1118 by du Puy, while Baldwin II was the Latin King of Jerusalem. The Hospital had been recognized by the Archbishop of Caesarea in 1112, and had widely extended its sphere of usefulness. It was King Baldwin who was anxious to stamp upon the Order a military character, similar to that conferred upon the Order of the Temple in 1130. This was natural since the kingdom was isolated, surrounded by fanatic enemies and always beset by and in danger from them. Thus the necessities of the times and the environment made it requisite that all who were able should bear arms, and coöperate for mutual defence.