Preliminary Report.

made against this Order, and the result of their efforts is in everyone's hands.

Nevertheless, there has still been a lack of a complete history of the Knights Templar original: "Tempelordens" until now, as most writers restricted themselves merely to its dissolution and the investigation of the accusations made against it, only briefly touching upon the history of its origin, its progress, its greatness, and its fall.

The same reason that moved some scholars in Germany to pay attention to the history of this ancient knighthood knighthood: here referring to the Ritterschaft, the collective body of knights as a social and military class perhaps contributed much to the emergence of a scholar in France who—provided with sufficient knowledge and the necessary resources—undertook to present this Order, which was exterminated five hundred years ago, as less guilty than most of his predecessors had done. To what extent he has succeeded in this is rightly left to the judgment of the historical researcher; yet it is clear from a brief overview of the present work that, as much as the author seeks to defend the Order as a whole, he never [conceals] the errors and injustices of individual members of the same— The text ends mid-word with "ver-", likely intended to be verhehlt (conceals) or verbirgt (hides).