Preliminary Report.

remains silent; that he, wherever possible, always speaks with the proof in hand, and spared no effort, through the comparison of authors, the selection of the best sources, and the assembly of facts, to justify the title of his work—that is, to show that the crimes and outrages attributed to the Order were the work of individual members or houses, but never the spirit of the whole.

This work appeared in the past year 1789 in two quarto volumes quarto: a book size where each large sheet of paper is folded twice to form four leaves (eight pages), resulting in a wide, rectangular volume, under the title:

Critical and Apologetic History of the Order

of the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem,

called Templars, by the late Reverend Father M. J. The original French title identifies the author as M. J. (Monsieur Jeune), though the OCR reads "M. I." Canon

Regular of the Order of Prémontré, Order of Prémontré: also known as the Premonstratensians or White Canons, a Catholic religious order of canons regular founded in the 12th century

Doctor of Theology, and Prior of the Ab-

bey of Étival. Paris.

The anonymous Premonstratensian Prior seems to have devoted several years to the production of the same and spared no research to give his work that completeness which one could expect from him, given the multitude of resources at his command. An example of his zealous efforts to collect everything that concerned his subject can be found in the