Introduction to the History and Defense.

historians of those times mention this Order, some with praise, others with censure, depending on their preconceived opinions; yet it never suffered the fate of being degraded through excessive flattery. But soon after its extermination, people felt entitled to portray it in such dark colors that the original itself finally became unrecognizable through them. What one finds about the Order in most historians is so little impartial, so far removed from all sound criticism and probability, that it seems as if these knights appeared on the world stage for one hundred and eighty-four years only to become an eternal stumbling block The author uses the phrase "Stein des Anstoßes," a biblical idiom (stumbling block) referring to something that causes disagreement or difficulty. for subsequent history.

a) Daniel, History of France original: "histoire de France." Referring to Gabriel Daniel, a Jesuit historian whose 17th-century work was a standard, if sometimes biased, reference..

Had our modern historians, who so gladly boast of their punctual accuracy and impartiality, done nothing more than confuse them at times with the Hospitallers Hospitallers: The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, a contemporary religious and military order, with the Teutonic Knights Teutonic Knights: A German medieval military order, with the Crusaders, and with the Knights of Saint Lazarus Knights of Saint Lazarus: A military order originally established to care for those suffering from leprosy; had they contented themselves with the pretense that Saint Bernard Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a key patron of the Order and helped draft their Rule, but he was a Cistercian monk and never their Grand Master. was their first Grand Master, that they had sprung from the Order of the Hospitallers, and finally that there had even been female Templars, then one could overlook such errors as trifles. One might then regard the following accusations as exaggerations: for example, that they were the worst of men among all the Eastern peoples a); that they allied themselves just as often with the