The Dream and the Tomb by Robert Payne

Author:Robert Payne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Published: 2000-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

Three Letters

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM TERENCE, MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, TO ALL COMMANDERS AND BRETHREN OF THE ORDER, FROM TYRE, NOVEMBER 1187

BROTHER TERENCE, known as Grand Master of the most impoverished house of the Temple, himself the most impoverished of all the brethren, and that brotherhood almost completely destroyed, to all commanders and brethren of the Temple, greetings! May they utter sighs to God, at whom the sun and the moon are astounded!

The wrath of God has lately permitted us to be scourged by innumerable calamities which our sins have brought down to us. Neither in writing nor in the language of tears, so unhappy is our fate, can we tell the full measure of these things. Know that the Turks assembled an immense multitude of their people and with bitter hostility they invaded the territories of the Christians. . . . They spread themselves over nearly all the land: Jerusalem, Tyre, Ascalon and Beirout being all that is left to us and to Christendom. Since nearly all the citizens of these cities have been slain, we shall not be able to hold them unless we speedily receive divine assistance and the aid you can bring to us. At the present moment they are besieging Tyre relentlessly by day and night, and they are so numerous that they cover the entire land from Tyre to Jerusalem and Gaza, like swarms of ants.

Grant us, we beseech you, your aid with all possible speed. Grant succour to us and to Christendom, which is now all but ruined in the East, that with God’s aid and by the great merits of the brotherhood and with your help, we may be able to save the few remaining cities. Farewell.

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM THE EMPEROR FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA TO SALADIN, KING OF EGYPT, WRITTEN BEFORE THE FALL OF JERUSALEM WAS KNOWN IN THE WEST.

FREDERICK BY THE GRACE OF GOD Emperor of the Romans, the ever august and glorious victor over the enemies of the Empire and the fortunate ruler of the entire kingdom, to Saladin, the illustrious Governor of the Saracens. May he take warning from Pharaoh and touch not Jerusalem!

. . . [Y]ou have profaned the Holy Land over which we, by the authority of the Eternal King, bear rule, as guardian of Judaea, Samaria and Palestine, [and] solicitude for our imperial office admonishes us to proceed with due rigour against such presumptuous and criminal audacity. Wherefore, unless, before all things, you restore the land which you have seized, . . . [within] a period of twelve months, . . . you will experience the fortune of war, in the field of Zoan, by the virtue of the life-giving Cross and in the name of the true Joseph.

We can scarcely believe that you are ignorant of that which all antiquity and the writings of the ancients testify. . . . That. . . innumerable . . . countries have been subject to our sway?

All this is well known to those kings in

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