Secret Societies of the Middle Ages. Thomas Keightley

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СКАЧАТЬ were eager in the pursuit of knowledge, and some of which already possessed written codes of law. He fixed his view on Croton, one of the wealthiest and most distinguished of those towns.

      Aristocracy was the soul of the Dorian political constitutions, and the towns of Magna Græcia were all Dorian colonies; but in consequence of their extensive commerce the tendency of the people was at that time towards democracy. To preserve the aristocratic principle was the object of Pythagoras; but he wished to make the aristocracy not merely one of birth; he desired that, like the sacerdotal castes of the East, it should also have the supremacy in knowledge. As his system was contrary to the general feeling, Pythagoras saw that it was only by gaining the veneration of the people that he could carry it into effect; and by his personal advantages of beauty of form, skill in gymnastic exercises, eloquence, and dignity, he drew to himself the popular favour by casting the mantle of mystery over his doctrines. He thus at once inspired the people with awe for them, and the nobles with zeal to become initiated in his secrets.

      The most perfect success, we are told, attended the project of the philosopher. A total change of manners took place in Croton; the constitution became nearly Spartan; a body of 300 nobles, rendered by the lessons of the sage as superior to the people in knowledge of every kind as they were in birth, ruled over it. The nobles of the other states flocked to Croton to learn how to govern by wisdom; Pythagorean missionaries went about everywhere preaching the new political creed; they inculcated on the people religion, humility, and obedience; such of the nobles as were deemed capable were initiated in the wisdom of the order, and taught its maxims and principles; a golden age, in which power was united with wisdom and virtue, seemed to have begun upon earth.

      But, like every thing which struggles against the spirit of the age, such a political system was not fated to endure. While Croton was the chief seat of Pythagoreanism, luxury had fixed her throne in the neighbouring city of Sybaris. The towns were rivals: one or the other must fall. It was little more than thirty years after the arrival of Pythagoras in Croton that a furious war broke out between them. Led by Milo and other Pythagoreans, who were as expert in military affairs as skilled in philosophy, the Crotoniates utterly annihilated the power of their rivals, and Sybaris sank to rise no more. But with her sank the power of the Pythagoreans. They judged it inexpedient to give a large share of the booty to the people; the popular discontent rose; Cylon, a man who had been refused admittance into the order, took advantage of it, and urged the people on; the Pythagoreans were all massacred, and a democracy established. All the other towns took example by Croton, a general persecution of the order commenced, and Pythagoras himself was obliged to seek safety in flight, and died far away from the town which once had received him as a prophet. The Pythagoreans never made any further attempts at attaining political power, but became a mere sect of mystic philosophers, distinguished by peculiarities of food and dress.

      Ancient times present us with no other society of any importance to which we can properly apply the term secret.

      The different sects of the Gnostics, who are by the fathers of the church styled heretics, were to a certain extent secret societies, as they did not propound their doctrines openly and publicly; but their history is so scanty, and so devoid of interest, that an examination of it would offer little to detain ordinary readers.

      The present volume is devoted to the history of three celebrated societies which flourished during the middle ages, and of which, as far as we know, no full and satisfactory account is to be found in English literature. These are the Assassins, or Ismaïlites, of the East, whose name has become in all the languages of Europe synonymous with murderer, who were a secret society, and of whom we have in general such vague and indistinct conceptions; the military order of the Knights Templars, who were most barbarously persecuted under the pretext of their holding a secret doctrine, and against whom the charge has been renewed at the present day; and, finally, the Secret Tribunals of Westphalia, in Germany, concerning which all our information has hitherto been derived from the incorrect statements of dramatists and romancers[2].

      It is the simplicity of truth, and not the excitement of romance, that the reader is to expect to find in the following pages,—pictures of manners and modes of thinking different from our own,—knowledge, not mere entertainment, yet as large an infusion of the latter as is consistent with truth and instruction.

THE ASSASSINS[3].

       Table of Contents

Chapter I.

       Table of Contents

State of the World in the 7th Century—Western Empire—Eastern Empire—Persia—Arabia—Mohammed—His probable Motives—Character of his Religion—The Koran.

       Table of Contents

      At the commencement of the 7th century of the Christian era a new character was about to be impressed on a large portion of the world. During the two centuries which preceded, the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and other martial tribes of the Germanic race, had succeeded in beating down the barriers opposed to them, and in conquering and dismembering the Western Empire. They brought with them and retained their love of freedom and spirit of dauntless valour, but abandoned their ancient and ferocious superstitions, and embraced the corrupt system which then degraded the name of Christianity. This system, hardened, as it were, by ideas retained and transferred from the original faith of its new disciples, which ideas were fostered by those passages of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures which accorded with their natural sentiments, afterwards, when allied with feudalism, engendered the spirit which poured the hosts of Western Europe over the mountains and plains of Asia for the conquest of the Holy Land.

      A different picture was at this time presented by the empire of the East. It still retained the extent assigned to it by Theodosius; and all the countries from the Danube, round the east and south coasts of the Mediterranean, to the straits of Gades, yielded a more or less perfect obedience to the successors of Constantine. But a despotism more degrading, though less ferocious, than those of Asia paralyzed the patriotism and the energy of their subjects; and the acuteness, the contentiousness, and the imagination of the Greeks, combined with mysticism and the wild fancy of the Asiatics to transform the simplicity of the religion of Christ into a revolting system of intricate metaphysics and gross idolatry, which aided the influence of their political condition in chilling the martial ardour of the people. The various provinces of the empire were held together by the loosest and feeblest connexion, and it was apparent that a vigorous shock would suffice to dissolve the union.

      The mountains of Armenia and the course of the Euphrates separated the Eastern Empire from that of Persia. This country had been under the dominion of the people named Parthians at the time when the eagles of the Roman republic first appeared on the Euphrates, and defeat had more than once attended the Roman armies which attempted to enter their confines. Like every dominion not founded on the freedom of the people, that of the Arsacides (the Parthian royal line) grew feeble with time, and after a continuance of nearly five centuries the sceptre of Arsaces passed from the weak hand of the last monarch of his line to that of Ardeshir Babegan (that is the son of Babec), a valiant officer of the royal army, and a pretended descendant of the ancient monarchs of Persia. Ardeshir, to accomplish this revolution, availed himself of the religious prejudices of the Persian people. The Parthian monarchs had inclined to the manners and the religion of the Greeks, and the Light-religion—the original faith of Persia, and one of the purest and most spiritual of those to which a divine origin may not be assigned—had been held in slight estimation, and its priests unvisited by royal favour. It was the pride and the policy of Ardeshir to restore СКАЧАТЬ