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Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Medieval Mysticism

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Trisha Sinclair
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« Reply #60 on: April 20, 2009, 02:46:52 am »

the banner of heresy when once dispossessed of their cure or of any other sacerdotal function?

Like the other aspirants to the sectarian priesthood, they went into seminaries or lodges to receive instruction; then, having become deacons or squires, having undergone tests and given the required pledges, they were admitted to the rank of Perfect Knights, or Perfect Troubadours. Having thus graduated, they started in the character of missionaries or of pilgrims of love ("pellegrini d’amore") as Dante says, sometimes undertaking long and dangerous journeys. And so we find traces of them everywhere, from the icy north and the depths of Germany even to the east, in France and the low countries, in England, Spain and Italy. Then it was that, in the symbolical language of the faithful in love, they were called by the name of Knights-errant.

Preaching the doctrine of love, the true law of the Redeemer, their mission was to redress the wrongs of Rome, to take up the defence of the weak and oppressed; they were also represented and celebrated as the true soldiers of the Christ, the champions of the poor, attacking under all their forms the monstrous abuses of theocratic regime; as comforters of the widow Rachel, that Gnostic church so cruelly tried by the pontifical Herod; as the devoted supporters of the sons of the widow, those humble members of the "massenie" of the Holy Grail; as the terror of ogres, dragons, and giants.

Fauriel must then believe in them, writing: "It is unquestionable that in all the countries in Europe in which there were Knights, there was one particular class known by the title of Knights errant; " and he cites in proof of this the tax which was levied upon them in 1241 by Henry III. of England, who was in great need of money and would naturally turn to his best allies to obtain it; would he necessarily call them by their true name of Albigensian missionaries?

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"It is in the poetical monuments of southern France, he adds, that I find the most ancient traces of knight-errantry. What may be gathered from them as a whole, is that the condition of Knight errant was rather accidental and transitory than fixed and permanent." Where else indeed than in Provence could one find more traces of their pilgrims of love since Provence was their native soil? And was it not the least that could be expected, after the trials of a wandering life, that these zealous missionaries, called back to sedentary functions, might rest after their prolonged fatigue?

Contrary to the romances which represent them as always solitary, and running about in search of adventures, "the Provençal poets depict them to us as usually travelling several together, and to all appearance temporarily associated for some enterprise or common quest." Yes, indeed! Exactly like the missionaries of our own times, and they were always accompanied by their socius, whom the Troubadours, their colleagues, turned into their squire.

One of the most illustrious among these knights-errant--an authentic personage, at least as a Troubadour--was Raimbaud de Vaqueiras, whose platonic amours with Madame Beatrice, who called him her beautiful knight ("beau chevalier"), are extremely curious, but would make too long an episode. We will merely say that Boniface, Marquis de Montferrat, whose sister Raimbaud's Beatrice must have been, was one of the nobles of the south of Europe who most especially occupied the attention of the Troubadours, for the very simple reason that, sharing their faith, he sheltered under his protection the Vaudois, whose cradle was in the valleys of Piedmont.

Other knights are mentioned at the same period in the historical monuments of the south of France and of the Catalogue, under the name of the "Chevalier Sauvages"--Wild Knights. The romance entitled "Guido, the Wild," presents the poetical personification of these guides or

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pastors of Alpine districts. He figures in Ariosto's "Roland," which we shall probably annotate some day, with some heroes whose symbolical value is not more difficult to estimate.

An article of certain constitutions of James I., of Aragon, who wanted to treat with Rome, forbade in 1234, the making of Wild Knights; another article, says Fauriel, "seems to establish a connection between this class of Knights and the jesters; it prohibits the giving of any gratuities to a jester or to a Wild Knight." I can well believe it, and such a connection was a matter of course. Was not the jester the squire, the socius of the Wild Knight, and the King of Aragon wishing to give pledges to Rome, how could he separate them in the prohibition he was issuing? Would not the gratuity given to one have been given to the other? The Wild Knights had in reality the closest relations with the Knights errant; like them they were ministers of the proscribed worship, forced to disguise their character carefully. They differed from them on one point only, and that was that instead of going to a foreign land to catechise and convert the orthodox population, they had to fulfil their own ministry in their own native country. Further, instead of exercising sedentary functions in a single parish, they had to move over a much more extensive area. They were obliged to go up hill and down dale, in Alpine districts, to carry the words of peace and consolation to the isolated populations, who were too few in number to have a resident pastor; and also to those whom persecution or the stake had deprived of their own.

Unlike the ministers of towns, boroughs and castles, the gentle knights, as titularies of this or that church, their lady-love--they themselves were the pastors of the woods and mountains, compelled, in order to feed their sheep, to travel through the wildest districts; hence the name given to them by their co-religionists, who caused it to be taken, like so many other conventional terms, outside their church, in a totally different sense.

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« Reply #61 on: April 20, 2009, 02:47:05 am »

The most bitter feeling on the part of the Catholics was aroused from the fact that the teachings they denounced were so closely allied to those inculcated by themselves, and that the lives of the heretics shone out as stars against the blackness of the mediæval monastic life. * Indeed, the majority of the higher classes became Troubadours, and when prevented by persecution from speaking, they took refuge in song, † and treated their subjects sometimes seriously, sometimes lightly, but ever was there, as we have seen, a dual meaning in La gaie saber, or the "Art of loving": for the true "union of love," as Aroux points out, meant the attachment of the "Perfect Chevalier" to the "celestial chivalry," for such were those knights ‡ called who gave themselves to the service of the "Holy Grail," or the "Mystic Quest," i.e., to the inner service, or initiation, of their secret body. They were indeed:


The soldier-saints who, row on row,
Burn upward each to his point of bliss.

The perfect passion of self-sacrifice was theirs, and moved those men of the Middle Ages to martyrdom and suffering in their zeal for the spreading of the knowledge of the mystic doctrine. Such, for




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instance, was Peter Waldo, * who became the founder of the powerful groups of Waldensians, † or the "Poor of Lyons," a secret body with masonic connections. He was first attracted to serious subjects by a Troubadour who was reciting a poem in the streets of Lyons--a chant in favour of the ascetic life; Waldo invited the Troubadour in, and from that time became one of them.

We must here digress from the mystic aspect, in order to give a slight outline on the general organisation, which can be taken from Baret's admirable work on the subject; ‡ he gives a chart of the chief School of Troubadours as follows: §

The School of Aquitaine
 All these were again sub-divided into groups.
 
The School of Auvergne
 
The School of Rodez
 
The School of Languedoc
 
The School of Provence
 

The general compositions of the Troubadours may be classified under the following heads:

"The Gallant," "The Historical," "The Didactic," "The Satirical," and the purely "Theological"; then





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« Reply #62 on: April 20, 2009, 02:47:19 am »

further, others we may term "The Mystical," or even "Hermetic"; the "Satirical" were often theological from an essentially belligerent standpoint. Baret emphasizes the fact that theological matters occupied the attention of the Troubadours much more than history. Nostradamus enumerates several works of this kind. * In the Vatican Library, says Baret, there, are four anonymous treatises which belong to the Provençal literature.

But the object which was the special search of the Inquisition was the translation of the Bible into the Catalonian tongue, and very carefully was this work concealed; for the organization of these mystic schools was admirable and their bishops and deacons were disguised as Troubadours. Throughout Spain, Germany, Italy and Central Europe, this powerful "secret organization" extended with its mystic traditions. Aroux, in connecting the Troubadours with the Albigenses on one side, links them also to the Manichæan religion on the other, that most pernicious--according to the Roman Church--of all heresies, because the most vital; † and, indeed, nothing but the wholesale bloodshed undertaken by



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the Dominicans could have crushed out its public organization; still, it lived again in other forms and under other names, and when Rutherford and other writers connect the Manichæans with the Freemasons they are touching a deeper truth than perhaps they know. As the above-mentioned writer points out, the Troubadours and the "Steinmetzen or Bridge-Builders" were connected, and "among them, too, the Freemasons found ample occupation"; this is accurately true, for from Manes * " the widow's son," descends the tradition which was common to Troubadour and Freemason; their hieroglyphs were in many cases identical and the signs common to both. Manes went into Egypt and brought back from thence the ancient tradition, he who was crucified for reforming the Magian priesthood, became the originator of the powerful symbolic phrase used among "the sons of the widow" with its corresponding sign. It is this tradition which underlies the well-known societies of the Knight Templars, the Fratres Lucis, the Asiatische Brüder, and many others who have kept alive the mystic teaching, and handed it on.

From the death of Manes, 276 A.D., there was


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« Reply #63 on: April 20, 2009, 02:47:31 am »

an intimate alliance *--even a fusion--with some of the leading Gnostic sects, and thence do we derive the intermingling of the two richest streams of oriental Wisdom: the one, directly through Persia from India; the other, traversing that marvellous Egyptian period, enriched by the wisdom of the great Hermetic teachers, flowed into Syria and Arabia, and thence with added force--garnered from the new divine powers made manifest in the profound mystery of the blessed Jesus--into Europe, through Northern Africa, finding a home in Spain, where it took deep root. From this stock sprang into full flower that richness of speech and song for which the Troubadours will live for ever, Manichæans, who sang and chanted the Esoteric Wisdom they dared not speak.

Next we see them dispersed in sects, taking local names--separated in name only, but using the same secret language, having the same signs. Thus, everywhere they journeyed, and, no matter by what name they were called, each knew the other as a "widow's son," bound together on a Mystic Quest, knitted--by virtue of a secret science--into one community; with them came from the East the chivalric ideal, and they


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chanted of love and sang of heaven: but the love was a "Divine Love," and their heaven was the wisdom and peace of those who sought the higher life. As Aroux * says, the chief object which dominated the work of these "Trouveurs" [troubadours] was chivalry--"not the feudal, fighting, iniquitous chivalry, as corrupt as it was ignorant," but that tone of thought which is well termed mystic, and which sees in all life only a manifestation of the Divine power; they fought for the purity of their ideal against the ever-increasing corruption of the Roman Church.

A word must here be added on the origin of chivalry which is mistakenly supposed to be of Christian inception. Viardot says:

In recalling what Christian Europe owes to the Arabs with regard to knowledge, we must not omit what she owes to them with regard to manners. The high civilization to which they had attained bore its natural fruit, and the Arabs were no less distinguished by the advance and the gentleness of their manners than by the extent and variety of their knowledge. The humanity, the tolerance that they displayed towards conquered nations, to whom they generously left their possessions, their religion, their laws, and mostly their civic rights, bore a striking testimony on this point, which was thoroughly confirmed by their whole


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« Reply #64 on: April 20, 2009, 02:47:54 am »

history. This high civilisation appeared under two chief aspects--gallantry in private manners, chivalry in public manners. Gallantry (as we will call the delicacy of social relations) arose among them from the extreme reserve imposed on the two sexes, from the severity of the laws and of opinion, in fine, from the cultivated mind of the women, who knew how to inspire love and to command respect. In all social relations, in all family customs, the Arabs showed extreme austerity. "Those people," they said of the Spaniards, "are full of courage, and endure privations with fortitude; but they live like wild beasts, washing neither their bodies nor even their clothes, which they only take off when they fall into rags, and going into each other's houses without asking permission." *

Chivalry was the virtue of warriors. Founded on justice, it corrected the abuses of force, which is the right of war; founded on humanity, it tempered the excesses of hatred, reminding men of their brotherhood even in the midst of combat; it was a kind of association or confraternity between men of arms which drew together and united all its members when politics or religion separated them, and which imposed on them noble duties when all rights were t disowned. Chivalry was the most powerful correction of feudalism by giving to the weak and the oppressed, protectors and avengers . . .

Bravery, however, the sole virtue of German soldiers, was neither the only one nor even the first, required of an Arab Knight. Ten qualities were indispensable to give him a right to this name, namely: goodness, valour, courtesy, poetry, elegance of speech, strength, horsemanship, skill in the use of lance, sword and bow. †



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This "Celestial Chivalry"--Aroux demonstrates--was derived from the "Albigensian Gospel," whose "Evangel" or "Gospel" was again derived from the Manichæan-Marcion tradition. * These Albigenses were identical with the Cathari, and the Troubadours were the links bearing the secret teaching from one body to another. " Thus one sees them taking every form: by turns, artizans, colporteurs, pilgrims, weavers, colliers . . . deprived of the right to speak, they took to singing."

It must be remembered that simultaneously with the inflow of this Manichæan Oriental wisdom into


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« Reply #65 on: April 20, 2009, 02:48:04 am »

 Spain, there had been the same development in Italy from Sicily, and all through the Danubian Provinces into Hungary, over the Caucasus to Russia, and along the shores of the Caspian Seas; just as the legend of the Holy Grail was everywhere, so also was this stream of thought, for the two were one.

The most prominent public development takes place, as we see, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the enormous spread of the teaching was the result of centuries of quiet work. Travel was slow, and nearly all communication was from person to person. Hence when we see in the twelfth century the "flowering of the plant," it must be remembered that this result was the work in each country of small bands of--even isolated---travelling mystics who were true missionaries in life and heart.

To turn to another aspect it is curious to think of the Troubadours as authorities in dress and etiquette. Rutherford says: * "They prepared the youth of both sexes for society, and they drew up rules for their guidance therein," and then he gives a most interesting quotation from a Troubadour, Amanieu des Escas, who instructed a young man of rank while he was a Page or Esquire as follows: "Shun the companionship of fools, impertinents, or meddlers, lest you pass for the same. Never indulge in buffoonery, scandals, deceit, or falsehood. Be frank, generous, and brave; be obliging and kind; study neatness in your dress,


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and let elegance of fashion make up for plainness of material. Never allow a seam to remain ripped and gaping; it is worse than a rent; the first shows ill-breeding, the last only poverty, which is by far the lesser evil of the two. There is no great merit in dressing well if you have the means: but a display of neatness and taste on a small income is a sure token of superiority of spirit," etc., etc. There is much more of the same kind, but this citation serves to show how eminently practical was the advice given to the young men in olden days.

Very bitter and violent were the attacks made upon these men by the monks, who were jealous of the real purity and asceticism of these heretical Troubadours, and who were infuriated at the publicity given to their own misdeeds; such an attack is graphically described by Hueffer in his thoughtful work on the Troubadours. The writings of "Izarn the Monk," for instance, he well describes as a "striking specimen of monkish effrontery" and he proceeds to criticise the "unctuous self-laudation" of his work, the Novas del Heretge, or the Tale of a Heretic, a dialogue between the author and a bishop of the Albigeois sect.

"The opening lines," says Hueffer, "are important to the historian of theology. They prove that the Neo-Manichæan heretics believed, or at least were said by the Catholics to believe, in something very like metempsychosis. 'Tell me,' the monk begins, 'in what school you have learned that the spirit of man,

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« Reply #66 on: April 20, 2009, 02:48:18 am »

when it has lost its body, enters an ox, an ass, or a horned wether, a hog, or a hen, whichever it sees first, and migrates from one to the other until a new body of man or woman is born for it? . . . This thou hast taught to deluded people, whom thou hast given to the devil and taken away from God. May every place and every land that has supported thee perish!'" *

It is curious and suggestive to find that St. Francis of Assisi had been a Troubadour; Görres † speaks of him as a "genuine Troubadour," and there is no doubt that he and some of his Franciscans were at one time members of the heretical Cathari: indeed it is questionable whether he was at any time an orthodox Churchman, though--like that other Troubadour, Dante--the Church has ever claimed him as a "faithful son."

A few words must now be devoted to what may be termed the general position of the Troubadours, the place and functions of some of them at least. Among the most illustrious of the Troubadours was Alfonso the Second, King of Arragon (1162-1196). Ticknor ‡ says: "From 1209 to 1229, the shameful war which gave birth to the Inquisition was carried on with extraordinary cruelty against the Albigenses, a religious sect in Provence, accused of heresy, but persecuted rather by an implacable political ambition.




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[paragraph continues] To this sect--which in some points opposed the pretensions of the See of Rome, and was at last exterminated by a crusade under the Papal Authority--belonged nearly all the contemporary Troubadours, whose poetry is full of their sufferings and remonstrances. * In their great distress, the principal ally of the Albigenses and Troubadours was Peter the Second of Arragon, who in 1213 perished nobly fighting in their cause at the disastrous battle of Muret. When therefore the Troubadours of Provence were compelled to escape from the burnt and bloody ruins of their homes, not a few of them hastened to the friendly Court of Arragon, sure of finding themselves protected, and their art held in honour, by princes who were at the same time poets." These passages and the accompanying notes are of importance to students, for they show how intimate a part was played by the Troubadours in the religious movements of the period; and how they were instruments in keeping the mystic teaching alive, and in handing on the Wisdom of the east clothed in this, its latest, poetical disguise.

In Germany also the Troubadours dwelt in high places, for, according to M. de Saint-Peloie, the Baron


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« Reply #67 on: April 20, 2009, 02:48:31 am »

 Zurlandben had just (1773) found a MS. in the library of the King, containing the sonnets of princely Troubadours, written about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Among these royal writers were the Emperor Henry VI., Conradin, King of Bohemia, and other Princes, Electors, Dukes and Margraves.

The emotional life of the young European nations was largely educated by means of the chivalric romances, based, as they were, on the highest religious and mystic teaching; and later, in 1400-1500, the Celestial Chivalry was the great standard set before the people, as a national ideal.

Says Ticknor: * "Religious romances were written . . . in the form of Allegories, like the 'Celestial Chivalry,' the 'Christian Chivalry,' 'The Knight of the Bright Star'"; and this author remarks that the object of that interesting book--the Celestial Chivalry, written by Hierónimo de San Pedro (at Valencia, in 1554) was to drive out of the world "the profane books of chivalry."

The titles he uses are worth attention, the first part being called "The Root of the Fragrant Rose"; the second, "The Leaves of the Rose." The names are suggestive, for it was just at this period, when, owing to bitter persecution, the Cathari and Albigenses were nearly exterminated, † that the Rosicrucians



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began to revive the same old Eastern tradition, and the blessed Christian Rosencreutz turned his steps eastwards, and in Arabia spent three years fitting himself for the work to come.

The Rose was one of the ancient traditional mystic symbols, re-adapted by the Rosicrucians, and used, indeed, by all sectaries and mystics Aroux * asserts that the famous Roman de la Rose † was not only a satire against the Pontifical Court, but also the apotheosis of heresy, for it contained the Hermetic Science under the guise of a religious poem.

Rossetti ‡ is as emphatic about this symbolic language, and Warton § gives us the following suggestive hints: "In the preface of the edition [to this poem,] printed in the year 1583, all this allegory is turned to religion. The Rose is proved to be a state of grace or divine wisdom, or eternal beatitude, or the Holy Virgin to which heretics cannot gain





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« Reply #68 on: April 20, 2009, 02:48:45 am »

access. It is the White Rose of Jericho, . . . . the chemists made it a search for the Philosopher's Stone." There is ever a mystery in the crucified Rose, typical of light and glory springing from the blood of Adonis, himself Dionysus, the best of heavenly beings. Endless are the exquisitely beautiful and refined symbolic meanings of the sacred Rose.

Thus as we study the Troubadours it becomes evident that an enormous under-current of secret teaching was being carried on, and Rutherford gives us some important hints on this point which have been previously noticed * but may again be usefully referred to since they illustrate this particular fact and verify much that is said by Aroux.

The body of the learned in the Middle Ages--or the inner circle of that body--seems to have formed a secret society, whose purpose was to keep as much knowledge as possible confined to itself, after the manner of the Druids, or of the Egyptians and Chaldæn Sages; when compelled to put the more occult portions of their scientific acquirements into a more permanent form they adopted one perfectly unintelligible to the vulgar. Some wrapped up their more valuable secrets in parables, others threw them again into the shape of illuminations, and others again adopted the device of Roger' Bacon, who, giving the name of an important ingredient of gunpowder in an anagram, rendered the whole receipt for the composition of the substance a complete mystery to the uninitiated.


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It has been said that Rutherford has allied the Troubadours with the Freemasons, and the latter body has an undoubtedly Manichæan tradition. For confirmation on this point we can refer to what is said by a very well-known Masonic authority, * whose knowledge about Masonry is unquestionable:

Sons of the Widow †--a powerful society founded by Manes, a Persian slave . . . . and continued to the present day; it consisted of two degrees: 1. Auditor. 2. Elect. It was at peace under the Mother of the Emperor Anastasius (A.D. 491-518), but was persecuted by Justin. In the course of time, its agents secretly instigated the Crusades; but being betrayed, had to veil their mysteries under many names. In Bulgaria and Lombardy it was known as the Society of the Paterini, in France as the Cathari and Albigenses, and from it originated the Hussites, Wyckliffites, and Lollards. The Dutch sect of the Family of Love also sprang from it.

Such is the statement of a high Mason on this connection, corroborating the links that have already been outlined, and many more might be instanced, showing that all the tenets of these mediæval sects of Troubadours are traceable to Gnostic and Manichæistic doctrines. Very wonderful is the part filled by the "Messengers of Love" in the spiritual evolution of Europe during the Dark Ages. Martyrs many,



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and Saints not a few--such will be the roll-call of the Minniesängers, Troubadours, and Bards of these olden days, when in the future the Ancient Wisdom once more reigns supreme.



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« Reply #69 on: April 20, 2009, 02:49:21 am »

Footnotes
104:* Rossetti (Gabriele), Disquisitions on the Anti-papal Spirit which produced the Reformation, ii, 1I2, 170. London, 1834.

106:* Rossetti, Gabriele, Disquisitions on the Antipapal Spirit which produced the Reformation, ii., 113-115. London, 1834.

Another writer makes the following comment:--"D’après les idées de M. Rossetti, il y aurait encore dans les poésies de Dante et de Pétrarque, ainsi que dans les romans de Boccace, quelque chose que ces hommes n’ont jamais entièrement exprimé dans leurs écrits latins. Il semblerait, à entendre le nouveau commentateur de la Divine Comédie, qu’une grande et éternelle vérité, partie de la bouche des Orphées, des Thalés, des Pythagores, et bondissant d’écho en écho jusqu’a nous, par l’intermédaire des prophètes, de Platon, des Sibylles, de Virgile et de Boétius, a été recueillie enfin, tenue voilée, mais exactement transmise aux générations modernes, par une succession de sectaires, comme les manichéens, les templiers, les patarins, les gibelins, les rosecroix, les sociniens, les swedenborgiens, les francs-maçons, et enfin les carbonari."--Delécluze (E. J.), Dante Alighieri, ou la Poésie Amoureuse; pp. 605-606. Paris, 1848.

110:* Aroux (Eugene), Dante Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste, Révélations d’un Catholique, p. 388. Paris, 1854.

110:† Aroux (E.), Les Mystères de la Chevalerie, pp. 161-169. Paris, 1858.

110:‡ The phrases "True human race" and "Sectarians" are generally applied to Mystics, also to the Manichæans, Albigenses, Troubadours, Palmers, and Palmieri; it meant those men and women throughout the world, of every nation and in every clime, who were seeking the inner life in its true sense; and who will be the "first fruits" of the "Redeemer," in the mystical sense.

110:§ Aroux is here referring to Fauriel (M.P., Paris), whose works on the Provençal literature have been so often quoted in these pages.

111:* This was just before the most deadly persecutions began. There was an extraordinarily extended organization of this so-called heretical church.

120:* Lecky (W. E. H., M.A.), History of European Morals, ii. 217. London, 1877.

120:† Thus we have the "Bible" of Guiot von Provins; and the whole cycle of the "Grail legends."

120:‡ Wolfram von Eschenbach was one of these.

121:* See Gilly, D.D. (W. S.), The Romaunt version of the Gospel according to St. John; from MSS. preserved in Trinity College, Dublin. Introduction, pp. xc. xcix.

121:† Also called Valdès, Valdernis, Valdensis, and then Waldensis.

121:‡ Baret (Eugène), Les Troubadours et leur Influence sur la Littérature du Midi de l’Europe, p. 64. Paris, 1867.

121:§ These are the French Schools only; Germany, Italy, Austria, and the Danubian Provinces contained as many.

122:* There is one of importance, Traité sur la Doctrine des Albigeois et Tuschius, by Raoul de Gassin.

122:† Says Lea: "When to Dualism is added the doctrine of transmigration as a means of reward and retribution, the sufferings of man seem to be fully accounted for. . . . Manes had so skilfully compounded Mazdean Dualism with Christianity and with Gnostic and Buddhist elements, that his doctrines found favour with high and low, with the subtle intellects of the Schools, and with the toiling masses." Hist. of the Inquisition, i. 89. London, 1888.

123:* Mani--or Cubricus--was the pupil of Terebinthe (who was afterwards called Buddas). He was an Egyptian Philosopher, and from him Manes received the Hermetic tradition; Manichæism was based on the Ancient Babylonian religion with Christian, Persian and Egyptian elements introduced. The Gnostics who joined the Manichæan stream were the Basilideans, Marcionites, and Bardesanites. See Beausobre (M. de), Histoire critique de Manichée, 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1734.

124:* Says Lea: "Of all the heresies with which the early Church had to contend, none had excited such mingled fear and loathing as Manichæism." And again: "The Manichæism of the Cathari, Patarins, or Albigenses, was not a mere speculative dogma of the schools, but a faith which aroused fanaticism so enthusiastic that its devotees shrank from no sacrifices in its propagation." Lea (H. C.), op. cit., i. 89.

125:* Aroux (Eugène), Les Mysterès de la Chevalerie, pp. 69-71. Paris, 1858.

"Every Knight has the power to create Knights. There is in the hand and in the sword of every Knight a power (I nearly wrote 'a fluid,' but I did not dare) which is really capable of creating other Knights."--Gautier (Léon), Chivalry, trs. Henry Frith, p. 223. London, 1891.

126:* "O believers! enter not into a strange house without asking permission to do so." (Koran, Sour. XXIV., v., 27). Jos. Conde, Part I., cap. 18.

126:† "Fue muy buen caballero, y se decia de él que tenia las diez prendas qué distinguen à los nobles y generosos, qué consisten en p. 127 bondad, valentia, caballeria, gentileza, poesia, bien hablar, fuerza, destreza en la lanza, en la espada, y en el tirar del arco." (J. Conde, perto II., cap. 63.)

He was an excellent Knight, and it was said of him that he possessed the ten accomplishments that distinguish nobles and honourable men, which consist in goodness, valour, horsemanship, courtesy, poetry, excellence of speech, ability, skill in lance, sword, and in drawing the bow.

The word "gentileza" or "gentillesse," which has greatly changed in meaning with the lapse of time, means charming manners, the good tone of a man well born and well bred, of one whom the English call a gentleman. Viardot (L), Histoire des Arabes et des Mores d’ Espagne, ii., pp. 197, 199. Paris, 1851.

127:* Lea (H. C.), op. cit., i. 92: A further irrefragable evidence of the derivation of Catharism from Manichæism is furnished by the sacred thread and garment which were worn by all the Perfect among the Cathari. This custom is too peculiar to have had an independent origin, and is manifestly the Mazdean kosti and saddarah, the sacred thread and shirt, the wearing of which was essential to all believers, and the use of which, by both Zends and Brahmins, shows that its origin is to be traced to the prehistoric period anterior to the separation of those branches of the Aryan family. Among the Cathari the wearer of the thread and vestment was what was known among the inquisitors as the 'hæreticus indutus' or 'vestitus,' initiated into all the mysteries of the heresy."

128:* Rutherford (John), The Troubadours, their Loves and Lyrics, p. 4. London, 1893.

130:* Hueffer (Francis), The Troubadours, p. 32. London, 1878.

130:† Görres (J.), Der heilige Franciskus von Assisi, ein Troubadour. Strassburg, 1826.

130:‡ Ticknor (George), History of Spanish Literature, i., p.p. 284 285. 1849.

131:* The following note is given by this author: "Sismondi (Hist. des Français, Paris, 8vo. tom. vi. and vii. 1823, 1826), gives an ample account of the cruelties and horrors of the war of the Albigenses, and Llorente (Histoire de l’ Inquisition, Paris, 1817, tom. i., p. 43), shows the connection of that war with the origin of the Inquisition. The fact that nearly all the Troubadours took part with the persecuted Albigenses is equally notorious. Histoire Litt. de la France, tom. xviii., p. 588.

132:* Ticknor (George), Hist. of Spanish Literature, i. 220, 221. London, 1849.

132:† "By order of the same François I., his General Almeida extirpated with a cruelty unusual even in those times, the remnant of the Albigenses still lurking in the villages of Provence, a sect, it should be remembered, p. 133 of genuine Manichæans, transplanted thither from the east at a comparatively recent date. As Manichæans, they would naturally have preserved the symbols and tokens for mutual recognition so much in vogue, as history and existing monuments attest." King M.A. (C. W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, p. 399. London, 1887.

133:* Aroux (Eugène), Dante, Hérétique, Révolutionnaire et Socialiste, p. 83. Paris, 1854.

133:† Begun by Guillaume de Loris--a Troubadour-1260, finished by Jean de Meung, Poet, Alchemist, and Astrologer. It is a Hermetic treatise of much value.

133:‡ Rossetti (Gabriele), Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo, ii. 411-414. London, 1840.

133:§ Warton (Thomas), Hist. of English Poetry, II., p. 149, note d. London, 1840.

134:* The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 202. London, 1899.

135:* Mackenzie (Kenneth R. H., ix°), The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, p. 768. New York, 1898.

135:† This term is applied to the Albigensian Troubadours; and it was employed amongst themselves.



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