Did the founders of Sainte-Marie-des-Allemands envision such a cruel fate for a militia tasked simply with protecting fellow pilgrims? The harvest of flesh and blood seems to be over and the Order has once again returned to its hospitable action. The Grand Masters no longer have the right of life and death over their subjects. In the meantime, how much suffering endured in the Order and by the Order to fulfill a tragic and fabulous destiny at the same time.
It all began in 1128, when several Germans from the city of Bremen, supported by Stephen, Patriarch of Jerusalem, founded a hospital in this city to welcome and protect pilgrims of the same origin.
Benefiting from the young experience of the two other orders, this community was immediately military like the Temple, but also hospitaller:placed first of all under the authority of the hospitallers of Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem, it will take its independence at the fall of the City holy.
Several knightly brotherhoods were founded during the Crusades, Saint-Lazare-de-Jérusalem,
Saint-Martin of the Bretons and Tourangeaux, Saint-Thomas-d Acre for the English, the Holy Sepulchre, Saint-Laurent for the Italians, Saint-Jean-l'Aumônier, Montjoie, Sainte-Trinité for the captives. Sainte-Marie-des-Allemands, led by Henri Walpot, its first Master, was recognized in 1190 and became an impressive power with two thousand knights under the leadership of the fourth Master, Herman de Salza.
They are helped in this by a major support, the Germanic Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, during the Sixth Crusade. He was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1227, who advised him to go to the Holy Land before soon regretting it. Blacklisted by the various orders of the Holy Land, the latter finds himself with only one ally, that of his subjects, the Teutonic.
He attacked with them in 1228, the convent of the Templars in Acre and even the Château-Pèlerin. During secret negotiations with Sultan el-Kamil, the emperor obtained the restitution of most of the holy places but forgot the esplanade of the Temple so dear to the Templars.
His boldness prompts him to crown himself King of Jerusalem in the presence of the Teutonics and the proclamation is read by Grand Master von Salza himself.
It was too much and the other orders of chivalry will do everything to reduce the influence of Sainte-Marie des-Allemands who will choose another territory commensurate with it. It must be said that the Teutonic Knights never had large possessions in Palestine.
Apart from Acre, Montfort, also called Franc-Château, was the only eagle's nest built by them. This fortress also contained the treasury and the archives of the Order. They still had many houses and farms around Acre, Bethsan and Lake Tiberias, but really nothing comparable to the Temple or the Hospital. Sainte-Marie-des-Teutons had a financial and commercial activity as important as that of the Temple.
The Teutonics do not forget their origin and put the Holy Land in the background of their concern. Barely thirty years after their creation, they favor their establishment in Eastern Europe and divide their territory into four provinces:Holy Land, Prussia,
Livonia and Germany. The opportunity is offered to them by Conrad of Poland in difficulty who asks them to help him fight the Boruses.
They establish themselves in Eastern Europe and will cut out without pity for their enemies a true empire, annexing in passing the knights Porte-Glaive, Dobrin and Thymau. The resistance will be terrible and Alexander Nevsky will crush them at the famous "battle of the ice" in 1242, as Eisenstein showed with great pomp in his film.
But what differentiated the Teutonic Knights from those of the Temple? First, you had to be a subject of the Holy Empire to claim entry. Subsequently, the Teutonic Knight was fully armed when entering the Order. He was given the helmet, cuirass, hauberk or coat of mail, armbands, gauntlets, thigh-pieces, greaves of the legs or the fronts of the boots, the armor of the feet, the shield and the coat of arms decorated with two crosses of the Order, one on the chest and the other on the back, holding the length and width of the coat, white with the black cross for the knights, gray with the same cross for the servants of weapons.
They received the white coat under Honorius III and Gregory IX added the wearing of the black cross sewn on the left side in memory of their black habit from the beginning. To these were added the lance, the sword, the mace, the dagger, the javelin, the half-pike and the battle-axe. The knight could only be dubbed after ten years of service:this was called "receiving the Ordo"; obligatory to be part of the Grand Order which practiced secret rituals of brotherhood. According to the formula, the knight knighted by the flat of the sword on the helm after the morning chapter no longer belonged to himself; he was not a member of the Order but alone embodied the Order, observing the rule of Saint Augustine. Discipline was much harsher than in the other orders.
They stayed there until their death and, in case of illness, they never joined Saint-Lazare, who took care more especially of the lepers, former Templars and Hospitallers.
After the fall of Acre in 1291 and the definitive loss of the Holy Land, the Teutonic fell back on Venice. Thereafter, the siege of the Sainte-Lance-qui-bleed, and to understand the reasons for this prodigy".
Here is the great secret unveiled:the Holy Grail is inseparable from the White Lance. However, according to Wolfram von Eschenbach, "Templar himself", the sacred vase was entrusted to the custody of the Temple and buried in the castle of Montsalvage.While all was lost on June 14, 1098 for the crusaders besieged in Antioch, Saint Andrew appeared to the monk Barthélemy and reveals to him the hiding place of the Holy Lance, near the Saint Peter's basilica. One digs and the precious object concealed there when the Persians invested Mount Zion, appears to the eyes of the combatants.
Stimulated by this discovery, they will defeat the infidels. On April 18, 1124, the relic is also shown during the battle of Ascalon. It would have been entrusted to the Teutonics who take it away and keep it in the island of Goland. The Sainte-Lance-qui-bleed would have been lost at the fall of this your island. Still according to Chrétien de Troyes, an angel holds the shaft of Longinus' lance and tilts it from time to time towards the Grail. Three drops of vermilion blood flow from the White Lance to the Holy Vessel, like those of the pelican towards its young. The precious blood is the sacred link between the Grail and the Lance. Perceval, before all the other knights, shows us the royal road. There is another spear held by the Emperor Constantine during the Battle of the Red Rocks:it is the spear of the centurion Maurice (3rd century), subsequently taken to Trier. It has returned to its place in the Imperial Museum of Vienna and its copy is in the treasury of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was used for the coronation of emperors.
It is said that part of the archives of the Temple would have ended up in Belgium and then would have been entrusted in 1307 to the custody of the Teutonic people of Maastricht by the commander of the Temple, the brother Arnoul of Wesemale; marriage of the carp and the rabbit, meeting, but a little late, of the two rival orders mentioned above, one ending while the other begins its ascent.
In 1780, workers digging under the ramparts of the Commandery of New Joncs, which formerly depended on the province of Lorraine, found in the said city a large chest lined with iron. Quickly informed, the Commander of the
Teutoniques immediately claimed it as property of the Order, specifying that it was a question of documents having belonged to the Templars.
Maastricht, burial place of the last Carolingian prince, Duke of Lorraine, would it have been the repository of part of the archives of the first European organization, commercial, banking and military, through the intermediary of the Teutonic order? Is it a legend No doubt. But are there really coincidences?