Secret societies of the Middle Ages : the Assassins, the Templars & the Secret Tribunals of Westphalia

292 Pages·2005·2.91 MB·English

by  Thomas Keightley

SECRET SOCIETIES of the MIDDLE
AGES
The Assassins, the Templars & the Secret Tribunals of
Westphalia
THOMAS KEIGHTLEY
introduction by JAMES WASSERMAN
This edition first published in 2005 by
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Introduction to this edition copyright © 2005 Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief
passages. Originally published in 1846 by M. A. Nattali, London.
Cover art is a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, 11th century. Used by special permission of the City of
Bayeux, France. The two horsemen that appear on the cover are in reverse orientation from the original
tapestry.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request Introduction typeset in
AGaramond by Kathryn Sky-Peck
TCP
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE 2005 EDITION
Thomas Keightley (1789-1872) was an extraordinarily prolific Irish-born scholar
and writer who could read twenty different languages. He attended Trinity
College in Dublin, but because of ill health, he did not join the Irish bar. He
moved to London in 1824 to begin his literary career. His first solo work, Fairy
Mythology, originally published anonymously in 1828 (and still in print), is said
to have been praised by Jacob Grimm. Secret Societies of the Middle Ages was
first published in 1837 anonymously and, according to the Dictionary of
National Biography, “against his will.”1 It was reprinted at least three times over
the next ten years.
I discovered Keightley only after I wrote The Templars and the Assassins: The
Militia of Heaven. I was surprised indeed to find how similar in structure our
books were. While many works on secret societies include short essays on the
medieval Muslim Assassins and the Christian Knights Templar, both Keightley
and I study and compare the two orders in greater detail.
Keightley's sophistication and erudition are unique for his day. His was
virtually the first book in English to discuss a full history of the Assassins. A
primary reference for him was Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856)
whose book The History of the Assassins (1818) had been solely available in
German. (Keightley mentions here that an English translation, published in
1835, was released just as he was finishing his book.) Hammer-Purgstall is
impossibly hostile to both the Assassins and the Templars. That Keightley could
rise above the judgmental cultural attitude of his time is remarkable. He was
clearly a man of vast learning and deep reflection, ahead of his time as a
historian.
Further proof of this is the contemporary relevance of this classic work. Today
we are engaged in what I believe may accurately be described as the modern-day
Crusades. That war of cultures between Christianity and Islam that shook the
world a thousand years ago—when Christian battled Muslim for possession and
control of the holy sites on which both their religions were founded—has
reemerged as the central theme of modern life for millions, if not billions, of
people worldwide. This book helps shed light on the roots of that conflict.
The Assassins and the Templars were mirror images of one another. The
Templars were unique to Christianity. Parallels might be drawn to King David's
battle with Goliath. In this case, the forces of darkness represented by Goliath
and the Philistines arose to threaten the forces of light represented by David and
the Israelis. Young David killed in service to a higher religious ideal. He could
be accused of breaking the sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” yet he
killed for the Lord. David's slaying of Goliath was an act of holy obedience.
While he may have broken the Commandment, he obeyed his God. On this type
of reasoning did the overall military campaign of the Crusades depend.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) acted as the spiritual guide of the
Knights Templar Order and promoted it to widespread acceptance. He was the
most powerful Catholic cleric of his age and has been called the “Conscience of
Christendom.” Advisor to popes and kings, that which Bernard supported
thrived, that which he opposed did not. In 1135, he wrote his famous letter of
spiritual instruction to the knight-monks of the fledgling Order, In Praise of the
New Knighthood, addressed to Templar founder Hughes de Payens. This
powerful proclamation laid out the conceptual basis of the spiritual ideal of the
warrior-monk. St. Bernard wrote of the Templar warrior vowed to the service of
the Church: “If he kills malicious men, he is not a murderer under these
circumstances, I say that he is murderer of wickedness and a champion of
Christ.”
The “average” Crusader was a secular knight doing good deeds for the
salvation of his soul in service to the visions of his spiritual guide, the Pope. He
could, in every other way, be a worldly individual—prone to drinking, bragging,
treachery, lechery, and general unruliness. In the case of the Templar knight, the
situation was completely different. The Templars were monks who exercised
their religious devotion through force of arms. They were holy warriors,
substituting the rigors of simplicity and poverty for the trumpery and
ostentatiousness of the silk-clad, jewel-bedecked, secular knight whose lust for
his Lady was often dressed in the romanticized idealism of chivalry.
The medieval chivalric ideal of the Divine Feminine represented a cultural
watershed. Celebrated in the songs and poems of troubadours and embodied by
the mounted, armored knight, chivalry exalted women in Christian culture for
the first time since the birth of the religion from its male-oriented Jewish parent.
It was a welcome advance indeed. However, the Templars took the idealization
of the feminine to a higher realm altogether. The Patroness of the Order was the
Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Mother of God. Service to this ideal called forth
a physical chastity from the Templar warrior-monk, lest he lose his greater focus
and be distracted by an illusion of that higher love, to waste his devotion on a
lesser reflection of the ultimate feminine archetype to whom he aspired.
The Assassins were a less foreign idea for Islam than the Templars were to
Christianity. Jihad, the principle of spiritual battle, was an established concept;
in fact it has been called the Sixth Pillar of Islam. The Prophet spread the
religion of Islam through the power of the sword. War was a part of religious
duty, especially for the early Muslim. The Assassins, however, were the first
monastic military Order within Islam. Their use of the dagger in service to the
higher welfare of their community was a departure from the idea that the
campaign against the infidels exempted Islam from battles between Muslims.
The Assassins declared themselves apart from all, Muslims included. Their
mission was to spread their teaching both outside of and within Islam. All who
did not accept the doctrine of the Imamate of Nizar were unbelievers, the infidels
against whom Jihad might properly be waged. (The Assassins are more properly
known as the Nizari Ismailis.) To an Assassin, an observant Muslim could be an
unbeliever.
Their use of assassination as a technique was also unique. The Assassins have
been called the world's first terrorists. Their strategy was to selectively target
those individuals who threatened their community—for example, hostile
political rulers, noble advisors who counseled policies against the community,
generals and other highranking military commanders who attacked them, or
religious and educational leaders who publicly preached against or taught against
the sect. They quite successfully created widespread fear among those who
opposed them.
In view of our modern experience with terrorism, however, it should be noted
that the Assassins were not the indiscriminate mass murderers targeting civilians
with whom we are only too familiar today. I contend that as a religious
brotherhood, even though they were killers like King David and the Knights
Templar, the Assassins showed a basic respect for human life far different than
we see in the militant Islamist movement of today. You may note that Hasan-i-
Sabah, founder of the Assassins, killed one of his sons for violating Islamic law
by drinking wine. Contrast this with reports that several of the September 11,
2001 killers spent their last nights on earth drinking alcohol at strip clubs.
The goal of the medieval Assassins was to carve out a territory for themselves
in an otherwise hostile region where they might practice their religion
undisturbed and to pursue their missionary activities among those receptive to
their message. Assassination was one of the techniques they perfected to
accomplish this goal. As Keightley points out, they were also adept at
negotiation, fortress building, and agriculture.
One of the great services rendered by Keightley is his reporting of the vast
repertoire of legends about the Assassins. Some of these I read for the first time
in this book, despite my rather wide acquaintance with Assassin literature. While
not all of them are historically accurate, the catalog presented here is instructive.
There is considerable documented historical interaction between the Templars
and the Assassins. They occupied castles within several miles of each other,
negotiated treaties together, paid ransoms and tributes to each other, arranged
visits between themselves for the purpose of discussing religion, and even
occasionally allied themselves militarily against common enemies. Within this
historical context, it is likely that spiritual relationships were formed between
Assassin adepts and certain Templar knights—philosophically motivated men
who sought mysteries beyond the superstitions and dogmas offered by their own
faith.
During the centuries-long rise of Christianity, the Pagan wisdom that had
spiritually dominated the Mediterranean region for millennia was continuously
displaced. As Christianity seized more political power, especially under
Constantine in the fourth century, the older faiths were declared illegal in the
Roman Empire. By the sixth century, the Roman Emperor Justinian closed the
last Neo-Platonic academy in the West.
Pagan scholars, monks, and mystics fled eastward, welcomed by the ruling
Sassanian dynasty of Persia. Thus, by the time of the founding of Islam in the
seventh century, there was a flourishing wisdom tradition in the area. The
Gnostic Neo-Platonism that had evolved from the Egyptian roots of classical
Greece had been successfully transplanted to the soil of the Near East. These
doctrines and practices, continuously interacting with the vibrancy of the new
Muslim faith, would become the parent of the Sufi mysteries, as well as those of
the Assassins.
Many scholars and occultists believe the interaction between the Assassins
and Templars was instrumental in re-introducing the lost higher wisdom to the
West. The Crusades began at the very end of the European Dark Ages—a period
lasting some four centuries, characterized by a brutality of life, failed social
conditions, and a dearth of spiritual values. Two centuries later, at the beginning
of the fourteenth century, although defeated militarily, European culture was
uplifted by its contact with the Muslim world. By the fifteenth century, this
creative evolution began to flower into the Renaissance and the intense classical
Pagan revival that was the motivating spiritual force of the Renaissance. Did
returning Templars in fact carry the Wisdom teachings back to Europe? Is this
perhaps the true identity of the legendary Templar treasure?
Keightley's informative treatment on the Holy Vehm (Fehm) is the most
detailed I have read on this fascinating subject. The modern reader cannot help
but draw parallels between the medieval system of the Holy Vehm and the
modern FISA courts (established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of
1978), the secret warrants authorized by the U.S. Patriot Act of 2001, and the
military tribunals of the “War on Terror.” A word of caution to the overly
anxious reader: please pay attention to Keightley's characterization of the Vehm
courts as a necessary corrective to the lawless times in which they initially
operated. Of course what began as a useful system in the case of the Holy Vehm
broke down and became corrupt. Americans, in particular, must exercise
diligence to prevent the more offensive legal structures erected to deal with the
very real threats of the post September 11 world from evolving into degenerate
tools of tyranny as the threat subsides.
One of Keightley's statements with which I must vigorously disagree is in his
brief conclusion. I was a bit surprised by his expression of relief at the lack of
secret-society activity during the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth
century. This was hardly the case. Revolutionary secret societies were in fact
quite active when Keightley wrote. Many drew ideological inspiration from the
Bavarian Illuminati (1776–1785), a secret society long considered to have
influenced the French Revolution in 1787 through their infiltration of much of
the existing Freemasonic Lodge network. From that bloodbath against Church
and State emerged social revolutionaries like Gracchus Babeuf, Nicholas
Bonneville, and Filippo Buonarroti, the ideological godparents of Karl Marx and
Vladimir Lenin. The Italian Carbonari, an early nineteenth-century nationalist
secret society became a trans-European revolutionary force, estimated at half a
million strong before it was suppressed ca. 1820. It was revived soon after by
Guiseppe Mazzini who fanned the flames of revolution establishing secret
societies throughout continental Europe.
Indeed secret associations did not disappear in a quaint medieval past. Nor did
they cease their activities after the nineteenth century. They are as active today
as they have ever been. Spiritual secret societies that seek higher wisdom find
that the confines of their closed membership provide an excellent forum to
pursue their shared interests and disciplines with minimal distractions. Criminal
organizations, such as the Mafia, will ever find secrecy, oaths of loyalty, and the
bonds of criminal acts to be a guarantee of silence, loyalty, and common
purpose. Those who seek political power over others continue to pursue their
manipulative agendas in the heavily guarded mansions, palatial resorts, think-
tank offices, global governance agencies, and foundation headquarters of the
West, while their Islamofascist adversaries—in secret societies such as al-Qaeda
—continue to fashion their equally obnoxious plans in the caves, mosques, and
palaces of the Muslim world.
We are fortunate to have this timely book available again after nearly a
century and a half. Many excellent works are available on the Templars and the
Assassins. If this is your first such book, you are in for an exciting journey. If
you are already familiar with some of the literature on these seminal secret
societies, you will not be disappointed by Thomas Keightley's contribution.
—JAMES WASSERMAN
Fall Equinox 2004
New York City
1 The article on Thomas Keightley appears in volume 10 of The Dictionary of National Biography
(London: Oxford University Press, 1917, reprinted 1959–1960.
CONTENTS.
___________
Introduction
THE ASSASSINS.
CHAPTER I.
State of the World in the Seventh Century—Western Empire—Eastern Empire—Persia—Arabia—
Mohammed—His probable Motives—Character of his Religion—The Koran
CHAPTER II.
Origin of the Khalifat—The first Khalifs—Extent of the Arabian Empire—Schism among the
Mohammedans—Soonees and Sheähs—Sects of the latter—The Keissanee—The Zeidites—The
Ghoollat—The Imamee—Sects of the Imamee—Their political Character—The Carmathites—Origin
of the Fatimite Khalifs—Secret Society at Cairo—Doctrines taught in it—Its Decline
CHAPTER III.
Ali of Rei—His son Hassan Sabah—Hassan sent to study at Nishaboor—Meets there Omar Khiam and
Nizam-al-Moolk—Agreement made by them—Hassan introduced by Nizam to Sultan Malek Shah—
Obliged to leave the Court—Anecdote of him—His own account of his Conversion—Goes to Egypt
—Returns to Persia—Makes himself Master of Alamoot
CHAPTER IV.
Description of Alamoot—Fruitless attempts to recover it—Extension of the Ismaïlite Power—The
Ismaïlites in Syria—Attempt on the Life of Aboo-Hard Issa—Treaty made with Sultan Sanjar—
Death of Hassan—His Character
CHAPTER V.
Organization of the Society—Names given to the Ismaïlites—Origin of the name Assassin—Marco
Polo's description of the Paradise of the Old Man of the Mountain—Description of it given by
Arabian writers Instances of the obedience of the Fedavee
CHAPTER VI.
Keäh Buzoorg Oomeid—Affairs of the Society in Persia—They acquire the Castle of Banias in Syria—
Attempt to betray Damascus to the Crusaders—Murders committed during the reign of Keäh Buzoorg