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Military Orders: In Praise of the New Knighthood (Liber ad milites Templi: De laude novae militae) St. Bernard of Clairvaux trans. Conrad Greenia The following passage is taken from a treatise written in the early 12th century by the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, on behalf of the fledgling Knights Templar. It might be viewed as a combination of exhortation to the Knights, and advertisement to the population in general. Officially it is an answer to a letter written to Bernard by his friend Hugh de Payens, one of the founders of the Templars.

hese two were born into upper-class feudal families (Peter in Brittany in 1079, and Bernard in Champagne in 1090), and grew up in a period when, after the inconclusive ending of the so-called "Investiture Contest", both Empire and Papacy were facing severe problems-one plagued by endemic civil war, and the other by faction-fighting in Rome and the threat of rising Norman power in southern Italy. 

The word 'Assassin' was brought back from Syria by the Crusaders, and in time acquired the meaning of murderer. Originally it was applied to the members of a Muslim religious sect - a branch of the Ismailis, and the followers of a leader known as the Old Man of the Mountain. Their beliefs and their methods made them a by-word for both fanaticism and terrorism in Syria and Persia in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the subject of a luxuriant growth of myth and legend. In this book, Bernard Lewis begins by tracing the development of these legends in medieval and modern Europe and the gradual percolation of accurate knowledge concerning the Ismailis. He then examines the origins and activities of the sect, on the basis of contemporary Persian and Arabic sources, and against the background of Middle Eastern and Islamic history. In a final chapter he discusses some of the political, social and economic implications of the Ismailis, and examines the significance of the Assassins in the history of revolutionary and terrorist movements.

Il existe une remarquable galerie de portraits des rois de France sur Gallica : il s'agit, d'après les notices des photos, de médailles du graveur Dassier, mais cette identification est inexacte : cette série gravée avec des portraits de profil des souverains français fut commandée en 1712 par Nicolas de Launay, directeur de la Monnaie de Paris et de la Monnaie des médailles du Louvre. Le médailleur responsable fut l'artiste français Thomas Bernard (1650-1713). Les deux derniers portraits de la série, ceux de Louis XV et Louis XVI, sont dûs à Gatteaux et Duvivier. On peut découvrir la totalité cette galerie de portraits des rois de France (67 photos des rois) dans le diaporama ci-dessous.