the Royal Order of Scotland and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem this Christian interpretation was preserved, and finally that it was this pure doctrine which passed into Freemasonry. According to early masonic authorities, the adoption of the two St. Johns as the patron saints of Masonry arose, not from Johannism, but from the alliance between the Templars and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
It is important to remember that the theory of the Templar connexion with Freemasonry was held by the Continental Freemasons of the eighteenth century, who, living at the time the Order was reconstituted on its present basis, were clearly in a better position to know its origins than we who are separated from that date by a distance of two hundred years. But since their testimony first comes to light at the period of the upper degrees, in which the Templar influence is more clearly visible than in Craft Masonry, it must be reserved for a later chapter. Before passing on to this further stage in the history of the Craft, it is necessary to consider one more link in the chain of the masonic tradition--the "Holy Vehm."
The Vehmgerichts
These dread tribunals, said to have been established by Charlemagne in 772 in Westphalia, had for their avowed object the establishment of law and order amidst the unsettled and even anarchic conditions that then reigned in Germany. But by degrees the power arrogated to itself by the "Holy Vehm" became so formidable that succeeding emperors were unable to control its workings and