y the ideas of sacerdotal sovereignty
and supreme royalty, he indicated him finally as his successor. So the
Order of the Knights of the Temple was stained from its origin with
schism and conspiracy against Kings."[194] Further, Levi relates that
the real story told to initiates concerning Christ was no other than the
infamous _Toledot Yeshu_ described in the first chapter of this book,
and which the Johannites dared to attribute to St. John.[195] This would
accord with the confession of the Catalonian Knight Templar, Galcerandus
de Teus, who stated that the form of absolution in the Order was: "I
pray God that He may pardon your sins as He pardoned St. Mary Magdalene
and the thief on the cross"; but the witness went on to explain:

By the thief of which the head of the Chapter speaks, is meant,
according to our statutes, that Jesus or Christ who was crucified
by the Jews because he was not God, and yet he said he was God and
the King of the Jews, which was an outrage to the true God who is
in Heaven. When Jesus, a few moments before his death, had his side
pierced by the lance of Longinus, he repented of having called
himself God and King of the Jews and he asked pardon of the true
God; then the true God pardoned him. It is thus that we apply to
the crucified Christ these words: "as God pardoned the thief on the
cross."[196]

Raynouard, who quotes this deposition, stigmatizes it as "singular and
extravagant"; M. Matter agrees that it is doubtless extravagant, but
that "it merits attention. There was a whole system there, which was not
the invention of Galcerant."[197] Eliphas Levi provides the clue to that
system and to the reason why Christ was described as a thief, by
indicating the Cabalistic legend wherein He was described as having
_stolen_ the sacred Name from the Holy of Holies. Elsewhere he explains
that the Johannites "made themselves out to be the only people initiated
into the true mysteries of the religion of the Saviour. They professed
to know the real history of Jesus Christ, and by adopting part of Jewish
traditions and the stories of the Talmud, they made out that the facts
related in the Gospels"--that is to say, the Gospels accepted by the
orthodox Church--"were only allegories of which St. John gives the
key."[198]

But it is time to pass from legend to facts. For the whole story of the
initiation of the Templars by the "Johannites" rests principall