Girls were running after omnibuses, lawyers were running after
briefs, and reporters were running after things called "stories" as I
turned from Fleet Street to enter that little Round Church in the
Temple which is one of the most splendid things in London.
Utter peace. A dim, tinted light filtered through the east windows,
and at my feet lay the stone figure of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl
of Essex, bandit and excommunicate. He lies in full chain armour,
his shield across his body, his spurs at his heels, and his long
sword beside him, just as he might have lain eight hundred and
eighty-four years ago, when they found him in the fen country and
sent an arrow through his head. What trouble his death must have
caused the Templars! They could not bury him in holy ground till the
Pope granted him absolution, so they sealed him up in a lead coffin
and hung him on a tree near Holborn. When Rome wiped out his sins
they plucked him from the tree and brought him to this little Round
Church that was born of the first Crusade.
As I stood over Geoffrey de Mandeville my thoughts raced across
Europe, across the Mediterranean, over that sandy yellow waste known
as the Desert of Sinai, and on to that city standing high on terraced
rock--Jerusalem. Of what else can one think here in the Round
Church? Its roots go back to Robert, Duke of Normandy, Tancred and
Bohemund, Godfrey de Bouillon, and that fiery triumvirate, Frederick,
Emperor of Germany, Richard Cœur de Lion of England, and Philip
Augustus of France.
This quiet little church remembers Saladin; its stones have rung to
the chain mail of men who saw the lances of the infidel like a forest
against the sky, of men who knew how Frederick Barbarossa came like a
storm out of the west to hurl his hosts on the gates of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem.... Standing there so near to the roar of London, yet
centuries away from it, I recalled white nights on the Mount of
Olives, the Holy City spread below over its hills, a dome rising up
from violet shadow into the moonlight, a group of cypress trees
pointing dark fingers to the stars, and from the faint ribbon of road
the trit-trot of a donkey's hoofs going on to Bethany.
The link with Jerusalem is true and straight. It was after they
returned from the First Crusade that the Templars built this church
to remind them of the round church that guarded the grave of Christ.
There are only three others like it in the country, at Cambridge,
Northampton, and Little Maplestead, Essex. This church was conceived
in Palestine. As I looked at it I recalled the waxen face of a monk
whose thin beard was like black silk. I met him in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I had been torn here and there by the
confused crowds of pilgrims. I had been mixed up in various sacred
processions, I had seen the hungry fervour in which those anxious for
salvation had kissed the end of a stick after it had been poked
through a hole in an arch so that it might touch a fragment of the
Column of the Scourging. And I went on towards the Chapel of the
Holy Sepulchre, six foot by six foot, in whose tiny space hang
forty-three lamps. Here I saw a poor Greek woman creep in and fall
into a torrent of tears on that marble slab which hides the tombstone
of Christ. The monk met me outside, such a smooth wax fellow, and
led me to a little chapel in which he produced a pair of old spurs
and a sword with a hilt shaped like a cross. Godfrey de Bouillon's!
So he said.