T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 24

which one, that of the Hospital, drew its inspiration from Europe, and the other, that of the Temple, from the Byzantine Empire. No castles of the Templar type were erected in France before the general adoption of the use of gunpowder. Castles of Byzantine characteristics, cited in standard works, date from the 15th. and 17th. centuries, when the Crusades were well-nigh forgotten, and the Syrian fortresses for two centuries and more ... ... in the hands of the Infidel. Unless nearly contemporary instances of borrowing of Byzantine principles can be found, the classical view can hardly be accepted; a mere transfer of some trifling detail need cause no surprise, for there was constant interchange between East and West. There was no important family in Southern France or Northern Italy which had not a younger branch in the Levant, and these younger branches died out so quickly that there was a continual traffic in the higher classes, concerned about material possessions, quite apart from the pilgrim-fervour of the rank and file. Nor will it be enough to find curtain-towers and provision for flanking fire, and outer wards, in French castles, and cry them up as Eastern features, without troubling to search for them as integral parts of Greek fortresses; and to decide that Château Gaillard must have been inspired by the East, simply because it is superior to the