ABSTRACT
Among the most colorful depositions made during the proceedings against the Templars is that of the Italian notary Antonio Sici di Vercelli. In the 1270s, Antonio had rendered legal services to the Templars in the Latin East where he had heard that the Order's commander of Sidon, Brother Matthew Sauvage, was "the brother of the Sultan of Babylon who was then reigning, because each had drunk from the blood of the other in turns, where-fore they were called brothers". With regard to the practices of the twelfth-and thirteenth-century Latin East, blood-brotherhood is briefly discussed in Hans Prutz's cultural history of the Crusades, as well as Reinhold Rohricht's history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1268, Baybars took Jaffa, the Templar castle of Beaufort, and Antioch. Between the conquest of Beaufort and Antioch, the Mamluks appeared outside of Tripoli.
