Molay elected Master--Last attempt of the Christians in
Syria--Conduct of the Three Military Orders--Philip the Fair and
Pope Boniface VIII.--Seizure of the Pope--Election of Clement
V.--The Papal See removed to France--Causes of Philip's enmity to
the Templars--Arrival of Molay in France--His interviews with the
Pope--Charges made against the Templars--Seizure of the
Knights--Proceedings in England--Nature of the Charges against the
Order.
We have, in what precedes, traced the order of the Templars from its
institution to the period when the Latin dominion was overthrown for
ever on the coast of Syria, and have described, at some length, its
internal organisation, and exhibited its power and extent of
possessions. It remains for us to tell how this mighty order was
suddenly annihilated, to examine the charges made against it[94], and,
as we have promised, to establish the falsehood and futility of them--a
task far from ungrateful, though not unattended with pain; for it is of
advantage to strengthen our love of justice and hatred of tyranny and
oppression, by vindicating the memory even of those who perished their
victims centuries agone. It is also of use to furnish one instance more
to the world of the operation of the principle which will be found so
generally to prevail, that, let falsehood and sophistry exert their
utmost to conceal the truth, means will always remain of refuting them,
and of displaying vice, however high seated, in its true colours.
[Footnote 94: The proceedings against the Templars have been published
from the original documents by Mowdenhaler, in Germany; but the work has
been bought up by the freemasons, who fancy themselves descended from
the Templars, so that we have been unable to procure a copy of it.
Wilike has, however, extracted largely from it.]
In the year 1297, when the order had established its head-quarters in
the isle of Cyprus, James de Molay, a native of Besancon, in the Franche
Comte, was elected Master. The character of Molay appears to have been
at all times noble and estimable; but if we are to credit the statement
of a knight named Hugh de Travaux, he attained his dignity by an
artifice not unlike that said to have been employed by Sixtus V. for
arriving at the papacy. The chapter, according to De Travaux, could not
agree, one part being for Molay, the other, and the stronger, for Hugh
de Peyraud. Molay, seeing that he had little chance of success, assured
some of the principal knights that he did not covet the office, and
would himself vote for his competitor. Believing him, they joyfully made
him great-prior. His tone now altered. "The mantle is done, now put the
hood on it. You have made me great-prior, and whether you will or not I
will be great-master also." The astounded knights instantly chose him.
If this account be true, the mode of election at this time must have
differed very considerably from that which we have described above out
of the statutes of the order. This election, moreover, took place in
France, where, in 1297, Molay, we are told, held the fourth son of the
king at the baptismal font.
One feeble attempt, the last military exploit of the Templars, was made
by the Christians to acquire once more a footing on the continent of
Asia during the mastership of Molay. In 1300, the Mongol chief Gazan
came to the aid of the king of Armenia, against the Turks. As it was the
policy of the Tartars, who had not as yet embraced Islam, to stir up
enemies to the Mohammedans, Gazan, after over-running the country as
far as Damascus, sent an embassy to the Pope, Boniface VIII., inviting
the Christians, particularly the three military orders, to come and take
possession of the Holy Land. The Templars, Hospitallers, and Henry, king
of Cyprus, forthwith manned seven galleys and five smaller vessels.
Almeric de Lusignan, Lord of Tyre, and the Masters of the two orders,
landed at Tortosa, and endeavoured to maintain that islet against the
Egyptian sultan, but were forced to yield to numbers. The Templars
fought gallantly to no purpose, and a few of them, who defended a tower
into which they had thrown themselves, surrendered, and were carried
prisoners to Egypt.
The Hospitallers, in the year 1306, renewed their attacks on the isle of
Rhodes, where they finally succeeded in expelling the Turks, and
planting the standard of their order. The Teutonic knights transferred
the sphere of their warfare to Russia, and the adjacent country, whose
inhabitants were still heathens. The Templars meantime remained inactive
in Cyprus, and seem even to have been meditating a retreat to Europe.
France was at this time governed by Philip the Fair, son of St. Louis.
Philip, who had come to the throne at the early age of seventeen years,
had been educated by Giles de Colonna, afterwards archbishop of Bourges,
a man distinguished for his learning and for the boldness of his
opinions. One of his favourite maxims was, "that Jesus Christ had not
given any temporal dominion to his church, and that the king of France
has his authority from God alone." Such principles having been early
instilled into his mind, the young monarch was not likely to be a very
dutiful son of the Church, and the character of Boniface VIII., who,
without possessing the talents or the virtues of a Gregory or an
Innocent, attempted to stretch the papal pretensions to their greatest
extent, soon roused him to resistance. In the plenitude of his fancied
authority, the pope issued a bull, forbidding the clergy to give any
subsidies to lay-powers without permission from Rome. Philip, in return,
issued an order prohibiting the exportation of gold, silver, or
merchandize from France, thereby cutting off a great source of papal
revenue. In the course of the dispute, Boniface maintained that princes
were subject to him in temporals also. Philip's reply was,--"Philip, by
the grace of God, king of the French, to Boniface, acting as supreme
pontiff, little or no health. Let your extreme folly know, that in
temporals we are not subject to any one." Shortly afterwards he publicly
burned a bull of the pope, and proclaimed the deed by sound of trumpet
in Paris. Boniface, raving with indignation, summoned the French clergy
to Rome, to deliberate on the means of preserving the liberties of the
Church. Philip convoked a national assembly to Paris, in which, for the
first time, there appeared deputies of the third estate, who readily
expressed their resolution to stand by their monarch in defence of his
rights, and the clergy willingly denied the temporal jurisdiction of the
pontiff. Several prelates and abbots having obeyed the summons of the
pope, the king seized on their temporalities. The pope menaced with
deprivation all those who had not attended, and, in his famous bull of
_Unam sanctam_, asserted that every human being was subject to the Roman
pontiff. Another bull declared that every person, be his rank what it
might, was bound to appear personally when summoned to Rome. Philip
forbade the publication of these bulls; and the states general being
again convoked appealed to a council against the pope. Commissaries were
sent through France to procure the adhesion of the clergy to this act,
which was given in some cases voluntarily, in others obtained by means
of a little wholesome rigour. The king, his wife, and his son, pledged
themselves to stand by those who adhered to the resistance made by
France to papal usurpation. Boniface next excommunicated the king, who
intercepted the bull, and prevented its publication. The pope finally
offered the crown of France to the emperor Albert of Austria. Matters
were now come to an extremity, and Philip ventured on one of the boldest
acts that have ever been attempted in the Christian world.
Philip had afforded an asylum at his court to some members of the
Colonna family, the personal enemies of the pope. His chancellor and
fast adherent was William de Nogaret, who had been his agent in the
affair of appealing to a general council, by presenting to the states
general a charge of simony, magic, and the usual real or imaginary
crimes of the day against the pontiff. This man, and some of the Italian
exiles, attended by a body of 300 horse, set out for Italy, and took up
his abode at a castle between Florence and Sienna, under pretext of its
being a convenient situation for carrying on negociations with Rome. The
pope was meantime residing at Anagni, his native town. Nogaret having,
by a liberal distribution of money, acquired a sufficient number of
partisans, appeared before the gate of Anagni early on the morning of
the 7th September, 1303. The gate was opened by a traitor, and the
French and their partisans ran through the streets, crying _Live the
king of France, die Boniface_. They entered the palace without
opposition; the French ran here and there in search of plunder, and
Sciarra Colonna and his Italians alone came in presence of the pope.
Boniface, who was now eighty-six years of age, was clad in his
pontifical vestments, and on his knees before the altar, in expectation
of death. At the sight of him the conspirators, whose intention had been
to slay him, stopped short, filled with involuntary awe, and did not
dare to lay a hand upon him. During three days they kept him a
prisoner; on the fourth the people of the town rose and expelled them,
and released the pontiff. Boniface returned to Rome; but rage at the
humiliation which he had undergone deranged his intellect, and in one of
his paroxysms he dashed his head against the wall of his chamber, and
died in consequence of the injury which he received[95].
[Footnote 95: Sismondi Republiques Italiennes, iv. p. 143.]
Benedict XI., the successor of Boniface, absolved Philip, and his
ministers and subjects, from the sentence of excommunication. As he felt
his power, he was proceeding to more vigorous measures to avenge the
insulted dignity of the holy see, when he died of poison, administered,
as a contemporary historian asserts, by the agents of Philip. During ten
months the conclave were unable to agree on his successor among the
Italian cardinals. It was then proposed by the partisans of the king of
France, that one party in the conclave should name three ultramontane
prelates, from among whom the other party should select one. The choice
fell on Bertrand de Gotte, archbishop of Bordeaux, who had many serious
causes of enmity to Philip and his brother Charles of Valois. Philip's
friend, the cardinal of Prato, instantly sent off a courier with the
news, advising the king to acquiesce in the election as soon as he had
secured him to his interest. Philip set out for Gascony, and had a
private interview with the pontiff elect, in an abbey in the midst of a
forest near St. Jean d'Angely. Having sworn mutual secresy, the king
told the prelate that it was in his power to make him pope on condition
of his granting him six favours. He showed him his proofs, and the
ambitious Gascon, falling at his feet, promised everything. The six
favours demanded by Philip were a perfect reconciliation with the
Church; admission to the communion for himself and friends; the tithes
of the clergy of France for five years, to defray the expenses of his
war in Flanders; the persecution and destruction of the memory of Pope
Boniface; the conferring the dignity of cardinal on James and Peter
Colonna. "The sixth favour," said he, "is great and secret, and I
reserve the asking of it for a suitable time and place." The prelate
swore on the host, and gave his brother and two of his nephews as
hostages. The king then sent orders to the cardinal of Prato, to elect
the archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V.
Whether urged by the vanity of shining in the eyes of his countrymen, or
by dread of the tyranny exercised by the cardinals over his
predecessors, or, what seems more probable, in compliance with the
wishes of Philip, or in consequence of impediments thrown by that
monarch in the way of his departure, Clement, to the dismay of all
Christendom, instead of repairing to Rome, summoned the cardinals to
Lyons for his coronation. They reluctantly obeyed, and he was crowned in
that city on the 17th December, 1305, the king, his brother, and his
principal nobles, assisting at the ceremony. Clement forthwith created
twelve new cardinals, all creatures of Philip, whose most devoted slave
the pope showed himself to be on all occasions. His promises to him were
most punctually fulfilled, with the exception of that respecting the
memory of Boniface, which the cardinal of Prato proved to Philip it
would be highly impolitic and dangerous to perform; but Clement
cheerfully authorised him to seize, on the festival of St. Madelaine,
all the Jews in his kingdom, to banish them, and confiscate their
property in the name of religion.
What the sixth and secret grace which Philip required was is unknown.
Many conjectures have been made to little purpose. It is not at all
improbable that the king had at the time no definite object in view,
and that, like the fabled grant of Neptune to Theseus, it was to be
claimed whenever an occasion of sufficient importance should present
itself.
Such as we have described them were Philip and the sovereign pontiff;
the one able, daring, rapacious, ambitious, and unprincipled; the other
mean, submissive, and little scrupulous. As it was the object of Philip
to depress the papal power, and make it subservient to his ambition, he
must naturally have desired to deprive it of support. The Templars,
therefore, who had been on all occasions the staunch partizans of the
papacy, must on this account alone have been objects of his aversion;
they had, moreover, loudly exclaimed against his repeated adulteration
of the coin, by which they sustained so much injury; and they were very
urgent in their demands for repayment of the money which they had lent
him on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Isabella with the
son of the king of England. Their wealth was great; their possessions in
France were most extensive; they were connected with the noblest
families in the realm; they were consequently, now that they seemed to
have given up all idea of making any farther efforts in the East, likely
to prove a serious obstacle in the way of the establishment of the
absolute power of the crown. They were finally very generally disliked
on account of their excessive pride and arrogance, and it was to be
expected that in an attack on their power and privileges the popular
favour would be with the king. These motives will, we apprehend,
sufficiently account for Philip's anxiety to give a check to the order,
beyond which, as it would appear, his plans did not at first extend. We
cannot venture to say when this project first entered the mind of king
Philip; whether he had the Hospitallers also in view, and whether he
impelled the pope to invite the Masters of the two orders to France.
As the rivalry and ill-feeling between the two orders had long been
regarded as one of the principal causes of the little success of the
Christians in the East, the idea of uniting them had been conceived, and
Gregory X. and St. Louis had striven, but in vain, at the council at
Lyons, to effect it. Pope Boniface VIII. had also been anxious to bring
this project to bear, and Clement now resolved to attempt it. On the 6th
June, 1306, only six months after his coronation, he wrote to the
Masters of the two orders to the following effect;--The kings of Armenia
and Cyprus were calling on him for aid; he therefore wished to confer
with them, who knew the country well, and were so much interested in it,
as to what were best to be done, and desired that they would come to him
as secretly as possible, and with a very small train, as they would find
plenty of their knights on this side of the sea; he directed them to
provide for the defence of Limisso during their absence.
The Master of the Hospital, William de Villaret, was, when the letter
arrived, engaged in the attack on Rhodes, and, therefore, could not obey
the summons. But De Molay, the Master of the Temple, having confided
Limisso and the direction of the order to the marshal, embarked with
sixty of his most distinguished knights, taking with him the treasure of
the order, consisting of 150,000 florins of gold, and so much silver,
that the whole formed the lading of twelve horses. When they arrived in
France, he proceeded to Paris, where the king received him with the
greatest marks of favour and distinction, and he deposited the treasure
in the Temple of that city. Shortly afterwards he set out for Poitiers,
where he had an interview with Clement, who consulted him on the affairs
of the East. On the subject of a new crusade, Molay gave it as his
opinion that nothing but a simultaneous effort of all the Christian
powers would be of any avail. He objected to the union of the orders on
the following grounds, which were, on the whole, sufficiently frivolous.
He said, 1st. That what is new is not always the best; that the orders,
as they were, had done good service in Palestine, and, in short, used
the good old argument of anti-reformists, _It works well_. 2dly. That as
the orders were spiritual as well as temporal, and many a one had
entered them for the weal of his soul, it might not be a matter of
indifference to such to leave the one which he had selected and enter
another. 3dly. There might be discord, as each order would want its own
wealth and influence, and seek to gain the mastery for its own rules and
discipline. 4thly. The Templars were generous of their goods, while the
Hospitallers were only anxious to accumulate--a difference which might
produce dissension. 5thly. As the Templars received more gifts and
support from the laity than the Hospitallers, they would be the losers,
or at least be envied by their associates. 6thly. There would probably
be some disputing between the superiors about the appointment to the
dignities in the new order. He however candidly acknowledged, that the
new order would be stronger than the old one, and so more zealous to
combat the infidels, and that many commanderies might be suppressed, and
some saving effected thereby. Having thus delivered his sentiments,
Molay took leave of the pope, and returned to Paris. Vague rumours of
serious charges made, or to be made, against the order now beginning to
prevail, Molay, accompanied by Rimbaud de Caron, preceptor of Outre-mer,
Jeffrey de Goneville, preceptor of Aquitaine, and Hugh de Perando,
preceptor of France, repaired once more to Poitiers, about April, 1307,
to justify himself and the order in the eyes of the pope. Clement, we
are told, informed them of the serious charges of the commission of
various crimes which had been made against them; but they gave him such
explanations as appeared to content him, and returned to Paris,
satisfied that they had removed all doubts from his mind.
The following was the way in which the charges were made against the
Templars.
There was lying in prison, at Paris or Toulouse, for some crime, a man
named Squin de Flexian, a native of Beziers, who had been formerly a
Templar, and prior of Mantfaucon, but had been put out of the order for
heresy and other offences. His companion in captivity was a Florentine,
named Noffo Dei--"a man (says Villani) full of all iniquity." These two
began to plan how they might best extricate themselves from their
present hopeless state; and, as it would appear, aware of the king's
dislike to the Templars, and hating them for having punished him for his
crimes, Squin de Flexian resolved to accuse them of the most monstrous
offences, and thus obtain his liberation. Accordingly, calling for the
governor of the prison, he told him that he had a discovery to make to
the king, which would be more for his advantage than the acquisition of
a new kingdom, but that he would only reveal it to the king in person.
Squin was immediately conveyed to Paris, and brought before the king, to
whom he declared the crimes of the order; and some of the Templars were
seized and examined by order of Philip.
Another account says that Squin Flexian and Noffo Dei, who were both
degraded Templars, had been actively engaged in an insurrection of the
people some time before, from which the king was obliged to take shelter
in the Temple. They had been taken, and were lying in prison without any
hope of their lives, when they hit on the plan of accusing their former
associates. They were both set at liberty; but Squin was afterwards
hanged, and Noffo Dei beheaded, as was said with little probability, by
the Templars.
It is also said, that, about the same time, Cardinal Cantilupo, the
pope's chamberlain, who had been in connexion with the Templars from his
eleventh year, made some discoveries respecting it to his master.
The charges made by Squin Flexian against the order were as follows:--
1. Each Templar, on his admission, was sworn never to quit the order;
and to further its interests, by right or by wrong.
2. The heads of the order are in secret alliance with the Saracens; and
have more Mahommedan infidelity than Christian faith; in proof of which,
they make every novice spit and trample on the cross of Christ, and
blaspheme his faith in various ways.
3. The heads of the order are heretical, cruel, and sacrilegious men.
Whenever any novice, on discovering the iniquity of the order, attempts
to quit it, they put him to death, and bury him privately by night. They
teach the women who are pregnant by them how to procure abortion, and
secretly murder the new-born babes.
4. The Templars are infected with all the errors of the Fraticelli; they
despise the pope and the authority of the Church; they contemn the
sacraments, especially those of penance and confession. They feign
compliance with the rites of the Church merely to escape detection.
5. The superiors are addicted to the most infamous excesses of
debauchery; to which, if any one expresses his repugnance, he is
punished by perpetual captivity.
6. The temple-houses are the receptacles of every crime and abomination
that can be committed.
7. The order labours to put the Holy Land into the hands of the
Saracens; and favours them more than the Christians.
8. The installation of the Master takes place in secret, and few of the
younger brethren are present at it; whence there is a strong suspicion
that he denies the Christian faith or promises, or does something
contrary to right.
9. Many statutes of the order are unlawful, profane, and contrary to the
Christian religion; the members are, therefore, forbidden, under pain of
perpetual confinement, to reveal them to any one.
10. No vice or crime committed for the honour or benefit of the order is
held to be a sin.
Such were the charges brought against the order by the degraded prior of
Montfaucon--charges in general absurd, or founded on gross exaggeration
of some of the rules of the society. Others, still more incredible, were
subsequently brought forward in the course of the examinations of
witnesses.
Philip and his ministers, having now what they regarded as a plausible
case against the Templars, prepared their measures in secret; and on the
12th September, 1307, sealed letters were sent to all the governors and
royal officers throughout France, with orders to arm themselves on the
12th of the following month; and in the night to open the letters and
act according to the instructions contained therein. The appointed day
arrived; and, on the morning of Friday, the 13th October, nearly all the
Templars throughout France saw themselves captives in the hands of their
enemies. So well had Philip taken his measures, that his meditated
victims were without suspicion; and, on the very eve of his arrest,
Molay was chosen by the treacherous monarch to be one of the four
pall-bearers at the funeral of the Princess Catherine, wife of the Count
of Valois.
The directions sent by the king to his officers had been to seize the
persons and the goods of the Templars; to interrogate, torture, and
obtain confessions from them; to promise pardon to those who confessed;
and to menace those who denied.
On the day of the arrest of the Master and his knights, the king took
possession of the Temple at Paris; and the Master and the preceptors of
Aquitaine, France, and beyond sea, were sent prisoners to Corbeil. The
following day the doctors of the University of Paris and several canons
assembled with the royal ministers in the church of Notre Dame, and
William de Nogaret, the chancellor, stated to them that the knights had
been proceeded against on account of their heresies. On the 15th the
University met in the Temple; and some of the heads of the order,
particularly the Master, were examined, and are said to have made some
confessions of the guilt of the order for the last forty years.
The king now published an act of accusation, conceived in no moderate or
gentle terms. He calls the accused in it devouring wolves, a perfidious
and idolatrous society, whose deeds, whose very words alone, are enough
to pollute the earth and infect the air, &c., &c. The inhabitants of
Paris were then assembled in the royal gardens; and the king's agents
spoke, and some monks preached to them against the accused.
Philip, in his hostility to the order, would be content with nothing
short of its utter ruin. Almost immediately after his _coup d'etat_ of
the 13th October, he despatched a priest, named Bernard Peletus, to his
son-in-law, Edward II., king of England, inviting him to follow his
example. Edward wrote, on the 30th of the same month, to say that the
charges made against the Templars by Philip and his agent appeared to
him, his barons, and his prelates, to be incredible; and that he would,
therefore, summon the senechal of Agen, whence this rumour had
proceeded, to inform him thereupon, before proceeding any farther.
Clement had been at first offended at the hasty and arbitrary
proceedings of the king of France against the Templars; but Philip
easily managed to appease him; and on the 22d November the pope wrote to
the king of England, assuring him that the Master of the Temple, had
spontaneously confessed that the brethren, on their admission, denied
Christ; and that several of the brethren in different parts of France
had acknowledged the idolatry and other crimes laid to the charge of the
order; and that a knight of the highest and most honourable character,
whom he had himself examined, had confessed the denial of Jesus Christ
to be a part of the ceremony of admission. He therefore calls on the
king to arrest all the Templars within his realms, and to place their
lands and goods in safe custody, till their guilt or innocence should be
ascertained.
Edward, in a letter, dated November 26, inquired particularly of the
senechal of Agen, in Guienne, respecting the charges against the
Templars. On the 4th December he wrote to the kings of Portugal,
Castile, Aragon, and Sicily, telling them of what he had heard, and
adding that he had given no credit to it; and begging of them not to
hearken to these rumours. On the 10th, evidently before he had received
the bull, he wrote to the pope, stating his disbelief of what he had
heard, and praying of his holiness to institute an inquiry. But when the
papal bull, so strongly asserting the guilt of the order, arrived, the
good-hearted king did not venture to refuse compliance with it; and he
issued a writ on the 15th December, appointing the morn of Wednesday
after Epiphany, in the following month, for seizing the Templars and
their property, but directing them to be treated with all gentleness.
Similar orders were forwarded to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, on the
20th; and on the 26th he wrote to assure the pope that his mandates
would be speedily obeyed. The arrests took place accordingly; and the
Templars and their property were thus seized in the two countries in
which they were most powerful[96].
[Footnote 96: The arrests were made in England in the same secret and
sudden manner as in France. Rymer iii. 34, 43.]
The reluctance of the king of England and his parliament to proceed to
any harsh measures against the Templars affords some presumption in
their favour, and would incline us to believe that, had Philip been
actuated by a similar love of justice, the order would not have been so
cruelly treated in France. But Philip had resolved on the destruction of
the society, and his privy councillors and favourites were not men who
would seek to check him in his career of blood and spoliation. These men
were William Imbert, his confessor, a Dominican monk, one of an order
inured in Languedoc to blood, and deeply versed in all inquisitorial
arts and practices; William Nogaret, his chancellor, the violator of the
sanctity of the head of the church; William Plasian, who had shared in
that daring deed, and afterwards sworn, in an assembly of the peers and
prelates of France, that Boniface was an atheist and a sorcerer, and had
a familiar demon. The whole order of the Dominicans also went heart and
hand in the pious work of detecting and punishing the heretics. We must
constantly bear in mind that the charges made against the Templars, if
they may not all be classed under the term heresy, were all such as the
Church was in the habit of making against those whom she persecuted as
public heretics. And in this, Philip and his advisers acted wisely in
their generation; for treason, or any other political charge, would have
sounded dull and inefficient in the ears of the people, in comparison
with the formidable word _heresy_.
[Illustration: Philip le Bel.]