this; and there are well-known characteristics of human nature that
explain how such revulsions of feeling come about. It has never been
found difficult to get up a case against those whom the great and
powerful have made up their minds to destroy. The best men are fallible
and have their weak side. Large bodies of men must contain some unworthy
members. A long history can hardly be without blots, mistakes, and
crimes. No man's life, if narrowly scrutinized by an unfavorable and
prejudiced criticism, but will afford ground for accusation. Then, too,
facts may be perverted, circumstances may be made to bear a meaning
that does not really belong to them, and fear and torture may force the
weak to say anything that they are required. And, finally, the evidence
and the judgment of those who have everything to gain by the
condemnation of those whom they accuse, must always be viewed with
suspicion by sober and truth-loving minds. Moreover, in judging the
Templars, we must not forget the lapse of time and the change of
circumstances that separate our age from theirs.
After the loss of Acre a chapter of the surviving Templars was gathered,
and James de Molay, preceptor of England, was elected grand master. One
more attempt was made to recover a footing in the Holy Land, but it was
defeated with great loss to the order, and all hope of restoring the
Latin kingdom in Palestine seems to have been abandoned. The occupation
of the Templars was gone. They had been banded together to fight upon
the sacred soil of Palestine, and to defend pilgrims, but now they had
been driven out of the country, and they could no longer execute their
mission or fulfil their vows. We soon hear of them being engaged in
civil or international wars, which seems to be a violation of their oath
not to draw sword upon any Christian. Thus we read of Templars fighting
on the side of the King of England, in the battle of Falkirk, 1298, and
similar occurrences are recorded in the French wars of the time. Those
against whom the Templars fought would not be slow to complain of them.
But the real cause of the downfall of the Templars was probably the
enormous wealth of the order. There had not been wanting indications for
some years of covetous eyes and itching hands turned toward the
possession of the Knights. Sometimes complaints were made because the
rents of their estates were all sent out of the country; sometimes the
grievance alleged was that they were exempted from paying taxes and
other levies, civil and ecclesiastical. Sometimes open acts of
spoliation were committed upon their property, and that even by royal
hands.
But it was in France that the final attack was made. Philip the Fair was
king at this time, a man of bad character and unscrupulous as to the
means by which he attained his ends. The country was exhausted and the
treasury empty, and the idea seems to have occurred to him, as it did
later to Henry VIII of England under similar circumstances, that an easy
way to fill his own purse was to put his hand into the purses of others.
But even kings cannot appropriate the property of a religious order
without offering some apology or justification to the world. And so it
began to be whispered that the Holy Land would never have been lost to
Christendom if its sworn defenders had not failed in their Christian
character. The whole blame of the defeat of the crusades was laid upon
the Templars. It was said they had treacherously betrayed the Christian
cause, that they had treated with the enemy, and by their personal sins,
especially by secret, unhallowed rites, had provoked the just wrath of
God, and so brought about the ruin of the dominion of the Cross in the
East.
When Ahab has determined to put Naboth to death, that he may seize his
coveted vineyard, it is not difficult to find witness that he is a
blasphemer of God and a traitor to the King; and so Philip found his
first tool in a man guilty of a multitude of crimes, who secured his own
pardon by a denunciation of the Templars.
But even a king could not ruin a great religious order without the aid
of the ecclesiastical authorities. The Templars had always been favored
and protected by the popes, and nothing was in itself so likely to evoke
that protection again as an attack upon the order by the secular powers.
But Philip was prepared for this. The Pope of the day, Clement V, had
been a subject of his own. As bishop of Bordeaux, he owed his election
to the pontificate to Philip's own intrigues, and had been easily
induced to quit Rome and live in France, so as to be more completely
under the dictation of the King. Moreover, the majority of the cardinals
were also French and entirely devoted to the King's interests.
Clement V was one of the worst of those miserable men who have from time
to time disgraced the papal chair, and was guilty of almost every crime.
There are, indeed, authorities worthy of credit who assert that before
his election he had been made to promise to perform six favors to the
King, and that the last was not to be divulged till the time for its
execution came. This last was then found to be the suppression of the
order of the Templars. There was no difficulty, under these
circumstances, in getting the so-called sanction of the Church for an
inquiry into the crimes of which the Templars were accused.
Accordingly, in 1307, Philip issued letters to his officers throughout
the kingdom, commanding them to seize all the Templars on a certain day,
that they might be tried for crimes of which he and the Pope had
satisfied themselves they were guilty. They had apostatized from the
Christian religion, worshipped idols in their secret meetings, and had
been guilty of horrible and shameful offences against God, the Church,
the State, and humanity itself. Philip professed the most pious horror
at what he had discovered; he lamented the grievous necessity laid upon
him, and urged upon the guilty men the expediency of a full and
immediate confession of their wicked doings as the only way to secure
pardon and escape the just and extreme penalty of such outrageous
wickedness.
It was during the night of October 13, 1307, that the King's orders were
executed. Every house of the Templars in the dominions of the King of
France was suddenly surrounded by a strong force, and all the Knights
and members of the order were simultaneously taken prisoners.
At the same time a strenuous endeavor was made to arouse popular
indignation against the order. The regular and secular clergy were
commanded to preach against the Templars, and to describe the horrible
enormities that were practised among them. It is incredible to us in
these days that such charges should be made, and still more that they
should actually be believed. It was said that the Templars worshipped
some hideous idol in their secret assemblies, that they offered
sacrifices to it of infants and young girls, and that although every one
saw them devout, charitable, and regular in their religious duties,
people were not to be misled by these things, for this was only a cloak
intended to deceive the world and conceal their secret rites and obscene
orgies.
It was hoped that some confession of guilt might be readily obtained
from some of the weaker brethren in order to receive the pardon which
was promised by the King. But no such confession was made. All the
prisoners denied the charges brought against them. Then the usual
mediæval expedient was resorted to, and torture was used to extort
acknowledgments of guilt. The unhappy Templars in Paris were handed over
to the tender mercies of the tormentors with the usual results. One
hundred and forty were subjected to trial by fire.
The details preserved are almost too horrible to be related. The feet of
some were fastened close to a hot fire till the very flesh and even the
bones were consumed. Others were suspended by their limbs, and heavy
weights attached to them to make the agony more intense. Others were
deprived of their teeth; and every cruelty that a horrible ingenuity
could invent was used.
While this was going on, questions were asked, and offers of pardon were
made if they would acknowledge themselves or others guilty of the
monstrous wickednesses which were detailed to them. At the same time
forged letters were read, purporting to come from the grand master
himself, exhorting them to make a full confession, and declarations were
made of the confessions which were said to have been already freely
given by other members of the order.
What wonder, then, that the usual consequences followed. Those who had
strong will and indomitable courage stood firm and endured the slow
martyrdom till death released them, maintaining to the last their own
innocence, and the innocence of their order, of the crimes with which
they were charged. But some weaker men broke down. In hope of release
from the agony which they could not endure, they confessed anything and
everything that was required of them, and these things were at once
written down as grave facts and made matter of accusation of others.
Often these unhappy men almost immediately recanted, and as soon as the
torture ceased withdrew their confessions, and repeated their original
denial of the accusations one and all.
We have long ago ceased to set any value upon confessions extorted by
torture, and the system has happily been abolished by all civilized
nations, but in those days this was not understood; torture was relied
upon as a means of extracting truth from unwilling witnesses when all
other means failed; indeed, it was simpler and more expeditious than the
calling of many witnesses, the testing of evidence by cross-examination,
and other surer but slower methods; and especially when conviction, not
truth, was the end in view, torture was a welcome and efficacious ally.
All this was but too sadly exemplified in the proceedings against the
Templars in France. No sooner were those who had made confessions of
guilt while under torture released from their tormentors than they
disavowed their forced admissions and proclaimed their innocence and the
purity of their order, appealing to history and the testimony of their
own day for evidence of their courage and devotion to the Catholic
faith.
Upon hearing of this Philip immediately ordered the rearrest of the
Templars, and, proceeding against them as relapsed heretics, they were
condemned to be burned alive. In Paris alone one hundred and thirteen
suffered this terrible punishment, and many more were burned in other
towns. In Spain, Portugal, and Germany, proceedings were taken against
the order; their property was confiscated, and in some cases torture was
used; but it is remarkable that it was only in France, and in those
places where Philip's influence was powerful, that any Templar was
actually put to death.
Everywhere else the monstrous charges were declared to be unproved, and
the order was declared innocent of heresy and sacrilegious rites.
In October, 1311, a council was held at Vienna to dissolve the Order of
the Temple, but the majority of the bishops were decidedly opposed to
such a proceeding against so ancient and illustrious an order, till its
members had been heard in their own defence in a fair and open trial.
The Pope was furious at this and dismissed the council, and in the
following year, 1312, by a papal brief, abolished the order and forbade
its reconstitution. The property of the order in France was nominally
made over to the Hospitallers, but Philip laid claim to an immense sum
for the expenses of the prosecution, and by this and other means he
obtained what he had all along desired--the greatest part of the
possessions of the order. Similar proceedings took place in other
countries. In some, new orders were founded in the place of the
Templars, with the sovereign at their head, by which means the estates
came into the possession of the Crown as completely as if they had
been actually confiscated.
In France the Templars who survived their torture and the horrors of
their prisons were either executed or left to linger out a miserable
existence in their dungeons till death released them. The grand master
and a few other brethren of the highest rank were thus kept in prison
for five years. They were then taken to Notre Dame in Paris, and
required to give verbal assent to the confessions which had been
extorted from them under torture. But the grand master, James de Molay,
the grand preceptor, and some others seized the opportunity of declaring
their innocence, and disowning the alleged confessions as forgeries. The
old veterans stood up in the church before the assembled multitude, and,
raising their chained hands to heaven, declared that whatever had been
confessed to the detriment of the illustrious order was only forced from
them by extreme agony and fear of death, and that they solemnly and
finally repudiated and revoked all such admissions.
On hearing of this, Philip ordered their immediate execution, and the
same evening the last grand master of the Temple and his faithful
comrades were burned to death at a slow fire.
Impartial men had formed their own judgment, and a very strong feeling
prevailed that justice had not been done. It was remarked that those who
had been foremost in the proceedings against the Templars came to a
speedy and miserable end. The Pope, the kings of France and of England,
and others, all soon followed their victims and died violent or shameful
deaths.
We have somewhat anticipated the order of events, and must return to the
earlier stage of the proceedings against the Templars. As soon as Philip
had determined upon his own course of action, he desired to find
countenance for it by stirring up other sovereigns to imitate it. He
therefore wrote letters to the kings of other European states, informing
them of his discovery of the guilt of the Templars, and urging them to
adopt a similar course in their own dominions. The Pope, too, summoned
the grand master to France, but with every mark of respect, and so got
him into his power before the terrible proceedings against the members
of his order were made public.
The King of England, Edward II, acted with prudence. He expressed his
unbounded astonishment at the contents of the French King's letter, and
at the particulars detailed to him by an agent specially sent to him by
Philip, but he would do no more at the time than promise that the matter
should receive his serious attention in due course.
He wrote at the same time to the kings of Portugal, Aragon, Castile, and
Sicily, telling them of the extraordinary information he had received
respecting the Templars, and declaring his unwillingness to believe the
dreadful charges brought against them. He referred to the services
rendered to Christendom by the order, and to its unblemished reputation
ever since it was founded. He urged upon his fellow-sovereigns that
nothing should be done in haste, but that inquiry should be made in due
and solemn legal form, expressing his belief that the order was
guiltless of the crimes alleged against it, and that the charges were
merely the result of slander and envy and of a desire to appropriate the
property of the order.
At the same time Edward wrote to the Pope in similar terms. He declared
that the Templars were universally respected by all classes throughout
his dominions as pious and upright men, and begged the Pope to promote a
just inquiry which should free the order from the unjust slander and
injuries to which it was being subjected. But hardly was this letter
despatched than Edward received another from the Pope, which had crossed
his own on its way, calling upon him to imitate Philip, King of France,
in proceeding against the Templars. The Pope professed great distress
and astonishment that an order that had so long enjoyed the respect and
gratitude of the Church for its worthy deeds in defence of the faith
should have fallen into grievous and perfidious apostasy. He then
narrated the commendable zeal of the King of France in rooting out the
secrets of these men's hidden wickedness, and gave particulars of some
of their confessions of the crimes with which they had been charged. He
concluded by commanding the King of England to pursue a similar course,
to seize and imprison all members of the order on one day, and to hold,
in the Pope's name, all the property of the order till it should be
determined how it was to be disposed of.
King Edward, notwithstanding his recent declaration of confidence in the
integrity of the Templars, yielded obedience to this missive of the
Pope. Whether he was overawed by the authority of the Pontiff, and
deferred his own opinion to that of so great a personage, or whether, as
some suppose, he desired to give the Templars a fair and honorable
trial, and the opportunity of clearing themselves; or whether he gave
way to the evil counsels of those who whispered that the great wealth of
the Templars would be useful to the Crown, and that he might avail
himself of the opportunity of taking all--as his predecessors had taken
some--of their treasure; whatever may have been his real motive, and the
cause of his change of conduct, it is certain that he issued an order
for the arrest of the Templars, and the seizure of all their estates,
houses, and property.
The greatest caution and secrecy were adopted. Instructions were sent to
all the sheriffs throughout England to hold themselves in readiness to
execute certain orders which would be given to them by trusty persons on
that day. Similar arrangements were made in Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales; and on January 8, 1308, every Templar was simultaneously
arrested.
It was not till October in the following year that any trial took place.
All this time the Templars had been suffering the miseries of
imprisonment. More than two hundred men of high rank, many of them
veterans who had fought and bled in Palestine, and who were now grown
old and feeble after a life of hardship and privation, maimed with
wounds, bronzed with exposure to the Eastern sun, languished under the
tender mercies of jailers, with no opportunity of defending themselves
or of raising up friends to say a word for them. Some were foreigners
who happened to be in England on the business of the order. A few
managed to evade the vigilance of the King's emissaries, notwithstanding
the secrecy and suddenness of the arrest, and escaped in various
disguises to the wild and remote mountain districts of Scotland, Wales,
and Ireland.
The court appointed by the Pope commenced its proceedings in London, in
October, 1309, under the presidency of the Bishop of London. Several
French ecclesiastics had come over to take their seat upon the bench as
judges--an ill omen for the English Templars. After the usual
preliminaries, which were long and tedious, the articles of accusation
were read. They stated that those who were received into the order of
the Knights of the Temple did, at their reception, formally deny Jesus
Christ and renounce all hope of salvation through him; that they
trampled and spat upon the cross; that they worshipped a cat(!); that
they denied the sacraments, and looked only to the grand master for
absolution; that they possessed and worshipped various idols; that they
practised a variety of cruel, degrading, and filthy customs and rites;
that the grand master and many of the brethren had confessed to these
things even before they had been arrested. Such is a brief summary of
the accusation, the original documents of which have happily come down
to us.
It is not easy for us to understand how such a farrago of absurdity,
profanity, and indecency could ever have been gravely produced in a
so-called court of justice in England as a state paper--a bill of
indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order
that for two hundred years had been the right arm of the Church and the
defender of Christianity against its most dangerous and ruthless
enemies. No writer of fiction would have ventured on inventing such a
trial, and no one unacquainted with mediæval history would credit the
record that grave prelates and learned judges drew up such a document,
and then set themselves to prove the truth of its monstrous allegations
by the use of torture.
Students of the Middle Ages know well that such things were done in
those days. They remember Savonarola and Beatrice Cenci in Italy, Jeanne
d'Arc in France, Abbot Whiting and others in England. They call to mind
the cruelties and exactions practised so often upon the Jews in every
country in Europe; and with the contemporary records in their hands,
they do not hesitate to accept as undoubted historical fact what would
otherwise be rejected as a slander upon humanity and an outrage upon
common-sense.
If the Templars had been accused of the crimes vulgarly supposed to
attach themselves to religious orders; if they had been charged with
falling into the sins to which poor human nature by its frailty is
liable; if erring members had been denounced, men who had entered the
order through disappointment, or from some other unworthy motive, men
such as Sir Walter Scott depicts in his imaginary Templar, Brian de
Bois Guilbert, in his novel, _Ivanhoe_, we might well believe that some
at least of the accusations against them were true.
It is singular that no such charges are alleged against the Templars,
though they were freely brought, two hundred years later, against the
regular monks by the commissioners of Henry VIII. This fact has been
noticed by most thoughtful historians, and has been considered to tell
strongly in the tribunal of equity in favor of the Templars. Instead of
these probable or possible crimes, we find nothing but monstrous charges
of sorcery, idolatry, apostasy, and such like, instances of which we
know are to be found in those strange times; but which it seems
altogether unlikely would infect a large body whose fundamental
principle was close adherence to Christianity; a body which was spread
all over the world, and which included in its ranks such a multitude and
variety of men and of nationalities, among whom there must have been, to
say the least, some sincere, upright, and godly men who would have set
themselves to root out such miserable errors, or, if they were found to
be ineradicable, would have left the order as no place for them.
Even Voltaire acknowledges that such an indictment destroys itself. It
recoils upon its framers, and proves nothing but their intense hatred of
their victims and their total unfitness to sit as judges.
When this extraordinary paper had been read, the prisoners were asked
what they had to say to it, and, as might be expected, they at once and
unanimously declared that they and their order were absolutely guiltless
of the crimes of which they were accused. After this the prisoners were
examined one by one.
It would be tedious to follow the long and wearisome questionings and to
record the replies given by the several brethren of the Temple during
their trial in London. One and all agreed in denying the existence of
the horrible and ridiculous rites which were said to be used at the
reception of new members; and whether they had been received in England
or abroad, detailed the ceremonies that were used, and showed that they
were substantially the same everywhere. The candidate was asked what he
desired, and on replying that he desired admission to the order of the
Knights of the Temple, he was warned of the strict and severe life that
was demanded of members of the order; of the three vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience; and, moreover, that he must be ready to go and
fight the enemies of Christ even to the death.
Others related details of the interior discipline and regulations of the
order, which were stern and rigorous, as became a body that added to the
strictness of the convent the order and system of a military
organization. Many of the brethren had been nearly all their lives in
the order, some more than forty years, a great part of which had been
spent in active service in the East.
The witnesses who were summoned were not members of the order, and had
only hearsay evidence to give. They had _heard_ this and that report,
they _suspected_ something else, they had been _told_ that certain
things had been said or done. Nothing definite could be obtained, and
there was no proof whatever of any of the extravagant and incredible
charges. Similar proceedings took place in Lincoln and York, and also in
Scotland and Ireland; and in all places the results were the same, and
the matter dragged on till October, 1311.