POLITICAL HERESY UTILIZED BY THE STATE.
It was inevitable that secular potentates should follow the example of
the Church in the employment of a weapon so efficient as the charge of
heresy, when they chanced to be in the position of controlling the
ecclesiastical organization.
A typical illustration of this is seen when, during the anarchy which
prevailed in Rome after the death of Innocent VII. in 1406, Basilio
Ordelaffi incurred the enmity of the Colonnas and the Savelli, and they
found that the easiest way to deal with him was through the Inquisition.
Under their impulsion it seized him and two of his adherents, Matteo and
Merenda. Through means procured by his daughter, Ordelaffi escaped from
prison and was condemned _in contumaciam_. The others confessed--doubtless
under torture--the heresies attributed to them, were handed over to the
secular arm, and were duly burned. Their houses were torn down, and on
their sites in time were erected two others, one of which afterwards
became the dwelling of Michael Angelo and the other of Salvator
Rosa.[256]
Secular potentates, however, had not waited till the fifteenth century
to appreciate the facilities afforded by heresy and the Inquisition for
the accomplishment of their objects. Already a hundred years earlier the
methods of the Inquisition had suggested to Philippe le Bel the great
crime of the Middle Ages--the destruction of the Order of the Temple.
When, in 1119, Hugues de Payen and Geoffroi de Saint-Adhémar with seven
companions devoted themselves to the pious task of keeping the roads to
Jerusalem clear of robbers, that pilgrims might traverse them in safety,
and when Raymond du Puy about the same time organized the Poor Brethren
of the Hospital of St. John, they opened a new career which was
irresistibly attractive to the warlike ardor and religious enthusiasm of
the age. The strange combination of monasticism and chivalry
corresponded so exactly to the ideal of Christian knighthood that the
Military Orders thus founded speedily were reckoned among the leading
institutions of Europe. At the Council of Troyes, in 1128, a Rule, drawn
up it is said by St. Bernard, was assigned to Hugues and his associates,
who were known as the Poor Soldiers of the Temple. They were assigned a
white habit, as a symbol of innocence, to which Eugenius III. added a
red cross, and their standard, _Bauséant_, half black and half white,
with its legend, "_Non nobis Domine_," soon became the rallying-point of
the Christian chivalry. The Rule, based upon that of the strict
Cistercian Order, was exceedingly severe. The members were bound by the
three monastic vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, and these were
enforced in the statutes of the Order with the utmost rigor. The
applicant for admission was required to ask permission to become the
serf and slave of the "House" forever, and was warned that he henceforth
surrendered his own will irrevocably. He was promised bread and water
and the poor vestments of the House; and if after death gold or silver
were found among his effects his body was thrust into unconsecrated
ground, or, if buried, it was exhumed. Chastity was prescribed in the
same unsparing fashion, and even the kiss of a mother was
forbidden.[257]
The fame of the Order quickly filled all Europe; knights of the noblest
blood, dukes and princes, renounced the world to serve Christ in its
ranks, and soon in its general chapter three hundred knights were
gathered, in addition to serving brethren. Their possessions spread
immensely. Towns and villages and churches and manors were bestowed upon
them, from which the revenues were sent to the Grand Master, whose
official residence was Jerusalem, together with the proceeds of the
collections of an organized system of beggary, their agents for which
penetrated into every corner of Christendom. Scarce had the Order been
organized when, in 1133, the mighty warrior, Alonso I. of Aragon, known
as _el Batallador_ and also as _el Emperador_, because his rule extended
over Navarre and a large portion of Castile, dying without children,
left his whole dominions to the Holy Sepulchre and to the Knights of the
Temple and of the Hospital in undivided thirds; and though the will was
not executed, the knights were promised and doubtless received
compensation from his successor, Ramiro el Monje. More practical was the
liberality of Philip Augustus, in 1222, when he left the two Orders two
thousand marks apiece absolutely, and the enormous sum of fifty thousand
marks each on condition of keeping in service for three years three
hundred knights in the Holy Land. We can understand how, in 1191, the
Templars could buy the Island of Cyprus from Richard of England for
twenty-five thousand silver marks, although they sold it the next year
for the same price to Gui, King of Jerusalem. We can understand, also,
that this enormous development began to excite apprehension and
hostility. At the Council of Lateran, in 1179, there was bitter strife
between the prelates and the Military Orders, resulting in a decree
which required the Templars to surrender all recently acquired churches
and tithes--an order which, in 1186, Urban III. defined as meaning all
acquired within the ten years previous to the council.[258]
This indicates that already the prelates were beginning to feel jealous
of the new organization. In fact, the antagonism which we have already
traced in the thirteenth century between the Mendicant Orders and the
secular clergy was but the repetition of that which had long existed
with respect to the Military Orders. These from the first were the
especial favorites of the Holy See, whose policy it was to elevate them
into a militia depending solely on Rome, thus rendering them an
instrument in extending its influence and breaking down the independence
of the local churches. Privileges and immunities were showered upon
them: they were exempted from tolls and tithes and taxes of all kinds;
their churches and houses were endowed with the right of asylum; their
persons enjoyed the inviolability accorded to ecclesiastics; they were
released from all feudal obligations and allegiance; they were
justiciable only by Rome; bishops were forbidden to excommunicate them,
and were even ordered to refer to the Roman curia all the infinite
questions which arose in local quarrels. In 1255, after the misfortunes
of the crusade of St. Louis, alms given to their collectors were
declared to entitle the donors to Holy Land indulgences. In short,
nothing was omitted by the popes that would stimulate their growth and
bind them firmly to the chair of St. Peter.[259]
Thus it was inevitable that antagonism should spring up between the
secular hierarchy and the Military Orders. The Templars were continually
complaining that the prelates were endeavoring to oppress them, to
impose exactions, and to regain by various devices the jurisdiction from
which the popes had relieved them; their right of asylum was violated;
the priests interfered with their begging collectors, and repressed and
intercepted the pious legacies designed for them; the customary quarrels
over burials and burial-fees were numerous, for, until the rise of the
Mendicants, and even afterwards, it was a frequent thing for nobles to
order their sepulture in the Temple or the Hospital. To these complaints
the popes ever lent a ready ear, and the favoritism which they
manifested only gave a sharper edge to the hostility of the defeated
prelates. In 1264 there was a threatened rupture between the papacy and
the Temple. Étienne de Sissy, Marshal of the Order and Preceptor of
Apulia, refused to assist in the crusade preparing against Manfred, and
was removed by Urban IV. When ordered to resign his commission he boldly
replied to Urban that no pope had ever interfered with the internal
affairs of the Order, and that he would resign his office only to the
Grand Master who had conferred it. Urban excommunicated him, but the
Order sustained him, being discontented because the succors levied for
the Holy Land were diverted to the papal enterprise against Manfred. The
following year a new pope, Clement IV., in removing the excommunication,
bitterly reproached the Order for its ingratitude, and pointed out that
only the support of the papacy could sustain it against the hostility of
the bishops and princes, which apparently was notorious. Still the Order
held out, and in common with the Hospitallers and Cistercians, refused
to pay a tithe to Charles of Anjou, in spite of which Clement issued
numerous bulls confirming and enlarging its privileges.[260]
That this antagonism on the part of temporal and spiritual potentates
had ample justification there can be little doubt. If, as we have seen,
the Mendicant Orders rapidly declined from the enthusiastic
self-abnegation of Dominic and Francis, such a body as the Templars,
composed of ambitious and warlike knights, could hardly be expected long
to retain its pristine ascetic devotion. Already, in 1152, the selfish
eagerness of the Grand Master, Bernard de Tremelai, to secure the spoils
of Ascalon nearly prevented the capture of that city, and the fall of
the Kingdom of Jerusalem was hastened when, in 1172, the savage ferocity
of Eudes de Saint-Amand, then Grand Master, prevented the conversion of
the King of the Assassins and all his people. It was not without show of
justification that about this time Walter Mapes attributes the
misfortunes of the Christians of the East to the corruption of the
Military Orders. By the end of the century we have seen from King
Richard's rejoinder to Foulques de Neuilly that Templar was already
synonymous with pride, and in 1207 Innocent III. took the Order to task
in an epistle of violent denunciation. His apostolic ears, he said, were
frequently disturbed with complaints of their excesses. Apostatizing
from God and scandalizing the Church, their unbridled pride abused the
enormous privileges bestowed upon them. Employing doctrines worthy of
demons, they give their cross to every tramp who can pay them two or
three pence a year, and then assert that these are entitled to
ecclesiastical services and Christian burial, even though laboring under
excommunication. Thus ensnared by the devil they ensnare the souls of
the faithful. He forbears to dwell further on these and other
wickednesses by which they deserve to be despoiled of their privileges,
preferring to hope that they will free themselves from their turpitude.
A concluding allusion to their lack of respect towards papal legates
probably explains the venomous vigor of the papal attack, but the
accusations which it makes touch points on which there is other
conclusive evidence. Although by the statutes of the Order the purchase
of admission, directly or indirectly, was simony, entailing expulsion on
him who paid and degradation on the preceptor who was privy to it, there
can be no doubt that many doubtful characters thus effected entrance
into the Order. The papal letters and privileges so freely bestowed upon
them were moreover largely abused, to the vexation and oppression of
those with whom they came in contact, for, exclusively justiciable in
the Roman curia, they were secure against all pleaders who could not
afford that distant, doubtful, and expensive litigation. The evils
thence arising were greatly intensified when the policy was adopted of
forming a class of serving brethren, by whom their extensive properties
were cultivated and managed without the cost of hired labor. Churls of
every degree, husbandmen, shepherds, swineherds, mechanics, household
servants, were thus admitted into the Order, until they constituted at
least nine tenths of it, and although these were distinguished by a
brown mantle in place of the white garment of the knights, and although
they complained of the contempt and oppression with which they were
treated by their knightly brethren, nevertheless, in their relations
with the outside world, they were full members of the Order, shrouded
with its inviolability and entitled to all its privileges, which they
were not likely by moderation to render less odious to the
community.[261]
Thus the knights furnished ample cause for external hostility and
internal disquiet, though there is probably no ground for the accusation
that, in 1229, they betrayed Frederic II. to the infidel, and, in 1250,
St. Louis to the Soldan of Egypt. Yet Frederic II. doubtless had ample
reason for dissatisfaction with their conduct during his crusade, which
he revenged by expelling them from Sicily in 1229, and confiscating
their property; and though he recalled them soon after and assumed to
restore their possessions, he retained a large portion. Still, pious
liberality continued to increase the wealth of the Order, though as the
Christian possessions in the East shrank more and more, people began to
attribute the ceaseless misfortunes to the bitter jealousy and animosity
existing between the rival Orders of the Temple and the Hospital, which
in 1243 had broken out into open war in Palestine, to the great comfort
of the infidel. A remedy was naturally sought in a union of the two
Orders, together with that of the Teutonic Knights. At the Council of
Lyons, in 1274, Gregory N. vainly endeavored to effect this, but the
countervailing influences, including, it was said, the gold of the
brethren, were too powerful. In these reproaches perhaps the Orders were
held to an undeserved accountability, for while their quarrels and the
general misconduct of the Latins in Palestine did much to wreck the
kingdom of Jerusalem, the real responsibility lay rather with the
papacy. When thousands of heretics were sent as crusaders in punishment,
the glory of the service was fatally tarnished. When money raised and
vows taken for the Holy Land were diverted to the purposes of the papal
power in Italy, when the doctrine was publicly announced that the home
interests of the Holy See were more important than the recovery of the
Holy Sepulchre, the enthusiasm of Christendom against the infidel was
chilled. When salvation could be trained at almost any time by a short
term of service near home in the quarrels of the Church, whether on the
Weser or in Lombardy, the devotion which had carried thousands to the
Syrian deserts found a less rugged and a safer path to heaven. It is
easy thus to understand how in the development of papal aggrandizement
through the thirteenth century recruits and money were lacking to
maintain against the countless hordes of Tartars the conquests of
Godfrey of Bouillon. In addition to all this the Holy Land was made a
penal settlement whither were sent the malefactors of Europe, rendering
the Latin colony a horde of miscreants whose crimes deserved and whose
disorders invited the vengeance of Heaven.[262]
With the fall of Acre, in 1291, the Christians were driven definitely
from the shores of Syria, causing intense grief and indignation
throughout Europe. In that disastrous siege, brought on by the perfidy
of a band of crusaders who refused to observe an existing truce, the
Hospital won more glory than the Temple, although the Grand Master,
Guillaume de Beaujeu, had been chosen to command the defence, and fell
bravely fighting for the cross. After the surrender and massacre, his
successor, the monk Gaudini, sailed for Cyprus with ten knights, the
sole survivors of five hundred who had held out to the last. Again, not
without reason, the cry went up that the disaster was the result of the
quarrels between the Military Orders, and Nicholas IV. promptly sent
letters to the kings and prelates of Christendom asking their opinions
on the project of uniting them, in view of the projected crusade which
was to sail on St. John's day, 1293, under Edward I. of England. At
least one affirmative answer was received from the provincial council of
Salzburg, but ere it reached Rome Nicholas was dead. A long interregnum,
followed by the election of the hermit Pier Morrone, put an end to the
project for the time, but it was again taken up by Boniface VIII., to
be interrupted and laid aside, probably by his engrossing quarrel with
Philippe le Bel. What was the drift of public opinion at the time is
probably reflected in a tract on the recovery of the Holy Land addressed
to Edward I. It is there proposed that the two Orders, whose scandalous
quarrels have rendered them the object of scorn, shall be fused together
and confined to their eastern possessions, which should be sufficient
for their support, while their combined revenues from their western
property, estimated at eight hundred thousand livres Tournois per annum,
be employed to further the crusade. Evidently the idea was spreading
that their wealth could be seized and used to better purpose than it was
likely to be in their hands.[263]
Thus the Order was somewhat discredited in popular estimation when, in
1297, Jacques de Molay, whose terrible fate has cast a sombre shadow
over his name through the centuries, was elected Grand Master, after a
vigorous and bitter opposition by the partisans of Hugues de Peraud. A
few years of earnest struggle to regain a foothold in Palestine seemed
to exhaust the energy and resources of the Order, and it became
quiescent in Cyprus. Its next exploit, though not official, was not of a
nature to conciliate public opinion. Charles de Valois, the evil genius
of his brother Philippe le Bel, and of his nephews, in 1300 married
Catherine, granddaughter of Baldwin II. of Constantinople, and titular
empress. In 1306 he proposed to make good his wife's claims on the
imperial throne, and he found a ready instrument in Clement V., who
persuaded himself that the attempt would not be a weakening of
Christianity in the East, but a means of recovering Palestine, or at
least of reducing the Greek Church to subjection. He therefore
endeavored to unite the Italian republics and princes in this crusade
against Christians. Charles II. of Naples undertook an expedition in
conjunction with the Templars. A fleet was fitted out under the command
of Roger, a Templar of high reputation for skill and audacity. It
captured Thessalonica, but in place of actively pursuing Andronicus II.,
the Templars turned their arms against the Latin princes of Greece,
ravaged cruelly the shores of Thrace and the Morea, and returned with
immense booty, having aroused enmities which were an element in their
downfall. In contrast to this the Hospitallers were acquiring fresh
renown as the champions of Christ by gallantly conquering, after a four
years' struggle, the island of Rhodes, in which they so long maintained
the cause of Christianity in the East. In 1306 Clement V. sent for de
Molay and Guillaume de Villaret, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, to
consult about a new crusade and the often discussed project of the union
of the Orders. He told them to come as secretly as possible, but while
the Hospitaller, engrossed with preparations for the siege of Rhodes,
excused himself, de Molay came in state, with a retinue of sixty
knights, and manifested no intention of returning to his station in the
East. This well might arouse the question whether the Templars were
about to abandon their sphere of duty, and if so, what were the
ambitious schemes which might lead them to transfer their headquarters
to France. The Teutonic knights in withdrawing from the East were
carving out for themselves a kingdom amid the Pagans of northeastern
Europe. Had the Templars any similar aspirations nearer home?[264]
Suspicions of the kind might not unnaturally be excited, and yet be
wholly without foundation. Modern writers have exercised their ingenuity
in conjecturing that there was a plot on hand for the Templars to seize
the south of France and erect it into an independent kingdom. The Order
had early multiplied rapidly in the provinces from the Garonne to the
Rhone; it is assumed that they were deeply tinctured with Catharism, and
held relations with the concealed heretics in those regions. All this is
the sheerest assumption without the slightest foundation. There was not
a trace of Catharism in the Order,[265] and we have seen how by this
time the Cathari of Languedoc had been virtually exterminated, and how
the land had been Gallicized by the Inquisition. Such an alliance would
have been a source of weakness, not of strength, for it would have
brought upon them all Europe in arms, and had there been a shred of
evidence to that effect, Philippe le Bel would have made the most of it.
Neither can it be assumed that they were intriguing with the
discontented, orthodox population. Bernard Délicieux and the Carcassais
would never have turned to the feeble Ferrand of Majorca if they could
have summoned to their assistance the powerful Order of the Temple. Yet
even the Order of the Temple, however great might have been its
aggregate, was fatally weakened for such ambitious projects by being
scattered in isolated fragments over the whole extent of Europe; and its
inability to concentrate its forces for either aggression or defence was
shown when it surrendered with scarce an effort at self-preservation in
one country after another. Besides, it was by no means so numerous and
wealthy as has been popularly supposed. The dramatic circumstances of
its destruction have inflamed the imagination of all who have written
about it, leading to a not unnatural exaggeration in contrasting its
prosperity and its misery. An anonymous contemporary tells us that the
Templars were so rich and powerful that they could scarce have been
suppressed but for the secret and sudden movement of Philippe le Bel.
Villani, who was also a contemporary, says that their power and wealth
were well-nigh incomputable. As time went on conceptions became
magnified by distance. Trithemius assures us that it was the richest of
all the monastic Orders, not only in gold and silver, but in its vast
dominions, towns and castles in all the lands of Europe. Modern writers
have even exceeded this in their efforts to present definite figures.
Maillard de Chambure assumes that at the time of its downfall it
numbered thirty thousand knights with a revenue of eight million livres
Tournois. Wilcke estimates its income at twenty million thalers of
modern money, and asserts that in France alone it could keep in the
field an army of fifteen thousand cavaliers. Zöckler calculates its
income at fifty-four millions of francs, and that it numbered twenty
thousand knights. Even the cautious Havemann echoes the extravagant
statement that in wealth and power it could rival all the princes of
Christendom, while Schottmüller assumes that in France alone there were
fifteen thousand brethren, and over twenty thousand in the whole
Order.[266]
The peculiar secrecy in which all the affairs of the Order were shrouded
renders such estimates purely conjectural. As to numbers, it has been
overlooked that the great body of members were serving brethren, not
fighting-men--herdsmen, husbandmen, and menials employed on the lands
and in the houses of the knights, and adding little to their effective
force. When they considered it a legitimate boast that in the one
hundred and eighty years of their active existence twenty thousand of
the brethren had perished in Palestine, we can see that at no time could
the roll of knights have exceeded a few thousand at most. At the Council
of Vienne the dissolution of the Order was urged on the ground that more
than two thousand depositions of witnesses had been taken, and as these
depositions covered virtually all the prisoners examined in France,
England, Spain, Italy, and Germany, whose evidence could be used, it
shows that the whole number can only have been insignificant in
comparison with what had been generally imagined. Cyprus was the
headquarters of the Order after the fall of Acre, yet at the time of the
seizure there were but one hundred and eighteen members there of all
ranks, and the numbers with which we meet in the trials everywhere are
ludicrously out of proportion with the enormous total popularly
attributed to the Order. A contemporary, of warmly papalist sympathies,
expresses his grief at the penalties righteously incurred by fifteen
thousand champions of Christ, which may be taken as an approximate guess
at the existing number; and if among these we assume fifteen hundred
knights, we shall probably be rather over than under the reality. As for
the wealth of the Order, in the general effort to appropriate its
possessions it was every one's interest to conceal the details of the
aggregate, but we chance to have a standard which shows that the
estimates of its supereminent riches are grossly exaggerated. In 1244
Matthew Paris states that it possessed throughout Christendom nine
thousand manors, while the Hospitallers had nineteen thousand. Nowhere
was it more prosperous than in Aquitaine, and about the year 1300, in a
computation of a tithe granted to Philippe le Bel, in the province of
Bordeaux, the Templars are set down at six thousand livres, the
Hospitallers at the same, while the Cistercians are registered for
twelve thousand. In the accounts of a royal collector in 1293 there are
specified in Auvergne fourteen Temple preceptories, paying in all three
hundred and ninety-two livres, while the preceptories of the
Hospitallers number twenty-four, with a payment of three hundred and
sixty-four livres. It will be remembered that a contemporary writer
estimates the combined revenues of the two Orders at eight hundred
thousand livres Tournois per annum, and of this the larger portion
probably belonged to the Hospital.[267]
Yet the wealth of the Order was more than sufficient to excite the
cupidity of royal freebooters, and its power and privileges quite enough
to arouse distrust in the mind of a less suspicious despot than Philippe
le Bel. Many ingenious theories have been advanced to explain his
action, but they are superfluous. In his quarrel with Boniface VIII.,
though the Templars were accused of secretly sending money to Rome in
defiance of his prohibition, they stood by him and signed an act
approving and confirming the assembly of the Louvre in June, 1303, where
Boniface was formally accused of heresy, and an appeal was made to a
future council to be assembled on the subject. So cordial, in fact, was
the understanding between the king and the Templars that royal letters
of July 10, 1303, show that the collection of all the royal revenues
throughout France was intrusted to Hugues de Peraud, the Visitor of
France, who had narrowly missed obtaining the Grand Mastership of the
Order. In June, 1304, Philippe confirmed all their privileges, and in
October he issued an Ordonnance granting them additional ones and
speaking of their merits in terms of warm appreciation. They lent him,
in 1299, the enormous sum of five hundred thousand livres for the dowry
of his sister. As late as 1306, when Hugues de Peraud had suffered a
loss of two thousand silver marks deposited with Tommaso and Vanno
Mozzi, Florentine bankers, who fraudulently disappeared, Philippe
promptly intervened and ordered restitution of the sum by Aimon, Abbot
of S. Antoine, who had gone security for the bankers. When in his
extreme financial straits he debased the coinage until a popular
insurrection was excited in Paris, it was in the Temple that he took
refuge, and it was the Templars that defended him against the assaults
of the mob. But these very obligations were too great to be incurred by
a monarch who was striving to render himself absolute, and the
recollection of them could hardly fail to suggest that the Order was a
dangerous factor in a kingdom where feudal institutions were being
converted into a despotism. While it might not have strength to sever a
portion of the provinces and erect an independent principality, it might
at any moment become a disagreeable element in a contest with the great
feudatories to whom the knights were bound by common sympathies and
interests. He was engaged in reducing them to subjection by the
extension of the royal jurisdiction, and the Templars were subject to no
jurisdiction save that of the Holy See. They were not his subjects; they
owed him no obedience or allegiance; he could not summon them to perform
military service as he could his bishops, but they enjoyed the right to
declare war and make peace on their own account without responsibility
to any one; they were clothed in all the personal inviolability of
ecclesiastics, and he possessed no means of control over them as he did
with the hierarchy of the Gallican Church. They were exempt from all
taxes and tolls and customs dues; their lands contributed nothing to his
necessities, save when he could wring from the pope the concession of a
tithe. While thus in every way independent of him, they were bound by
rules of the blindest and most submissive obedience to their own
superiors. The command of the Master was received as an order from God;
no member could have a lock upon a bag or trunk, could bathe or let
blood, could open a letter from a kinsman without permission of his
commander, and any disobedience forfeited the habit and entailed
imprisonment in chains, with its indelible disabilities. It is true that
in 1295 there had been symptoms of turbulence in the Order, when the
intervention of Boniface VIII. was required to enforce subjection to the
Master, but this had passed away, and the discipline within its ranks
was a religious obligation which rendered it vastly more efficient for
action than the elastic allegiance of the vassal to his seigneur. Such a
body of armed warriors was an anomaly in a feudal organization, and when
the Templars seemed to have abandoned their military activity in the
East, Philippe, in view of their wealth and numbers in France, may well
have regarded them as a possible obstacle to his schemes of monarchical
aggrandizement to be got rid of at the first favorable moment. At the
commencement of his reign he had endeavored to put a stop to the
perpetual acquisitions of both the religious Orders and the Templars,
through which increasing bodies of land were falling under mainmorte,
and the fruitlessness of the effort must have strengthened his
convictions of its necessity. If it be asked why he attacked the
Templars rather than the Hospitallers, the answer is probably to be
found in the fact that the Temple was the weaker of the two, while the
secrecy shrouding its ritual rendered it an object of popular
suspicion.[268]
Walsingham asserts that Philippe's design in assailing the Templars was
to procure for one of his younger sons the title of King of Jerusalem,
with the Templar possessions as an appanage. Such a project was
completely within the line of thought of the time, and would have
resulted in precipitating Europe anew upon Syria. It may possibly have
been a motive at the outset, and was gravely discussed in the Council of
Vienne in favor of Philippe le Long, but it is evident that no sovereign
outside of France would have permitted the Templar dominions within his
territories to pass under the control of a member of the aspiring house
of Capet.[269]
For the explanation of Philippe's action, however, we need hardly look
further than to financial considerations. He was in desperate straits
for money to meet the endless drain of the Flemish war. He had imposed
taxes until some of his subjects were in revolt, and others were on the
verge of it. He had debased the currency until he earned the name of the
Counterfeiter, had found himself utterly unable to redeem his promises,
and had discovered by experience that of all financial devices it was
the most costly and ruinous. His resources were exhausted and his
scruples were few. The stream of confiscations from Languedoc was
beginning to run dry, while the sums which it had supplied to the royal
treasury for more than half a century had shown the profit which was
derivable from well-applied persecution of heresy. He had just carried
out a financial expedient of the same kind as his dealings with the
Templars, by arresting all the Jews of the kingdom simultaneously,
stripping them of their property, and banishing them under pain of
death. A memorandum of questions for consideration, still preserved in
the Trésor des Chartres, shows that he expected to benefit in the same
way from the confiscation of the Templar possessions, while, as we shall
see, he overlooked the fact that these, as ecclesiastical property, were
subject to the imprescriptible rights of the Church.[270]
The stories about Squin de Florian, a renegade Templar, and Noffo Dei, a
wicked Florentine, both condemned to death and concocting the
accusations to save themselves, are probably but the conception of an
imaginative chronicler, handed down from one annalist to another.[271]
Such special interposition was wholly unnecessary. The foolish secrecy
in which the Templars enveloped their proceedings was a natural stimulus
of popular curiosity and suspicion. Alone among religious Orders, the
ceremonies of reception were conducted in the strictest privacy;
chapters were held at daybreak with doors closely guarded, and no
participant was allowed to speak of what was done, even to a
fellow-Templar not concerned in the chapter, under the heaviest penalty
known--that of expulsion. That this should lead to gossip and stories of
rites too repulsive and hideous to bear the light was inevitable. It was
the one damaging fact against them, and when Humbert Blanc, Preceptor of
Auvergne, was asked on his trial why such secrecy was observed if they
had nothing to conceal, he could only answer "through folly." Thus it
was common report that the neophyte was subjected to the humiliation of
kissing the posteriors of his preceptor--a report which the Hospitallers
took special pleasure in circulating. That unnatural lusts should be
attributed to the Order is easily understood, for it was a prevalent
vice of the Middle Ages, and one to which monastic communities were
especially subject; as recently as 1292 a horrible scandal of this kind
had led to the banishment of many professors and theologians of the
University of Paris. Darker rumors were not lacking of unchristian
practices introduced in the Order by a Grand Master taken prisoner by
the Soldan of Babylon, and procuring his release under promise of
rendering them obligatory on the members. There was also a legend that
in the early days of the Order two Templars were riding on one horse in
a battle beyond seas. The one in front recommended himself to Christ and
was sorely wounded; the one behind recommended himself to him who best
could help, and he escaped. The latter was said to be the demon in human
shape who told his wounded comrade that if he would believe him the
Order would grow in wealth and power. The Templar was seduced, and
thence came error and unbelief into the organization. We have seen how
readily such stories obtained credence throughout the Middle Ages, how
they grew and became embroidered with the most fantastic details. The
public mind was ripe to believe anything of the Templars; a spark only
was needed to produce a conflagration.[272]
Philippe's ministers and agents--Guillaume de Nogaret, Guillaume de
Plaisian, Renaud de Roye, and Enguerrand de Marigny--were quite fitted
to appreciate such an opportunity to relieve the royal exchequer, nor
could they be at a loss in finding testimony upon which to frame a
formidable list of charges, for we have already seen how readily
evidence was procured from apparently respectable witnesses convicting
Boniface VIII. of crimes equally atrocious. In the present case the task
was easier: the Templars could have been no exception to the general
demoralization of the monastic Orders, and in their ranks there must
have been many desperate adventurers, ready for any crime that would
bring a profit. Expelled members there were in plenty who had been
ejected for their misdeeds, and who could lose nothing by gratifying
their resentments. Apostates also were there who had fled from the Order
and were liable to imprisonment if caught, besides the crowd of
worthless ribalds whom the royal agents could always secure when
evidence for any purpose was wanted. These were quietly collected by
Guillaume de Nogaret, and kept in the greatest secrecy at Corbeil under
charge of the Dominican, Humbert. Heresy was, of course, the most
available charge to bring. The Inquisition was there as an unfailing
instrument to secure conviction. Popular rumor, no matter by whom
affirmed, was sufficient to require arrest and trial, and when once on
trial there were few indeed from whom the inquisitorial process could
not wring conviction. When once the attempt was determined upon the
result was inevitable.[273]
Still, the attempt could not be successful without the concurrence of
Clement V., for the inquisitorial courts, both of the Holy Office and of
the bishops, were under papal control, and, besides, public opinion
would require that the guilt of the Order should be proved in other
lands besides France. To enable Philippe to enjoy the expected
confiscations in his own dominions, confiscation must be general
throughout Europe, and for this the co-operation of the Holy See was
essential. Clement subsequently declared that Philippe broached the
subject to him in all its details before his coronation at Lyons,
November 14, 1305,[274] but the papal bulls throughout the whole matter
are so infected with mendacity that slender reliance is to be placed on
their statements. Doubtless there was some discussion about the current
reports defaming the Order, but Clement is probably not subject to the
imputation which historians have thrown upon him, that his summons to de
Molay and de Villaret in 1306 was purely a decoy. It seems to me
reasonable to conclude that he sent for them in good faith, and that de
Molay's own imprudence in establishing himself in France, as though for
a permanence, excited at once the suspicions and cupidity of the king,
and ripened into action what had previously been merely a vague
conception.[275]
If such was the case, Philippe was not long in maturing the project, nor
were his agents slow in gathering material for the accusation. In his
interview with Clement at Poitiers, in the spring of 1307, he vainly
demanded the condemnation of the memory of Boniface VIII., and, failing
in this, he brought forward the charges against the Templars, while
temporarily dropping the other matter, but with equal lack of immediate
result. Clement sent for de Molay, who came to him with Raimbaud de
Caron, Preceptor of Cyprus, Geoffroi de Gonneville, Preceptor of
Aquitaine and Poitou, and Hugues de Peraud, Visitor of France, the
principal officers of the Order then in the kingdom. The charges were
communicated to them in all their foulness. Clement subsequently had
the audacity to declare to all Europe that de Molay before his arrest
confessed their truth in the presence of his subordinates and of
ecclesiastics and laymen, but this is a manifest lie. The Templars
returned to Paris evidently relieved of all anxiety, thinking that they
had justified themselves completely, and de Molay, on October 12, the
eve of the arrest, had the honor to be one of the four pall-bearers at
the obsequies of Catharine, wife of Charles de Valois, evidently for the
purpose of lulling him with a sense of security. Nay, more, on August
24, Clement had written to Philippe urging him to make peace with
England, and referring to his charges against the Templars in their
conversations at Lyons and Poitiers, and the representations on the
subject made by his agents. The charges, he says, appear to him
incredible and impossible, but as de Molay and the chief officers of the
Order had complained of the reports as injurious, and had repeatedly
asked for an investigation, offering to submit to the severest
punishment if found guilty, he proposes in a few days, on his return to
Poitiers, to commence, with the advice of his cardinals, an examination
into the matter, for which he asks the king to send him the proofs.[276]
No impression had evidently thus far been made upon Clement, and he was
endeavoring, in so far as he dared, to shuffle the affair aside.
Philippe, however, had under his hands the machinery requisite to attain
his ends, and he felt assured that when the Church was once committed to
it, Clement would not venture to withdraw. The Inquisitor of France,
Guillaume de Paris, was his confessor as well as papal chaplain, and
could be relied upon. It was his official duty to take cognizance of all
accusations of heresy, and to summon the secular power to his
assistance, while his awful authority overrode all the special
immunities and personal inviolability of the Order. As the Templars were
all defamed for heresy by credible witnesses, it was strictly according
to legal form for Frère Guillaume to summon Philippe to arrest those
within his territories and bring them before the Inquisition for trial.
As the enterprise was a large one, secrecy and combined operations were
requisite for its success, and Philippe, as soon as Clement's letter had
shown him that he was not to expect immediate papal co-operation, lost
no time. He always asserted that he had acted under requisition from the
inquisitor, and excused his haste by declaring that his victims were
collecting their treasures and preparing to fly. On September 14 royal
letters were sent out to the king's representatives throughout France,
ordering the simultaneous arrest, under authority from Frère Guillaume,
of all members of the Order on October 13, and the sequestration of all
property. Frère Guillaume, on September 20, addressed all inquisitors
and all Dominican priors, sub-priors, and lectors, commissioning them to
act, and reciting the crimes of the Templars, which he characterized as
sufficient to move the earth and disturb the elements. He had, he said,
examined the witnesses, he had summoned the king to lend his aid, and he
cunningly added that the pope was informed of the charges. The royal
instructions were that the Templars when seized were to be strictly
guarded in solitary confinement; they were to be brought before the
inquisitorial commissioners one by one; the articles of accusation were
to be read over to them; they were to be promised pardon if they would
confess the truth and return to the Church, and be told that otherwise
they were to be put to death, while torture was not to be spared in
extracting confession. The depositions so obtained were to be sent to
the king as speedily as possible, under the seals of the inquisitors.
All Templar property was to be sequestrated and careful inventories be
made out. In undertaking an act which would shock public opinion in no
common fashion, it was necessary that it should be justified at once by
the confessions wrung from the prisoners, and nothing was to be spared,
whether by promises, threats, or violence, to secure the result.[277]
This was all strictly in accordance with inquisitorial practice, and the
result corresponded with the royal expectations. Under the able
management of Guillaume de Nogaret, to whom the direction of the affair
was confided, on October 13 at daybreak the arrests took place
throughout the land, but few of the Templars escaping. Nogaret himself
took charge of the Paris Temple, where about a hundred and forty
Templars, with de Molay and his chief officials at their head, were
seized, and the vast treasure of the Order fell into the king's hands.
The air had been thick with presages of the impending storm, but the
Templars underrated the audacity of the king and had made no
preparations to avert the blow. Now they were powerless in the hands of
the unsparing tribunal which could at will prove them guilty out of
their own mouths, and hold them up to the scorn and detestation of
mankind.[278]
Philippe's first care was to secure the support of public opinion and
allay the excitement caused by this unexpected move. The next day,
Saturday, October 14, the masters of the university and the cathedral
canons were assembled in Nôtre Dame, where Guillaume de Nogaret, the
Prévôt of Paris, and other royal officials made a statement of the
offences which had been proved against the Templars. The following day,
Sunday the 15th, the people were invited to assemble in the garden of
the royal palace, where the matter was explained to them by the
Dominicans and the royal spokesmen, while similar measures were adopted
throughout the kingdom. On Monday, the 16th, royal letters were
addressed to all the princes of Christendom announcing the discovery of
the Templar heresy, and urging them to aid the king in the defence of
the faith by following his example. At once the Inquisition was set
busily at work. From October 19 to November 24 Frère Guillaume and his
assistants were employed in recording the confessions of a hundred and
thirty-eight prisoners captured in the Temple, and so efficacious were
the means employed that but three refused to admit at least some of the
charges. What these methods were the records of course fail to show,
for, as we have seen, the official confession was always made after
removal from the torture-chamber, and the victim was required to swear
that it was free and unconstrained, without fear or force, though he
knew that if he retracted what he had uttered or promised to utter on
the rack he would be liable to fresh torture, or to the stake as a
relapsed heretic. The same scenes were enacting all over France, where
the commissioners of Frère Guillaume, and sometimes Frère Guillaume
himself, with the assistance of the royal officials, were engaged in the
same work. In fact, the complaisant Guillaume, in default of proper
material for labor so extensive, seems occasionally to have commissioned
the royal deputies to act. A few of the reports of these examinations
have been preserved, from Champagne, Normandy, Querci, Bigorre,
Beaucaire, and Languedoc, and in these the occasional allusions to
torture show that it was employed whenever necessary. In all cases, of
course, it was not required, for the promise of pardon and the threat of
burning would frequently suffice, in conjunction with starvation and the
harshness of the prison. The rigor of the application of the
inquisitorial process is shown by the numerous deaths and the occasional
suicides prompted by despair to which the records bear testimony. In
Paris alone, according to the testimony of Ponsard de Gisiac, thirty-six
Templars perished under torture; at Sens, Jacques de Saciac said that
twenty-five had died of torment and suffering, and the mortality
elsewhere was notorious. When a number of the Templars subsequently
repeated their confessions before the pope and cardinals in consistory,
they dwelt upon the excessive tortures which they had endured, although
Clement in reporting the result was careful to specify that their
confessions were free and unconstrained. De Molay, of course, was not
spared. He was speedily brought into a complying state of mind. Although
his confession, October 24, is exceedingly brief, and only admits a
portion of the errors charged, yet he was induced to sign a letter
addressed to the brethren stating that he had confessed and
recommending them to do the same, as having been deceived by ancient
error. As soon as he and other chiefs of the Order were thus committed,
the masters and students of all the faculties of the university were
summoned to meet in the Temple; the wretched victims were brought before
them and were required to repeat their confessions, which they did, with
the addition that these errors had prevailed in the Order for thirty
years and more.[279]
The errors charged against them were virtually five: I. That when a
neophyte was received the preceptor led him behind the altar, or to the
sacristy or other secret place, showed him a crucifix and made him
thrice renounce the prophet and spit upon the cross. II. He was then
stripped, and the preceptor kissed him thrice, on the posteriors, the
navel, and the mouth. III. He was then told that unnatural lust was
lawful, and it was commonly indulged in throughout the Order. IV. The
cord which the Templars wore over the shirt day and night as a symbol of
chastity had been consecrated by wrapping it around an idol in the form
of a human head with a great beard, and this head was adored in the
chapters, though only known to the Grand Master and the elders. V. The
priests of the Order do not consecrate the host in celebrating mass.
When, in August, 1308, Clement sent throughout Europe a series of
articles for the interrogation of the accused, drawn up for him by
Philippe, and varying according to different recensions from
eighty-seven to one hundred and twenty-seven in number, these charges
were elaborated, and varied on the basis of the immense mass of
confessions which had meanwhile been obtained. The indecent kisses were
represented as mutual between the receptor and the received; disbelief
in the sacrament of the altar was asserted; a cat was said to appear in
the chapters and to be worshipped; the Grand Master or preceptor
presiding in a chapter was held to have power of absolving from all sin;
all brethren were instructed to acquire property for the Order by fair
means or foul, and all the above were declared to be fixed and absolute
rules of the Order, dating from a time beyond the memory of any member.
Besides these, it was reproached for the secrecy of its proceedings and
neglect in the distribution of alms. Even this however, did not satisfy
the public imagination, and the most absurd exaggerations found
credence, such as we have so frequently seen in the case of other
heresies. The Templars were said to have admitted betraying St. Louis
and the stronghold of Acre, and that they had such arrangements with the
Soldan of Babylon that if a new crusade were undertaken the Christians
would all be sold to him. They had conveyed away a portion of the royal
treasure, to the great injury of the kingdom. The cord of chastity was
magnified into a leather belt, worn next the skin, and the _mahommerie_
of this girdle was so powerful that as long as it was worn no Templar
could abandon his errors. Sometimes a Templar who died in this false
belief was burned, and of his ashes a powder was made which confirmed
the neophytes in their infidelity. When a child was born of a virgin to
a Templar it was roasted, and of its fat an ointment was made wherewith
to anoint the idol worshipped in the chapters, to which, according to
other rumors, human sacrifices were offered. Such were the stories which
passed from mouth to mouth and served to intensify popular
abhorrence.[280]
It is, perhaps, necessary at this point to discuss the still mooted
question as to the guilt or innocence of the Order. Disputants have from
various motives been led to find among the Templars Manichæan, Gnostic,
and Cabalistic errors justifying their destruction. Hammer-Purgstall
boasted that he had discovered and identified no less than thirty
Templar images, in spite of the fact that at the time of their sudden
arrest the Inquisition, aided by the eager creatures of Philippe, was
unable to lay its hands on a single one. The only thing approaching it
was a metal reliquary in the form of a female head produced from the
Paris Temple, which, on being opened, was found to contain a small skull
preserved as a relic of the eleven thousand virgins.[281]
This fact alone would serve to dispose of the gravest of the charges,
for, if the depositions of some of the accused are to be believed, these
idols were kept in every commandery and were employed in every reception
of a neophyte. With regard to the other accusations, not admitting thus
of physical proof, it is to be observed that much has been made by
modern theorists of the fact that the rules and statutes of the Order
were reserved exclusively for its chiefs, and it has been assumed that
in them were developed the secret mysteries of the heresy. Yet nothing
of the kind was alleged in the proceedings; the statutes were never
offered in evidence by the prosecution, although many of them must have
been obtained in the sudden seizure, and this for the best of reasons.
Sedulously as they were destroyed, two or three copies escaped, and
these, carefully collated, have been printed. They breathe nothing but
the most ascetic piety and devotion to the Church, and the numerous
illustrative cases cited in them show that up to a period not long
anterior to the destruction of the Order there were constant efforts
made to enforce the rigid Rule framed by St. Bernard and promulgated by
the Council of Troyes in 1128. Thus there is absolutely no external
evidence against the Order, and the proof rests entirely upon
confessions extracted by the alternative of pardon or burning, by
torture, by the threat of torture, or by the indirect torture of prison
and starvation, which the Inquisition, both papal and episcopal, know so
well how to employ. We shall see, in the development of the affair, that
when these agencies were not employed no admissions of criminality could
be obtained.[282] No one who had studied the criminal jurisprudence of
the later Middle Ages will attach the slightest weight to confessions
obtained under such conditions. We have seen, in the case of the
Stedingers, how easy it was to create belief in the most groundless
charges. We have seen, under Conrad of Marburg, how readily the fear of
death and the promise of absolution would cause nobles of birth and
station to convict themselves of the foulest and most impossible
offences. We shall see, when we come to consider persecution for
witchcraft, with what facility the rack and strappado procured from
victims of all ranks confessions of participating in the Sabbat, and of
holding personal intercourse with demons, of charming away harvests, of
conjuring hail-storms, and of killing men and cattle with spells. Riding
through the air on a broomstick, and commerce with incubi and succubi
rest upon evidence of precisely the same character and of much greater
weight than that upon which the Templars were convicted, for the witch
was sure of burning if she confessed, and had a chance of escaping if
she could endure the torture, while the Templar was threatened with
death for obstinacy, and was promised immunity as a reward for
confession. If we accept the evidence against the Templar we cannot
reject it in the case of the witch.
As the testimony thus has no intrinsic weight, the only scientific
method of analyzing the affair is to sift the whole mass of confessions,
and determine their credibility according to the internal evidence which
they afford of being credible or otherwise. Several hundred depositions
have reached us, taken in France, England, and Italy, for the most part
naturally those incriminating the Order, for the assertions of innocence
were usually suppressed, and the most damaging witnesses were made the
most of. These are sufficiently numerous to afford us ample material for
estimating the character of the proof on which the Order was condemned,
and to obtain from them a reasonable approximation to the truth requires
only the application of a few tests suggested by common-sense.
There is, firstly, the extreme inherent improbability that a rich,
worldly, and ambitious body of men like the Templars should be secretly
engaged in the dangerous and visionary task of laying the foundations of
a new religion, which would bring them no advantage if they succeeded in
supplanting Christianity, and which was certain to lead them to
destruction in the infinite chances of detection. To admit this is to
ascribe to them a spiritual exaltation and a readiness for martyrdom
which we might expect from the asceticism of a Catharan or a Dolcinist,
but not from the worldliness which was the real corroding vice of the
Order. Secondly, if the Templars were thus engaged in the desperate
enterprise of propagating a new faith under the eyes of the Inquisition,
they would be wary in initiating strangers; they would exercise extreme
caution as to the admission of members, and only reveal to them their
secrets by degrees, as they found them worthy of confidence and
zealously willing to incur the risk of martyrdom. Thirdly, if a new
dogma were thus secretly taught as an indispensable portion of the Rule,
its doctrines would be rigidly defined and its ritual be closely
administered. The witnesses who confessed to initiation would all tell
the same story and give the same details.
Thus evidence of the weightiest and most coherent character would be
requisite to overcome the inherent improbability that the Templars could
be embarked in an enterprise so insane, in place of which we have only
confessions extracted by the threat or application of torture, and not a
single instance of a persistent heretic maintaining the belief imputed
to him. Turning to the testimony to see whether it comports with the
conditions which we have named, we find that no discrimination whatever
was exercised in the admission of neophytes. Not a single witness speaks
of any preliminary preparation, though several intimate that they
obtained entrance by making over their property to the Order.[283]
Indeed, one of the charges was, that there was no preliminary probation,
and that the neophyte at once became a professed member in full
standing, which, as explained by a knight of Mas Deu, was because their
services were considered to be at once required against the
Saracens.[284] Youths and even children of tender years were admitted,
although in violation of the statutes of the Order, of ages ranging
from ten or eleven years upward.[285] High-born knights, priding
themselves on their honor, priests, laborers, husbandmen, menials of all
kinds were brought in, and, if we are to believe their evidence, they
were without notice obliged, by threats of death and lifelong
imprisonment, to undergo the severest personal humiliation, and to
perform the awful task of renouncing their Saviour and spitting on, or
even more outrageously defiling, the cross which was the object of their
veneration and the symbol of their faith. Such a method of propagating
heresy by force in the Europe of the Inquisition, of trusting such
fearful secrets to children and to unwilling men of all conditions, is
so absurd that its mere assertion deprives the testimony of all claim to
credence.
Equally damaging to the credibility of the evidence is the
self-contradictory character of its details. It was obtained by
examining the accused on a series of charges elaborately drawn up, and
by requiring answers to each article in succession, so that the general
features of the so-called confessions were suggested in advance. Had the
charges been true there could have been little variation in the answers,
but in place of a definite faith or a systematic ritual we find every
possible variation that could suggest itself to witnesses striving to
invent stories that should satisfy their torturers. Some say that they
were taught Deism--that God in heaven alone was to be worshipped.[286]
Others, that they were forced to renounce God.[287] The usual formula
reported, however, was simply to renounce Christ, or Jesus, while others
were called upon to renounce Notre Sire, or la Profeta, or Christ, the
Virgin, and the Saints.[288] Some professed that they could not
recollect whether their renunciation had been of God or of Christ.[289]
Sometimes we hear that instruction was given that they should not
believe in Christ, that he was a false prophet, that he suffered for his
own sins, but more frequently that the only reason alleged was that such
was the Rule of the Order.[290] It was the same with the idol which has
so greatly exercised the imagination of commentators. Some witnesses
swore that it was produced whenever a neophyte was received, and that
its adoration was a part of the ceremony; others that it was only
exhibited and worshipped in the secrecy of chapters; by far the greater
number, however, had never seen it or heard of it. Of those who
professed to have seen it, scarce two described it alike, within the
limits suggested by the articles of accusation, which spoke of it as a
head. Sometimes it is black, sometimes white, sometimes with black hair,
and sometimes white and black mixed, and again with a long white beard.
Some witnesses saw its neck and shoulders covered with gold; one
declared that it was a demon (_Maufé_) on which no one could look
without trembling; another that it had for eyes carbuncles which lighted
up the room; another that it had two faces; another three faces; another
four legs, two behind and two before, and yet another said it was a
statue with three heads. On one occasion it is a picture, on another a
painting on a plaque, on another a small female figure which the
preceptor draws from under his garments, and on another the statue of a
boy, a cubit in height, sedulously concealed in the treasury of the
preceptory. According to the testimony of one witness it degenerated
into a calf. Sometimes it is called the Saviour, and sometimes Bafomet
or Maguineth--corruptions of Mahomet--and is worshipped as Allah.
Sometimes it is God, creating all things, causing the trees to bloom and
the grass to germinate, and then again it is a friend of God who can
approach him and intercede for the suppliant. Sometimes it gives
responses, and sometimes it is accompanied or replaced by the devil in
the form of a black or gray cat or raven, who occasionally answers the
questions addressed to him, the performance winding up, like the
witches' Sabbat, with the introduction of demons in the form of
beautiful women.[291]
Similar contradictions are observable in the evidence as to the ritual
of reception. The details laid down in the Rule are accurately and
uniformly described, but when the witnesses come to speak of the
sacrilegious rites imputed to them, they flounder among almost every
variation that could suggest itself to their imaginations. Usually
renunciation of God or Christ and spitting on the cross are both
required, but in many cases renunciation without spitting suffices, and
in as many more spitting without renunciation.[292] Occasionally
spitting is not sufficient, but trampling is added, and even urination;
indeed some over-zealous witnesses declared that the Templars assembled
yearly to perform the latter ceremony, while others, while admitting the
sacrilege of their reception rites, say that the yearly adoration of the
cross on Good Friday, prescribed in the Rule, was also observed with
great devotion.[293] Generally a plain cross is described as the object
of contempt, but sometimes a crucifix is used, or a painting of the
crucifixion in an illuminated missal; the cross on the preceptor's
mantle is a common device, and even two straws laid crosswise on the
ground suffices. In some cases spitting thrice upon the ground was only
required, without anything being said as to its being in disrespect of
Christ.[294] Many witnesses declared that the sacrilege was performed in
full view of the assembled brethren, others that the neophyte was taken
into a dark corner, or behind the altar, or into another room carefully
closed; in one case it took place in a field, in another in a grange, in
another in a cooper-shop, and in another in a room used for the
manufacture of shoes.[295] As a rule the preceptor was represented as
enforcing it, but in many cases the duty was confided to one or more
serving brethren, and in one instance the person officiating had his
head hidden in a cowl.[296] Almost universally it formed part of the
ceremonies of reception, sometimes even before the vows were
administered or the mantle bestowed, but generally at the conclusion,
after the neophyte was fully committed, but there were occasional
instances in which it was postponed until a later hour, or to the next
day, or to longer intervals, extending, in one or two cases, to months
and years.[297] Some witnesses declared that it formed part of all
receptions; others that it had been enforced in their case, but they had
never seen it or heard of it in other receptions at which they had been
present. In general they swore that they were told it was a rule of the
Order, but some said that it was explained to them as a joke, and others
that they were told to do it with the mouth and not with the heart. One,
indeed, deposed that he had been offered the choice between renouncing
Christ, spitting on the cross, and the indecent kiss, and he selected
the spitting.[298] In fact, the evidence as to the enforcement of the
sacrilege is hopelessly contradictory. In many cases the neophyte was
excused after a slight resistance; in others he was thrust into a dark
dungeon until he yielded. Egidio, Preceptor of San Gemignano of
Florence, stated that he had known two recalcitrant neophytes carried in
chains to Rome, where they perished in prison, and Niccolò Regino,
Preceptor of Grosseto, said that recusants were slain, or sent to
distant parts, like Sardinia, where they ended their days. Geoffroi de
Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, swore that he enforced it upon the first
neophyte whom he received, but that he never did so afterwards, and Gui
Dauphin, one of the high officers of the Order, said virtually the same
thing; Gaucher de Liancourt, Preceptor of Reims, on the other hand,
testified that he had required it in all cases, for if he had not he
would have been imprisoned for life, and Hugues de Peraud, the Visitor
of France, declared that it was obligatory on him.[299]
It would be a work of supererogation to pursue this examination further.
The same irreconcilable confusion reigns in the evidence as to the other
charges--the cord of chastity, the obscene kiss, the mutilation of the
canon of the mass,[300] the power of absolution assigned to the Grand
Master, the license for unnatural crime. It might be argued, as these
witnesses had been received into the Order at times varying from fifty
to sixty years previous to within a few months, and at places so widely
apart as Palestine and England, that these variations are explicable by
local usages or by a gradually perfected belief and ritual. An
investigation of the confessions shows, however, that no such
explanation will suffice; there can be no grouping as to the time or
place of the ceremony. Yet there can be a grouping which is of supreme
significance, a grouping as to the tribunal through which the witness
passed. This is often very notable among the two hundred and twenty-five
who were sent to the papal commission from various parts of France, and
examined in 1310 and 1311. As a rule they manifested extreme anxiety
that their present depositions should accord with those which they had
made when subject to inquisition by the bishops--doubtless they made
them as nearly so as their memories would permit--and it is easy to see
how greater or less rigor, or how concert between those confined in the
same prison, had led to the concoction of stories such as would satisfy
their judges. Thus the confessions obtained by the Ordinary of Poitiers
have a character distinct from those extorted by the Bishop of Clermont,
and we can classify the penitents of the Bishop of Le Mans, the
Archbishop of Sens, the Archbishop of Tours, the Bishops of Amiens,
Rodez, Macon, in fact of nearly all the prelates who took part in the
terrible drama.[301]
Another feature indicating the untrustworthy character of the evidence
is that large numbers of the witnesses swore that they had confessed the
sacrilege committed to priests and friars of all kinds, to bishops, and
even to papal penitentiaries, and had received absolution by the
imposition of penance, usually of a trifling character, such as fasting
on Fridays for a few months or a year.[302] No ordinary confessor could
absolve for heresy; it was a sin reserved for the inquisitor, papal or
episcopal. The most that the confessor could have done would have been
to send the penitent to some one competent to grant absolution, which
would only have been administered under the heaviest penance, including
denunciation of the Order. To suppose, in fact, that thousands of men,
during a period of fifty or a hundred years, could have been entrapped
into such a heresy without its becoming matter of notoriety, is in
itself so violent an assumption as to deprive the whole story of all
claims upon belief.
Thus the more closely the enormous aggregate of testimony is examined
the more utterly worthless it appears, and this is confirmed by the fact
that nowhere could compromising evidence be obtained without the use of
inquisitorial methods. Had thousands of men been unwillingly forced to
abjure their faith and been terrorized into keeping the dread secret, as
soon as the pressure was removed by the seizure there would have been a
universal eagerness to unburden the conscience and seek reconciliation
with the Church. No torture would have been requisite to obtain all the
evidence required. In view, therefore, of the extreme improbability of
the charge, of the means employed to obtain proof for its support, and
the lack of coherence in the proof so obtained, it appears to me that no
judicial mind in possession of the facts can hesitate to pronounce a
sentence, not merely of not proven, but of acquittal. The theory that
there were inner grades in the Order, by which those alone to be trusted
were initiated in its secret doctrines, is perfectly untenable. As there
is no evidence of any kind to support it, it is a matter of mere
conjecture, which is sufficiently negatived by the fact that with scarce
an exception those who confessed, whether ploughmen or knights, relate
the sacrilege as taking place on their admission. If the witnesses on
whom the prosecution relied are to be believed at all, the infection
pervaded the whole Order.
Yet it is by no means improbable that there may have been some
foundation for the popular gossip that the neophyte at his reception was
forced to kiss the posteriors of his preceptor. As we have seen, a large
majority of the Order consisted of serving brethren on whom the knights
looked down with infinite contempt. Some such occasional command on the
part of a reckless knight, to enforce the principle of absolute
obedience, in admitting a plebeian to nominal fraternity and equality,
would not have been foreign to the manners of the age. Who can say,
moreover, that men, soured with the disillusion of life within the
Order, chafing under the bonds of their irrevocable vow, and perhaps
released from all religious convictions amid the license of the East,
may not occasionally have tested the obedience of a neophyte by bidding
him to spit at the cross on the mantle that had grown hateful to
him?[303] No one who recognizes the wayward perversity of human nature,
or who is familiar with the condition of monasticism at the period, can
deny the possibilities of such occasional performances, whether as
brutal jokes or spiteful assertions of supremacy, but the only rational
conclusion from the whole tremendous tragedy is that the Order was
innocent of the crime for which it was punished.
* * * * *
While Philippe was seizing his prey, Clement, at Poitiers, was occupied
in the equally lucrative work of sending collectors throughout Germany
to exact a tithe of all ecclesiastical revenues for the recovery of the
Holy Land. When aroused from this with the news that Philippe, under the
authority of Frère Guillaume the inquisitor, had thus taken decided and
irrevocable action in a matter which was still before him for
consideration, his first emotion naturally was that of wounded pride and
indignation, sharpened perhaps by the apprehension that he would not be
able to secure his share of the spoils. He dared not publicly disavow
responsibility for the act, and what would be the current of public
opinion outside of France no man could divine. In this cruel dilemma he
wrote to Philippe, October 27, 1307, expressing his indignation that the
king should have taken action in a matter which the brief of August 24
showed to be receiving papal consideration. Carefully suppressing the
fact of the intervention of the Inquisition which legally justified the
whole proceeding, Clement sought a further ground of complaint by
reminding the king that Templars were not under royal jurisdiction, but
under that of the Holy See, and he had committed a grave act of
disobedience in seizing their persons and property, both of which must
be forthwith delivered to two cardinals sent for the purpose. These were
Berenger de Frédole, Cardinal of SS. Nereo and Achille, and Étienne de
Suissi of S. Ciriaco, both Frenchmen and creatures of Philippe, who had
procured their elevation to the sacred college. He seems to have had no
trouble in coming to an understanding with them, for, though the trials
and tortures were pushed unremittingly, another letter of Clement's,
December 1, praises the king for putting the matter in the hands of the
Holy See, and one of Philippe's of December 24 announces that he had no
intention of infringing on the rights of the Church and does not intend
to abandon his own; he has, he says, delivered the Templars to the
cardinals, and the administration of their property shall be kept
separate from that of the crown. Clement's susceptibilities being thus
soothed, even before the trials at Paris were ended he issued, November
22, the bull _Pastoralis præeminentiæ_, addressed to all the potentates
of Europe, in which he related what Philippe had done at the requisition
of the Inquisitor of France, in order that the Templars might be
presented to the judgment of the Church; how the chiefs of the Order had
confessed the crimes imputed to them; how he himself had examined one of
them who was employed about his person and had confirmed the truth of
the allegations. Therefore he orders all the sovereigns to do likewise,
retaining the prisoners and holding their property in the name of the
pope and subject to his order. Should the Order prove innocent the
property is to be restored to it, otherwise it is to be employed for the
recovery of the Holy Land.[304] This was the irrevocable act which
decided the fate of the Templars, as we shall see hereafter when we
consider the action of the princes of Europe outside of France.
Philippe thus had forced Clement's hand, and Clement was fairly
committed to the investigation, which in the hands of the Inquisition
could only end in the destruction of the Order. Secure in his position,
the king pushed on the examination of the prisoners throughout the
kingdom, and the vigilance of his agents is shown in the case of two
German Templars returning home, whom they arrested at Chaumont and
delivered to the Inquisitor of the Three Bishoprics. One was a priest,
the other a serving brother, and the inquisitor in reporting to Philippe
says that he had not tortured the latter because he was very sick, but
that neither had admitted that there was in the Order aught that was not
pure and holy. The examinations went on during the winter of 1308, when
Clement unexpectedly put a stop to them. What was his motive we can only
conjecture; probably he found that Philippe's promises with regard to
the Templar possessions were not likely to be fulfilled, and that an
assertion of his control was necessary. Whatever his reasons, he
suddenly suspended in the premises the power of all the inquisitors and
bishops in France and evoked to himself the cognizance of the whole
affair, alleging that the suddenness of the seizure without consulting
him, although so near and so accessible, had excited in him grave
suspicions, which had not been allayed by the records of the
examinations submitted to him, for these were of a character rather to
excite incredulity--though in November he had proclaimed to all
Christendom his conviction of their truth. It shows how completely the
whole judicial proceedings were inquisitional that this brought them to
an immediate close, provoking Philippe to uncontrollable wrath. Angrily
he wrote to Clement that he had sinned greatly: even popes, he hints,
may fall into heresy; he had wronged all the prelates and inquisitors of
France; he had inspired the Templars with hopes and they were retracting
their confessions, especially Hugues de Peraud, who had had the honor of
dining with the cardinal-deputies. Evidently some intrigue was on foot,
and Clement was balancing, irresolute as to which side offered most
advantage, and satisfied at least to show to Philippe that he was
indispensable. Philippe at first was disposed to assert his
independence and claim jurisdiction, and he applied to the University
for an opinion to support his claims, but the Faculty of Theology
replied, March 25, 1308, as it could not help doing: the Templars were
religious and consequently exempt from secular jurisdiction; the only
cognizance which a secular court could have over heresy was at the
request of the Church after it had abandoned the heretic; in case of
necessity the secular power could arrest a heretic, but it could only be
for the purpose of delivering him to the ecclesiastical court; and
finally the Templar property must be held for the purpose for which it
was given to the Order.[305]
Philippe, thus foiled, proceeded to bring a still stronger pressure to
bear on Clement. He appealed to his subservient bishops and summoned a
national assembly, to meet April 15 in Tours, to deliberate with him on
the subject of the Templars. Already, at the Assembly of Paris in 1302,
he had called in the Tiers-État and had learned to value its support in
his quarrel with Boniface, and now he again brought in the communes,
thus founding the institution of the States-General. After some delay
the assembly met in May. In his summons Philippe had detailed the crimes
of the Templars as admitted facts which ought to arouse for their
punishment not only arms and the laws, but brute cattle and the four
elements. He desired his subjects to participate in the pious work, and
therefore he ordered the towns to select each two deputies zealous for
the faith. From a gathering collected under such impulsion it was not
difficult, in spite of the secret leaning of the nobles to the
proscribed Order, to procure a virtually unanimous expression of opinion
that the Templars deserved death.[306]
With the prestige of the nation at his back, Philippe went from Tours,
at the end of May, to Clement at Poitiers, accompanied by a strong
deputation, including his brothers, his sons, and his councillors. Long
and earnest were the disputations over the affair, Philippe urging,
through his spokesman, Guillaume de Plaisian, that the Templars had been
found guilty and that immediate punishment should follow; Clement
reiterating his grievance that an affair of such magnitude, exclusively
appertaining to the Holy See, should be carried on without his
initiative. A body like the Order of the Temple had powerful friends all
over Europe whose influence with the curia was great, and the papal
perplexities were manifold as one side or the other preponderated; but
Clement had irrevocably committed himself in the face of all Europe by
his bull of November 22, and it was in reality but a question of the
terms on which he would allow the affair to go on in France by removing
the suspension of the powers of the Inquisition. The bargaining was
sharp, but an agreement was reached. As Clement had reserved the matter
for papal judgment, it was necessary that some show of investigation
should be had. Seventy-two Templars were drawn from the prisons of Paris
to be examined by the pope and sacred college, that they might be able
to assert personal knowledge of their guilt. Clement might well shrink
from confronting de Molay and the chiefs of the Order whom he was
betraying, while at the same time they could not be arbitrarily omitted.
They were therefore stopped at Chinon near Tours, under pretext of
sickness, while the others were sent forward to Poitiers. From the 28th
of June to July 1 they were solemnly examined by five cardinals friendly
to Philippe deputed for the purpose. The official report of the
examinations shows the care which had been exercised in the selection of
those who were to perform this scene in the drama. A portion of them
were spontaneous witnesses who had left, or had tried to leave, the
Order. The rest, with the terrible penalty for retraction impending over
them, confirmed the confessions made before the Inquisition, which in
many cases had been extracted by torture. Then, July 2, they were
brought before the pope in full consistory and the same scene was
enacted. Thus the papal jurisdiction was recognized; Clement in his
subsequent bulls could speak of his own knowledge, and could declare
that the accused had confessed their errors spontaneously and without
coercion, and had humbly begged for absolution and reconciliation.[307]
The agreement duly executed between Clement and Philippe bore that the
Templars should be delivered to the pope, but be guarded in his name by
the king; that their trials should be proceeded with by the bishops in
their several dioceses, to whom, at the special and earnest request of
the king, the inquisitors were adjoined--but de Molay and the Preceptors
of the East, of Normandy, Poitou, and Provence, were reserved for the
papal judgment; the property was to be placed in the hands of
commissioners named by the pope and bishops, to whom the king was
secretly to add appointees of his own, but he was to pledge himself in
writing that it should be employed solely for the Holy Land. Clement
assumed that the fate of the Order, as an institution, was too weighty a
question to be decided without the intervention of a general council,
and it was decided to call one in October, 1310. The Cardinal of
Palestrina was named as the papal representative in charge of the
persons of the Templars--a duty which he speedily fulfilled by
transferring them to the king under condition that they should be held
at the disposition of the Church. Clement performed his part of the
bargain by removing, July 5, the suspension of the inquisitors and
bishops, and restoring their jurisdiction in the matter. Directions were
sent at the same time to each of the bishops in France to associate with
himself two cathedral canons, two Dominicans, and two Franciscans, and
proceed with the trials of the individual Templars within his diocese,
admitting inquisitors to participate at will, but taking no action
against the Order as a whole; all persons were ordered, under pain of
excommunication, to arrest Templars and deliver them to the inquisitors
or episcopal officials, and Philippe furnished twenty copies of royal
letters commanding his subjects to restore to the papal deputies all
property, real and personal, of the Order.[308]
Although Clement declared in his bulls to Europe that Philippe had
manifested his disinterestedness by surrendering all the Templar
property, the question was one which gave rise to a good deal of skilful
fencing on both sides. It is not worth while to pursue the affair in its
details, but we shall see how in the end Philippe successfully cheated
his partner in the game and retained the control which he apparently
gave up.[309]
The rival powers having thus come to an understanding about their
victims, proceedings were resumed with fresh energy. Clement made up for
his previous hesitation with ample show of zeal. De Molay and the chief
officials with him were detained at Chinon until the middle of August,
when the Cardinals of SS. Nereo and Achille, of S. Ciriaco and of S.
Angelo, were sent thither to examine them. These reported, August 20, to
Philippe, that on the 17th and following days they had interrogated the
Grand Master, the Master of Cyprus, the Visitor of France, and the
Preceptors of Normandy and Poitou, who had confirmed their previous
confessions and had humbly asked for absolution and reconciliation,
which had been duly given them, and the king is asked to pardon them.
There are two things noteworthy in this which illustrate the duplicity
pervading the whole affair. In the papal bulls of August 12, five days
before this examination was commenced, its results are fully set forth,
with the assertion that the confessions were free and spontaneous.
Moreover, when, in November, 1309, this bull was read over by the papal
commission to de Molay, on hearing its recital of what he was said to
have confessed he was stupefied, and, crossing himself twice, said he
wished to God the custom of the Saracens and Tartars were observed
towards persons so perverse, for they beheaded or cut in two those who
thus perverted the truth. He might have said more had not Guillaume de
Plaisian, the royal agent, who pretended to be his friend, cautioned him
as to the risk which he ran in thus constructively retracting his
confession, and he contented himself with asking for time for
consideration.[310]
On August 12 Clement issued a series of bulls which regulated the
methods of procedure in the case, and showed that he was prepared fully
to perform his part of the agreement with Philippe. The bull _Faciens
misericordiam_, addressed to the prelates of Christendom, recited at
great length the proceedings thus far taken against the accused, and the
guilt which they had spontaneously acknowledged; it directed the
bishops, in conjunction with inquisitorial commissioners appointed by
the pope, to summon all Templars before them and make inquisition
concerning them. After this provincial councils were to be summoned,
where the guilt or innocence of the individuals was to be determined,
and in all the proceedings the local inquisitors had a right to take
part. The results of the inquisitions, moreover, were to be promptly
transmitted to the pope. With this was enclosed a long and elaborate
series of articles on which the accused were to be examined--articles
drawn up in Paris by the royal officials--and the whole was ordered to
be published in the vernacular in all parish churches. The bull _Regnans
in cælis_, addressed to all princes and prelates, repeated the narrative
part of the other, and ended by convoking, for October 1, 1310, a
general council at Vienne, to decide as to the fate of the Order, to
consult as to the recovery of the Holy Land, and to take such action as
might be required for the reformation of the Church. By another bull,
_Faciens misericordiam_, dated August 8, a formal summons was issued to
all and singular of the Templars to appear before the council,
personally or by procurators, on a certain day, to answer to the charges
against the Order, and the Cardinal of Palestrina, who was in charge of
them, was ordered to produce de Molay and the Preceptors of France,
Normandy, Poitou, Aquitaine, and Provence to receive sentence. This was
the simplest requirement of judicial procedure, and the manner in which
it was subsequently eluded forms one of the darkest features in the
whole transaction. Finally there were other bulls elaborately providing
for the payment of the papal commissioners and inquisitors, and ordering
the Templar possessions everywhere to be sequestrated to await the
result of the trial, and to be devoted to the Holy Land in case of
condemnation. Much, it was stated, had already been wickedly seized and
appropriated, and all persons were summoned to make restitution, under
pain of excommunication. All debtors to the Order were summoned to pay,
and all persons cognizant of such debts or of stolen property were
required to give information. The series of bulls was completed by one
of December 30, to be read in all churches, declaring all Templars to be
suspect of heresy, ordering their capture as such and delivery to the
episcopal ordinaries, and forbidding all potentates and prelates from
harboring them or showing them any aid or favor, under pain of
excommunication and interdict. At the same time another bull was
directed to all the princes of Christendom, commanding them to seize any
Templars who might as yet not have been arrested.[311]
The prosecution of the Templars throughout Europe was thus organized.
Even such distant points as Achaia, Corsica, and Sardinia were not
neglected. The large number of special inquisitors to be appointed was a
work of time, and the correspondence between Philippe and Clement on the
subject shows that they virtually were selected by the king. In France
the work of prosecution was speedily set on foot, and, after a respite
of some six months, the Templars found themselves transferred from the
improvised inquisitorial tribunals set on foot by Frère Guillaume to the
episcopal courts as provided by Clement. In every diocese the bishops
were soon busily at work. Curiously enough, some of them doubted whether
they could use torture, and applied for instructions, to which Clement
answered that they were to be governed by the written law, which removed
their misgivings. The papal instructions indicate that these proceedings
only concerned those Templars who had not passed through the hands of
Frère Guillaume and his commissioners, but there seems to have been
little distinction observed as to this. Clement urged forward the
proceedings with little regard to formality, and authorized the bishops
to act outside of their respective dioceses, and without respect to the
place of origin of the accused. The sole object evidently was to extract
from them satisfactory confessions, as a preparation for the provincial
councils which were to be summoned for their final judgment. Those who
had already confessed were not likely to retract. Before the papal
commission in 1310, Jean de Cochiac exhibited a letter from Philippe de
Vohet and Jean de Jamville, the papal and royal custodians of the
prisoners, to those confined at Sens at the time the Bishop of Orleans
was sent there to examine them (the archbishopric of Sens was then
vacant), warning them that those who revoked the confessions made before
"_los quizitor_" would be burned as relapsed. Vohet, when summoned
before the commission, admitted the seal to be his, but denied
authorizing the letter, and the commission prudently abstained from
pushing the investigation further. The nervous anxiety manifested by
most of those brought before the commission that their statements should
accord with what they had said before the bishops, shows that they
recognized the danger which they incurred.[312]
The treatment of those who refused to confess varied with the temper of
the bishops and their adjuncts. The records of their tribunals have
mostly disappeared, and we are virtually left to gather what we can from
the utterances of a few witnesses who made to the commission chance
allusions to their former experiences. Yet the proceedings before the
Bishop of Clermont would show that they were not in all cases treated
with undue harshness. He had sixty-nine Templars, of whom forty
confessed, and twenty-nine refused to admit any evil in the Order. Then
he assembled them and divided them into the two groups. The recusants
declared that they adhered to their assertion, and that if they should
subsequently confess through fear of torture, prison, or other
affliction, they protested that they should not be believed, and that it
should not prejudice them, nor does it appear that any constraint was
afterwards put upon them. The others were asked whether they had any
defence to offer, or whether they were ready for definitive sentence,
when they unanimously declared that they had nothing to offer nor wished
to hear their sentence, but submitted themselves to the mercy of the
Church. What that mercy was we shall see hereafter. All bishops were not
as mild as he of Clermont, but in the fragmentary recitals before the
commission it is not always easy to distinguish the action of the
episcopal tribunals from that of Frère Guillaume's inquisitors. A few
instances will suffice to show how, between the two, testimony was
obtained against the Order. Jean de Rompreye, a husbandman, declared
that he knew nothing but good of the Order, although he had confessed
otherwise before the Bishop of Orleans after being thrice tortured.
Robert Vigier, a serving brother, likewise denied the accusations,
though he had confessed them before the Bishop of Nevers at Paris, on
account of the fierceness of the torture, under which he understood that
three of his comrades, Gautier, Henri, and Chanteloup, had died. Bernard
de Vado, a priest, had been tortured by fire applied to the soles of the
feet to such an extent that a few days afterwards the bones of his heels
dropped out, in testimony of which he exhibited the bones. Nineteen
brethren from Périgord had confessed before the Bishop of Périgord
through torture and starvation--one of them had been kept for six months
on bread and water, without shoes or upper clothing. Guillaume d'Erré,
when brought before the Bishop of Saintes, had denied all the charges,
but after being put on bread and water and threatened with torture, had
confessed to renouncing Christ and spitting at the cross--a confession
which he now retracts. Thomas de Pamplona, under many tortures inflicted
on him at St. Jean d'Angely, had confirmed the confession made by de
Molay, and then, upon being put upon bread and water, had confessed
before the Bishop of Saintes to spitting at the cross, all of which he
now retracts. These instances might be multiplied out of the few who
had the hardihood to incur the risk of martyrdom attendant upon
withdrawing their confessions. Indeed, in the universal terror impressed
on the friendless and defenceless wretches, we cannot condemn those who
yielded, and can only admire the constancy of those who endured the
torture and braved the stake in defence of the Order. What was the
general feeling among them was voiced by Aymon de Barbara, who had
thrice been tortured, and had for nine weeks been kept on bread and
water. He pitifully said that he had suffered in body and soul, but as
for retracting his confession, he would not do so as long as he was in
prison. The mental struggles which the poor creatures endured are well
illustrated by Jean de Cormèle, Preceptor of Moissac, who when brought
before the commission hesitated and would not describe the ceremonies at
his own reception, though he declared that he had seen nothing wrong at
the reception of others. The recollection of the tortures which he had
endured in Paris, in which he had lost four teeth, completely unnerved
him, and he begged to have time for consideration. He was given until
the next day, and when he reappeared his resolution had broken down. He
confessed the whole catalogue of villainies; and when asked if he had
consulted any one, denied it, but said that he had requested a priest to
say for him a mass of the Holy Ghost that God might direct him what to
do.[313]