In fact, the whole matter was strictly inquisitorial business, and it is a noteworthy fact that where the Inquisition was in good working order, as in France and Italy, there was no difficulty in obtaining the requisite evidence. In Castile and Germany it failed; in England, as we shall see, nothing could be done until the Inquisition was practically established temporarily for the purpose.
[278] Dom Bouquet, XXI. 448.—Vaissette, IV. 139.—Chron. Anon. (Bouquet, XXI. 137, 149).—Cont. Guill. Nangiac. ann. 1307.—Joann. de S. Victor. (Bouquet, XXI. 649).—Procès des Templiers, I. 458; II. 373.
[279] Joann. de S. Victor (Bouquet, XXI. 649-50).—Contin. Guill. Nangiac. ann. 1307.—Chron. Anon. (Bouquet, XXI. 137).—Schottmüller, op. cit. I. 131-33.—Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. V. c. 73.—Procès des Templiers, II. 6, 375, 386, 394.—Du Puy, pp. 25-6, 88-91, 101-6.—Raynouard, pp. 39-40, 164, 235-8, 240-5.—Procès des Templiers, I. 36, 69, 203, 301; II. 305-6.—Ptol. Lucens. Hist. Eccles. Lib. XXIV. (Muratori S. R. I. XI. 1230).—Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1307.—Chron. Anon. (Bouquet, XXI. 149).
[280] Pissot, pp. 41-2.—Procès des Templiers, I. 89 sqq.—Mag. Bull. Roman. IX. 129 sqq.—Raynouard, p. 50.—Grandes Chroniques V. 188-90.—Chron. Anon. (Bouquet, XXI. 137).—Naucleri Chron. ann. 1306.
[281] Wilcke, II. 424.—Procès des Templiers, II. 218.—The flimsiness of the evidence which suffices to satisfy archaeologists of this kind is seen in the laborious trifling of M. Mignard, who finds in a sculptured stone coffer, discovered at Essarois in 1789, all the secrets of gnostic Manichæism, and who thereupon leaps to the conclusion that the coffer must have belonged to the Templars who had a preceptory within eight or ten miles of the place, and that it served as a receptacle for the Baphometic idol (Mignard, Monographie du coffret de M. le duc de Blacas, Paris, 1852.—Suite, 1853).
It is impossible to listen without respect to Professor Hans Prutz, whose labors in the archives of Valetta I have freely quoted above, and one can only view with regret the efforts of such a man wasted in piecing together contradictory statements of tortured witnesses to evolve out of them a dualistic heresy—an amalgamation of Catharan elements with Luciferan beliefs, to which even the unlucky Stedingers contribute corroboration (Geheimlehre u. Geheimstatuten des Tempelherren-Ordens, Berlin, 1879, pp. 62, 86, 100). It ought to be sufficient to prevent such wasted labor for the future, to call attention to the fact that if there had been ardor and conviction enough in the Order to risk the organization and propagation of a new heresy, there would, unquestionably, have been at least a few martyrs, such as all other heretical sects furnished. Yet not a single Templar avowed the faith attributed to them and persisted in it. All who confessed under the stress of the prosecution eagerly abjured the errors attributed to them and asked for absolution. A single case of obstinacy would have been worth to Philippe and Clement all the other testimony, and would have been made the pivotal point of the trials, but there was not one such. All the Templars who were burned were martyrs of another sort—men who had confessed under torture, had retracted their confessions, and who preferred the stake to the disgrace of persisting in the admission extorted from them. It does not seem to occur to the ingenious framers of heretical beliefs for the Templars that they must construct a heresy whose believers will not suffer death in its defence, but will endure to be burned in scores rather than submit to the stigma of having it ascribed to them. The mere statement of the case is enough to show the fabulous character of all the theories so laboriously constructed, especially that of M. Mignard, who proves that the Templars were Cathari—heretics whose aspiration for martyrdom was peculiarly notorious.
I have not been able to consult Loiseleur’s “La Doctrine Secrète des Templiers” (Orleans, 1872), but from Prutz’s references to it I gather that it is grounded on the same false basis and is open to the same easy refutation. Wilcke’s speculations are too perversely crude to be worth attention.
[282] Writers unfamiliar with the judicial processes of the period are misled by the customary formula, to the effect that the confirmation of a confession is not obtained by force or fear of torture. See Raynald. ann. 1307, No. 12, and Bini, Dei Tempieri in Toscana, p. 428. Wilcke asserts positively (op. cit. II. 318) that de Molay never was tortured, which may possibly be true (Amalr. Auger. Vit. Clem. V. ap. Muratori III. ii. 461), but he saw his comrades around him subjected to torture, and it was a mere question of strength of nerve whether he yielded before or after the rack. Prutz even says that in England neither torture nor terrorism was employed (Geheimlehre, p. 104), which we will see below was not the case. Van Os (De Abol. Ord. Templ. pp. 107, 109) is bolder, and argues that a confession confirmed after torture is as convincing as if no torture had been used. He carefully suppresses the fact, however, that retraction was held to be relapse and entailed death by burning.
How the system worked is illustrated by the examination of the Preceptor of Cyprus, Raimbaud de Caron, before the inquisitor Guillaume, Nov. 10, 1307. When first interrogated he would only admit that he had been told in the presence of his uncle, the Bishop of Carpentras, that he would have to renounce Christ to obtain admission. He was then removed and subsequently brought back, when he remembered that at his reception he had been forced to renounce Christ and spit on the cross, and had been taught that the gratification of unnatural lust was permissible. Yet this confession, so evidently the result of torture, winds up with the customary formula that he swore it was not the result of force or fear of prison or torture.—Procès. II. 374-5.
[283] Procès, II. 188, 407.