[177] This must be Henry VII. from the dates, the contemporary princes, and the character given of the monarch.—Trans.
[178] How amusing, and, at the same time, wonderfully instructive it is, to read these schemes of philosophers and statemen a hundred and fifty years after they have occupied their thoughts by day and their visions by night!—Trans.
[179] Words intertwined with the letters of the cipher of the Grand Seignor.
[180] This passage being the basis of all the privileges of the French in Turkey, it often serves as a motive in the requests of ambassadors, and as a foundation for the firmans of the Grand Seignor.
[181] Much more is wanting to show that the informations received against the Templars furnished either moral or legal proof of the existence of the Bafometic figures. The act of accusation says not one word of it. There is no mention of it in the great procedure instituted at Paris, or in the numerous depositions of the witnesses whom the inquisitor and the commissaries of the pope questioned. Of the six witnesses heard at Carcassonne, who declared that an idol was presented to them, only two designated it in Figuram Bafometi. One, Gaucerand de Montpesat, when brought to Paris, retracted all preceding confession; there only then remained one single witness, of whose ulterior conduct and end nothing is known. It is proved, that of the other four persons interrogated at Carcassonne, Jean Cassauhas and Peter de Mossi retracted their first deposition, and Jean Cassauhas was burnt in that city.
[182] The pretended truncated cross, which M. Hammer believed he recognised upon the medals, which otherwise have nothing to do with the Templars, is nothing but the effect of the superposition of a hand upon the upper part of an ordinary cross; this hand, which holds the cross by the top, is found upon many medals and coins which M. Hammer himself would not dare to attribute to the Templars.
[183] Raimundus de Agiles says of the Mahometans: In ecclesiis autem magnis Bafumarias faciebant ... habebant monticulum ubi duæ erant Bafumariæ. The troubadours employ Baformaria for mosque, and Bafomet for Mahomet.