Secret Societies of the Middle Ages

by Thomas Keightley

Orders having been given that all the Templars who were desirous to undertake the defence of the order should be conveyed to Paris, they were brought thither strongly guarded. The commission then renewed its sittings. As the prisoners were successively brought before it, they, with few exceptions, declared their readiness to defend their order—till death, cried some; till the end, cried others; because I wish to save my soul, added one. Bertrand de St. Paul declared that he never did, and never would, confess the guilt of the order, because it was not true; and that he believed that God would work a miracle if the body of Christ was administered to those who confessed and those who denied. Seven of those who had been examined before the pope, and had confessed, now declared that they had lied, and revoked what they then said. John de Valgellé maintained that he had made no confession on that occasion. "I was tortured so much, and held so long before a burning fire," said Bernard de Vado, "that the flesh of my heels was burnt, and these two bones (which he showed) came off."

In the course of these examinations, a Templar, named Laurent de Beaune, showed a letter with the seals of Philip de Voet and John Jainville, the persons set by the pope and king over the prisoners, addressed to the Templars confined at Sens, inviting them to confess what was required, and declaring that the pope had given orders that those who did not persevere in their confessions should be committed to the flames. Philip de Voet, on being interrogated, said that he did not believe that he had sent that letter; his seal had often lain in the hands of his secretary; he had always advised the prisoners to speak the truth. Jainville was not examined, neither was John Carpini, the bearer of the letter. De Beaune was one of the first afterwards committed to the flames; the supposition is natural, that the letter was a stratagem of the king and his ministers.

The Master having been again brought before the commissioners, and having renewed his demand of being sent to the pope, they promised to write to the pope on the subject, but there is no proof of their having done so.

On the 28th March all the Templars who had expressed their willingness to defend the order were assembled in the garden of the bishop's palace. Their number was 546. The Master was not among them. The articles of accusation were then read over to them in Latin; the commissioners ordered that they should be read again to them in the vulgar tongue, but the knights all cried out that it was enough, they did not desire that such abominations, which were false and not to be named, should be repeated in the vulgar language. Again, they complained of the deprivation of their religious habits and the sacraments of the church, and desired that the Master and the heads of the order should be called thither also. But this reasonable request was not complied with. In vain the Master demanded to be brought before the pope; in vain the knights required to be permitted to enjoy the presence of their chief. Neither the one nor the other suited the interest or the designs of the king.

The number of the Templars in Paris soon amounted to near 900. The commissioners were desirous that they should appoint agents to manage their defence; but this they declined to do, some alleging that they could not do so without the consent of their chief, others insisting on defending the order in person. At length, after a great deal of argument and deliberation, seventy-five Templars were chosen to draw up the defence of the order; and the priests of the order, Raynaud de Pruino and Peter of Bologna, and the knights, William de Chambonnet and Bertrand de Sartiges, were appointed to be present at the deposition of the witnesses.

The act of accusation against the Templars, drawn up in the name of the pope, ran thus. At the time of their reception they were made to deny God, Christ, the Virgin, &c.; in particular to declare that Christ was not the true God, but a false prophet, who had been crucified for his own crimes, and not for the redemption of the world. They spat and trampled on the cross, especially on Good Friday. They worshipped a cat which sometimes appeared in their chapters. Their priests, when celebrating mass, did not pronounce the words of consecration. They believed that their Master could absolve them from their sins. They were told at their reception that they might abandon themselves to all kinds of licentiousness. They had idols in all their provinces, some with three faces, some with one. They worshipped these idols in their chapters, believed that they could save them, regarded them as the givers of wealth to the order, and of fertility to the earth; they touched them with cords which they afterwards tied round their own bodies. Those who at the time of their reception would not comply with these practices were put to death or imprisoned. All this, it was stated, took place according to the statutes of the order; it was a general and ancient custom, and there was no other mode of reception. The act of accusation stated farther that the Templars stopped at no means of enriching the order[102].

The Templars, in their reply, asserted that all these imputations were false, and that if any of them had confessed them, they had done so under terror and violence, thirty-six having expired by torture at Paris and several others elsewhere. The forms of law had been violated with respect to them; to obtain from them false depositions letters of the king had been shown them declaring that the order had been condemned irrevocably, and offering life, liberty, and pensions, to those who would depose falsely. "All these facts, said they, are so public and so notorious that there are no means or pretexts for disavowing them." The heads of accusation were nothing but falsehoods and absurdities, and the bull contained nothing but horrible, detestable, and iniquitous falsehoods. Their order was pure, and if their statutes were consulted they would be found to be the same for all Templars and for all countries. Their belief was that of the Church; parents brought their children, brothers each other, uncles their nephews, into the order, because it was pure and holy. When in captivity to the infidels, the Templars died sooner than renounce their religion. They declared their readiness to defend their innocence in every way, and against every person except the pope and the king, demanded to be brought personally before the general council, required that those who had quitted the order and deposed against it should be kept in close custody till their truth or falsehood should be ascertained, and that no layman should be present to intimidate the accused when under examination. The knights, they maintained, had been struck with such terror, that the false confessions made by some were less matter of surprise than the courage of those who maintained the truth was of admiration. Inquire, said they, of those who were present at the last moments of the knights who died in prison; let their confessions be revealed, and it will be seen if the accusations are true. Is it not strange, asked they in conclusion, that more credit should be given to the lies of those who yielded to tortures or to promises than to the asseverations of those who, in defence of the truth, have died with the palm of martyrdom—of the sound majority of those knights who have suffered and still suffer so much for conscience' sake?

On the 11th April, 1310, the hearing of the witnesses against the order commenced. Only twenty-one were produced, two of whom did not belong to the order, the others being principally those who had persisted in their declarations before the pope. As might be expected, all the crimes laid to the charge of the order in the papal bull were again deposed to by these men; but the commission had only got as far as the examination of the thirteenth witness when the impatience of the king manifested itself in a barbarous and illegal act, which had apparently long been meditated.

The Archbishop of Sens, whose suffragan the Bishop of Paris was, had died about Easter, 1309, and the pope had reserved the nomination to himself. Philip wrote to him requiring of him to nominate Philip de Marigny, Bishop of Cambray, brother to Enquerrand, his prime minister, alleging that his youth was no just impediment, and that his acts would prove how much he was beyond his age. The pope, though very reluctant, was obliged to consent, and in April, 1310, Marigny was installed. No time was now lost in proceeding to operation. On Sunday, May 10, the four defenders of the order learned that the provincial council of Sens was convoked at Paris in order to proceed against the knights individually. They took alarm, and applied to the commission, which, though it did not sit on Sundays, assembled, and Peter of Bologna informed them of what he had heard. He begged that they would suffer him to read an appeal which he had drawn up. This they declined doing, but said that, if he had any defence of the order to give in, they would receive it. He forthwith laid down a written paper, stating the danger which the prisoners were in dread of, appealing to the holy see, and entreating the commission to stop the proceedings of the archbishop and his suffragans. The defenders of the order then retired, and the further consideration of the affair was put off till after vespers, when they re-appeared and gave in an address to the Archbishop of Sens, containing an appeal to the pope. The commissioners, however, declined interfering for the present.

It is to be noticed that the defenders of the order prayed on this occasion of the commission to nominate one or more of its notaries to draw up their act of defence, because they could find no notary who would act for them, owing probably to fear of the royal displeasure, or to the want of funds by the accused.