"I declare then, on peril of my soul, and on the oath which I have taken, that, at the time of my reception, I neither denied God nor spat upon the cross, nor committed any of the indecencies of which we are accused, and was not required so to do. It is true that I have made confessions before the inquisitors; but it was through the fear of death, and because Giles de Rotangi had, with tears, said to me, and many others who were with me in prison at Montreuil, that we should pay for it with our lives, if we did not assist by our confessions to destroy the order. I yielded, and afterwards I wished to confess myself to the Bishop of Amiens; he referred me to a Minorite friar; I accused myself of this falsehood, and obtained absolution, on condition that I would make no more false depositions in this affair. I tell you the truth; I persist in attesting it before you; come what may of it, I prefer my soul to my body."
Nothing can bear more plainly the character of truth than this declaration; yet three days afterwards the witness came back, revoked it all, spoke of the cat which used to appear in the chapters, and said that, if the order had not been abolished, he would have quitted it. Had he not been well menaced and tortured in the interim?
The examination of Peter de la Palu, a bachelor in theology of the order of the preachers, the 201st witness, brought from him these remarkable words: "I have been present at the examination of several Templars, some of whom confessed many of the things contained in the said articles, and some others totally denied them; and for many reasons it appeared to me that greater credit was to be given to those who denied than to those who confessed."
Chapter XI.
Examinations in England—Germany—Spain—Italy—Naples and Provence—Sicily—Cyprus—Meeting of the Council of Vienne—Suppression of the order—Fate of its Members—Death of Molay.
The time fixed for the meeting of the council at Vienne was now at hand, in which the fate of the order was to be decided. Before we proceed to narrate its acts we will briefly state the result of the examinations of the Templars in other countries.
The pope sent, as his judges, to England, Dieu-donné, abbot of Lagny, and Sicard de Vaux, canon of Narbonne; and the examinations commenced at York, London, Lincoln, and other places, on the 25th November, 1309. The inquiry continued till the council held in London in 1311; the number of Templars examined was two hundred and twenty-eight; that of the witnesses against the order was seventy-two, almost all Carmelites, Minorites, Dominicans, and Augustinians, the natural foes of the order. The Templars were treated with great mildness; and in England, Ireland, and Scotland, they were unanimous and constant in their assertion of the innocence of the order. The evidence against the order was almost all hearsay: its nature will be shown by the following specimens.
John de Goderal, a Minorite, had heard that Robert de Raxat, a Templar, had once gone about a meadow crying "Wo, wo is me! that ever I was born. I have been forced to deny God, and give myself up to the devil."