The Story of Paris

by Thomas Okey

CHAPTER VII

Conflict with Boniface VIII.—The States-General—The Destruction of the Knights-Templars—The Parlement

In 1302 the eyes of Europe were again drawn to Paris where the Fourth Philip, surnamed the Fair, a prince who, in Dante's grim metaphor, scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged her to do his will in France, was grappling with the great pontiff, Boniface VIII.—the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim to universal secular supremacy—and essaying a task which had baffled the mighty emperors themselves.

The king knowing he had embarked on a struggle in which the greatest potentates had been worsted, determined to appeal to the patriotism of all classes of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of such popular opinion as then existed. For the first time the States-General were summoned, after the burning of the papal bull in Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th February 1302. Their meeting marks an epoch in French history, and for the first time members of the Tiers État (the third estate, or commons), sat beside the privileged orders of clergy and nobles, and were recognised as one of the legitimate orders of the realm. The assembly was convoked to meet in Notre Dame on the 10th of April. The question was the old one which had rent Christendom asunder for centuries: Was the pope at Rome to be supreme over the princes and peoples of the earth in secular as well as in spiritual matters? The utmost enthusiasm prevailed, and though the prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice, the assembled members swore to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice the honour of the crown and their own liberties to the insolent usurpation of Rome. Excommunication followed, but Philip had ordered all the passes from Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or messenger should enter France. "Boniface, who," says Villani, the Florentine chronicler, "was proud and scornful, and bold to attempt every great deed, magnanimous and puissant," replied by announcing the publication of a bull deposing the king from his throne and releasing his subjects from their allegiance. Philip at an assembly in the garden of the palace in the Cité, and in presence of the chief ecclesiastical, religious and lay authorities, again laid his case before the people and read an appeal against the pope to a future Council of the Church.

The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On the 7th, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city of Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, Philip's minister, bearing the royal banner of France, Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian nobles, with three hundred horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni, crying—"Death to Pope Boniface." The papal palace was unguarded: at the first alarm the cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a few faithful servants forsook their master. The defenceless pope believed that his hour was come, but, writes Villani, "Great-souled and valiant as he was, he said, 'Since like Jesus Christ I must be taken by treachery and suffer death, at least I will die like a pope.' He commanded his servants to robe him in the mantle of Peter, to place the crown of Constantine on his head and the keys and crozier in his hands." He ascended the papal throne and calmly waited. Guillaume, Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the apartment, sword in hand, uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and cowed by the indomitable old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling majesty, their weapons dropped as though their hands were palsied and none durst offend him. They set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace. For three days the grand old pope—he was eighty-six years of age—remained a prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and rescued him, and he returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated Boniface died of a broken heart, and before two years were passed his successor in Peter's chair, Pope Clement V., revoked all his bulls and censures, expunged them from the papal register, solemnly condemned his memory and restored the Colonna family to all their honours. Dante, who hated Boniface as cordially as Philip did, and cast him into hell, was yet revolted at the cruelty of the "new Pilate, who had carried the fleur-de-lys into Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked Him a second time, renewed the gall and vinegar, and slew Him between two living thieves." But the "new Pilate was not yet sated." The business at Anagni had only been effected spendendo molta moneta; the disastrous battle of Courtrai and the inglorious Flemish wars had exhausted the royal treasury; and the debasement of the coinage availing nought, Philip turned his lustful eyes on a once powerful lay order, whose chief seat was at Paris and whose wealth and pride were the talk of Christendom.

After the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment there of a Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however, piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder of unarmed pilgrims, on their journey from the coast, by hordes of roving lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks were powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in 1118, two young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, with other seven youths of highest birth, bound themselves into a lay community, with the object of protecting the pilgrims' way. They took the usual vows of poverty, charity and obedience; St. Bernard drew up their Rule—and we may be sure it was austere enough—pope and patriarch confirmed it. Their garb was a mantle of purest white linen with a red cross embroidered on the shoulder. The order was housed in a wing of the palace, which was built on the site of Solomon's Temple, hard by the Holy Sepulchre, and its members called themselves the Poor Soldiers of Christ and of Solomon's Temple. Their banner, half of black, half of white, was inscribed with the device "non nobis Domine." Their battle-cry "Beauceant," and their seal, two figures on horseback, have not been satisfactorily interpreted—the latter probably portrays a knight riding away with a rescued pilgrim. Soon the little band of nine was joined by hundreds of devoted youths from rich and noble families; endowments to provide them with arms and horses and servants flowed in, and thus was formed the most famous, the purest and the most heroic body of warriors the world has ever seen. Hugh de Payens had gathered three hundred Knights-Templars around him at Jerusalem: in five years nearly every one had been slain in battle. But enthusiasm filled the ranks faster than they were mowed down: none ever surrendered and the order paid no money for ransom. When hemmed in by overwhelming numbers, they fought till the last man fell, or died, a wounded captive, in the hands of the Saracens. Of the twenty-two Grand Masters, seven were killed in battle, five died of wounds, and one of voluntary starvation in the hands of the infidel.

When Acre was lost, and the last hold of the Christians in the Holy Land was wrested from them, only ten Knights-Templars of the five hundred who fought there escaped to Cyprus. They chose Jacques de Molay for Grand Master, replenished their treasury and renewed their members; but their mission was gone for ever. The order was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and subject to the pope alone; its wealth, courage and devotion were rusting for lack of employment. Boniface VIII., with that grandeur and daring which make of him, despite his faults, so magnificent a figure in history, conceived the idea of uniting them with the other military orders—the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights—and making of the united orders an invincible army to enforce on Europe the decrees of a benevolent and theocratic despotism. They soon became suspected and hated by bishops and kings alike, and at length were betrayed by the papacy itself to their enemies.

In 1304, a pair of renegade Templars,[73] who for their crimes were under sentence of imprisonment for life in the prison at Toulouse, sought an introduction to the king, and promised in return for their liberty to give information of certain monstrous crimes and sacrileges of common and notorious occurrence in the order. Depositions were taken and sent to Philip's creature, Pope Clement V. Some communication passed between them, but no action was taken and the matter seemed to have lapsed. About a year after these events the pope wrote an affectionate letter to Jacques de Molay, inviting him to bring the treasure of the order and his chief officers to France, to confer with himself and the king respecting a new crusade. Jacques and his companions, suspecting nothing, came and were received by pope and king with great friendliness: the treasure, twelve mules' load of gold and silver, was stored in the vaults of the great fortress of the Templars at Paris. Some rumours reached de Molay of the delation made by the Toulousian prisoners, but the pope reassured him in an interview, April 1307, and lulled him into security. On 14th September of the same year the royal officers of the realm were ordered to hold themselves armed for secret service on 12th October, and sealed letters were handed to them to be opened that night. At dawn on the 13th, all the Templars in France were arrested in their beds and flung into the episcopal gaols, and the bishops then proceeded to "examine" the prisoners. One hundred and forty were dealt with in Paris, the centre of the order. The charges and a confession of their truth by the Grand Master were read to them; denial, they were told, was useless: liberty would be the reward of confession, imprisonment the penalty of denial.

A few confessed and were set free. The remainder were "examined." Starvation and torture of the most incredible ferocity did their work. Thirty-six died under the rack in Paris, and many more in other places; most of the remainder confessed to anything the inquisitors required. Clement, warned by the growing feeling in Europe, now became alarmed, and the next act in the drama opens at the abbey of St. Genevieve in Paris, where a papal commission sat to hear what the Templars had to say in their defence. All were invited to give evidence and promised immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came to Paris to defend their order,[74] but having been made to understand by the bishops that they would be burned as heretics if they retracted their confessions, they held back for a time until solemnly assured by the papal commissioners that they had nothing to fear, and might freely speak. Ponzardus de Gysiaco, preceptor of Payens, then came forward and disclosed the atrocious means used to extort confessions, and said if he were so tortured again he would confess anything that were demanded of him; he would face death, however horrible, even by boiling and fire, in defence of his order, but long-protracted and agonising torture was beyond human endurance. Ponzardus was sent back to confinement and the warders were bidden to see that he suffered naught for what he had said. The rugged old master, Jacques de Molay, scarred by honourable wounds, the marks of many a battle with the infidel, was brought before the court and his alleged confession read to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if his enemies were not priests he would know how to deal with them. A second time he was examined and preposterous charges of unnatural crimes were preferred against the order by the king's chancellor, Guillaume de Nogaret. They were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and based on certain statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan of Babylon (Egypt). Again he was stupefied, and declared he had never heard of such things. And now the Templars' courage rose. Two hundred and thirty-one came forward, emaciated, racked and torn; among them one poor wretch was carried in, whose feet had been burnt by slow fires.[75] Nearly all protested that the confessions had been wrung from them by torture, that their accusers were perjurers, and that they would maintain the purity of their order usque ad mortem ("even unto death"). Many complained that they were poor, illiterate soldiers, neither able to pay for legal defence nor to comprehend the charges indicted in Latin against them. It was Philip's turn now to be alarmed, but the prelates were equal to the crisis. The archbishop of Sens, metropolitan of Paris and brother of the king's chief adviser, convoked a provincial court at his palace in Paris, and condemned to the stake fifty-four of the Knights who had retracted their confessions. On the 10th of May the papal commissioners were appealed to: they expressed their sorrow that the episcopal court was beyond their jurisdiction, but would consider what might be done. Short time was allowed them. The stout-hearted archbishop was not a man to show weakness; he went steadily on with his work, and in spite of appeals from the papal judges for delay, the fifty-four were led forth on the afternoon of the 12th[76] to the open country outside the Porte St. Antoine, near the convent of St. Antoine des Champs, and slowly roasted to death. They bore their fate with the constancy of martyrs, each protesting his innocence with his last breath, and declaring that the charges alleged against the order were false. Two days later, six more were sent to the stake at the Place de Grève. In spite of threats, the prelates went on with their grim work of terror. Many of the bravest Templars still gave the lie to their traducers, but the majority were cowed; further confessions were obtained, and the pope was satisfied. The proudest, bravest and richest order in Christendom was crushed or scattered to the four corners of the world; their vast estates were nominally confiscated to the Knights Hospitallers. But our "most dear brother in Christ, Philip the king, although he was not moved by avarice nor intended the appropriation of the Templars' goods"[77] had to be compensated for the expense of the prosecution: the treasure of the order failed to satisfy the exorbitant claims of the crown, and the Hospitallers were said to have been impoverished rather than enriched by the transfer.