[1305-1311 A.D.]
The pontiffs being at a distance, the Ghibelline faction in Italy, which was hostile to the pontiffs, assumed greater boldness than formerly, and not only invaded and laid waste the territories of St. Peter, but also assailed the pontifical authority by their publications. Hence a number of cities revolted from the popes; Rome itself became the parent and fomenter of tumults, cabals, and civil wars; and the laws and decrees sent thither from France were publicly treated with contempt, and not merely by the nobles but also by the common citizens. A great part of Europe followed the example of Italy; and numberless examples show that the people of Europe attributed far less power to the fulminations and decrees issued from France than to those issued from Rome. Various seditions, therefore, were raised in one place and another against the pontiffs, which they were unable to subdue and put down, notwithstanding that the inquisitors were most active in the discharge of their functions.
As the French pontiffs could derive but little revenue from Italy, which was rent into factions, seditious, and devastated, they were obliged to devise new modes of raising money. They, therefore, not only sold indulgences to the people more frequently than formerly, to the great indignation of kings and princes, but they likewise required enormous prices to be paid for their letters or bulls of every kind. In this thing John XXII showed himself peculiarly adroit and shrewd; for though he did not first invent the regulations and fees of the apostolic chancery, yet the Romish writers admit that he enlarged them and reduced them to a more convenient form. He also is said to have imposed that tribute which under the title of annates is customarily paid to the pontiffs; yet the first commencement of it was anterior to that age. Moreover, these French pontiffs, subverting the rights of election, assumed the power of conferring all sacred offices, whether high or low, according to their own pleasure; by which means they raised immense sums of money. Hence, under these pontiffs, those most odious terms reservation, provision, and expectative, rarely used before, were now everywhere heard, and they called forth the bitterest complaints from all the nations of Europe; and these complaints increased immeasurably when some of the pontiffs, John XXII, Clement VI, Gregory XI, publicly announced that they had reserved all churches to themselves, and that they would provide for all without exception, by virtue of the sovereign right which Christ had conferred on the vicars, or in the plenitude of their power. By these and other artifices for filling their treasury and amassing property these indiscreet pontiffs heaped additional odium on the apostolic see, and thus weakened very considerably the papal empire, which began to decline from the time of Boniface.
Clement V was governed all his life by the will and pleasure of Philip the Fair, king of France. Guillaume de Nogaret, the implacable foe of Boniface VIII, though excommunicated, resolutely prosecuted his own cause and that of King Philip against Boniface in the papal court; a transaction which, we believe, is without a parallel. Philip wished to have the body of Boniface disinterred and publicly burned. With great difficulty Clement averted this infamy by his entreaties and advice; but in everything else he had to obey the king. Accordingly he abrogated the laws enacted by Boniface, granted the king five years’ tithes, absolved Nogaret from all crime, after imposing on him a slight penance, which he never performed; restored the inhabitants of Anagni to their former reputable and good standing, and held a general council at Vienne, 1311, that Philip’s pleasure might be gratified in the suppression of the Templars.[c]
THE FATE OF THE TEMPLARS
[1311-1313 A.D.]
The end of Clement himself and of Clement’s master, the king of France, drew near. But the pope and the king must be preceded into the realm of darkness and to the judgment-seat of heaven by other victims. The tragedy of the Templars had not yet drawn to its close.[107] The four great dignitaries of the order, the grand-master De Molay, Guy the commander of Normandy, son of the dauphin of Auvergne, the commander of Aquitaine Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France Hugues de Peraud, were still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on their fate. The king and the pope were now equally interested in burying the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named. The grand-master and the rest were found guilty, and were to be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.
Six years of dreary imprisonment had passed over their heads; of their valiant brethren the most valiant had been burned alive, the recreants had purchased their lives by confession; the pope in a full council had condemned and dissolved the order. If a human mind, a mind like that of De Molay, not the most stubborn, could be broken by suffering and humiliation, it must have yielded to this long and crushing imprisonment. The cardinal-archbishop of Albi ascended a raised platform; he read the confessions of the knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged on the criminality of the order, on the holy justice of the pope, and the devout, self-sacrificing zeal of the king; he was proceeding to the final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand-master advanced; his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awe-struck apprehension.
In a calm, clear voice De Molay spoke: “Before heaven and earth, on the verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the pope and of the king; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and orthodox brotherhood.”
The cardinals stood confounded; the people could not suppress their profound sympathy. The assembly was hastily broken up; the provost was commanded to conduct the prisoners back to their dungeons: “To-morrow we will hold further council.”