Chapter V · POLITICAL HERESY UTILIZED BY THE STATE. (continued 2)

At length the commission succeeded in securing the presence of de Molay, of Hugues de Peraud, and of some of the brethren confined in Paris. De Molay said he was not wise and learned enough to defend the Order, but he would hold himself vile and miserable if he did not attempt it. Yet he was a prisoner and penniless; he had not four deniers to spend, and only a poor serving brother with whom to advise; he prayed to have aid and counsel, and he would do his best. The commissioners reminded him that trials for heresy were not conducted according to legal forms, that advocates were not admitted, and they cautioned him as to the risk he incurred in defending the Order after the confession which he had made. Kindly they read over to him the report of the cardinals as to his confession at Chinon; and on his manifesting indignation and astonishment, Guillaume de Plaisian, who seems to have been watching the proceedings on the part of the king, gave him, as we have already seen, another friendly caution which closed his lips. He asked for delay, and when he reappeared Guillaume de Nogaret was there to take advantage of any imprudence. From the papal letters which had been read to him he learned that the pope had reserved him and the other chiefs of the Order for special judgment, and he therefore asked to have the opportunity of appearing before the papal tribunal without delay. The shrewdness of this device thus made itself apparent. It separated the leaders from the rest; de Molay, Hugues de Peraud, and Geoffroi de Gonneville were led to hope for special consideration, and selfishly abandoned their followers. As for the brethren, their answers to the commission were substantially that of Géraud de Caux—he was a simple knight, without horse, arms, or land; he knew not how, and could not defend the Order.[315]

By this time Philippe seems to have been satisfied that no harm could come from the operations of the commission. His opposition disappeared, and he graciously lent them his assistance. November 28, a second summons was sent to the bishops threatening them with papal indignation for a continuance of their neglect, and, what was far more efficacious, it was accompanied with orders from Philippe directing his jailers to afford to the episcopal officials access to the imprisoned Templars, while the baillis were instructed to send to Paris, under sure guard, all Templars desiring to defend their Order.[316]

February 3, 1310, was the day named in this new citation. By the 5th Templars began to pour in, nearly all eager to defend their Order. They accumulated until the commission was embarrassed how to deal with them, and finally, on March 28, five hundred and forty-six who had offered to defend were assembled in the garden of the episcopal palace, where the commissioners explained to them what was proposed, and suggested that they should nominate six or eight or ten of their number to act as procurators; they would not again have an opportunity of meeting, and the commission would proceed on the 31st, but the procurators should have access to them in their several prisons, and should agree with them as to what defence should be offered. A promiscuous crowd, whose differences of dialect rendered intercommunication impossible, abandoned by their natural leaders and thus suddenly brought together, was not fitted for deliberation on so delicate an emergency. Many hesitated about acting without orders from the Master, for all initiative on the part of subordinates was strictly forbidden by the Rule. The commissioners seem to have been sincerely desirous of getting the matter into some sort of shape, and finally, on the 31st, they ordered their notaries to visit the houses in which the Templars were confined and report their wishes and conclusions. This was a process requiring time, and the reports of the notaries after making their daily rounds are pitiful enough. The wretched prisoners floundered helplessly when called upon to resolve as to their action. Most of them declared the Order to be pure and holy, but knew not what to do in the absence of their superiors. There was a general clamor, often on bended knees, for readmission to the sacraments. Many begged to be assured that when they died they should be buried in consecrated ground; others offered to pay for a chaplain out of the miserable allowance doled to them; some asked that the allowance be increased, others that they should have clothes to cover their nakedness. They were urgent in the impossible request that they should have experts and learned men to advise with and appear for them, for they were simple and illiterate, chained in prison and unable to act; and they further begged that security should be given to witnesses, as all who had confessed were threatened with burning if they should retract. A paper presented April 4 by those confined in the house of the Abbot of Tiron is eloquent in its suggestiveness as to their treatment, for the houses in which they were quartered had apparently taken them on speculation. They assert the purity of the Order and their readiness to defend it as well as men can who are fettered in prison and pass the night in dark fosses. They further complain of the insufficiency of their allowance of twelve deniers a day, for they pay three deniers each per day for their beds; for hire of kitchen, napery, and cloths, two sols six deniers per week; two sols for taking off and replacing their fetters when they appear before the commission; for washing, eighteen deniers a fortnight; wood and candles, four deniers a day, and ferriage across from Nôtre Dame, sixteen deniers. It is evident that the poor creatures were exploited relentlessly.[317]

The outcome of the matter was that on April 7 nine representatives presented a paper in the name of all, declaring that without authority from the Master and Convent they could not appoint procurators, but they offer themselves one and all in defence of the Order, and ask to be present at the council or wherever it is on trial. They declare the charges to be horrible and impossible lies fabricated by apostates and fugitives expelled for crime from the Order, confirmed by torturing those who uphold the truth, and encouraging liars with recompenses and great promises. It is wonderful, they say, to see greater faith reposed in those corrupted thus by worldly advantage than in those who, like the martyrs of Christ, have died in torture with the palm of martyrdom, and in the living who, for conscience’ sake, have suffered and daily suffer in their dungeons so many torments, tribulations, and miseries. In the universal terror prevailing they pray that when the brethren are examined there may be present no laymen or others whom they may fear, and that security may be assured them, for all who have confessed are daily threatened with burning if they retract. In reply the commissioners disavowed responsibility for their ill-usage, and promised to ask that they be humanely treated in accordance with the orders of the Cardinal of Palestrina, to whom they had been committed by the pope. The Grand Master, they added, had been urged to defend the Order, but had declined, and claimed that he was reserved for the pope.[318]

Having thus given the Templars a nominal opportunity for defence, the commissioners proceeded to take testimony, appointing four of the representatives, Renaud de Provins, Preceptor of Orleans, Pierre de Boulogne, procurator of the Order in the papal court, and Geoffroi de Chambonnet and Bertrand de Sartiges, knights, to be present at the swearing of the witnesses, and to do what might be requisite without constituting them formal defenders of the Order. These four on April 13 presented another paper in which, after alluding to the tortures employed to extort confessions, they stated it to be a notorious fact that to obtain testimony from Templars sealed royal letters had been given them promising them liberty and large pensions for life, and telling them that the Order was permanently abolished. This was evidently intended as a protest to pave the way for disabling the adverse witnesses, which, as we have seen, was the only defence in the inquisitorial process, and with the same object they also asked for the names of all witnesses. They did not venture to ask for a copy of the evidence, but they earnestly requested that it should be kept secret, to avert the danger that might otherwise threaten the witnesses. Subject to the interruption of the Easter solemnities, testimony, mostly adverse to the Order, continued to be taken up to May 9, from witnesses apparently carefully selected for the purpose. On Sunday, May 10, the commissioners were suddenly called together, at the request of Renaud de Provins and his colleagues, to receive the startling announcement that the provincial Council of Sens, which had been hastily assembled at Paris, proposed to prosecute all the Templars who had offered to defend the Order. Most of these had previously confessed; they had heroically taken their lives in their hands when, by asserting the purity of the Order, they had constructively revoked their confessions. The four Templars therefore appealed to the commissioners for protection, as the action of the council would fatally interfere with the work in hand; they demanded apostoli, and that their persons and rights and the whole Order should be placed under the guardianship of the Holy See, and time and money be allowed to prosecute the appeal. They further asked the commissioners to notify the Archbishop of Sens to take no action while the present examination was in progress, and that they be sent before him with one or two notaries to make a protest, as they can find no one who dares to draw up such an instrument for them. The commissioners were sorely perplexed and debated the matter until evening, when they recalled the Templars to say that while they heartily compassionated them they could do nothing, for the Archbishop of Sens and the council were acting under powers delegated by the pope.[319]

It was no part of Philippe’s policy to allow the Order any opportunity to be heard. The sudden rally of nearly six hundred members, after their chiefs had been skilfully detached from them, and their preparations for defence at the approaching council promised a struggle which he proceeded to crush at the outset with his customary unscrupulous energy. The opportunity was favorable, for after long effort he had just obtained from Clement the archbishopric of Sens (of which Paris was a suffragan see) for a youthful creature of his own, Philippe de Marigny, brother of his minister Enguerrand, who took possession of the dignity only on April 5. The bull Faciens misericordiam had prescribed that, after the bishops had completed their inquests, provincial councils were to be called to sit in judgment on the individual brethren. In pursuance of this, the king through his archbishops was master of the situation. Provincial councils were suddenly called, that for Sens to meet at Paris, for Reims at Senlis, for Normandy at Pont de l’Arche, and for Narbonne at Carcassonne, and a demonstration was organized which should paralyze at once and forever all thought of further opposition to his will. No time was wasted in any pretence of judicial proceedings, for the canon law provided that relapsed heretics were to be condemned without a hearing. On the 11th the Council of Sens was opened at Paris. On the 12th, while the commissioners were engaged in taking testimony, word was brought them that fifty-four of those who had offered to defend the Order had been condemned as relapsed heretics for retracting their confessions, and were to be burned that day. Hastily they sent to the council Philippe de Vohet, the papal custodian of the Templars, and Amis, Archdeacon of Orleans, to ask for delay. Vohet, they said, and many others asserted that the Templars who died in prison declared on peril of their souls that the crimes alleged were false; Renaud de Provins and his colleagues had appealed before them from the council; if the proposed executions took place the functions of the commission would be impeded, for the witnesses that day and the day before were crazed with terror and wholly unfit to give evidence. The envoys hurried to the council-hall, where they were treated with contempt and told that it was impossible that the commission could have sent such a message. The fifty-four martyrs were piled in wagons and carried to the fields near the convent of S. Antoine, where they were slowly tortured to death with fire, refusing all offers of pardon for confession, and manifesting a constancy which, as a contemporary tells us, placed their souls in great peril of damnation, for it led the people into the error of believing them innocent. The council continued its work, and a few days later burned four more Templars, so that if there were any who still proposed to defend the Order they might recognize what would be their fate. It ordered the bones of Jean de Tourne, former treasurer of the Temple, to be exhumed and burned; those who confessed and adhered to their confessions were reconciled to the Church and liberated; those who persisted in refusing to confess were condemned to perpetual prison. This was rather more humane than the regular inquisitorial practice, but it suited the royal policy of the moment. A few weeks later, at Senlis, the Council of Reims burned nine more; at Pont de l’Arche three were burned, and a number at Carcassonne.[320]

This ferocious expedient accomplished its purpose. When, on the day after the executions at Paris, May 13, the commission opened its session, the first witness, Aimery de Villiers, threw himself on his knees, pale and desperately frightened; beating his breast and stretching forth his hands to the altar, he invoked sudden death and perdition to body and soul if he lied. He declared that all the crimes imputed to the Order were false, although he had, under torture, confessed to some of them. When he had yesterday seen his fifty-four brethren carried in wagons to be burned, and heard that they had been burned, he felt that he could not endure it and would confess to the commissioners or to any one else whatever might be required of him, even that he had slain the Lord. In conclusion he adjured the commissioners and the notaries not to reveal what he had said to his jailers, or to the royal officials, for he would be burned like the fifty-four. Then a previous witness, Jean Bertrand, came before the commission to supplicate that his deposition be kept secret on account of the danger impending over him. Seeing all this, the commission felt that during this general terror it would be wise to suspend its sittings, and it did so. It met again on the 18th to reclaim fruitlessly from the Archbishop of Sens, Renaud de Provins, who had been put on trial before the council. Pierre de Boulogne was likewise snatched away and could not be obtained again. Many of the Templars who had offered to defend the Order made haste to withdraw, and all effort to provide for it an organized hearing before the Council of Vienne was perforce abandoned. Whether Clement was privy to this high-handed interruption of the functions of his commission is perhaps doubtful, but he did nothing to rehabilitate it, and his quiescence rendered him an accomplice. He had only succeeded in betraying to a fiery death the luckless wretches whom he had tempted to come forward.[321]

On April 4, by the bull Alma Mater, Clement had postponed the Council of Vienne from October, 1310, until October, 1311, in consequence of the inquisition against the Templars requiring more time than had been expected. There was, therefore, no necessity for haste on the part of the commission, and it adjourned until November 3. Its members were long in getting together, and it did not resume its sessions until December 17. Then Guillaume de Chambonnet and Bertrand de Sartiges were brought before it, when they protested that they could not act for the Order without the aid of Renaud de Provins and Pierre de Boulogne. These, the commission informed them, had solemnly renounced the defence of the Order, had returned to their first confessions, and had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment by the Council of Sens, after which Pierre had broken jail and fled. The two knights were offered permission to be present at the swearing of the witnesses, with opportunity to file exceptions, but they declared themselves unfitted for the task and retired. Thus all pretence of affording the Order a chance to be heard was abandoned, and the subsequent proceedings of the commission became merely an ex parte accumulation of adverse testimony. It sat until June, industriously hearing the witnesses brought before it: but as those were selected by Philippe de Vohet and Jean de Jamville, care was evidently taken as to the character of the evidence that should reach it. Most of the witnesses, in fact, had been reconciled to the Church through confession, abjuration, and absolution, and no longer belonged to the Order which they had abandoned to its fate. Among the large number of Templars who had refused to confess, only a few, and these apparently by accident, were allowed to appear before it. There were also a few who dared to retract what they had stated before the bishops, but with these slender exceptions all the evidence was adverse to the Order. In fact, it frequently happened that witnesses were sworn who never reappeared to give their testimony, and that this was not accidental is rendered probable by the fact that Renaud de Provins was one of these. Finally, on June 5, the commission closed its labors and transmitted without comment to Clement its records as part of the material to guide the judgment of the assembled Church at the Council of Vienne.[322]

Before proceeding to the last scene of the drama at Vienne, it is necessary to consider briefly the action taken with the Templars outside of France. In England, Edward II., on October 30, 1307, replied to Philippe’s announcement of October 16, to the effect that he and his council have given the most earnest attention to the matter; it has caused the greatest astonishment, and is so abominable as to be well-nigh incredible, and, to obtain further information, he had sent for his Seneschal of Agen. So strong were his convictions and so earnest his desire to protect the threatened Order that on December 4 he wrote to the Kings of Portugal, Castile, Aragon, and Naples that the accusations must proceed from cupidity and envy, and begging them to shut their ears to detraction and do nothing without deliberation, so that an Order so distinguished for purity and honor should not be molested until legitimately convicted. Not content with this, on the 10th he replied to Clement that the reputation of the Templars in England for purity and faith is such that he cannot, without further proof, believe the terrible rumors about them, and he begs the pope to resist the calumnies of envious and wicked men. In a few days, however, he received Clement’s bull of November 22, and could no longer doubt the facts asserted by the head of Christendom. He hastened to obey its commands, and on the 15th elaborate orders were already prepared and sent out to all the sheriffs in England, with minute instructions to capture all the Templars on January 10, 1308, including directions as to the sequestration and disposition of their property, and this was followed on the 20th by similar commands to the English authorities in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Possibly Edward’s impending voyage to Boulogne to marry Isabella, the daughter of Philippe le Bel, may have had something to do with his sudden change of purpose.[323]

The seizure was made accordingly, and the Templars were kept in honorable durance, not in prison, awaiting papal action; for there seems to have been no disposition on the part either of Church or State to take the initiative. The delay was long, for though commissions were issued August 12, 1308, to the papal inquisitors, Sicard de Lavaurand the Abbot of Lagny, they did not start until September, 1309, and on the 13th of that month the royal safe-conducts issued for them show their arrival in England. Then instructions were sent out to arrest all Templars not yet seized and gather them together in London, Lincoln, and York, for the examinations to be held, and the bishops of those sees were strictly charged to be present throughout. Similar orders were sent to Ireland and Scotland, where the inquisitors appointed delegates to attend to the matter. It apparently was not easy to get the officials to do their duty, for December 14 instructions were required to all the sheriffs to seize the Templars who were wandering in secular habits throughout the land, and in the following March and again in January, 1311, the Sheriff of York was scolded for allowing those in his custody to wander abroad. Popular sympathy evidently was with the inculpated brethren.[324]

At length, on October 20, 1309, the papal inquisitors and the Bishop of London sat in the episcopal palace to examine the Templars collected in London. Interrogated singly on all the numerous articles of accusation, they all asserted the innocence of the Order. Outside witnesses were called in who mostly declared their belief to the same effect, though some gave expression to the vague popular rumors and scandalous stories suggested by the secrecy of proceedings within the Order. The inquisitors were nonplussed. They had come to a country whose laws did not recognize the use of torture, and without it they were powerless to accomplish the work for which they had been sent. In their disgust they finally applied to the king, and on December 15 they obtained from him an order to the custodians of the prisoners to permit the inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries to do with the bodies of the Templars what they pleased, “in accordance with ecclesiastical law”—ecclesiastical law, by the hideous perversion of the times, having come to mean the worst of abuses, from which secular law still shrank. Either the jailers or the episcopal officials interposed difficulties, for the mandate was repeated March 1, 1310, and again March 8, with instructions to report the cause if the previous one had not been obeyed. Still no evidence worth the trouble was gained, though the examinations were prolonged through the winter and spring until May 24, when three captured fugitives were induced by means easily guessed to confess what was wanted, of which use was made to the utmost. At length Clement grew impatient under this lack of result. On August 6 he wrote to Edward that it was reported that he had prohibited the use of torture as contrary to the laws of the kingdom, and that the inquisitors were thus powerless to extract confessions. No law or usage, he said, could be permitted to override the canons provided for such cases, and Edward’s counsellors and officials who were guilty of thus impeding the Inquisition were liable to the penalties provided for that serious offence, while the king himself was warned to consider whether his position comported with his honor and safety, and was offered remission of his sins if he would withdraw from it—perhaps the most suggestive sale of an indulgence on record. Similar letters at the same time were sent to all the bishops of England, who were scolded for not having already removed the impediment, as they were in duty bound to do. Under this impulsion Edward, August 26, again ordered that the bishops and inquisitors should be allowed to employ ecclesiastical law, and this was repeated October 6 and 23, November 22, and April 28, 1311—in the last instances the word torture being used, and in all of them the king being careful to explain that what he does is through reverence for the Holy See. August 18, 1311, similar instructions were sent to the Sheriff of York.[325]

Thus for once the papal Inquisition found a foothold in England, but apparently its methods were too repugnant to the spirit of the nation to be rewarded with complete success. In spite of examinations prolonged for more than eighteen months, the Templars could not be convicted. The most that could be accomplished was, that in provincial councils held in London and York in the spring and summer of 1311, they were brought to admit that they were so defamed for heresy that they could not furnish the purgation required by law; they therefore asked for mercy and promised to perform what penance might be enjoined on them. Some of them, moreover, submitted to a form of abjuration. The councils ordered them scattered among different monasteries to perform certain penance until the Holy See should decide as to the future of the Order. This was the final disposition of the Templars in England. A liberal provision of fourpence a day was made for their support, while two shillings was assigned to William de la More, the Master of England, and on his death it was continued to Humbert Blanc, the Preceptor of Auvergne, who, fortunately for himself, was in England at the time of arrest, and was caught there. This shows that they were not regarded as criminals, and the testimony of Walsingham is that in the monasteries to which they were assigned they comported themselves piously and righteously in every respect. In Ireland and Scotland their examinations failed to procure any proof against the Order, save the vague conjectures and stories of outside witnesses industriously gathered together.[326]

In Lorraine, as soon as news came of the seizure in France, the Preceptor of Villencourt ordered the brethren under him to shave and abandon their mantles, which was virtually releasing them from the Order. Duke Thiebault followed the exterminating policy of Philippe with complete success. A large number of the Templars were burned, and he managed to secure most of their property.[327]

In Germany our knowledge of what took place is somewhat fragmentary. The Teutonic Order afforded a career for the German chivalry, and the Templars were by no means so numerous as in France, their fate was not so dramatic, and it attracted comparatively little attention from the chroniclers. One annalist informs us that they were destroyed with the assent of the Emperor Henry on account of their collusion with the Saracens in Palestine and Egypt, and their preparation for establishing a new empire for themselves among the Christians, which shows how little impression on the popular mind was made by the assertion of their heresies. For the most part, indeed, the action taken depended upon the personal views of the princely prelates who presided over the great archbishoprics. Burchard III. of Magdeburg was the first to act. Obliged to visit the papal court in 1307 to obtain the pallium, he returned in May, 1308, with orders to seize all the Templars in his province; and as he was already hostile to them, he obeyed with alacrity. There were but four houses in his territories: on these and their occupants he laid his hands, leading to a long series of obscure quarrels, in which he incurred excommunication from the Bishop of Halberstadt, which Clement hastened to remove; by burning some of the more obstinate brethren, moreover, he involved himself in war with their kindred, in which he fared badly. As late as 1318 the Hospitallers are found complaining to John XXII. that Templars were still in possession of the greater portion of their property.[328]

The bull Faciens misericordiam of August, 1308, sent to the German prelates, reserved, with Clement’s usual policy, the Grand Preceptor of Germany for papal judgment. With the exception of Magdeburg, its instructions for active measures received slack obedience. It was not to much purpose that, on December 30 of the same year, he wrote to the Duke of Austria to arrest all the Templars in his dominions, and commissioned the Ordinaries of Mainz, Trèves, Cologne, Magdeburg, Strassburg, and Constance as special inquisitors within their several dioceses, while he sent the Abbot of Crudacio as inquisitor for the rest of Germany, ordering the prelates to pay him five gold florins a day. It was not until 1310 that the great archbishops could be got to work, and then the results were disappointing. Trèves and Cologne, in fact, made over to Burchard of Magdeburg, in 1310, their authority as commissioners for the seizure of the Templar lands, and Clement confirmed this with instructions to proceed with vigor. As regards the persons of the Templars, at Trèves an inquest was held in which seventeen witnesses were heard, including three Templars, and resulting in their acquittal. At Mainz the Archbishop Peter, who had incurred Clement’s displeasure by transferring to his suffragans his powers as commissioner over the Templar property, was at length forced to call a provincial council. May 11, 1310. Suddenly and unbidden there entered the Wild and Rheingraf, Hugo of Salm, Commander of Grumbach, with twenty knights fully armed. There were fears of violence, but the archbishop asked Hugo what he had to say: the Templar asserted the innocence of the Order; those who had been burned had steadfastly denied the charges, and their truth had been proved by the crosses on their mantles remaining unburned—a miracle popularly believed, which had much influence on public opinion. He concluded by appealing to the future pope and the whole Church, and the archbishop, to escape a tumult, admitted the protest. Clement, on hearing of these proceedings, ordered the council to be reassembled and to do its work. He was obeyed. The Wildgraf Frederic of Salm, brother of Hugo and Master of the Rhine-province, offered to undergo the red-hot iron ordeal, but it was unnecessary. Forty-nine witnesses, of whom thirty-seven were Templars, were examined, and all swore to the innocence of the Order. The twelve non-Templars, who were personages of distinction, were emphatic in their declarations in its favor. Among others, the Archpriest John testified that in a time of scarcity, when the measure of corn rose from three sols to thirty-three, the commandery at Mostaire fed a thousand persons a day. The result was a verdict of acquittal, which was so displeasing to the pope that he ordered Burchard of Magdeburg to take the matter in hand and bring it to a more satisfactory conclusion. Burchard seems to have eagerly obeyed but the results have not reached us. Archbishop Peter continued to hope for some adjustment, and when, after the Council of Vienne, he was forced to hand over the Templar property to the Hospitallers, he required the latter to execute an agreement to return the manor of Topfstadt if the pope should restore the Order.[329]

In Italy the Templars were not numerous, and the pope had better control over the machinery for their destruction. In Naples the appeal of Edward II. was in vain. The Angevine dynasty was too closely allied to the papacy to hesitate, and when a copy of the bull Pastoralis prœeminentiœ, of November 21, 1307, was addressed to Robert, Duke of Calabria, son of Charles II., there was no hesitation in obedience. Orders were speedily sent out to all the provinces under the Neapolitan crown to arrest the Templars and sequestrate their property. Philip, Duke of Achaia and Romania, the youngest son of Charles, was forthwith commanded to carry out the papal instructions in all the possessions in the Levant. January 3, 1308, the officials in Provence and Forcalquier were instructed to make the seizure January 23. The Order was numerous in those districts, but the members must have mostly fled, for only forty-eight were arrested, who are said to have been tried and executed, but a document of 1318 shows that Albert de Blacas, Preceptor of Aix and St. Maurice, who had been imprisoned in 1308, was then still enjoying the Commandery of St. Maurice, with consent of the Hospitallers. The Templar movables were divided between the pope and king, and the landed possessions were made over to the Hospital. In the kingdom of Naples itself, some fragmentary reports of the papal commission sent in 1310 to obtain evidence against the Order as a whole and against the Grand Preceptor of Apulia, Oddo de Valdric, show that no obstacle was thrown in the way of the inquisitors in obtaining by the customary methods the kind of testimony desired. The same may be said of Sicily, where, as we have seen, Frederic of Aragon had admitted the Inquisition in 1304.[330]

In the States of the Church we have somewhat fuller accounts of the later proceedings. Although we know nothing of what was done at the time of arrest, there can be no doubt that in a territory subjected directly to Clement his bull of November 22, 1307, was strictly obeyed; that all members of the Order were seized and that appropriate means were employed to secure confessions. When the papal commission was sent to Paris to afford the Order an opportunity to prepare its defence at the Council of Vienne, similar commissions, armed with inquisitorial powers, were despatched elsewhere, and the report of Giacomo, Bishop of Sutri, and Master Pandolfo di Sabello, who were commissioned in that capacity in the Patrimony of St. Peter, although unfortunately not complete, gives us an insight into the real object which underlay the ostensible purpose of these commissions. In October, 1309, the inquisitors commenced at Rome, where no one appeared before them, although they summoned not only members of the Order, but every one who had anything to say about it. In December they went to Viterbo, where five Templars lay in prison, who declined to appear and defend the Order. In January, 1310, they proceeded to Spoleto without finding either Templars or other witnesses. In February they moved to Assisi, where they adopted the form of ordering all Templars and their fautors to be brought before them, and this they repeated in March at Gubbio, but in both places without result. In April, at Aquila, they summoned witnesses to ascertain whether the Templars had any churches in the Abruzzi, but not even the preceptor of the Hospitallers could give them any information. All the Franciscans of the place were then assembled, but they knew nothing to the discredit of the Order. A few days later, at Penna, they adopted a new formula by inviting all Templars and others who desired to defend the Order to appear before them. Here two Templars were found, who were personally summoned repeatedly, but they refused, saying that they would not defend the Order. One of them, Walter of Naples, was excused, owing to doubts as to his being a Templar, but the other, named Cecco, was brought before the inquisitors and told them of an idol kept for worship in the treasure-chamber of a preceptory in Apulia. In May, at Chieti, they succeeded in getting hold of another Templar, who confessed to renouncing Christ, idol-worship, and other of the charges. By May 23 they were back in Rome issuing citations, but again without result. The following week they were back at Viterbo, resolved to procure some evidence from the five captives imprisoned there, but the latter again sent word that none of them wished to appear before the inquisitors or to defend the Order. Five times in all they were summoned and five times they refused, but the inquisitors were not to be balked. Four of the prisoners were brought forward, and by means which can readily be guessed were induced to talk. From the 7th of June to the 19th, the inquisitors were employed in receiving their depositions as to renouncing Christ, spitting on the cross, etc., all of which was duly recorded as free and spontaneous. On July 3 the commissioners were at Albano issuing the customary summons, but on the 8th their messenger reported that he could find no Templars in Campania and Maritima; and a session at Velletri on the 16th was similarly fruitless. The next day they summoned other witnesses, but eight ecclesiastics who appeared had nothing to tell. Then at Segni they heard five witnesses without obtaining any evidence. Castel Fajole and Tivoli were equally barren, but on the 27th, at Palombara, Walter of Naples was brought to them from Penna, the doubts as to his membership of the Order having apparently been removed. Their persistence in this case was rewarded with full details of heretical practices. Here the record ends, the industrious search of nine months through these extensive territories having resulted in finding eight Templars, and obtaining seven incriminating depositions.[331] Even making allowance for those who may have succeeded in escaping, it shows, like the rest of the Italian proceedings, how scanty were the numbers of the Order in the Peninsula.

In the rest of Italy Clement’s bull of 1307, addressed to the archbishops and ordering an inquest, seems to have been somewhat slackly obeyed. The earliest action on record is an order, in 1308, of Frà Ottone, Inquisitor of Lombardy, requiring the delivery of three Templars to the Podestà of Casale. Some further impulsion apparently was requisite, and in 1309 Giovanni, Archbishop of Pisa, was appointed Apostolic Nuncio in charge of the affair throughout Tuscany, Lombardy, Dalmatia, and Istria, with a stipend of eight florins per diem, to be assessed on the Templar property. In Ancona the Bishop of Fano examined one Templar who confessed nothing, and nineteen other witnesses who furnished no incriminating evidence, and in Romagnuola, Rainaldo, Archbishop of Ravenna, and the Bishop of Rimini interrogated two Templars at Cesena, both of whom testified to the innocence of the Order. The archbishop, who was papal inquisitor against the Templars in Lombardy, Tuscany, Tarvisina, and Istria, seems to have extended his inquest over part of Lombardy, though no results are recorded. Papal letters were published throughout Italy, empowering the inquisitors to look after the Templar property, of which the Archbishops of Bologna and Pisa were appointed administrators; it was farmed out and the proceeds remitted to Clement. Rainaldo of Ravenna sympathized with the Templars, and no very earnest efforts were to be expected of him. He called a synod at Bologna in 1309, where some show was made of taking up the subject, but no results were reached, and when, in 1310, his vicar, Bonincontro, went to Ravenna with the papal bulls, he made no secret of his favor towards the accused. At length Rainaldo was forced to action, and issued a proclamation, November 25, 1310, reciting the papal commands to hold provincial councils for the examination and judgment of the Templars, in obedience to which he summoned one to assemble at Ravenna in January, 1311, calling upon the inquisitors to bring thither the evidence which they had obtained by the use of torture. The council was held and the matter discussed, but no conclusion was reached. Another was summoned to meet at Bologna on June 1, but was transferred to Ravenna and postponed till June 18. To this the bishops were ordered to bring all Templars of their dioceses under strict guard, the result of which was that on June 16, seven knights were produced before the council. They were sworn and interrogated seriatim on all the articles as furnished by the pope, which they unanimously denied. The question was then put to the council whether they should be tortured, and it was answered in the negative, in spite of the opposition of two Dominican inquisitors present. It was decided that the case should not be referred to the pope, in view of the nearness of the Council of Vienne, but that the accused should be put upon their purgation. The next day, however, when the council met this action was reversed and there was a unanimous decision that the innocent should be acquitted and the guilty punished, reckoning among the innocent those who had confessed through fear of torture and had revoked, or who would have revoked but for fear of repetition of torture. As for the Order as a whole, the council recommended that it should be preserved if a majority of the members were innocent, and if the guilty were subjected to abjuration and punishment within the Order. In addition to the seven knights there were five brethren who were ordered to purge themselves by August 1, before Uberto, Bishop of Bologna, with seven conjurators; of these the purgations of two are extant, and doubtless all succeeded in performing the ceremony. It was no wonder that Clement was indignant at this reversal of all inquisitorial usage and ordered the burning of those who had thus relapsed—though the command was probably not obeyed, as Bishop Bini assures us that no Templars were burned in Italy. The council further, in appointing delegates to Vienne, instructed them that the Order should not be abolished unless it was found to be thoroughly corrupted. For Tuscany and Lombardy, Clement appointed as special inquisitors Giovanni, Archbishop of Pisa, Antonio, Bishop of Florence, and Pietro Giudici of Rome, a canon of Verona. These were instructed to hold the inquests, one upon the brethren individually and one upon the Order. They were troubled with no scruples as to the use of torture and, as we shall presently see, secured a certain amount of the kind of testimony desired. Venice kindly postponed the inevitable uprooting of the Order, and when it eventually took place there was no unnecessary hardship.[332]

Cyprus was the headquarters of the Order. There resided the marshal, Ayme d’Osiliers, who was its chief in the absence of the Grand Master, and there was the “Convent,” or governing body. It was not until May, 1308, that the papal bull commanding the arrest reached the island, and there could be no pretence of a secret and sudden seizure, for the Templars were advised of what had occurred in France. They had many enemies, for they had taken an active part in the turbulent politics of the time, and it had been by their aid that the regent, Amaury of Tyre, had been placed in power. He hastened to obey the papal commands, but with many misgivings, for the Templars at first assumed an attitude of defence. Resistance, however, was hopeless, and in a few weeks they submitted; their property was sequestrated and they were kept in honorable confinement, without being deprived of the sacraments. This continued for two years, until, in April, 1310, the Abbot of Alet and the Archpriest Tommaso of Rieti came as papal inquisitors to inquire against them individually and the Order in general, under the guidance of the Bishops of Limisso and Famagosta. The examination commenced May 1 and continued until June 5, when it came abruptly to an end, in consequence, doubtless, of the excitement caused by the murder of the Regent Amaury. All the Templars on the island, seventy-five in number, together with fifty-six other witnesses, were duly interrogated upon the long list of articles of accusation. That the Templars were unanimous in denying the charges and in asserting the purity of the Order shows that torture cannot have been employed. More convincing as to their innocence is the evidence of the other witnesses, consisting of ecclesiastics of all ranks, nobles, and burghers, many of them political enemies, who yet rendered testimony emphatically favorable. As some of them said, they knew nothing but good of the Order. All dwelt upon its liberal charities, and many described the fervor of the zeal with which the Templars discharged their religious duties. A few alluded to the popular suspicions aroused by the secrecy observed in the holding of chapters and the admission of neophytes; the Dominican Prior of Nicosia spoke of the reports brought from France by his brethren after the arrest and Simon de Sarezariis, Prior of the Hospitallers, said that he had had similar intelligence sent to him by his correspondents, but the evidence is unquestionable that in Cyprus, where they were best known, among friends and foes, and especially among those who had been in intimate relations with the Templars for long periods, there was general sympathy for the Order, and that there had been no evil attributed to it until the papal bulls had so unqualifiedly asserted its guilt. All this, when sent to Clement, was naturally most unsatisfactory, and when the time approached for the Council of Vienne, he despatched urgent orders, in August, 1311, to have the Templars tortured so as to procure confessions. What was the result of this we have no means of knowing.[333]

In Aragon, Philippe’s letter of October 16, 1307, to Jayme II. was accompanied with one from the Dominican, Fray Romeo de Bruguera, asserting that he had been present at the confession made by de Molay and others. Notwithstanding this, on November 17 Jayme, like Edward II., responded with warm praises of the Templars of the kingdom, whom he refused to arrest without absolute proof of guilt or orders from the pope. To the latter he wrote two days later for advice and instructions, and when, on December 1, he received Clement’s bull of November 22, he could hesitate no longer. Ramon, Bishop of Valencia, and Ximenes de Luna, Bishop of Saragossa, who chanced to be with him, received orders to make in their respective dioceses diligent inquisition against the Templars, and Fray Juan Llotger, Inquisitor-general of Aragon, was instructed to extirpate the heresy. As resistance was anticipated, royal letters were issued December 3 for the immediate arrest of all members of the Order and the sequestration of their property, and the inquisitor published edicts summoning them before him in the Dominican Convent of Valencia, to answer for their faith, and prohibiting all local officials from rendering them assistance. Jayme also summoned a council of the prelates to meet January 6, 1308, to deliberate on the subject with the inquisitor. A number of arrests were effected; some of the brethren shaved and threw off their mantles and succeeded in hiding themselves; some endeavored to escape by sea with a quantity of treasure, but adverse storms cast them back upon the coast and they were seized. The great body of the knights, however, threw themselves into their castles. Ramon Sa Guardia, Preceptor of Mas Deu in Roussillon, was acting as lieutenant of the Commander of Aragon, and fortified himself in Miravet, while others occupied the strongholds of Ascon, Montço, Cantavieja, Vilell, Castellot, and Chalamera. On January 20, 1308, they were summoned to appear before the Council of Tarragona, but they refused, and Jayme promised the prelates that he would use the whole forces of the kingdom for their subjugation. This proved no easy task. The temporal and spiritual lords promised assistance, except the Count of Urgel, the Viscount of Rocaberti, and the Bishop of Girona; but public sympathy was with the Templars. Many noble youths embraced their cause and joined them in their castles, while the people obeyed slackly the order to take up arms against them. The knights defended themselves bravely. Castellot surrendered in November, soon after which Sa Guardia, in Miravet, rejected the royal ultimatum that they should march out with their arms and betake themselves by twos and threes to places of residence, from which they were not to wander farther than two or three bow-shots, receiving a liberal allowance for their support, while the king should ask the pope to order the bishops and inquisitors to expedite the process. In response to this Sa Guardia addressed Clement a manly appeal, pointing out the services rendered to religion by the Order; that many knights captured by the Saracens languished in prison for twenty or thirty years, when by abjuring they could at once regain their liberty and be richly rewarded—seventy of their brethren were at that moment enduring such a fate. They were ready to appear in judgment before the pope, or to maintain their faith against all accusers by arms, as was customary with knights, but they had no prelates or advocates to defend them, and it was the duty of the pope to do so. A month after this Miravet was forced to surrender at discretion, and in another month all the rest, except Montço and Chalamera, which held out until near July, 1309. Clement at once took measures to get possession of the Templar property, but Jayme refused to deliver it to the papal commissioners, alleging that most of it had been derived from the crown, and that he had made heavy outlays on the sieges; the most that he would promise was that if the council should abolish the Order he would surrender the property, subject to the rights and claims of the crown. Clement seems to have sought a temporary compromise. In letters of January 5, 1309, he announces that the Templars of Aragon and Catalonia, like faithful sons of the Church, had written to him offering to surrender their persons and property to the Holy See, and to obey his commands in every way; he therefore sends his chaplain, Bertrand, Prior of Cessenon, to receive them and transfer them to the custody and care of the king, taking from him sealed letters that he holds them in the name of the Holy See. Whether Jayme assented to this arrangement as to the property does not appear, but he was not punctilious about the persons of the Templars, and on July 14 he issued orders to the viguiers to deliver them to the inquisitor and ordinaries when required. In 1310 Clement sent to Aragon, as elsewhere, special papal inquisitors to conduct the trials. They were met by the same difficulties as in England: in Aragon torture was not recognized by the law, and in 1325 we find the Cortes protesting against its use and against the inquisitorial process as infractions of the recognized liberties of the land, and the king admitting the protest and promising that such methods should not be employed except for counterfeiters, and then only in the case of strangers and vagabonds. Still the inquisitors did what they could. At their request the king, July 5, 1310, ordered his baillis to put the Templars in irons and to render their prison harsher. Then the Council of Tarragona interfered and asked that they be kept in safe but not afflictive custody, seeing that nothing had as yet proved their guilt, and their case was still undecided. In accordance with this, on October 20, the king ordered that they should be free in the castles where they were confined, giving their parole not to escape under pain of being reputed heretics. This was not the way to obtain the desired evidence, and Clement, March 18, 1311, ordered them to be tortured, and asked Jayme to lend his aid to it, seeing that the proceedings thus far had resulted only in “vehement suspicion.” This cruel command was not at first obeyed. In May the Templars prayed the king to urge the Archbishop of Tarragona to have their case decided in the council then impending, and Jayme accordingly addressed the archbishop to that effect, but nothing was done, and in August he ordered them to be again put in chains and harshly imprisoned. The papal representatives were evidently growing impatient, as the time set for the Council of Vienne was approaching, and the papal demands for adverse evidence remained unsatisfied. Finally, on the eve of the assembling of the council, the king yielded to the pope. September 29 he issued an order appointing Umbert de Capdepont, one of the royal judges, to assist at the judgment, when sentence should be rendered by the inquisitors, Pedro de Montclus and Juan Llotger, along with the Bishops of Lerida and Vich, who had been especially commissioned by the pope. We have no knowledge of the details of the investigation, but there is evidence that torture was unsparingly used, for there is a royal letter of December 3 ordering medicaments to be prepared for those of the Templars who might need them in consequence of sickness or torture. At last, in March, 1312, the Archbishop of Tarragona asked to have them brought before his provincial council, then about to assemble, and the king assented, but nothing was done, probably because the Council of Vienne was still in session; but after the dissolution of the Order had been proclaimed by Clement, and the fate of the members was relegated to the local councils, one was held, October 18, 1312, at Tarragona, which decided the question so long pending. The Templars were brought before it and rigorously examined. November 4 the sentence was publicly read, pronouncing an unqualified acquittal from all the errors, crimes, and impostures with which they were charged; they were declared beyond suspicion, and no one should dare to defame them. In view of the dissolution of the Order the council was somewhat puzzled to know what to do with them, but after prolonged debate it was determined that until the pope should otherwise decree they should reside in the dioceses in which their property lay, receiving proper support from their sequestrated lands. This decree was carried out, and when the property passed into the hands of the Hospitallers it was burdened with these charges. In 1319 a list of pensions thus payable by the Hospitallers would seem to show that the Templars were liberally provided for, and received what was due to them.[334]

Jayme I. of Majorca was in no position to resist the pressure brought upon him by Philippe le Bel and Clement. His little kingdom consisted of the Balearic Isles, the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, the Seignory of Montpellier and a few other scattered possessions at the mercy of his powerful neighbor. He promptly therefore obeyed the papal bull of November 22, 1307, and by the end of the month the Templars in his dominions were all arrested. In Roussillon the only preceptory was that of Mas Deu, which was one of the strongholds of the land, and there the Templars were collected and confined to the number of twenty-five, including the Preceptor, Ramon Sa Guardia, the gallant defender of Miravet, who after his surrender was demanded by the King of Majorca and willingly joined his comrades. We know nothing of what took place on the islands beyond the fact of the arrest, but on the mainland we can follow with some exactness the course of events. Roussillon constituted the diocese of Elne, which was suffragan to the archbishopric of Narbonne. May 5, 1309, the archbishop sent to Ramon Costa, Bishop of Elne, the articles of accusation with the papal bull ordering an inquest. The good bishop seems to have been in no haste to comply, but, pleading illness, postponed the matter until January, 1310. Then, in obedience to the instructions, he summoned two Franciscans and two Dominicans, and with two of his cathedral canons he proceeded to interrogate the prisoners. It is evident that no torture was employed, for in their prolonged examinations they substantially agreed in asserting the purity and piety of the Order, and their chaplain offered in evidence their book of ritual for receptions in the vernacular, commencing, “Quan aleum proom requer la compaya de la Mayso.” With manly indignation they refused to believe that the Grand Master and chiefs of the Order had confessed to the truth of the charges, but if they had done so they had lied in their throats—or, as one of them phrased it, they were demons in human skin. With regard to the cord of chastity, an humble peasant serving brother explained not only that it was procured wherever they chose, but that if it chanced to break while ploughing it was at once temporarily replaced with one made of reeds. The voluminous testimony was forwarded, with a simple certificate of its accuracy, by Bishop Ramon, August 31, 1310, which shows that he was in no haste to transmit it. It could have proved in no sense satisfactory, and there can be little doubt that the cruel orders of Clement, in March, 1311, to procure confessions by torture were duly obeyed, for Jean de Bourgogne, sacristan of Majorca, was appointed by Clement inquisitor for the Templars in Aragon, Navarre, and Majorca, and the same methods must unquestionably have been followed in all the kingdoms. After the Council of Vienne there ensued a rather curious controversy between the archbishops of Tarragona and Narbonne on the subject. The former, with the Bishop of Valencia, was papal custodian of Templar property in Aragon, Majorca, and Navarre. He seems thus to have imagined that he held jurisdiction over the Templars of Roussillon, for, October 15, 1313, he declared Ramon Sa Guardia absolved and innocent, and directed him to live with his brethren at Mas Deu, with a pension of three hundred and fifty livres, and the use of the gardens and orchards, the other Templars having pensions ranging from one hundred to thirty livres. Yet, in September, 1315, Bernard, Archbishop of Narbonne, ordered Bishop Ramon’s successor Guillen to bring to the provincial council which he had summoned all the Templars imprisoned in his diocese, together with the documents relating to their trials, in order that their persons might be disposed of. King Jayme I. had died in 1311, but his son and successor, Sancho, intervened, saying that Clement had placed the Templars in his charge, and he would not surrender them without a papal order—the papacy at that time being vacant, with little prospect of an early election. He added that if they were to be punished it belonged to him to have them tried in his court, and to protect his jurisdiction he appealed to the future pope and council. This was effectual, and the Templars remained undisturbed. A statement of pensions paid in 1319 shows that of the twenty-five examined at Mas Deu in 1310 ten had died; the remainder, with one additional brother, were drawing pensions amounting in the aggregate to nine hundred and fifty livres a year. On the island of Majorca there were still nine whose total pensions were three hundred and sixty-two livres ten sols. In 1329 there were still nine Templars receiving pensions allotted on the Preceptory of Mas Deu, though most of them had retired to their houses, for they do not appear to have been restricted as to their place of residence. By this time the indomitable Ramon Sa Guardia’s name had disappeared. One by one they dropped off, until in 1350 there was but a single survivor, the knight Berenger dez Coll.[335]

In Castile no action seems to have been taken until the bull Faciens misericordiam of August 12, 1308, was sent to the prelates ordering them to act in conjunction with the Dominican, Eymeric de Navas, as inquisitor. Fernando IV. then ordered the Templars arrested, and their lands placed in the hands of the bishops until the fate of the Order should be determined. There was no alacrity, however, in pursuing the affair, for it was not until April 15, 1310, that Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo cited the Master of Castile, Rodrigo Ybañez, and his brethren to appear before him at Toledo. For the province of Compostella, comprising Portugal, the archbishop held a council at Medina del Campo, where thirty Templars and three other witnesses were examined, all of whom testified in favor of the Order; a priest swore that he had heard the confessions of many Templars on their death-beds, as well as others mortally wounded by the infidel, and all were orthodox. No better success attended inquests held by the Bishop of Lisbon at Medina Celi and Orense. The only judicial action of which we have notice was that of the Council of Salamanca for the province of Compostella, where the Templars were unanimously acquitted, and the cruel orders to torture them issued the next year by Clement seem to have been disregarded. After the Order was dissolved the Templars for the most part continued to lead exemplary lives. Many retired to the mountains and ended their days as anchorites, and after death their bodies remained incorruptible, in testimony of the saintliness of their martyrdom.[336]

Portugal belonged ecclesiastically to the province of Compostella, and the Bishop of Lisbon, commissioned to investigate the Order, found no ground for the charges. The fate of the Templars there was exceptionally fortunate, for King Diniz, grateful for their services in his wars with the Saracens, founded a new Order, that of Jesus Christ, or de Avis, and procured its approval in 1318 from John XXII. To this safe refuge the Templars and their lands were transferred, the commander and many of the preceptors retaining their rank, and the new Order was thus merely a continuation of the old.[337]

The period finally set for the Council of Vienne was approaching, and thus far Clement had failed to procure any evidence of weight against the Templars beyond the boundaries of France, where bishop and inquisitor had been the tools of Philippe’s remorseless energy. Clement may at the first have been Philippe’s unwilling accomplice, but if so he had long since gone too far to retract. Whether, as believed by many of his contemporaries, he was sharing the spoils, is of little moment. He had committed himself personally to all Europe, in the bull of November 22, 1307, to the assertion of the Templars’ guilt, and had repeated this emphatically in his subsequent utterances, with details admitting of no retraction or explanation; he, as well as they, was on trial before Christendom, and their acquittal by the council would be his conviction. He was, therefore, no judge, but an antagonist, forced by the instinct of self-preservation to destroy them, no matter through what unscrupulous methods. As the council drew near his anxiety increased, and he cast around for means to secure the testimony which should justify him by proving the heresy of the Order. We have seen how he urged Edward II. to introduce torture into the hitherto unpolluted courts of England, and how he succeeded in having the brethren of Aragon tortured in violation of the liberties of the land. These were but specimens of a series of bulls, perhaps the most disgraceful that ever proceeded from a vicegerent of God. From Cyprus to Portugal, prince and prelate were ordered to obtain confessions by torture; in some places, he said, it had been negligently and imprudently omitted, and the omission must be repaired. The canons required that in such cases those who refused to confess must be submitted to a “religious torturer” and the truth thus be forced from them. So earnest was he that he wrote to his legate in Rhodes to go to Cyprus and personally see that it was done. The result in such cases was to be sent to him as speedily as possible.[338]

How much of human agony these inhuman orders caused can never be known. It was not merely that those who had hitherto been spared the rack were now subjected to it, but, in the eagerness to supplement the evidence on hand, those who had already undergone torture were brought from their dungeons and again subjected to it with enhanced severity, in order to obtain from them still more extravagant admissions of guilt. Thus at Florence thirteen Templars had been duly inquisitioned in 1310, and some of them had confessed. Under the fresh papal urgency the inquisitors again assembled in September, 1311, and put them through a fresh series of examinations. Six of them yielded testimony in every way satisfactory—the adoration of idols and cats and the rest. Seven of them, however, were obstinate, and testified to the innocence of the Order. The inquisitors showed their appreciation of what Clement wanted by sending him only the six confessions. The other seven brethren, they reported, had been duly tortured, but had stated nothing that was worth the sending, as they were serving brethren or newly initiated members who, presumably, were ignorant—although elsewhere the most damaging evidence had been obtained from such brethren and utilized. Clement evidently knew his man when he selected the Archbishop of Pisa as the head of this inquisition. We happen to have another illustration of the results of Clement’s urgency in preparing for the council. In the Château d’Alais the Bishop of Nîmes held thirty-three Templars who had already been examined and confessions extorted from some of them, which had mostly been retracted. Under Clement’s orders for fresh tortures twenty-nine survivors of these (four having meanwhile died in prison) were brought out in August, 1311. Some of them had already been tortured three years before, but now all were tortured again, with the result of obtaining the kind of testimony required, including demon-worship.[339]

In spite of all these precautions it required the most arbitrary use of both papal and kingly influence to force from the council a reluctant assent to what was evidently regarded by Christendom as the foulest injustice. It is, perhaps, significant that the acts of the council vanished from the papal archives, and we are left to gather its proceedings from such fragmentary allusions as occur in contemporary chroniclers and from the papal bulls which record its results. Good orthodox Catholics have even denied to it the right to be considered Œcumenic, in spite of the presence of more than three hundred bishops from all the states of Europe, the presidency of a pope, and the book of canon laws which was adopted in it, no one knows how.[340]

The first question to be settled was Clement’s demand that the Order should be condemned without a hearing. He had, as we have seen, solemnly summoned it to appear, through its chiefs and procurators, before the council, and had ordered the Cardinal of Palestrina, whom he had appointed their custodian, to present them for that purpose; he had organized a commission expressly to listen to those who were willing to defend it, and to arrange for them to nominate procurators, and he had uttered no protest when Philippe’s savage violence had put an end to the attempt. Now the council had met and the chiefs of the Order were not brought before it. The subject was too delicate a one to be trusted to the body of the council, and a picked convocation was formed of prelates selected from the nations represented—Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, England, Ireland, and Scotland—to discuss the matter with the pope and cardinals. On a day in November, while this body was listening to the reports sent in by the inquisitors, suddenly there appeared before them seven Templars offering to defend the Order in the name, they said, of fifteen hundred or two thousand brethren, refugees who were wandering in the mountains of the Lyonnais. In place of hearing them, Clement promptly cast them into prison, and when, a few days later, two more, undeterred by the fate of their predecessors, made a similar attempt, they were likewise incarcerated. Clement’s principal emotion was fear for his own life from the desperation of the outcasts, leading him to take extra precautions and to advise Philippe to do the same. This was not calculated to make the prelates feel less keenly the shame of what they were asked to do, for which the only reason alleged was the injury to the Holy Land arising from the delay to be anticipated from discussion; and when the matter came to a vote only one Italian bishop and three Frenchmen (the Archbishops of Sens, Reims, and Rouen, who had burned the relapsed Templars) were found to record themselves in favor of the infamy of condemning the Order unheard. They might well hesitate. In Germany, Italy, and Spain provincial councils had solemnly declared that they could find no evil in the Order or its members. In England the Templars had only confessed themselves defamed of heresy. In France alone had there been any general confession of guilt. Even if individuals were guilty, they had been condemned to appropriate penance, and there was no warrant for destroying without a hearing so noble a member of the Church Militant as the great Order of the Temple.[341]

Clement vainly used every effort to win over the Council. The most that he could do was to prolong the discussion until the middle of February, 1313, when Philippe, who had called a meeting of the Three Estates at Lyons, hard by Vienne, came thence with Charles de Valois, his three sons and a following numerous enough to impress the prelates with his power. A royal order of March 14 to the Seneschal of Toulouse to make a special levy to defray the expenses of the delegates sent by that city successively to Tours, Poitiers, Lyons, and Vienne, “on the business of the faith or of the Templars,” shows how the policy, begun at Tours, of overawing the Church by pressure from the laity of the kingdom was unscrupulously pursued to the end. Active discussions followed. Philippe had dexterously brought forward again the question of the condemnation of Boniface VIII. for heresy, which he had promised, a year previous, to abandon. It was an impossibility to grant this without impugning the legitimacy of Boniface’s cardinals and of Clement’s election, but it served the purpose of affording an apparent concession. The combined pressure brought to bear upon the council became too strong for further resistance, and the Gordian knot was resolutely severed. In a secret consistory of cardinals and prelates held March 22, Clement presented the bull Vox in excelso, in which he admitted that the evidence did not canonically justify the definitive condemnation of the Order, but he argued that it had been so scandalized that no honorable men hereafter could enter it, that delay would lead to the dilapidation of its possessions with consequent damage to the Holy Land, and that, therefore, its provisional abolition by the Holy See was expedient. April 3 the second session of the council was held, in which the bull was published, and Clement apologized for it by explaining that it was necessary to propitiate his dear son, the King of France. If the popular belief was that the sentence was rendered by Philippe’s command, it was not without justification. Thus, after all this cruelty and labor, the Order was abolished without being convicted. There can be little doubt that the council acquiesced willingly in this solution of the question. The individual members were thus relieved of responsibility, and they felt that the Order had been so foully dealt with that policy required injustice to be carried out to the bitter end.[342]

The next point to be determined was the disposition of the Templar property, which gave rise to a long and somewhat bitter debate. Various plans were proposed, but finally Clement succeeded in procuring its transfer to the Hospitallers. It may not be true that they bribed him heavily to accomplish this, but such a belief prevailed extensively at the time, and sufficiently illustrates the estimate entertained of him by his contemporaries. May 2 the bull Ad providam announced that, although in view of the proceedings thus far had the Order could not legally be suppressed, it was provisionally and irrevocably abolished by apostolic ordinance; it was placed under perpetual inhibition, and any one presuming to enter it or to assume its habit incurred ipso facto excommunication. All the property of the Order was assumed by the Holy See, and was transferred to the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, saving in the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Majorca, and Portugal. As early as August, 1310, Jayme of Aragon had urged his brother monarchs to unite with him in defending their claims before the papal court; and though he disregarded Clement’s invitation to appear in person before the council to state his reasons, the three kings took care to have their views energetically represented. Elsewhere, all who occupied and detained such property, no matter what their rank or station, were required, under pain of excommunication, to hand it over to the Hospitallers within a month after summons. This bull was sent to all princes and prelates, and the latter were instructed to enforce the surrender of the property by a vigorous use of excommunication and interdict.[343]

The burning question as to the property being thus settled, the less material one as to the persons of the Templars was shuffled off by referring them to their provincial councils for judgment, with the exception of the chiefs of the Order still reserved to the Holy See. All fugitives were cited to appear within a year before their bishops for examination and sentence; failure to do so incurred ipso facto excommunication, which if endured for another year became condemnation for heresy. General instructions were given that the impenitent and relapsed were to be visited with the utmost penalties of the law. Those who, even under torture, denied all knowledge of error afforded a problem insoluble to the wisdom of the council and were referred to the provincial councils to be treated as justice and the equity of the canons required: to those who confessed, the rigor of justice should be tempered with abundant mercy. They were to be placed in the former houses of the Order or in monasteries, taking care that no great number should be herded together, and be decently maintained out of the property of the Order. Interest in the subject, however, passed away with the alienation of the property, and few provincial councils seem to have been held save those of Tarragona and Narbonne already mentioned. Many Templars rotted to death in their dungeons; some of the so-called “relapsed” were burned; many wandered over Europe as homeless vagabonds; others maintained themselves as best they might by manual labor. In Naples, curiously enough, John XXII. in 1318 ordered them to be supported by the Dominicans and Franciscans. When some attempted to marry, John XXII. pronounced that their vows were still binding and their marriages void, thus admitting that their reception had been regular and not vitiated. He likewise assumed their orthodoxy when he permitted them to enter other Orders. A certain number of them did so, especially in Germany, where their fate was less bitter than elsewhere, and where the Hospitallers welcomed them by formal resolution of the Conference of Frankfurt-am-Mayn in 1317. The last Preceptor of Brandenburg, Frederic of Alvensleben, was received into the Hospital with the same preferment. In fact, popular sympathy in Germany seems to have led to the assignment to them of revenues of which the Hospitallers complained as an insupportable burden, and in 1318 John XXII. ordered that they should not be so provided for as to enable them to lay up money and live luxuriously, but should have merely a living and garments suited to spiritual persons.[344]

There remained to be disposed of de Molay and the other chiefs reserved by Clement for his personal judgment—a reservation which, as we have seen, by inspiring them with selfish hopes, led them to abandon their brethren. When this purpose had been accomplished Clement for a while seemed to forgot them in their drear captivity. It was not till December 22, 1313, that he appointed a commission of three cardinals, Arnaud of S. Sabina, Nicholas of S. Eusebio, and Arnaldo of S. Prisca, to investigate the proceedings against them and to absolve or condemn, or to inflict penance proportionate to their offences, and to assign to them on the property of the Order such pensions as were fitting. The cardinals dallied with their duty until March 19, 1314, when, on a scaffold in front of Nôtre Dame, de Molay, Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy, Hugues de Peraud, Visitor of France, and Godefroi de Gonneville, Master of Aquitaine, were brought forth from the jail in which for nearly seven years they had lain, to receive the sentence agreed upon by the cardinals, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and some other prelates whom they had called in. Considering the offences which the culprits had confessed and confirmed, the penance imposed was in accordance with rule—that of perpetual imprisonment. The affair was supposed to be concluded when, to the dismay of the prelates and wonderment of the assembled crowd, de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney arose. They had been guilty, they said, not of the crimes imputed to them, but of basely betraying their Order to save their own lives. It was pure and holy; the charges were fictitious and the confessions false. Hastily the cardinals delivered them to the Prévôt of Paris, and retired to deliberate on this unexpected contingency, but they were saved all trouble. When the news was carried to Philippe he was furious. A short consultation with his council only was required. The canons pronounced that a relapsed heretic was to be burned without a hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for. That same day, by sunset, a pile was erected on a small island in the Seine, the Isle des Juifs, near the palace garden. There de Molay and de Charney were slowly burned to death, refusing all offers of pardon for retraction, and bearing their torment with a composure which won for them the reputation of martyrs among the people, who reverently collected their ashes as relics. It remained for a modern apologist of the Church to declare that their intrepid self-sacrifice proved them to be champions of the devil. In their death they triumphed over their persecutor and atoned for the pusillanimity with which they had abandoned those committed to their guidance. Hugues de Peraud and the Master of Aquitaine lacked courage to imitate them, accepted their penance, and perished miserably in their dungeons. Raimbaud de Caron, the Preceptor of Cyprus, had doubtless been already released by death.[345]

The fact that in little more than a month Clement died in torment of the loathsome disease known as lupus, and that in eight months Philippe, at the early age of forty-six, perished by an accident while hunting, necessarily gave rise to the legend that de Molay had cited them before the tribunal of God. Such stories were rife among the people, whose sense of justice had been scandalized by the whole affair. Even in distant Germany Philippe’s death was spoken of as a retribution for his destruction of the Templars, and Clement was described as shedding tears of remorse on his death-bed for three great crimes, the poisoning of Henry VI. and the ruin of the Templars and Beguines. An Italian contemporary, papalist in his leanings, apologizes for introducing a story of a wandering outcast Templar carried from Naples to the presence of Clement, bearding him to his face, condemned to the stake, and from the flames summoning him and Philippe to the judgment-seat of God within the year, which was marvellously fulfilled. These tales show how the popular heart was stirred and how the popular sympathies were directed.[346]

In fact, outside of France, where, for obvious reasons, contemporary opinion was cautious in expression, the downfall of the Templars was very largely attributed to the remorseless cupidity of Philippe and Clement. Even in France public sentiment inclined in their favor. Godefroi de Paris evidently goes as far as he dares when he says:

It required courage animated by a lofty sense of duty when, at the height of the persecution, the Dominican, Pierre de la Palu, one of the foremost theologians of the day, voluntarily appeared before the papal commission in Paris to say that he had been present at many examinations where some of the accused confessed the charges and others denied them, and it appeared to him that the denials were worthy of confidence rather than the confessions.[347] As time wore on the conviction as to their innocence strengthened. Boccaccio took their side. St. Antonino of Florence, whose historical labors largely influenced opinion in the fifteenth century, asserted that their downfall was attributable to the craving for their wealth, and popular writers in general adopted the same view. Even Raynaldus hesitates and balances arguments on either side, and Campi assures us that in Italy, in the seventeenth century, they were regarded by many as saints and martyrs. At length, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the learned Du Puy undertook to rehabilitate the memory of Philippe le Bel in a work of which the array of documentary evidence renders it indispensable to the student. Gürtler, who followed him with a history of the Templars, is evidently unable to make up his mind. Since then the question has been argued pro and con with a vehemence which promises to leave it one of the unsettled problems of history.[348]

Be this as it may, Philippe obtained the object of his desires. After 1307 his financial embarrassments visibly decreased. There was not only the release from the obligation of the five hundred thousand livres which he had borrowed of the Order, but its vast accumulations of treasure and of valuables of all kinds fell into his hands and were never accounted for. He collected all the debts due to it, and his successors were still busy at that work as late as 1322. The extensive banking business which the Templars had established between the East and the West doubtless rendered this feature of the confiscation exceedingly profitable, and it is safe to assume that Philippe enforced the rule that debts due by convicted heretics were not to be paid. Despite his pretence of surrendering the landed estates to the pope, he retained possession of them till his death and enjoyed their revenues. Even those in Guyenne, belonging to the English crown, he collected in spite of the protests of Edward, and he claimed the Templar castles in the English territories until Clement prevailed upon him to withdraw. The great Paris Temple, half palace, half fortress, one of the architectural wonders of the age, was retained with a grip which nothing but death could loosen. After the property had been adjudged to the Hospitallers, in May, 1312, by the Council of Vienne with Philippe’s concurrence, and he had formally approved of it in August, Clement addressed him in December several letters asking his assistance in recovering what had been seized by individuals—assistance which doubtless was freely promised; but in June, 1313, we find Clement remonstrating with him over his refusal to permit Albert de Châteauneuf, Grand Preceptor of the Hospital, to administer the property either of his own Order or that of the Temple in France. In 1314 the General Chapter of the Hospital gave unlimited authority to Leonardo and Francesco de Tibertis to take possession of all the Temple property promised to the Order, and in April an arrêt of Parlement recites that it had been given to the Hospital at Philippe’s special request, and that he had invested Leonardo de Tibertis with it; but there was a reservation that it was liable for the expenses of the imprisoned Templars and for the costs incurred by the king in pushing the trials. This was a claim elastic both in amount and in the time required for settlement. Had Philippe’s life been prolonged it is probable that no settlement would have been made. As it was, the Hospitallers at last, in 1317, were glad to close the affair by abandoning to Philippe le Long all claim on the income of the landed estates which the crown had held for ten years, with an arrangement as to the movables which virtually left them in the king’s hands. They also assumed to pay the expenses of the imprisoned Templars, and this exposed them to every species of exaction and pillage on the part of the royal officials.[349]

In fact, it is the general testimony that the Hospitallers were rather impoverished than enriched by the splendid gift. There had been a universal Saturnalia of plunder. Every one, king, noble, and prelate, who could lay hands on a part of the defenceless possessions had done so, and to reclaim it required large payments either to the holder or to his suzerain. In 1286 the Margrave Otto of Brandenburg had entered the Order of the Temple and had enriched it with extensive domains. These the Margrave Waldemar seized, and did not surrender till 1322, nor was the transfer confirmed till 1350, when the Hospital was obliged to pay five hundred silver marks. In Bohemia many nobles seized and retained Templar property; the chivalrous King John is said to have kept more than twenty castles, and Templars themselves managed to hold some and bequeath them to their heirs. Religious orders were not behindhand in securing what they could out of the spoils—Dominicans, Carthusians, Augustinians, Celestinians, all are named as participators. Even the pious Robert of Naples had to be reminded by Clement that he had incurred excommunication because he had not surrendered the Templar property in Provence. In fact, he had secretly sent orders to his seneschal not to deliver it to the Archbishops of Arles and Embrun, the commissioners appointed by the pope, and before he was finally obliged to make it over he realized what he could from it. Perhaps the Hospital fared better in Cyprus than elsewhere, for when the papal nuncio, Peter, Bishop of Rhodes, published the bull, November 7, 1313, the Templar possessions seem to have been made over to it without contest. In England, even the weakness of Edward II. made a feeble attempt to keep the property. Clement had ordered him, February 25, 1309, to make it over to the papal commissioners designated for the purpose, but he seems to have paid no attention to the command. After the Council of Vienne we find him, August 12, 1312, expressing to the Prior of the Hospital his surprise that he is endeavoring under the color of papal letters to obtain possession of it, to the manifest prejudice of the dignity of the crown. Much of it had been farmed out and alienated to Edward’s worthless favorites, and he resisted its surrender as long as he dared. When forced to succumb he did so in a manner as self-abasing as possible, by executing, November 24, 1313, a notarial instrument to the effect that he protested against it, and only yielded out of fear of the dangers to him and his kingdom to be apprehended from a refusal. It may be doubted whether his orders were obeyed that it should be burdened with the payment of the allowances to the surviving Templars. He succeeded, however, in getting a hundred pounds from the Hospitallers for the London Temple; and in 1317 John XXII. was obliged to intervene with an order for the restitution of lands still detained by those who had succeeded in occupying them.[350]

The Spanish peninsula had been excepted from the operation of the bull transferring the property to the Hospital, but subject to the further discretion of Clement. As regards the kingdom of Majorca he exercised this discretion in 1313 by giving King Sancho II. the personal property, and ordering him to make over the real estate to the Hospital, under condition that the latter should be subject to the duties which had been performed by the Temple. Even this did not relieve the Hospitallers from the necessity of bargaining with King Sancho. It was not until February, 1314, that the lands on the island of Majorca were surrendered to them in consideration of an annual payment of eleven thousand sols, and an allowance of twenty-two thousand five hundred sols to be made on the mesne profits to be accounted for since the donation was made. All profits previous to that time were to remain with the crown. No documents are extant to show what was done on the mainland, but doubtless there was a similar transaction. In addition to this the pensions of the Templars assigned on the property were a heavy burden for many years.[351]

In Aragon there was less disposition to accede to the papal wishes. Constant struggle with the Saracen had left memories of services rendered, or sharpened the sense of benefits to come from some new Order devoted wholly to national objects, which could not be expected of a body like the Hospitallers, whose primary duty was devotion to the Holy Land. The Templars had contributed largely to all the enterprises which had enlarged the boundaries of the kingdom. They had rendered faithful service to the monarchy in the council as well as in the field; to them was in great part attributed the rescue of Jayme I. from the hands of de Montfort, and they had been foremost in the glorious campaigns which had earned for him the title of el Conquistador. Pedro III. and Jayme II. had scarce had less reason for gratitude to them, and the latter, after sacrificing them, naturally desired to use their forfeited property for the establishment of a new Order from which he might expect similar advantages, but Clement’s engagements with the Hospitallers were such that he turned a deaf ear to the king’s repeated representations. On the accession of John XXII., however, matters assumed a more favorable aspect, and in 1317 Vidal de Vilanova, Jayme’s envoy, procured from him a bull authorizing the formation of the Order of Nuestra Señora de Montesa, affiliated to the Order of Calatrava, from which its members were to be drawn. Its duties were defined to be the defence of the coasts and frontier of Valencia from corsairs and Moors; the Templar property in Aragon and Catalonia was made over to the Hospitallers, while the new Order was to have in Valencia not only the possessions of the Temple, but all those of the Hospital, except in the city of Valencia and for half a league around it. In 1319 the preliminaries were accomplished, and the new Order was organized with Guillen de Eril as its Grand Master.[352]

In Castile Alonso XI. retained for the crown the greater part of the Templar lands, though, along the frontier, nobles and cities succeeded in obtaining a portion. Some were given to the Orders of Santiago and Calatrava, and the Hospitallers received little. After an interval of half a century another effort was made, and in 1366 Urban V. ordered the delivery within two months of all the Templar property to the Hospitallers, but it is safe to assume that the mandate was disregarded, though in 1387 Clement VII., the Avignonese antipope, confirmed some exchanges made of Templar property by the Hospitallers with the Orders of Santiago and Calatrava.[353] Castile, as we have already seen, was always singularly independent of the papacy. In Portugal, as mentioned above, the property was handed over as a whole to the Order of Jesus Christ.

In the Morea, where the Templar possessions were extensive, Clement had, as early as November 11, 1310, exercised rights of proprietorship by ordering his administrators, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Patras, to lend to Gautier de Brienne, Duke of Athens, all the proceeds which they had collected, and all that they might collect for a year to come.[354]

Thus disappeared, virtually without a struggle, an organization which was regarded as one of the proudest, wealthiest, and most formidable in Europe. It is not too much to say that the very idea of its destruction could not have suggested itself, but for the facilities which the inquisitorial process placed in able and unscrupulous hands to accomplish any purpose of violence under the form of law. If I have dwelt on the tragedy at a length that may seem disproportionate, my apology is that it affords so perfect an illustration of the helplessness of the victim, no matter how high-placed, when once the fatal charge of heresy was preferred against him, and was pressed through the agency of the Inquisition.

The case of the learned theologian, Jean Petit, Doctor of Sorbonne, is of no great historical importance, but it is worth noting as an example of the use made of the charge of heresy as a weapon in political warfare, and of the elastic definition by which heresy was brought to include offences not easily justiciable in the ordinary courts.

Under Charles VI. of France the royal power was reduced to a shadow. His frequently recurring fits of insanity rendered him incapable of governing, and the quarrels of ambitious princes of the blood reduced the kingdom almost to a state of anarchy. Especially bitter was the feud between the king’s brother, Louis, Duke of Orleans, and his cousin, Jean sans Peur of Burgundy. Yet even that age of violence was startled when, by the procurement of Jean sans Peur, the Duke of Orleans, in 1407, was assassinated in the streets of Paris—a murder which remained unavenged until 1419, when the battle-axe of Tanneguy du Châtel balanced the account on the bridge of Montereau. Even Jean sans Peur felt the need of some apology for his bloody deed, and he sought the assistance of Jean Petit, who read before the royal court a thesis—the Justificatio Ducis Burgundiæ—to prove that he had acted righteously and patriotically, and that he deserved the thanks of king and people. Written in the conventional scholastic style, the tract was not a mere political pamphlet, but an argument based on premises of general principles. It is a curious coincidence that, nearly three centuries earlier, another Johannes Parvus, better known as John of Salisbury, the worthiest representative of the highest culture of his day, in a purely speculative treatise had laid down the doctrine that a tyrant was to be put to death without mercy. According to the younger Jean Petit, “Any tyrant can and ought properly to be slain by any subject or vassal, and by any means, specially by treachery, notwithstanding any oath or compact, and without awaiting judicial sentence or order.” This rather portentous proposition was limited by defining the tyrant to be one who is endeavoring through cupidity, fraud, sorcery, or evil mind to deprive the king of his authority, and the subject or vassal is assumed to be one who is inspired by loyalty, and him the king should cherish and reward. It was not difficult to find Scriptural warrant for such assertion in the slaying of Zimri by Phineas, and of Holofernes by Judith; but Jean Petit ventured on debatable ground when he declared that St. Michael, without awaiting the divine command and moved only by natural love, slew Satan with eternal death, for which he was rewarded with spiritual wealth as great as he was capable of receiving.[355]

That this was not a mere lawyer’s pleading is shown by the fact that it was written in the vernacular and exposed for sale. Doubtless Jean sans Peur circulated it extensively, and it was doubtless convincing to those who were already convinced. It might safely have been allowed to perish in the limbo of forgetfulness, but when, some six years later, the Armagnac faction obtained the upper hand, it was exhumed from the dust as a ready means of attacking the Burgundians. Jean Petit himself, by opportunely dying some years before, escaped a trial for heresy, but in November, 1313, a national council was assembled in Paris to consider nine propositions extracted from his work. Gérard, Bishop of Paris, and Frère Jean Polet, the inquisitor, summoned the masters of theology of the University to give their opinions, which solemnly condemned the propositions. The council debated the question with unwearied prolixity through twenty-eight sessions, and finally, on February 23, 1314, it adopted a sentence condemning the nine propositions to be burned as erroneous in faith and morals, and manifestly scandalous. The sentence was duly executed two days later on a scaffold in front of Nôtre Dame, in presence of a vast crowd, to whom the famous doctor, Benoist Gencien, elaborately explained the enormity of the heresy. Jean sans Peur thereupon appealed to the Holy See from this sentence, and John XXIII. appointed a commission of three cardinals—Orsini, Aquileia, and Florence—to examine and report. Thus Jean Petit had succeeded in becoming a European question, but in spite of this a royal ordonnance on March 17 commanded all the bishops of the kingdom to burn the propositions; on March 18, the University ordered them burned; on June 4 there was a royal mandate to publish the condemnation; on December 4 the University came to the royal court and delivered an oration on the subject, and on December 27 Charles VI. addressed a royal letter to the Council of Constance asking it to join in the condemnation. Evidently the affair was exploited to the uttermost; and when, on January 4, 1315, the long-delayed obsequies of the Duke of Orleans were performed in Nôtre Dame, Chancellor Gerson preached a sermon before the king and the court, the boldness of which excited general comment. The government of the Duke of Orleans had been better than any which had succeeded it; the death of the Duke of Burgundy was not counselled, but his humiliation was advocated; the burning of Petit’s propositions was well done, but more remained to do, and all this Gerson was ready to maintain before all comers.[356]