Note 303 — Chapter V · POLITICAL HERESY UTILIZED BY THE STATE.

This would seem not unlikely if we are to believe the confession of Jean d’Aumônes, a serving brother who stated that at his reception his preceptor turned all the other brethren out of the chapel, and after some difficulty forced him to spit at the cross, after which he said “Go, fool, and confess.” This Jean at once did, to a Franciscan who imposed on him only the penance of three Friday fasts, saying that it was intended as a test of constancy in case of capture by the Saracens (Procès, I. 588-91).

Another serving brother, Pierre de Cherrut, related that after he had been forced to renounce God his preceptor smiled disdainfully at him, as though despising him (Ib. I. 531).

Equally suggestive is the story, told by the serving brother Eudes de Bures, a youth of twenty at the time, that after his reception he was taken into another room by two of the brethren and forced to renounce Christ. On his refusing at first, one of them said that in his country people renounced God a hundred times for a flea—perhaps an exaggeration, but “Je renye Dieu” was one of the commonest of expletives. When the preceptor heard him weeping he called to the tormentors to let him alone, as they would set him crazy, and he subsequently told Eudes that it was a joke (Ib. II. 100-2).

What is the real import of such incidents may be gathered from a story related by a witness during the inquest held in Cyprus, May, 1310. He had heard from a Genoese named Matteo Zaccaria, who had long been a prisoner in Cairo, that when the news of the proceedings against the Order reached the Soldan of Egypt he drew from his prisons about forty Templars captured ten years before on the island of Tortosa, and offered them wealth if they would renounce their religion. Surprised and angered by their refusal, he remanded them to their dungeons and ordered them to be deprived of food and drink, when they perished to a man rather than apostatize.—Schottmüller, op. cit. II. 160.