Read The Tragedy of the Templars Online
Authors: Michael Haag
The Tragedy of the Templars (43 page)
Philip was able to arrest and charge the Templars owing to a loophole in the law going back to the time of the Cathars and their trials nearly eighty years earlier. So serious was the spread of the Cathar heresy in the early 1200s that Pope Honorius III had bestowed extraordinary powers on the Inquisition, extending its reach even to the exempt orders, the Templars, the Hospitallers and St Bernard's Cistercians, whenever there was a suspicion of heresy. After the Cathar heresy was eradicated, this grant of powers was forgotten by the papacy, but it was never revoked. This meant that the Templars, though otherwise answerable to no secular or religious authority other than the pope, were vulnerable to the charge of heresy â a discovery made by Philip IV's assiduous lawyers, who now used it to devastating effect.
As heresy was the one possible charge that the king could successfully level against the Templars, so heresy it had to be. No time was wasted in mounting a propaganda campaign against the Templars: the king's minister William of Nogaret announced the heresy before a large crowd in Paris, and under the Inquisitor's instructions the charge was repeated from church pulpits. The mere mention of heresy had the immediate effect of blackening the order's reputation.
The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by royal agents under the direction of William of Nogaret, who in 1303 had taken part in the attempt to overthrow Pope Boniface VIII, since when he had remained excommunicated. William's family had suffered persecution because his grandfather had been a Cathar, but by his cleverness and cynicism he had risen in Philip's court and was ennobled in 1299, becoming the king's Keeper of the Seals and his right-hand man. These facts may have contributed to William of Nogaret's contempt for the papacy and his unscrupulous ambition to make France the greatest power in the world.
Many of those arrested were simple men, not battle-hardened Templar knights but ploughmen, artisans and servants who helped keep the order running, and these would have succumbed to torture or even the threat of torture fairly quickly. The knights themselves, however, had been long prepared for the worst in Outremer, for that day when they might be captured and thrown into a Muslim dungeon, be tortured or face execution unless they abjured their faith. And yet these too rapidly and all but unanimously confessed. The tortures could be savage: scores died undergoing what was called ecclesiastical procedure, which did not mean breaking limbs or drawing blood but which routinely included being kept chained in isolation and fed on bread and water; being drawn on the rack until the joints were dislocated, being raised over a beam by a rope tied to the wrists that had been bound behind the victim's back and sometimes with weights attached to the testicles, and having fat rubbed into the soles of the feet, which were then placed before a fire. One tortured Templar priest was so badly burned that the bones fell out of his feet. Another of the accused said that he would have agreed âto kill God'
5
to stop his torment.
Yet physical torture was far from the only element in the confessions. Instead, one of the worst problems for the Templars was the overturning of their spiritual and social universe. They had spent their lives in the enclosed world of a military elite to which they owed absolute loyalty and were constantly reminded of the support they in turn received from the rest of society. But now they were reviled, told that they were heretics, and no support seemed to be forthcoming from any quarter. The walls, ceiling and floor of their enclosed world had fallen away, leaving them exposed, bewildered and lost. Under these conditions it is not surprising that Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, Geoffrey of Charney, preceptor of Normandy, and Hugh of Pairaud, whose rank of visitor of France made him the most elevated Templar in Western Christendom after Jacques de Molay, were among the near unanimity of Templars who rapidly confessed.
On 19 October 1307 the Inquisitorial hearings began at the Paris Temple. On 25 and 26 October Jacques de Molay was called to testify. His confession, made before the hearing, was recorded and sent to the pope as proof of heresy. In less than two weeks since their arrest, the Templars' honour had been stained for ever, and the news of their guilt reverberated throughout the whole of Christendom.
Jacques de Molay's confession, made on 24 October, stated that his initiation ceremony, which took place forty-two years earlier, followed the usual observances and statutes of the order, but then after the receptor placed the mantle on his shoulders he
        caused a certain bronze cross bearing the image of the Crucified to be brought into his presence, and told and ordered him to deny Christ whose image was there. Against his will he did this. Then the said receiver ordered him to spit on it but he spat on the ground. Asked how many times, he said on oath that he only spat once, and he remembered this clearly. Asked if, when he vowed chastity, anything was said to him about homosexual practices with the brothers, he said on oath that this was not the case and that he had never done this. Asked on oath whether other brothers of the said order were received in this manner, he said that he believed there was no difference between his and others' receptions. [. . .] Asked whether he had told or included any lie or omitted any fact in his deposition because of threat, fear or torture or imprisonment or any other reason he said on his oath that he had not; indeed he told the whole truth for the salvation of his soul.
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Although Jacques de Molay did not admit to much, his confession acquires greater force when seen in conjunction with others made at about the same time. On 21 October, Geoffrey of Charney, preceptor of Normandy, went down the same list of offences in the same order. After the mantle was placed on his shoulders, âthere was brought to him a certain cross bearing the image of Jesus Christ, and the said receptor told him not to believe in the one whose image was portrayed there since he was a false prophet and was not God. And then the said receptor made him deny Jesus Christ three times, but he claimed to have done this only with his tongue and not with his heart'.
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Geoffrey of Charney could not remember if he had then spat on the image, but he did recall kissing his receptor on the navel and being told it was better to have sex with brothers than with women, although he said he never did this.
The same formula â the mantle, the image, the denial, the spitting â was followed again on 9 November, when Hugh of Pairaud, Visitor of France, made his confession. âHe denied Jesus Christ, though as he said, with his lips but not his heart.' He admitted to kissing the receptor, but only on the mouth. But when later he conducted his own initiations,
        he made them kiss him on the bottom of the dorsal spine, on the navel and on the mouth, and then had brought before them a cross and told them that the statutes of the order required them to deny the Crucified one and the cross three times, to spit upon the cross and the image of Jesus Christ, the Crucified one, although this is what he ordered them to do, he did not do this with his heart.
He also gave permission for initiates to relieve their sexual urges with their fellow brothers, âalthough he did this only with his lips, not with his heart'. Asked about the head,
        he said on his oath that he had seen it, held it and stroked it at Montpellier in a chapter, and he and other brothers present had worshipped it. He said however that he had worshipped it with his lips, not with his heart, and then only in pretence; he did not know if other brothers worshipped it with their heart. [. . .] He said that this head had four feet, two at the front, under the face, and two behind.
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These confessions are significant at least as much for what has been omitted. They were crafted by William of Nogaret, who selected and extrapolated from their context those elements which could be presented as crimes against the faith. These were then put together in such a form that they created the impression of a coherent heretic creed. Quite possibly little or no torture was required to get the basic facts, but the violence came in the way they were presented.
It is not impossible that Philip and his government really did believe the accusations of heresy that they made against the Templars. This was an age when people believed that the devil was constantly trying to spread corruption throughout Christian society. By attacking the weak points of the social structure the devil aimed to cause the collapse of society altogether. Therefore the task of the faithful was to be vigilant, to expose evil and to cut out corruption at an early stage before the whole of society succumbed. Philip had given himself the role of a sacred king ruling over a holy country and had already shown he would not accept any challenge to his absolute sovereignty; he had not hesitated to strike against Boniface VIII and would have tried him for heretical crimes. The protection under the pope enjoyed by the Templars and their immunity from the secular law would already have been an offence in Philip's eyes; if there was anything about the Templars that smacked of heresy, the king and his supporters could easily have taken this as a danger that needed to be immediately eradicated.
But Philip's most powerful immediate motive was the desire, indeed the need, to get his hands on the wealth of the Templars. He had already stolen from the Italian bankers and the Jews, he had debased the currency, and it was his exactions from the clergy that provoked his first confrontation with Boniface VIII. His wars against England and in Flanders had cost him a great deal of money, and he had inherited a huge debt from his father's wars. The Templars were a tempting target, for unlike the Hospitallers, whose wealth was entirely in land, the Templars from their banking activities also had liquid wealth, which the king could quickly and easily grab. By accusing them of heresy Philip could turn the Templars into reprehensible religious outsiders against whom persecution was readily rationalised.
Many foreign observers, especially those in northern Italy, where there was a more complete understanding of the power of money than anywhere else in fourteenth-century Europe, were convinced that getting his hands on the Templars' cash and precious metals was the primary motive for Philip's attack. Dante famously attacked the king's actions in
Purgatorio
, the second book of the
Divine Comedy
, written in the immediate aftermath of the Templars' arrest. Comparing Philip to Pontius Pilate, Dante wrote:
        I see the second Pilate's cruel mood
        Grow so insatiate that without decree
        His greedy sails upon the Temple intrude.
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Pope Clement V was stunned when, on 14 October, a messenger brought the news to his court at Poitiers that the Templars had been arrested the previous day. Although the action had been taken on the nominal authority of the French Inquisitor William of Paris, there was no doubt that the arrests represented an attack on the papacy and the Catholic Church by the secular monarchy of France. The matter concerned not the Templars only; the survival of the papacy was at stake, and Clement immediately summoned all his cardinals for an emergency meeting of the Curia, which began on 16 October and lasted three days.
Another pope at another time might have excommunicated Philip. But Clement was doubly vulnerable â after Philip's coup against Boniface in Italy, and as a resident on French soil. Instead Clement issued a bull,
Ad Preclarus Sapientie
, which gave Philip a way out: it said that the king had acted unlawfully and had tarnished the reputation of his grandfather St Louis, but he could make up for his rashness by handing the Templars and their possessions over to the Church. To achieve this, in November the pope sent two cardinals to Paris to take into custody the men and property of the Temple. But the king had made himself absent and his counsellors refused access to the Templars, let alone handing them over to the Church, arguing that a papal intervention was superfluous as they were self-confessed heretics.
When the cardinals went back to Poitiers with the news that the French monarchy was flatly refusing to obey an express command of the pope, the Curia was plunged into crisis. According to one report, ten cardinals threatened to resign if the pope showed himself to be a puppet of the French king. Clement was faced with replacing the cardinals at the cost of causing a schism in the Church, or he could excommunicate Philip and fall victim to a royal coup.
But the pope found another way and, acting with some dexterity within the difficult constraints of his situation, he did what he could to put himself in charge of events. First on 22 November 1307 he issued a bull,
Pastoralis Praeeminentiae
, asking all the kings and princes of Christendom to arrest the Templars in their lands and to hold their property in safe keeping for the Church. In this way proceedings were initiated against the Templars in England, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Cyprus â but in the name of the Church. By doing this the pope was delivering an implied ultimatum to King Philip, that what was true in the rest of Europe must also be so in France. He praised the French king for his good faith and religious zeal, but Clement was making it clear that the case against the Templars was being removed from the king's authority and was now being taken into the hands of the papacy.
As for the crisis that had arisen when the king's officials rebuffed the two cardinals, the pope simply pretended that the incident had never happened. Instead in December he sent the two cardinals back to Paris as if for the first time. But now they brought with them the power, granted by the pope, to excommunicate Philip on the spot and to place the whole of France under an interdict if the king persisted in his refusal to hand over the Templars. The move was effective: on 24 December 1307 Philip wrote to the pope that he would hand over the Templars.
On 27 December 1307 the cardinals met Jacques de Molay and other leading Templars, who denied everything to which they had formerly confessed. According to one source, the Grand Master said that he had confessed only under heavy torture, and he showed the wounds on his body, although it is not clear if this source can be trusted. Nevertheless, retracting the confessions was a risky move because under the rules of the Inquisition relapsed heretics were handed over to the secular authorities to be burned. That the Grand Master and others took that risk shows that they were confident that a great injustice was about to be overturned.