Mediaeval Knights Templars

Chapter 5.

For some years there had been vague rumours and whisperings of excesses and secret rites among the Templars: and as far back as 1208 Pope Innocent III had issued an epistle to the Master censuring their conduct and exhorting them to be mindful of their noble call­ing, but their fall is to be attributed to other causes besides this. They had become exceedingly powerful, yet could count on friends nowhere. The prelates regarded them with coldness, if not jealousy, on account of their numerous privileges. Their very wealth proved a source of danger. In France their possessions were enormous; their Temple at Paris was the strongest fortress in the Kingdom. To Philip IV a strong and ambitious ruler, whose life-long aim had been to break the power of his vassals, such an order was especially obnoxious. They paid no feudal dues, and should they unite with any of his enemies, the throne might be in peril. He was in want too of money. Some years before he had plundered the Jews, but their spoils had all gone, and he was looking for some other source from which to fill his coffers. And there was a keen personal element governing his actions. In the conflict between the King and Pope Boniface VIII when excommunication and defiance had been hurled at each other, the Templars had taken the side of the Pope, and Philip was not likely to forget this. In 1305, after ten months wrangling in the conclave for the election of a new Pope, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was put forward as a candidate for the dignity. Philip met the Archbishop and showed him that it was in his power to secure his election, and he was willing to do so if he would agree to six conditions. These referred to the removal of the excommunication on him and his family, a grant of the tithes in France for five years, and the conferring of dignities on some of his friends. “The sixth favour,” he said, "is great and secret, and I reserve the asking of it for a suitable time and place." The ambitious Archbishop agreed to all the conditions and in December of that year was crowned at Lyons as Clemant V.

The following year Clement summoned the Master of the Temple and the Master of the Hospital to France. The Hospitallers were engaged in the attack on Rhodes, but James de Molay, with 60 of his best Knights, left Cyprus on the call of the Pope; and as showing the wealth of the Order at the time, he is said to have taken with him 150,000 florins of gold and so much silver as altogether formed the loading of twelve horses. On his arrival rumours of charges against the Templars were communicated to De Molay by the Pope, and he gave such explanation as appeared to assure his holiness of their innocence. But the King had determined to enforce the "last great and secret condition" of his bargain with Clement. Having made up evidence against the Order by the aid of those who entertained personal malice towards them, assisted by the confession of two renegade Knights who had been expelled for infamous conduct, in October 1307, he had all the Knights in France arrested and their goods and property seized; and the next day took possession of the Temple in Paris with all the treasure stored there.

The charges against the Templars were:- That on the initiation of a Knight he was forced to deny Christ, to spit upon the cross, and to undergo obscene ceremonies; that they worshipped idols-some said a head, some said a cat; that they practised magic; and that in their Preceptories they indulged in gross and unnatural vices. These charges are altogether improbable in themselves, and were unsupported by any evidence that would be accepted in these times.

Philip, however, was resolved to get convictions. The Master and 140 of his Knights had been imprisoned in Paris, where 36 of them died under torture. All through the kingdom the members of the Order were submitted to torture of the most horrible kind, torture beyond human endurance, under the agony of which they confessed whatever was desired, subsequently recanted their confessions, and under torture again revoked their recantations. In August 1309, a commiss­ion was appointed to take evidence on the guilt of the Order, and the trial dragged on for months, taking such evidence as they could from the terror-stricken brethren. In April 1310, while the Commiss­ion was actually sitting, Philip sent 54 Knights, who had appeared to defend the Order, to the flames, and they were burnt refusing at the stake the offer of the Envoy of the Court of liberty and royal favour if they would confess, and retract their declaration of innocence. The example was followed in other parts of the country. The Knights who refused to confess, or who having confessed under torture afterwards denied the unworthy charges, were sent to the flames in batches. And the Commission was still recording as evidence the broken utterances of  those whose honour and courage had surr­endered to the honour of the dungeon and the rack. One Knight, Aymeric de Villars-le-Duc, appeared before the commission in this terrified condition. He was told to speak the truth. Bending his knee, and striking his breast, he said, "I persist in maintaining that the errors imputed to the Templars are absolutely false, though I have confessed some of them myself, overcome by the torture which the King's Knights ordered to be inflicted on me. I have seen the 54 Knights, led in carts, to be committed to the flames because they would not make the confessions which were required of them. I have heard that they were burnt, and I doubt if I could, like them, have had the noble constancy to brave the terror of the pile. I believe that if I were threatened with it I should depose on oath before the Commission, and before any other person who should inter­rogate me, that these same errors were true." And shuddering at the recollection of the torture he had endured he exclaimed, "I would kill God himself if it were required of me."

Clement had called a council to consider the question of the guilt or innocence of the Order, and this assembled at Vienne, near Lyons, in 1311. A proclamation had been issued inviting those Templars who were willing to appear and defend their Order. Although it was four years since the persecution of the Knights had begun, and their leaders were all dead or languishing in prison, nine Knights came forward as the representatives of 1,500 or 2,000 who were lying hidden in the neighbourhood. Clement threw these brave Knight& into prison, and although out of 114 prelates at the Council all but four--three from Italy and one from France--voted for their admission and for hearing their defence, he refused to allow this, and closed the session. Philip, in the meantime, had lost patience at the slowness of these proceedings. He made a visit to Clement, who immediately assembled his cardinals and a few of his prelates in a secret consistory, and of his own sole authority abolished the Order on March 2nd 1313. The second session of the Council was now called. The King, his sons, and his brother appeared at it with the royal guards for protection or intimidation: the bull of abolition was read, no voice was raised against it, and on May 2nd the Order as such ceased to exist.  

The King and the Pope took possession of all the movable property of the Templars; the other possessions were consigned to the Hospitallers, though it was years before they could get them, and then only on payment of such fines as left them little the better off. It was ordered in council that those Knights who had been found guiltless should be set at liberty, those who refused were to be kept in prison. While the King and Clement were working their will against the Order, and the Knights were persecuted and banished or killed, the Grand Master, with three companions, the Great Prior of Normandy, Hugh, Visiter of France, and Guy, Prior of Auvergne, lay imprisoned at Paris. There would seem to be no doubt that some confessions had been wrung from them under torture. they were now to be dealt with, and on March 13th 1314, a public stage was erected in front of Notre Dame, where they were brought to hear their punishment. A Cardinal read their confession, and was proceeding with the sentence of perpetual imprisonment when he was interrupted by De Molay, who said that he had committed the greatest of crimes, but it was in acknow­ledging the charges so foully alleged against the Order the truth compelled him to attest that it was innocent. He had made the con­trary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture. He knew the fate of those who revoked their confession, but even that would not make him confirm one lie by another. The life offered him on such infamous terms he abandoned with regret. Guy followed him with a similar assertion, and the next day they were burnt over a slow fire of charcoal on an island in the Seine, persevering to the last in the avowal of innocence

It was said that for long--on the anniversary of the suppression of the Order--the heads of seven of the martyred Templars rose from their graves. A phantom clothed in the red cross mantle came into the churchyard and cried thrice, "Who shall now defend the Holy Temple? Who shall free the Sepulchre of the lord?" and the seven heads made answer, “None, the Temple is destroyed."

In England, the King, Edward II at the instigations of Philip, and under pressure from the Pope, in 1308 issued writs to seize all the Templars in his kingdom and attach their property. About 250 Knights were arrested in England and Ireland. courts of trial were set up in London, Lincoln, and York. Nothing of any account could be proved against the Order. The Holy Father wrote censuring the King and the Prelates for their mildness, and enjoining the use of torture. The prelates replied that there was no machine for torture in the land. Many of the Knights, under terror, confessed to irreg­ularities; but the Great Prior, William de la Moore, with forty seven of the noblest Knights who had been committed to the Tower, persisted in their avowal of innocence. It does not appear that torture was employed; none of the Knights were put to death, and after several years imprisonment they were discharged with an injunction to the Hospitallers, who had become possessed of their property, to allow them such sum as would be sufficient to afford them a bare existence.

In Germany nothing was proved against the Order; at a council at Mainz it was declared innocent. In Spain the Knights were held not guilty of heresy. In Aragon their property was given to the Order of Our Lady of Montessa, whose members assumed the habit of the Templars and fought against the Moors. In Portugal it merely changed its name to the Order of Christ, which has existed to modern times. In every country away from the influence of France of the Holy See, the Order was pronounced innocent, or members guilty of minor irreg­ularities only; but nothing could avert the calamity urged on by the King and the Pope. The Knights who were released found their property gone, and were reduced to the utmost distress. 'many of them were received into the Order of St.John or of the Teutonic Knights; and as the members died or were merged into the other Orders, the name of Templar fell into oblivion, or, blasted with the taint of heresy by the emissaries of Rome, it became for centuries a bye-word of the people. It remained for comparatively recent research to show how this once great and powerful Order, whose members had raised chivalry to its highest pitch, who had for nearly two hundred years formed the bulwark of Christianity in the East, who had spent their blood in defence of what was believed by the Church to be its dearest and most sacred objects, was sacrificed to the hatred and avarice of a King who might have been their rival, and the treachery and cowardice of a Pope who should have been their defender.

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I came across the above paper about the Mediaeval Knights Templars by Bro. Knight H.H. MacConnal in an old Masonic book printed in 1924. I don't believe it will be copyright now although I am still trying to find that out. In copying this from the old book into this site I might have made a few typographical errors, I would appreciate these being pointed out to me for correction. If you would like to use this, feel free, but an acknowledgement to Greyfriars Preceptory and this site would be appreciated.   The Webmaster.