The Knights Templars

In the spring of the year 1299, the Templars landed at Suadia, and made a junction with the Tartar forces which were encamped amid the ruins of Antioch. An army of thirty thousand men was placed by the Mogul emperor under the command of the Grand Master, and the combined forces moved up the valley of the Orontes towards Damascus. In a great battle fought at Hems, the troops of the sultans of Damascus and Egypt were entirely defeated, and pursued with great slaughter until nightfall. Aleppo, Hems, Damascus, and all the principal cities, surrendered to the victorious arms of the Moguls, and the Templars once again entered Jerusalem in triumph, visited the Holy Sepulchre, and celebrated Easter on Mount Zion. Casan sent ambassadors to the pope, and to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the victorious progress of his arms, soliciting their alliance, and offering them in return the possession of Palestine. But the Christian nations heeded not the call, and none thought seriously of an expedition to the east excepting the ladies of Genoa, who, frightened by an interdict which had been laid upon their town, assumed the cross as the best means of averting the divine indignation. The Grand Master of the Temple advanced as far as Gaza, and drove the Saracens into the sandy deserts of Egypt; but a Saracen chief, who had been appointed by the Tartars governor of Damascus, instigated the Mussulman population of Syria to revolt, and the Grand Master was obliged to retreat to Jerusalem. He was there joined by the Tartar general, Cotulosse, who had been sent across the Euphrates by Casan to support him. The combined armies were once more preparing to march upon Damascus, when the sudden illness of Casan, who was given over by his physicians, disconcerted all their arrangements, and deprived the Grand Master of his Tartar forces. The Templars were then compelled to retreat to the sea-coast and embark their forces on board their galleys. The Grand Master sailed to Limisso, stationing a strong detachment of his soldiers on the island of Aradus, near Tortosa, which they fortified; but they were speedily attacked in that position by a fleet of twenty vessels, and an army of ten thousand men, and after a gallant defence they were compelled to abandon their fortifications, and were all killed or taken prisoners.143

Thus ended the dominion of the Templars in Palestine, and thus closed the long and furious struggle between the CRESCENT and the CROSS! The few remaining Christians in the Holy Land were chased from ruin to ruin, and exterminated. The churches, the houses, and the fortifications along the sea-coast, were demolished, and everything that could afford shelter and security, or invite the approach of the crusaders from the west, was carefully destroyed. The houses were all set on fire, the trees were cut down and burnt, the land was everywhere laid waste, and all the maritime country, from Laodicea to Ascalon, was made desert. “Every trace of the Franks,” says the Arabian chronicler, Ibn Ferat, “was removed, and thus it shall remain, please God, till the day of judgment!”144

Near six centuries have swept over Palestine since the termination of the wars of the cross, and the land still continues desolate. The proud memorials of past magnificence are painfully contrasted with present ruin and decay, and the remains of the rich and populous cities of antiquity are surrounded by uncultivated deserts. God hath said, “I will smite the land with a curse. I will bring the worst of the heathen and they shall possess it.” “Thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof, and the defenced city shall be left desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness.”

“The fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be on the vine; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall.” But brighter and happier times are yet to come, for the Lord God hath also said, “To the mountains of Israel, to the hills, and to the rivers, to the valleys, and the desolate wastes, and the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and a derision to the heathen. Behold I am for you, I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown, and I will multiply men upon you, and they shall build up the old waste cities, the desolation of many generations!”

“In the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, shall the flocks pass again under the hand of him that telleth them, saith the Lord!”

CHAPTER VII

The downfall of the Templars – The cause thereof – The Grand Master comes to Europe at the request of the pope – He is imprisoned, with all the Templars in France, by command of king Philip – They are put to the torture, and confessions of the guilt of heresy and idolatry are extracted from them – Edward II., king of England, stands up in defence of the Templars, but afterwards persecutes them at the instance of the pope – The imprisonment of the Master of the Temple and all his brethren in England – Their examination upon eighty-seven horrible and ridiculous articles of accusation before foreign inquisitors appointed by the pope – The curious evidence adduced as to the mode of admission into the order, and of the customs and observances of the fraternity – The Templars in France having revoked their rack-extorted confessions, are treated as relapsed heretics, and burnt at the stake – Solitary confinement of the Templars in England in separate dungeons – Torture – Confessions and recantations – The Master of the Temple at London dies in the Tower – The Grand Master is burnt at the stake – The abolition of the order and disposal of its property.

En cel an qu’ai dist or endroit,Et ne sait a tort ou a droit,Furent li Templiers, sans doutance,Tous pris par le royaume de France.Au mois d’Octobre, au point du jor,Et un vendredi fu le jor.Chron. MS.

It now only remains for us to relate the miserable and cruel fate of the surviving brethren of the order of the Temple, and to tell of the ingratitude they encountered at the hands of their fellow-Christians in the West. After the loss of all the christian territory in Palestine, and the destruction of every serious hope of recovering and retaining the Holy City, the services of the Templars ceased to be required, and men began to regard with an eye of covetousness their vast wealth and immense possessions. The clergy regarded with jealousy and indignation their removal from the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction, their exemption from tithe, and the privilege they possessed of celebrating divine service during interdict; and their hostility to the order was manifested in repeated acts of injustice, which drew forth many severe bulls from the Roman pontiffs.145 The Templars, moreover, became unpopular with the European sovereigns and their nobles. The revenues of the former were somewhat diminished through the immunities conceded to the order by their predecessors, and the paternal estates of the latter had been diminished by the grant of many thousand manors, lordships, and fair estates to the fraternity by their pious and enthusiastic ancestors. Considerable dislike also began to be manifested to the annual transmission of large sums of money, the revenues of the Templars, from the European states, to be expended in a distant warfare in which Christendom now took comparatively no interest.

Shortly after the fall of Acre, and the total loss of Palestine, Edward I., king of England, seized and sequestered to his own use the monies which had been accumulated by the Templars, to forward to their brethren in Cyprus, alleging that the property of the order had been granted to it by the kings of England, his predecessors, and their subjects, for the defence of the Holy Land, and that since the loss thereof, no better use could, be made of the money than by appropriating it to the maintenance of the poor. At the earnest request of the pope, however, the king afterwards permitted their revenues to be transmitted to them in the island of Cyprus in the usual manner. King Edward had previously manifested a strong desire to lay hands on the property of the Templars. On his return from his victorious campaign in Wales, finding himself unable to disburse the arrears of pay due to his soldiers, he went with Sir Robert Waleran and some armed followers to the Temple, and calling for the treasurer, he pretended that he wanted to see his mother’s jewels, which were there kept. Having been admitted to the house, he deliberately broke open the coffers of the Templars, and carried away ten thousand pounds with him to Windsor Castle. His son, Edward II, on his accession to the throne, committed a similar act of injustice. He went with his favourite, Piers Gaveston, to the Temple, and took away with him fifty thousand pounds of silver, with a quantity of gold, jewels, and precious stones, belonging to the bishop of Chester. The impunity with which these acts of violence were committed, manifests that the Templars then no longer enjoyed the power and respect which they possessed in ancient times.

As the enthusiasm, too, in favour of the holy war diminished, large numbers of the fraternity remained at home in their western preceptories, and took an active part in the politics of Europe. They interfered in the quarrels of christian princes, and even drew their swords against their fellow-Christians. Thus we find the members of the order taking part in the war between the houses of Anjou and Aragon, and aiding the king of England in his warfare against the king of Scotland. In the battle of Falkirk, fought on the 22nd of July, A. D. 1298, seven years after the fall of Acre, perished both the Master of the Temple at London, and his vicegerent the Preceptor of Scotland. All these circumstances, together with the loss of the Holy Land, and the extinction of the enthusiasm of the crusades, diminished the popularity of the Templars. The rolls of the English parliament about this time begin to teem with complaints and petitions from the fraternity, of the infringement of their charters, franchises, liberties, and privileges, in all parts of the realm.146

At the period of the fall of Acre, Philip the Fair, son of St. Louis, occupied the throne of France. He was a needy and avaricious monarch, and had at different periods resorted to the most violent expedients to replenish his exhausted exchequer. On the death of pope Benedict XI., (A. D. 1304,) he succeeded, through the intrigues of the French Cardinal Dupré, in raising the archbishop of Bordeaux, a creature of his own, to the pontifical chair. The new pope removed the holy see from Rome to France; he summoned all the cardinals to Lyons, and was there consecrated, (A. D. 1305,) by the name of Clement V., in the presence of king Philip and his nobles. Of the ten new cardinals then created, nine were Frenchmen, and in all his acts the new pope manifested himself the obedient slave of the French monarch. The character of this pontiff has been painted by the Romish ecclesiastical historians in the darkest colours.

On the 6th of June, A. D. 1306, a few months after his coronation, he addressed letters from Bordeaux to the Grand Masters of the Temple and Hospital at Limisso, in the island of Cyprus, expressing his earnest desire to consult them with regard to the measures necessary to be taken for the recovery of the Holy Land. He tells them that they are the persons best qualified to give advice upon the subject, and to conduct and manage the enterprise, both from their great military experience and the interest they had in the success of the expedition. “We order you,” says he, “to come hither without delay, with as much secrecy as possible, and with a very little retinue, since you will find on this side the sea a sufficient number of your knights to attend upon you.” The Grand Master of the Hospital declined obeying this summons; but the Grand Master of the Temple forthwith accepted it, and unhesitatingly placed himself in the power of the pope and the king of France. He landed in France, attended by sixty of his knights, at the commencement of the year 1307, and deposited the treasure of the order, which he had brought with him from Cyprus, in the Temple at Paris. He was received with distinction by the king, and then took his departure for Poictiers to have an interview with the pope.

The secret agents of the French king immediately circulated various dark rumours and odious reports concerning the Templars. According to some writers, Squin de Florian, a citizen of Bezieres, who had been condemned to death or perpetual imprisonment in one of the royal castles for his iniquities, was brought before king Philip, and received a free pardon, and was well rewarded, in return for an accusation on oath, charging the Templars with heresy, and with the commission of the most horrible crimes. According to others, Nosso de Florentin, an apostate Templar, who had been condemned by the Grand Preceptor and chapter of France to perpetual imprisonment for impiety and crime, made in his dungeon a voluntary confession of the sins and abominations charged against the order. Be this as it may, upon the strength of an information sworn to by a condemned criminal, king Philip, on the 14th of September, despatched secret letters to all the baillis of the different provinces in France, accusing the Templars of infidelity; of mocking the sacred image of the Saviour; of sacrificing to idols; and of abandoning themselves to impure practices and unnatural crimes! “We being charged,” says he, “with the maintenance of the faith; after having conferred with the pope, the prelates, and the barons of the kingdom, at the instance of the inquisitor, from the informations already laid, from violent suspicions, from probable conjectures, from legitimate presumptions, conceived against the enemies of heaven and earth! and because the matter is important, and it is expedient to prove the just like gold in the furnace, by a rigorous examination, have decreed that the members of the order who are our subjects shall be arrested and detained to be judged by the church, and that all their real and personal property shall be seized into our hands!” &c. The baillis and seneschals were required accurately to inform themselves, with great secrecy, and without exciting suspicion, of the number of the houses of the Temple within their respective jurisdictions; to provide an armed force sufficient to overcome all resistance, and on the 13th of October to surprise the Templars in their preceptories, and make them prisoners. The inquisition is then directed to assemble to examine the guilty, and to employ TORTURE if it be necessary. “Before proceeding with the inquiry,” says Philip, “you are to inform them (the Templars) that the pope and ourselves have been convinced, by irreproachable testimony, of the errors and abominations which accompany their vows and profession; you are to promise them pardon and favour if they CONFESS the truth, but if not, you are to acquaint them that they will be condemned to death.”

As soon as Philip had issued these orders, he wrote to the principal sovereigns of Europe, urging them to follow his example, and sent a confidential agent, named Bernard Peletin, with a letter to the young king, Edward the Second, who had just then ascended the throne of England, representing in frightful colours the pretended sins of the Templars. On the 22nd of September, (A. D. 1306,) king Edward replied to this letter, observing that he had considered of the matters mentioned therein, and had listened to the statements of that discreet man, Master Bernard Peletin; that he had caused the latter to unfold the charges before himself, and many prelates, earls, and barons of his kingdom, and others of his council; but that they appeared so astonishing as to be beyond belief; that such abominable and execrable deeds had never before been heard of by the king, and the aforesaid prelates, earls, and barons, and it was therefore hardly to be expected that an easy credence could be given to them. The English monarch, however, informs king Philip, that by the advice of his council he had ordered the seneschal of Agen, from whose lips the rumours were said to have proceeded, to be summoned to his presence, that through him he might be further informed concerning the premises; and he states that, at the fitting time, after due inquiry, he will take such steps as will redound to the praise of God, and the honour and preservation of the catholic faith.147

On the night of the 13th of October, all the Templars in the French dominions were simultaneously arrested. Monks were appointed to preach against them in the public places of Paris, and in the gardens of the Palais Royal; and advantage was taken of the folly, the superstition, and the credulity of the age, to propagate the most horrible and extravagant charges against them. They were accused of worshipping an idol covered with an old skin, embalmed, having the appearance of a piece of polished oil-cloth. “In this idol,” we are assured, “there were two carbuncles for eyes, bright as the brightness of heaven, and it is certain that all the hope of the Templars was placed in it; it was their sovereign god, and they trusted in it with all their heart.” They are accused of burning the bodies of the deceased brethren, and making the ashes into a powder, which they administered to the younger brethren in their food and drink, to make them hold fast their faith and idolatry; of cooking and roasting infants, and anointing their idols with the fat; of celebrating hidden rites and mysteries, to which young and tender virgins were introduced, and of a variety of abominations too absurd and horrible to be named. Guillaume Paradin, in his history of Savoy, seriously repeats these monstrous accusations, and declares that the Templars had “un lieu creux ou cave en terre, fort obscur, en laquelle ils avoient un image en forme d’un homme, sur lequel ils avoient appliqué la peau d’un corps humain, et mis deux clairs et luisans escarboucles au lieu des deux yeux. A cette horrible statue etoient contraints de sacrifier ceux qui vouloient etre de leur damnable religion, lesquels avant toutes ceremonies ils contragnoient de renier Jesus Christ, et fouler la croix avec les pieds, et apres ce maudit sacre auquel assistoient femmes et filles (seduites pour etre de ce secte) ils estegnoient les lampes et lumieres qu’ils avoient en cett cave… Et s’il advenoit que d’un Templier et d’un pucelle nasquit un fils, ils se rangoient tous en un rond, et se jettoient cet enfant de main en main, et ne cessoient de le jetter jusqu’a ce qu’il fu mort entre leurs mains; etant mort ils se rotissoient (chose execrable) et de la graisse ils en ognoient leur grand statue!” The character of the charges preferred against the Templars proves that their enemies had no serious crimes to allege against the order. Their very virtues, indeed, were turned against them, for we are told that, “to conceal the iniquity of their lives, they made much almsgiving, constantly frequented church, comported themselves with edification, frequently partook of the holy sacrament, and manifested always much modesty and gentleness of deportment in the house, as well as in public.”

During twelve days of severe imprisonment, the Templars remained constant in the denial of the horrible crimes imputed to the fraternity. The king’s promises of pardon extracted from them no confession of guilt, and they were therefore handed over to the tender mercies of the brethren of St. Dominic, who were the most refined and expert torturers of the day. On the 19th of October, the grand inquisitor proceeded with his myrmidons to the Temple at Paris, and a hundred and forty Templars were one after another put to the torture. Days and weeks were consumed in the examination, and thirty-six Templars perished in the hands of their tormentors, maintaining, with unshaken constancy to the very last, the entire innocence of their order! Many of them lost the use of their feet from the application of the torture of fire, which was inflicted in the following manner: – their legs were fastened in an iron frame, and the soles of their feet were greased over with fat or butter; they were then placed before the fire, and a screen was drawn backwards and forwards, so as to moderate and regulate the heat. Such was the agony produced by this roasting operation, that the victim often went raving mad. Brother Bernarde de Vado, on subsequently revoking a confession of guilt, wrung from him by this description of torment, says to the commissary of police, before whom he was brought to be examined, “They held me so long before a fierce fire that the flesh was burnt off my heels, two pieces of bone came away, which I present to you.”148 Another Templar, on publicly revoking his confession, declared that four of his teeth were drawn out, and that he confessed himself guilty to save the remainder. Others of the fraternity deposed to the infliction on them of the most revolting and indecent torments;149 and, in addition to all this, it appears that forged letters from the Grand Master were shown to the prisoners, exhorting them to confess themselves guilty! Many of the Templars were accordingly compelled to acknowledge whatever was required of them, and to plead guilty to the commission of crimes which, in the previous interrogatories, they had positively denied.

These violent proceedings excited the astonishment of Europe. On the 20th of November, the king of England summoned the seneschal of Agen to his presence, and examined him concerning the truth of the horrible charges preferred against the Templars; and on the 4th of December, the English monarch wrote letters to the kings of Portugal, Castile, Aragon, and Sicily, to the following effect: – “To the magnificent prince the Lord Dionysius, by the grace of God the illustrious king of Portugal, his very dear friend, Edward, by the same grace king of England, &c. Health and prosperity. It is fit and proper, inasmuch as it conduceth to the honour of God and the exaltation of the faith, that we should prosecute with benevolence those who come recommended to us by strenuous labours and incessant exertions in defence of the Catholic faith, and for the destruction of the enemies of the cross of Christ. Verily, a certain clerk (Bernard Peletin,) drawing nigh unto our presence, applied himself, with all his might, to the destruction of the order of the brethren of the Temple of Jerusalem. He dared to publish before us and our council certain horrible and detestable enormities repugnant to the Catholic faith, to the prejudice of the aforesaid brothers, endeavouring to persuade us, through his own allegations, as well as through certain letters which he had caused to be addressed to us for that purpose, that by reason of the premises, and without a due examination of the matter, we ought to imprison all the brethren of the aforesaid order abiding in our dominions. But, considering that the order, which hath been renowned for its religion and its honour, and in times long since passed away was instituted, as we have learned, by the Catholic Fathers, exhibits, and hath from the period of its first foundation exhibited, a becoming devotion to God and his holy church, and also, up to this time, hath afforded succour and protection to the Catholic faith in parts beyond sea, it appeared to us that a ready belief in an accusation of this kind, hitherto altogether unheard of against the fraternity, was scarcely to be expected. We affectionately ask, and require of your royal majesty, that ye, with due diligence, consider of the premises, and turn a deaf ear to the slanders of ill-natured men, who are animated, as we believe, not with a zeal of rectitude, but with a spirit of cupidity and envy, permitting no injury unadvisedly to be done to the persons or property of the brethren of the aforesaid order, dwelling within your kingdom, until they have been legally convicted of the crimes laid to their charge, or it shall happen to be otherwise ordered concerning them in these parts.”

A few days after the transmission of this letter, king Edward wrote to the pope, expressing his disbelief of the horrible and detestable rumours spread abroad concerning the Templars. He represents them to his holiness as universally respected by all men in his dominions for the purity of their faith and morals. He expresses great sympathy for the affliction and distress suffered by the Master and brethren, by reason of the scandal circulated concerning them; and he strongly urges the holy pontiff to clear, by some fair course of inquiry, the character of the order from the unjust and infamous aspersions cast against it.150 On the 22nd of November, however, a fortnight previously, the pope had issued the following bull to king Edward. “Clement, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his very dear son in Christ, Edward, the illustrious king of England, health and apostolical blessing.