Secrets of the Knights Templar

by S. J. Hodge

  You, our dear son … have in our absence, violated every rule and laid hands on the persons and properties of the Templars. You have also imprisoned them and what pains us even more, you have not treated them with due leniency … and have added to the discomfort of imprisonment yet another affliction. You have laid hands on persons and property that are under the direct protection of the Roman Church … Your actions and rightly so are seen as an act of contempt against us and the Roman Church.

  Without stating whether or not he believed the knights were guilty of the charges, Clement was merely complaining at the king’s wrongful conduct and appropriation of papal powers. He asked Philip to hand over the Templars, together with all their possessions, for questioning to two of his cardinals, Bérenger Frédol and Etienne de Suisy, but Philip ignored him. In his letter to the king, the words ‘yet another affliction’ allude to the torture that was imposed on many of the Templars as soon as they were arrested. Torture had been authorized approximately 50 years previously by Pope Innocent IV, to be used in the name of the Inquisition.

  An 18th-century engraving of King Philip IV of France, who ascended the throne at the age of 17. Called the Fair (Philippe le Bel), through his marriage to Joan I of Navarre, he was also Philip I, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne, from 1284 to 1305.

  Torture

  In 1252, Pope Innocent IV issued a papal bull, Ad exstirpanda, that permitted torture as a method of extracting confessions. Torture was meant to be performed only once on any suspect, but it was commonly repeated and simply classed as a continuation of the first session. Torturers were not supposed to spill blood or to break bones, but because of the brutality of the methods, they nearly always did. Forms of torture included sleep deprivation, the rack and water-boarding, as well as hanging by the wrists with weights suspended from the ankles (the strappado), being chained to a wall for days, or bent backwards over a wooden beam with the arms bound beneath it, or even having fat rubbed on the soles of the feet before a flame was put to them. It is known that at least the rack, the strappado and the burning of the soles of the feet were used on many of the arrested Templars. One, Bernard de Vado, was tortured so badly with the burning feet method that his blackened bones fell out of his heels. He later showed these bones to the authorities when he revoked his confession.

  The harshness of the Templars’ treatment was a deliberate attempt to break them as quickly as possible. The Grand Inquisitor of France was also Philip’s own confessor, William Imbert de Paris. His task, set by the king, was to suppress the Templars completely and, at the same time, to lessen the Pope’s standing. Despite Inquisition ‘rules’, it is said that at least 36 Templars died under William Imbert’s investigation. The Templars who had been arrested in France were mainly simple men, not tough, experienced knights, and with no battle or endurance training, they quickly buckled under torture and harsh treatment. Aside from torture, while imprisoned, they were fed on bread and water, kept in dark, cold and damp conditions and, to unnerve them even more, Inquisitors often burst in during the night and beat them, or moved them roughly to different cells.

  The Inquisition

  The medieval Inquisition was a series of interrogations led by the Catholic Church to suppress heresy. It was started by Pope Gregory IX in southern France and northern Italy in 1231 with campaigns to overthrow the Cathars and Waldensians, although Pope Gregory did not approve the use of torture as a tool of investigation or for penance. Earlier, in 1184, Pope Lucius III had issued the papal bull Ad abolendam, which has been called the ‘founding charter of the Inquisition’, as it commanded bishops to take an active role in identifying and prosecuting heresy in their own districts, but torture was not part of the procedure. Members of the Inquisition were employed from some members of the clergy, but predominantly from different religious brotherhoods and primarily from the Dominican and Franciscan orders who had a history of fighting heresy. Trained specifically for the job, Inquisitors kept detailed records of their Inquisitions. ‘Confessing fully’ was one of the expressions they used that they said gave an individual the best chance of being dealt a lesser punishment. But full confessions always implicated others, including the accused’s close relatives and friends. Inquisitors amassed evidence from anyone they could, even criminals, excommunicants and convicted heretics, and a suspect could be left in prison for years before trial while new information was sought. If it was believed that the prisoner had not confessed sufficiently, he or she could be returned to prison as often as the Inquisitors deemed necessary. Punishments could be as ordinary as a penance, such as prayer or pilgrimage, or it could be the confiscation of property, exile or long-term imprisonment. The ultimate punishment could be burning at the stake. As holy men, Inquisitors were forbidden to put their prisoners to death, so secular executioners were hired to conduct the task, although – contrary to popular belief – Inquisitors preferred to save souls rather than to admit defeat and have a person put to death.

  A torture scene, created around 1475; the prisoner is being stretched and water poured on his face. The medieval Inquisition began as a means to eliminate heresy and had no one authority, so ‘rules’ were never implemented and after 1252, torture became a widespread method of extracting confessions.

  The charges

  Since the Albigensian Crusade nearly 80 years before, a charge of heresy meant that even protected orders such as the Templars could be charged by the Inquisitor in France. The king’s lawyers gathered information about the ways in which the Templars lived, read their Rule closely and questioned ex-Templars or those who had worked with them, and then they selected and adapted elements so they could be seen as transgressions against the Church. In October 1307, before a large crowd in Paris, William de Nogaret declared the Templars’ guilt. Across France, Franciscan monks, under the aegis of the Inquisition, spread the information through sermons in churches. The declarations presented the king as a defender of the faith and a protector of his people over the enemies of the Church. Encouraging a sense of unity, the scandalous allegations helped citizens forget the king’s unpopular policies, such as the debasing of their money and the crippling taxes he imposed on the wealthy.

  Beyond France, however, many were convinced that Philip’s motives were primarily to seize the Templars’ wealth for himself. In the wake of the Templar arrests, in Italy, the poet Dante Aligheri (c.1265–1321) wrote Purgatorio, the second book of The Divine Comedy, attacking the king’s actions by calling him a second Pilate (as in Pontius Pilate, the Roman ruler who condemned Jesus to death). The charges made against the Templars at the time of their arrests shocked almost everyone who heard about them. They included:

  During the reception ceremony, new brothers were required to deny Christ, God, the Virgin or the Saints on the command of those receiving them.

  The brothers committed various sacrilegious acts, either on the Cross or on an image of Christ.

  The receptors practised obscene kisses on new entrants: on the mouth, navel or buttocks.

  Priests of the Order did not consecrate the host and the brothers did not believe in the sacraments.

  The brothers practised idol worship of a head or a cat.

  The brothers encouraged and permitted the practice of sodomy.

  The Grand Master or other officials absolved fellow Templars of their sins.

  The Templars held their reception ceremonies and chapter meetings in secret and at night.

  The Templars abused their duties of charity and hospitality and used illegal means to acquire property and increase their wealth.

  The trials

  On 19 October 1307, the trials of the Templars began in Paris. On 25 and 26 October, Jacques de Molay was called to testify and, like most of the other accused Templars, he confessed quite quickly. Immediately, the king sent transcripts of the confessions to the Pope as evidence of their guilt. Suspecting foul play and still cross at the king’s actions, Clement sent two cardinals to Paris to take the Templars and their possessio
ns into papal custody. But Philip and his ministers refused to see the cardinals and they were refused access to the Templars, so they returned to Poitiers empty-handed. Caught between the king and the Templars (and those of the papal court who were outraged at the king’s conduct), on 22 November 1307, Clement issued the bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae. It told all European rulers to imprison any members of the Knights Templar in their countries and to hold their possessions for the Church. Clement was showing the king that every other European power was acting on behalf of the Church and so Philip should do likewise. Next, ignoring the previous incident with his two cardinals, Clement sent them once again to Paris. This time, Philip was aware that if he continued to avoid the Pope’s wishes, he might instantly be excommunicated and the whole of France could be put under an interdict. So, at the end of December 1307, the Pope’s two cardinals were allowed to meet with Jacques de Molay and other high-ranking Templars. In the cardinals’ presence, all the Templars gathered denied their confessions and showed their wounds from torture. Clement suspended the Inquisition and in reaction, the king’s men tried to muster public support for the reopening of the investigations by distributing pamphlets to the public describing Templar depravity. William de Nogaret began attacking the Pope with an onslaught of libel, slander, physical intimidation and threats against his family. At length, in the early summer of 1308, Philip went to Poitiers to meet the Pope. Neither men were in comfortable positions. The king was going against the Church, but as the Templars had confessed, the Pope had to tread carefully. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 had stated that ‘Heretics and all who defend and receive them shall be excommunicated’. The king and his lawyers pointed out that if the Pope tried to defend those who had declared themselves to be guilty, his position and possibly even his life would be at risk, as few would tolerate a heretical Pope.

  Templar interrogation

  Eventually it was agreed that Philip would release more Templars to be investigated by the Church. At the end of June 1308, 72 members of the Order selected by the king were brought from the prisons in Paris to the Pope’s cardinals in Poitiers. Chained together and under military escort, the Templars were interrogated for five days by the Pope’s cardinals. The Pope had wanted to know, in particular, details of their Rule that had been written originally by Bernard of Clairvaux and added to over the years. The Templars as an order had continued to adhere rigidly to their Rule; it was necessarily extremely strict and demanding, but not every ritual or formality that they observed was written into it. Over the years it seemed, extra procedures had been developed verbally. For instance, to ascertain whether or not a new recruit would be sufficiently loyal, a test to challenge his courage and commitment was set. This test and the initiation rite were open to interpretation, so misunderstandings and confusion often occurred. It was established, however, that even though they were not authorized parts of the Rule, they had been performed for years.

  Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got, was Pope for nine years from 1305 to his death in 1314. He is remembered for his involvement in the suppression of the Knights Templar, and for moving the Curia from Rome to Avignon; the period became known as the Avignon Papacy.

  It was known that if they were captured in battle by Muslims, Christians were often forced to spit on the Cross, to deny Christ and to do various other things that violated their beliefs and humiliated them. The Templars’ initiation test focused on this possibility: if caught by Muslim soldiers, could they endure such atrocities and still remain true to the Order and to Christianity? The tests and rite had probably developed after stories were related by Templars who had managed to escape from Muslim prisons and had become a means of challenging the potential of a future Templar’s character and determination.

  The result of the investigation at Poitiers was that the Templars asked for forgiveness and the Pope granted them absolution. This is one of the many grey areas of their trials. Had they been completely innocent, they would not have asked for forgiveness and Clement would have acquitted them completely. Had they been guilty, even had they asked for his forgiveness, the Pope would not have granted it. The Pope decided that they were not heretics, but in denying Christ, albeit to strengthen their Christian resolve, they needed to repent. Sparse notes of the Poitiers questioning have been discovered relatively recently, along with the Chinon Parchment.

  The Chinon Parchment

  In September 2001, an Italian palaeographer, Dr Barbara Frale, discovered a document that had been lost in the Vatican Secret Archives. It constitutes evidence that, in August 1308, Pope Clement V secretly absolved Jacques de Molay and the entire Templar Order from all charges brought against them by the Medieval Inquisition. The document is dated 17–20 August 1308 and was written in the castle of Chinon in France by three of the Pope’s cardinals who questioned five senior Templars there. The cardinals included two who had been involved already – Bérenger Frédol, cardinal of St Nerus and Archelius, and Etienne de Suisy, cardinal of St Cyriac in Therminis – as well as another, Landolfo Brancacci, cardinal of St Angel. According to the documents written at Chinon, the Pope instructed the cardinals to conduct the investigation of the accused Knights Templar away from royal officials, in order to ascertain the truth. The cardinals interviewed the Templars individually. First they questioned Raimbaud de Caron, the Master of Cyprus, then Geoffrey de Charney, the Master of Normandy, then Geoffrey de Gonneville, the Master of Aquitaine and Poitou, then Hugh de Pairaud, who was the second highest-ranking Templar as the Visitor of the Temple in France and Poitou, and the Deputy Grand Master. Finally, the cardinals interviewed Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master himself. The Chinon Parchment begins:

  We … declare through this official statement … that since our most holy father and lord Clement … after receiving … clamorous reports from the illustrious king of France and prelates, dukes, counts, barons and other subjects of the said kingdom … had initiated an inquiry into matters concerning the brothers and the Rule of the said Order, because of which it suffered public infamy, the very same lord Pope wishing and intending to know the pure, complete and uncompromised truth from the leaders of the said Order … that we might … examine the truth by questioning the grandmaster and the … preceptors – one by one and individually, having summoned … trustworthy witnesses.

  Replicas of the three seals used by the Templars’ inquisitors, lying on the official transcript of their trial that describes their offences, including heresy, idolatry, homosexuality, secret initiation rituals, corruption and fraud.

  According to the document, all the cardinals’ questioning was held in the presence of at least eight other churchmen who acted as official witnesses. The parchment details the appearances of the accused, the charges made against them and some of the interrogations and torture they endured through the Inquisition. The report repeats similar findings to those previously mentioned by the 72 Templars at Poitiers. When the cardinals reported back to the Pope, he accepted the Templars’ testimonies: that the accusations of blasphemy and sodomy were misinterpretations of the rituals they had developed to help prepare them for some of the difficulties they might face in the Holy Land. The denial of Christ, spitting on the Cross and even kissing other men’s backsides were all probable attempts to become resistant to humiliations and to learn to face any difficulties that they might be subjected to. In asking the Pope’s pardon, the Chinon Parchment states:

  … the mercy of pardons for these acts to Brother Jacques de Molay, the Grandmaster of the said Order, who in the form and manner described above had denounced in our presence the described and any other heresy, and swore in person on the Lord’s Holy Gospel, and humbly asked for the mercy of pardon, restoring him to unity with the Church and reinstating him to communion of the faithful and sacraments of the Church.

  Three copies of the Chinon Parchment were made, all sealed and signed by the interrogators, the accused and the witnesses. The document is proof that in 1308, the Pope determined to save the Te
mplars from the king’s threats. However, as he did not make the details of his absolution public, the king continued to persecute the Templars and to appropriate their belongings.