by Dan Jones
This was enough for his inquisitor. The Dominican brother Nicholas of Ennezat, who was deputizing for William of Paris, had the hearing adjourned until later in the day, and Hugh was taken from the room. Something was done to change his mind, and when the hearing resumed Hugh said ‘on the contrary, he thought that all brothers were received in that manner rather than in another; and he was saying this to correct his words’. He went on to add some detail to another line of inquiry that had been opened up during the depositions: the matter of idol-worship, which James of Molay and Geoffrey of Charney had not touched upon. By now he was prepared to say more or less anything. Hugh described a ‘head that had four feet, two under the face and two behind’ which existed in Montpellier, which he had worshipped ‘with his lips and not his heart, and then only in pretence’. This ‘idol’ sounded rather like a reliquary – one of those bejewelled caskets, often given human form, in which scraps of saints’ remains were kept for the purpose of perfectly orthodox Catholic adoration. This was of no consequence. Having satisfied his inquisitors and sworn that he had not ‘included any lie or omitted any fact... because of threats or fear of torture or imprisonment’, Hugh was taken away.
The interrogations continued through the autumn of 1307 and into the new year, both at the Paris Temple and in provincial hearings across France. A uniform pattern of activity was established. Templars were imprisoned in miserable conditions, chained and fed bread and water. They were periodically tortured, and since this was accepted practice in the pursuit of heresy, the inquisitors did not bother to conceal it, speaking frankly in their communications with the royal court. Indeed, the instructions to the arresting officers in September 1307 had been quite plain on the matter:
They will place the persons individually under separate and secure guard and will investigate them first before calling the commissioners of the enquiry, and will determine the truth carefully, with the aid of torture if necessary (par gehine, se mestier est).
When called before the enquiry, the same instructions stated that:
They will be told that the king and the pope have been informed by several very trustworthy witnesses in the Order of the errors and the buggery they commit particularly on their entry and their profession. They will be promised a pardon if they confess the truth and return to the faith of the holy Church; otherwise they will be condemned to death.11
One of the few men who tried to resist the pressure placed on him was the sixty-year-old Raimbaud of Caron, who as preceptor of Cyprus evidently considered himself tougher than the ageing accountant-farmers in France.12 Raimbaud was questioned in Paris on the day after Hugh of Pairaud. He initially refused to admit any wrongdoing, saying that he had taken oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience and ‘he had never known or heard of anything evil or dishonourable in the reception of brothers or in the order’. The laconic notes of his deposition record him making this highly unsatisfactory statement in the presence of Brother Nicholas of Ennezat. ‘But later the same day’ he made a full confession.13 Evidently there were methods of torture available to the inquisitors that could break even a hardened crusader. This left little hope for the rest, and the admissions freely flowed. From teenagers to wizened old men, from the highest-ranking officers to the meanest labourers, Templar brothers were lined up before their black-clad interrogators and confessed one by one to the same heretical actions: illicit kisses in secret ceremonies, spitting on the cross, denying Christ, sex between brothers, worshipping idols. Almost to a man they told their tormentors exactly what they wanted to hear.14
*
The speed with which the Templars were rounded up and persuaded to start their confessions was a key element in French strategy. But rounding up the Templars was harder than rounding up the French Jews: popular prejudice was not so easy to manipulate in the case of an order tightly associated with the crusading movement and deeply embedded into Christian society across the realm. The government had to work fast. It had to be unsubtle. It had to push the Templars beyond redemption before any serious resistance could be organized.
On 25 and 26 October 1307, following James of Molay’s confession, the master and a parade of other senior brothers were forced to repeat their misdeeds in front of a specially invited audience of scholars and students from the University of Paris: a group whose opinion, writings and connections in other realms could be used to broadcast the king’s side of the story and entrench it in the popular consciousness. This was an educated audience, and it could have been an opportunity for James of Molay and his senior officials to make a stand. Unfortunately at this stage the master of the Templars was a broken man, who had decided that the only way out of trouble was to comply as fully as possible with royal demands. He repeated his confession to the scholars, and described the king of France as an all-seeing ‘bringer of light’. Then he acquiesced as letters were sent in his name calling on other Templars to follow his lead in making their confessions. In short, he abdicated any responsibility for defending the order’s good name, in the hope that by giving his rabid persecutors what they wanted, they would tire and move on to the next victim.
Had James had more political sense he might have realized that Philip’s desire to ruin the reputation of the Templars was not shared by other rulers. As well as courting intellectual support in Paris, the French king had written to James II of Aragon and the new English king Edward II (who succeeded his father Edward I when the old warrior-king died in the summer of 1307) explaining his discoveries and urging them to begin rounding up Templars in their own jurisdictions. He was met with blank bafflement from both. A worldly view of the arrests was expressed by another of James II’s correspondents, who wrote to the king of Aragon from Genoa and explained that ‘the pope and the king did this in order to have [the Templars’] money and because they wished to make one single house of the Hospital and the Temple... of which house the king intended and desired to make one of his sons the ruler’.15
The pope was affronted by Philip IV’s drastic actions. Clement V was in poor health and undergoing medical treament, but he could hardly ignore the assault Philip had made on the Order of the Temple and the authority of the papacy. It was one thing for a pope to be an ally of the French crown; quite another to appear to be led around by the nose. Three days after James of Molay’s confession, Clement wrote politely but indignantly to the king from Poitiers. Treading lightly at first, he praised the unparalleled holiness of the Capetian kings, who were ‘like shining stars’, but pointed out to Philip that the reason for their godliness was their ‘wisdom and obedience’, and above all their understanding that in matters ‘where ecclesiastical and religious persons could be harmed they would... leave everything to the ecclesiastical courts’.16
Perhaps, thought the pope, this had slipped Philip’s mind. ‘You have laid hands on the persons and goods of the Templars, and not just anyhow but going as far as imprisoning them as though we were privy to events.’ Clement made it clear that he knew the brothers were being tortured: ‘add[ing] a greater affliction to those who are already considerably afflicted by their imprisonment’.
He was disappointed, he told Philip, since he had been ‘better disposed towards you than all the bishops of Rome... in your lifetime’. He had told Philip that he intended to investigate the Templars; Philip had completely ignored him and arrested ‘the said persons and their goods which are under the direct jurisdiction of ourselves and the Church of Rome’. The pope now wished to take custody of all the Templar prisoners and their possessions, and to be allowed to take command of the investigation himself. ‘We desire ardently with all our strength radically to cleanse this garden of the Church... so that there shall remain no spark of this type of infection... if there is an infection, which God forbid!’
The pope may have been ill, and he may have been compromised by his residence in France and not Rome, but he was not about to be turned into a lapdog for a king of France who had decided to dismember the church militant because he felt like
it.
*
On 22 November 1307 Clement sent a papal bull known as Pastoralis praeeminentiae (‘pastoral pre-eminence’) to all the leading Christian kings of the west, including Edward II of England, James II of Aragon and the rulers of Castile, Portugal, Italy and Cyprus. The church, it argued, took precedence over the throne. It was a familiar theme to anyone who had followed relationships between popes and the king of France, but coming from Clement V it had special resonance. He would not and could not allow the house of Capet to destroy the Templars. Pastoralis praeeminentiae gave notice of his intentions.
Clement’s problem was that he was fighting a rearguard action. Too much evidence had been presented, and however incredible it seemed, he could not simply sweep it all away. The king of France was an enthusiastic hunter, who would never give up the chase. The fact that Boniface was still being hounded four years after he was cold in the ground served as a warning to Clement not to attack Philip directly.
The pope hit on a different approach. The case of the Templars would fall under papal supervision, but it would be widened to take in all of Christendom. All of the rulers who received the bull were invited to begin their own arrests, using the model followed in France. Clement rehearsed the order’s supposed misdeeds, but carefully noted that he retained an open mind, that the allegations could be untrue and that if so, everything would be settled accordingly.17 With a stroke of his pen, Clement had inserted himself into the heart of the process against the Templars. The price was that he had implicitly hitched himself to Philip’s policy, and the pursuit of the Templars had now to be carried out everywhere, from Dublin to Famagusta, until whatever end it should reach.
For the French king and his ministers this was frustrating, but they cannot possibly have been shocked. They had pressed the Templars fast and hard and publicly, knowing the window for winding up the order would be short. Clement’s intervention now meant they would lose overall control of proceedings. It was true that pressure on the order remained intense: on 7 January 1308 every Templar in England was arrested, and on 10 January royal officers also picked up the brothers of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Three days later Charles II, king of Naples, executed the pope’s orders.18 Suddenly the case had ballooned, and the chances of a swift resolution all but vanished.
Less than two months into the new year the pope abruptly halted the Templar inquiry in France. In December 1307 cardinals had been allowed access to the highest-ranking Templar prisoners in Paris. Faced with friendlier interviewers, the order’s leaders began to backtrack on their statements. Around Christmas James of Molay had withdrawn his confession: risking being branded as a relapsed heretic but heaping doubt on every other Templar statement extracted so far. By February 1308 the pope had grown concerned that the evidence gathered by the French authorities was tainted beyond usefulness. Although his previous orders for the arrests of Templars outside France were still being enacted, he ordered the inquisitors to stop their work. The charges remained outstanding, and brothers remained imprisoned, but there was now some time for the order to recover, and perhaps to resist.
Philip grew restless and his ministers shifted tactics. The king could not restart proceedings against the Templars, but he could certainly try to rally the rest of France around him. He began with the University of Paris, whose scholars had been treated to a privileged early viewing of the Templars’ confessions. In February a series of questions was sent to the university’s finest scholars concerning the king’s legal right to take action against heresy in his own realm. Philip and his ministers hoped a favourable legal opinion might bounce the pope into re-opening hearings.
The consultation was not so much a resounding victory as an apologetic whimper. The academics squirmed, and on 25 March the king was sent a grovelling advisory note explaining that while he was certainly to be commended in his ‘zeal for the faith’ he was perhaps overstepping the mark. ‘If there is doubt concerning [the Templars’] profession,’ they argued, ‘it belongs to the Church which instituted their religious order to decide this case.’ They also argued that the proceeds of all confiscations from the order should be put to the use for which they were originally intended: saving the Holy Land.19
This was inconvenient, but the king did not give up. Between 5 and 15 May he summoned an assembly of the estates of the realm – representatives from the towns and countryside all over the kingdom – to Tours to advise the king. In reality, this meant that they were forced to listen to him and his ministers rant about the Templars. The estates went along with the royal opinion that the Templars were evil, corrupt and heretical and deserved to be put to death. Buoyed by this agreeable display of subservience, Philip now set out for the papal court for a personal meeting with Clement. He took with him an enormous entourage, including his sons, his brother Charles of Valois, bishops, noblemen and as many important-looking dignitaries from across France as could be brought along from Tours. This great deputation arrived in Poitiers at the end of May.
The French came to Poitiers with smiles, but soon made it clear what they wanted. In a series of conferences with Pope Clement and his advisors, royal ministers and supporters gave long speeches denouncing the Templars in ever more hysterical terms. Much of this was done by William of Plaisians, a lawyer who had been active with William of Nogaret in the attacks on Boniface in 1303. According to letters sent to the king of Aragon, on 30 May William of Plaisians stood on a stool and hectored the pope and his audience on the familiar theme of Philip IV’s inherent grace:
The providence of God chose as minister in this affair the king of France who is the vicar of God in his kingdom in temporal matters, and to be sure nobody more suitable could be found. For he is a most devout and Christian prince, the richest and the most powerful. So all those slanderers should be silent.
The king was not motivated by avarice or a desire for the Templars’ wealth, said William, but by the noble Christian aim of cleansing the church in his realm. He would do the same if his own brother or sons (both of whom were in attendance) were themselves Templars. All he was asking of the pope was to declare the order condemned, so that he could carry on with the business of judging and punishing the brothers themselves.20
William was a skilled advocate and a subtle rhetorician (he was also an able mouthpiece for William of Nogaret, who was not welcome in the pope’s presence). Yet his adversary was resolute. Clement offered some placatory remarks, praising the king’s godliness and denying that he would ever suspect him to be motivated by greed in his pursuit of the Templars. Beyond this he would not be moved. On 14 June William of Plaisians tried again, this time more emphatically. He concluded this speech by making a series of thinly veiled threats against Clement himself. If the pope continued to delay, the king might act alone. Philip had every right to take hold of heresy in his own realm, and by continuing to obstruct him, the pope was abetting the heretics. There was a whiff here of deposition. Yet still the pope held firm. He, and he alone was qualified to judge the Templars, he argued, and he would not respond to threats. He seemed unmoveable. Little by little, though, he was weakening.
*
On 6 May 1308 the papal bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae finally arrived on the island of Cyprus. It had taken nearly six months, thanks to the slow-down in communication over the stormy winter months in the Mediterranean. In the meantime, news of the fate of the Templars in France had made its way to the islanders. Lightning arrests, false confessions and claims of bizarre rituals were more than enough to suggest their fate hung in the balance. Their acting leader, Marshal Aimo of Oiselay, had begun making preparations for the probable opening of proceedings against them. Treasure and other valuable goods had been moved from inland Nicosia to Limassol, on the south coast, where Templar galleys began surreptitiously to spirit brothers off the island. Perhaps a third of the membership had disappeared when, on 12 May, six days after the arrival of the papal bull, the command was given to arrest all the order’s members and confiscate their good
s.
The man who issued the order was Amalric of Lusignan, the brother of King Henry II of Cyprus, who in 1306 had led an uprising against royal rule and had himself appointed regent of Cyprus for life, a position he had secured in part with Templar help. Amalric should in theory have been an ally, but he could hardly protect an organization whose master had confessed to blasphemy and whose entire membership was under arrest.
Amalric was confronting a much livelier group of men than those who had been herded like sheep by the bailiffs and seneschals of France. For one thing they were armed. They had boats. They were among the best fighting men on the island and capable of manning castles against a full siege. In short they would only be taken in if they wanted to. Rather than resorting to brute force, Amalric would have to ask politely, and it was only after several days of negotiation, during which Marshal Aimo of Oiselay suggested that the order retire to one of their estates and await resolution of the case back in France, that they agreed to co-operate by making a limited collective statement. On Tuesday 27 May 118 brothers appeared in Nicosia and gave a public address in which they proclaimed their innocence. They outlined their good service in the east, enumerated some of their most famous battles against the Mamluks and stated their absolute dedication to the Christian cause. Then they left for their house at Limassol.
If they thought they had put the matter to rest they were soon disabused. The following night Amalric held his own conference of leading knights and churchmen, read them various documents illustrating the progress of the case against the Templars, and commanded his troops to muster, so as to capture the Templars and bring them to justice. On 1 June they were ambushed at Limassol, taken prisoner and incarcerated until they could be tried. It would be a long and miserable wait: it took nearly two years for proceedings on Cyprus to begin.