BOOK VIII. 

FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE END  OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,  A.D. 1303-1418.

 

CHAPTER I.

BENEDICT XI. AND CLEMENT V.

A.D. 1303-1313.

 

 

The state of affairs at the death of Boniface VIII (A.D. 1303) was such as might well fill the chiefs of the Roman church with anxiety. The late pope had provoked the most powerful sovereign in Christendom, had uttered sentences of excommunication and deposition against him, and had fallen a victim to his enmity. Philip had been supported in the contest by the prelates and clergy, the nobles and the commonalty of the realm; and while such were the relations between the Roman see and France, Boniface had also seriously offended the rulers of some other countries. Was, then, his policy to be carried out by his successor in defiance of all the fearful risks which beset such a course, or was the papacy to endure sub­missively the indignities which had been inflicted on it?

In the conclave which met at Perugia for the election of a pope, the influence of the Orsini family was predominant. On the 23rd of November—eleven days after the death of Boniface—the choice of the cardinals fell on Nicolas Bocassini, bishop of Ostia, who took the name of Benedict, and was at first reckoned as the tenth of that name, but was eventually styled the eleventh. He was a native of Treviso, and was of very humble origin; he had been general of the Dominican order; had been promoted to the cardinalate by Boniface, who employed him on important missions to England and other countries; and he had been one of the few who stood faithfully by his patron throughout the outrages of Anagni. Bui if Benedict’s principles agreed with those of Boniface, his character was mild and conciliatory, and his policy was sincerely directed to the work of reconciling the spiritual with the temporal power.

In congratulating Benedict on his election, Philip the Fair expressed a hope that he would redress the wrongs which his predecessor had committed against France. But it was needless to urge such a request; the pope, without waiting to be entreated, hastened to restore the  “lost sheep” to the fold, by releasing the king from his excommunication. He annulled all acts which might be to the prejudice of the French crown or nation, and revoked all sentences which had been incurred by neglect of Boniface’s citations to Rome, or by forbidding obedience to those citations. He repealed or suspended various decrees of the late pope, on the ground that they had been made without the advice of the cardinals. He restored to the French chapters their rights of election; to the universities their privileges of teaching and of conferring degrees; and he ratified all the appointments which had been made since the time of Boniface’s inhibitions. The bull Clericis laicos was so far mitigated as to allow the payment of all voluntary subsidies by the clergy to the sovereign, and the tithe of benefices was granted to Philip for two years. The Colonnas were restored to their position, and to so much of their property as had not been bestowed on others, although the rebuilding of Palestrina was forbidden unless the pope’s permission should be obtained; and the cardinals of the family were reinstated in their dignity, although they did not as yet recover the full exercise of its privileges. Even the actors in the outrage of Anagni were forgiven, with exception of those who had actually plundered the papal treasures, and of Nogaret, whose case was reserved for the pope’s special judgment.

But these concessions were insufficient to satisfy the enmity of Philip against the memory of his antagonist. With the royal sanction a libellous life of the late pope was circulated, describing him, under the name of “Maleface”, as a wicked sorcerer, whose end had been attended by terrible prodigies; and a petition was contrived, in which the French people were made to entreat that the king would take measures for getting him declared a heretic, as having notoriously died in heresy and in mortal sin, without sign of repentance. By such means only (the petitioners were made to say) could the independence of the kingdom be asserted. An emissary of the king, Peter of Peredo, prior of Chese, had been employed during the last days of Boniface’s life in endeavouring to stir up the Roman clergy against him. With the same object he now put forth a long list of points in which he represented Boniface as having encroached on the rights of the clergy by acts which he contrasted with the alleged system of earlier popes; and it was urged that a general council should be assembled at Lyons, or some other convenient and neutral place. To this proposal Benedict gave no answer.

Rome was again distracted by the factions of its cardinals and nobles, which were complicated and embittered by the influence of the French king; and the pope, unsupported by any family connexions, found himself unable to hold his ground. It was believed that he intended to seek a refuge in Lombardy; but when, on the approach of the heats of summer, he announced an intention of going to Assisi, it was at first opposed by the cardinals, although through the influence of Matthew Orsini, the most important member of the college, he was able to carry out his design, and reached Perugia.

In various directions Benedict found it necessary to assert his authority. He had rebuked Frederick of Trinacria for presuming to reckon the years of his reign from the time when he assumed the crown instead of dating from the papal acknowledgment of him as king. He had endeavoured to pacify the exasperated factions of Florence, where about this time the great poet, who has invested the squabbles of Whites and Blacks with an interest not their own, attempted, with some fellow exiles, to surprise the city, and was condemned to banishment without hope of return. But Benedict’s legate was driven to flight, and the pope avenged the indignity by an anathema against the Florentines.

It was, however, on the side of France that difficulties were most to be feared. The bitterness with which the persecution of Boniface’s memory was urged on compelled Benedict, unless he would submit to the utter degradation of the papacy, to depart from that policy of conciliation which best accorded with his desires. He refused William of Nogaret’s petition for provisional absolution and declined to treat with him as an ambassador from the king; and on the 9th of June he issued a bull, by which, with much strength of denunciation, Nogaret, with fourteen others who had been especially concerned in the seizure of Boniface and the plunder of his treasures, together with all their abettors, was declared excommunicate, and was cited to appear for judgment on the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul. But two days before that term Benedict died after a short illness, produced by eating largely of figs which had been brought to him as a present, and in which it was commonly suspected that poison had been administered by some enemy.

For many months after the death of Benedict the cardinals were unable to agree in the choice of a successor. The nineteen members of whom the college then consisted were divided between a French and an Italian party—the Italians headed by Matthew Orsini, who was supported by Francis Gaetani, a nephew of Boniface VIII; while the chiefs of the French party were Napoleon Orsini and Nicolas Ubertini, bishop of Ostia, but more commonly styled cardinal of Prato, an able and subtle Dominican, who was the confidential agent of king Philip. At length the citizens of Perugia became impatient of the delay, and threatened to force an election by shutting up the cardinals in conclave and stinting their allowance of provisions; but before this threat was carried into act, a compromise was settled on terms which the cardinal of Prato had proposed to Gaetani—that the Italians should name three candidates from beyond the Alps, and that from these three the French cardinals should select a pope. This arrange­ment was accepted by the Italians in the belief that the power of limiting the election to three candidates would secure the triumph of their party; but the cardinal of Prato, according to the story which has been commonly believed, pursued a deeper policy. Knowing the men who were most likely to be put forward, he trusted that the French, by having the final choice in their hands, would be able to gain over the most formidable of their opponents. Of the three who were nominated by the Italians, he fixed on Bertrand d’Agoust or Du Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, a Gascon of noble family, who had been a thorough partisan of Boniface, had been indebted to that pope for the metropolitan see of Bordeaux, and had attended his synod of November 1302. The archbishop was a subject of the king of England, and therefore owed no immediate allegiance to the French crown; he had made himself obnoxious to Philip, and had more especially offended the king’s brother, Charles of Valois. Yet this was the man in whom Nicolas of Prato, reckoning on his notorious vanity and ambition, saw a fit instrument for bringing the papacy into subserviency to France. Between the nomination of the three and the final choice of a pope there was to be an interval of forty days. Within eleven days a courier despatched by cardinal Nicolas arrived at Paris; and it is said that within six days more the king held a secret interview with the archbishop of Bordeaux in the forest of St. Jean d’Angely. In consideration of receiving the papacy, the archbishop is reported to have submitted to six conditions, of which five were expressed at the time, while the sixth was to be reserved until the occasion should come for the performance of it. Each party swore to the other on the holy Eucharist, and the future pope gave his brother and his two nephews as hostages for his good faith. He bound himself (1) to reconcile the king perfectly with the church; (2) Philip and his agents were to be readmitted to communion; (3) the king was to be allowed the lithe of the ecclesiastical income of France for five years, towards the expenses of the Flemish war; (4) the memory of pope Boniface was to be undone and annulled; (5) the Colonnas were to be restored to the cardinalate, and certain friends of the king were to be promoted to the same dignity. As to the sixth condition, attempts have been made to gather it by conjectures from the sequel of the history—that it related to the empire, to the order of the Templars, or to the settlement of the papal court in France.

But this story, which in itself appears suspicious from the fullness of detail with which transactions so mysterious are related, has of late been contradicted in almost every point; and, more especially, a document has been discovered which proves that, at the time of the alleged interview in the forest of St. Jean d’Angely, the archbishop was engaged in a provincial visitation which must have prevented his meeting Philip there or elsewhere. It would seem, therefore, that the negotiations between the king and the prelate were carried on through the agency of other persons; and the particular conditions which are said to have been imposed on Du Got may have been inferred from his later conduct. That he had thoroughly bound himself to Philip’s interest is, however, unquestionable. On the 5th of June 1305 the archbishop was elected to the papal chair, and each of the rival parties among the cardinals suppose him to be its own.

But soon after the election the Italian cardinals, who had requested the new pope to consult the interests of the church by repairing to Italy, were surprised at receiving from him a summons to attend his coronation, not at Rome, but at Lyons. Matthew Orsini, the senior of the college, is said to have told the cardinal of Prato that, since he had succeeded in bringing the papal court beyond the mountains, it would be long before it would return; “for,” he added, “I know the character of the Gascons”.

On St. Martin’s day the coronation of the new pope, who took the name of Clement V, was solemnized. The king of England had excused himself from the ceremony, on account of his war with the Scots; but Philip of France and king James of Majorca were present, and, as the pope rode from the church of St Just towards his lodgings, the king of France held his horse’s reins for part of the way. But as the procession was passing near an old and ruinous wall, on which many spectators were crowded together, the wall gave way. The pope was thrown from his horse, and his crown was rolled in the mud; the duke of Brittany, who was leading the horse, was killed; and many other persons, among whom was Clement’s own brother, perished. The accident was regarded as ominous of evil to come.

Another near relative of Clement was soon after slain in an affray which arose out of a disreputable amour, and, in consequence of the exasperated feeling of the citizens, the pope thought it well to withdraw from Lyons to Bordeaux. As an instance of the manner in which the resources of cathedrals and monasteries were drained by the expense of entertaining him and his train on this journey, it is recorded that, after his departure from Bourges, the archbishop, Giles Colonna, found himself obliged to seek the means of subsistence in the daily payments which were allowed to members of his chapter for attendance at the offices of the cathedral. During five years Clement sojourned in various parts of France, until at length he fixed his residence at Avignon, a city held under the imperial kingdom of Arles by the count of Provence, who, as king of Naples, was also a vassal of the papal see. But, although nominally beyond the French territory, the popes at Avignon were under the influence of the kings of France; and the seventy years’ captivity in Babylon (as it was styled by the Italians) greatly affected the character of the papacy. Among the popes of this time were some whose memory deserves to be held in very high respect; but the corruption of the court grew to a degree before unknown, its exactions raised the indignation of all western Christendom, and its moral tone became grossly scandalous. Clement himself openly entertained as his mistress Brunisenda de Foix, the wife of Count Talleyrand of Perigord, and lavished on her insatiable rapacity the treasures which he wrung out from the subjects of his spiritual dominion. Simony was practised without limit and without shame; and some payments which had formerly been made to the bishops, such as the first fruits of English benefices, were now seized by the popes themselves. Ecclesiastical discipline was neglected, and the sight of the corruptions of Avignon swelled the numbers of the sectaries who regarded the church as apostate; while in the meantime the ancient capital of western Christendom was left to neglect and decay. But, whereas the Italians denounce the corruption of the papal court as an effect of its settlement in France, French writers represent the luxury and vices of Avignon as imported from Italy, to the destruction of the virtuous simplicity which they supposed to have formerly marked the character of their own countrymen. In truth the state of things which had been bad at Rome became worse at Avignon; but it is in vain that either nation would endeavour to throw the blame of this on the other.

From the very beginning of his pontificate Clement showed his subserviency to the author of his promotion. He granted to Philip the tenth of the ecclesiastical re­venues of France for five years, under the pretext of a crusade; he restored the king and all his abettors in the late struggle to the communion of the church; at his request he reinstated the cardinals of the Colonna family in all the privileges of their office he created ten new cardinals, who were all either Frenchmen or devoted to the French interest; he withdrew all that was offensive in Boniface’s bulls, the Clericis laicos and the Unamsanctum. At the same time he began to display his own character by using his new power for purposes of revenge on persons who had formerly offended him, and by scandalous promotions of his near relations to dignities for which they were notoriously unfit. “The whole court,” says St. Antoninus of Florence, “was governed by Gascons and Frenchmen.”

During the vacancy of the papal chair, William of Nogaret had repeatedly presented himself before the official of the bishop of Paris, and had protested against the sentence which the late pope Benedict had uttered against him, as having been based on false grounds. He claimed for himself the character of a champion of the church against the evil practices of Boniface; he declared that Boniface’s misfortunes were the result of his obstinacy, and tendered a list of sixty articles against his memory. He charged him with the most abominable and monstrous crimes, with having obtained his office irregularly, with having been an enemy of the French church and kingdom and he quoted against him the saying as to his having entered like a fox, reigned like a lion, and died like a dog. As to his own behaviour at Anagni, he asserted that he had been obliged to use force because the pope could not be dealt with by gentler means; that he had protected Boniface and the papal treasures, had saved his life and that of his nephew Peter Gaetani; that in consideration of his exertions, which had cost him much reproach, he had received the pope’s thanks and absolution after Boniface had been set at liberty. And he professed a wish to be heard in his own justification before a council.

Philip was not disposed to let the memory of Boniface rest. Immediately after the coronation of Clement he had desired him to listen to charges against his predecessor; and, although the pope was able to defer the matter for a time, Philip persisted in his design. In 1307 he invited Clement, who was then at Bordeaux, to Poitiers—ostensibly with a view to a crusade under Charles of Valois, who, by marrying the heiress of the Courtenays, had acquired pretensions to the throne of Constantinople. It was said that the reigning Greek emperor, Andronicus, was too weak to hold his ground against the advancing Turkish arms; that it was therefore expedient to set him aside, and to oppose to the infidels a strong Christian power, with Charles as its head. The pope entered into this scheme, wrote letters in favour of it, granted ecclesiastical tenths, and in other ways showed himself willing to favour the interest of the French princes. Of a vast debt which Charles of Naples had contracted to the papal treasury, two-thirds were forgiven, and the remainder was to be transferred to the proposed crusade; the crown of Hungary was awarded to the Neapolitan king’s grandson, Charobert, and proceedings were begun for the canonization of his second son, Lewis, who had died in 1297 as archbishop of Toulouse. All who had been Philip’s instruments in his contest with Boniface were allowed to go unpunished; even William of Nogaret was absolved, on condition that he should join the next crusade to the Holy Land, and that in the meantime he should make pilgrimages to the shrine of St. James at Compostella, and to certain other places of devotion.

But still Philip urged on the case against Boniface, requiring that he should be condemned as a heretic, and that his bones should be disinterred and burnt. Clement felt that by such a course the credit of the papacy would be grievously impaired; that if Boniface had not been a rightful pope, his appointments to the cardinalate must be void, and consequently Clement’s own election, by cardinals of whom a large proportion owed their dignity to Boniface, would be annulled; and, as was natural, the cardinals whose position was affected were allied with the pope in opposition to Philip’s wishes. Finding that, although treated with a great show of respect at Poitiers, he was virtually a prisoner, Clement attempted to escape in disguise, carrying with him a part of his treasures; but the attempt was unsuccessful. At length, however, it was suggested by the cardinal of Prato that the question should be reserved for the consideration of a general council, which Clement intended to assemble at Vienne, a city beyond the bounds of the French king’s territory. The pope eagerly caught at the suggestion; and Philip, who had often pressed for such a council, found himself now debarred from opposing it, however distasteful to him.

But during the conferences at Poitiers another subject was brought forward, which held out at once to Clement a hope of rescuing the reputation of Boniface and the credit of his see, and to the king the prospect of replenishing his exhausted treasury. For, notwithstanding the unexampled severity of his taxation, and the absence of all splendour in his court, Philip was continually in difficulties as to money, chiefly on account of his unsuccessful wars with the Flemings. In order to supply his needs, he had more than once expelled the Jews and the Lombards from his dominions, and had confiscated their property; and he had practised a succession of infamous tricks on the coinage, so as to provoke his subjects to discontent, which in 1306 broke out into insurrection. Philip, finding himself insecure in his own palace, took refuge in the house of the Templars at Paris, which was more strongly fortified; and having appeased the multitude which besieged him there by concessions, he afterwards hanged nearly thirty of their leaders. The society to which he had then been in­debted for shelter and deliverance was now to feel his enmity.

The great military orders of the Temple and the Hospital, while they grew in importance and in power, had incurred much enmity by their assumptions, and had not escaped serious imputations. Although the Templars at their outset had received no special exemptions (for to such privileges their great patron, Bernard of Clairvaux, was opposed) they had gradually acquired much of this kind. Their lands were free from tithes. They were untouched by interdicts uttered against any place where they might be. A bull of Alexander III, granted as a reward for their adhesion to him against the rival claimant of the papacy, had made them independent of all but the papal authority, and allowed them to have a body of clergy of their own. But Alexander himself found it necessary, at the Lateran council of 1179, to censure them, in common with the Hospitallers, for having greatly exceeded their privileges; and about thirty years later, Innocent III reproved them as undutiful to the holy see, as insubordinate to all other ecclesiastical authority, as interfering with the discipline of the church, and as having fallen into many vices, so that they used the show of religion in order to blind the world to their voluptuousness. At a later time, they had opposed Frederick II in his expedition to the Holy Land, and it was said that they had offered to betray him to the Sultan—an offer which the more generous infidel made known to the object of the intended treachery. Since the loss of Palestine, both orders had established themselves in the island of Cyprus, and many of the Templars had returned to settle on the estates which their order possessed in Western Europe.

The order of the Temple now consisted of about 15,000 members—the most formidable and renowned soldiery in the world; and the whole number of persons attached to it may probably have amounted to not less than 100,000. About half of them were Frenchmen, and the preponderance of that nation was shown by the fact that all the grand-masters of the order had been French. They had vast wealth, which it was supposed that they held them­selves bound to increase by unlawful as well as by lawful means; and, strong and powerful as they already were, it may have been not unnatural to suspect them of intending, after the example already given by the Teutonic knights on the Baltic, to establish a sovereignty of their own. They were animated by a spirit of exclusive devotion to the brotherhood, and of contempt for all men beyond it. When Clement had projected a union with the Hospitallers, the master of the Temple, James de Molay, had declined the proposal on grounds which although partly reasonable, showed a scornful assumption of superiority to the order which made the less rigid profession. Towards the bishops, from whose authority they were exempt, towards the sovereigns of the countries within which their vast estates were situated, the behaviour of the Templars was disrespectful and defiant. The unpopularity caused by their pride was increased by the mystery and closeness which they affected in all that concerned the order; and out of this not unnaturally arose dark suspicions against them. During the latter part of their career in the Holy Land, they had become familiar with the infidels, whom they had at first opposed with unrelenting hatred; and it was supposed that both their religion and their morals had been infected by their oriental associations. In their ordinary habits it is said that they were lax and luxurious, so that “to drink like a Templar” was a proverb,

When Gregory IX, in 1238, had reproved the Hos­pitallers for having allied themselves with the Greek Vatatzes against the Latin emperor of Constantinople, he had taken occasion to speak of imputations of unchastity and heresy which were cast on them. It was not until a later time that any accusations of heresy were brought against the Templars; but now strange and shocking reports of this kind were circulated, and, instead of the charge of familiarity with women, there were suspicions of unnatural vices, which were less abhorred in the east than in the west. It would seem that the loss of the Holy Land had told unfavourably on their character. Having been deprived of their proper occupation, they may naturally have yielded to the temptations which arise out of idleness; perhaps, too, the spirit which commonly led the people of these days to judge by visible appearances may have inclined the Templars themselves to doubt the power of the God whose champions had been forced to give way to unbelievers, while it disposed the gene­rality of men to accept tales and suspicions against the order, to whose sins it was natural to ascribe the loss of that sacred territory which it had been their especial duty to defend. And it is probable that even before their withdrawal from Palestine they may have taken up oriental superstitions as to the virtue of charms and magical practices.

Philip the Fair had at one time endeavoured to estab­lish a connexion with the order, probably in the hope of becoming master of its treasures; but his suit had been rejected. In the contest with Boniface, the Templars, notwithstanding the allegiance which most of them owed to the crown of France, had inclined to side with the pope, and when Benedict XI had granted Philip the tenths of spiritual property in France, the Templars had firmly stood on their exemptions The king had been largely in their debt for money advanced to pay the dowry of his sister, the queen of England; and his acquaintance with their resources had been extended by his late sojourn in the head-quarters of the order at Paris—a large enclosure, covered with buildings sufficient to contain a vast number of dependents, and strong enough to hold out against a more formidable siege than that which he had there experienced. And to the motives of cupidity and jealousy may have been added the influence of a Dominican confessor over the king’s mind; for the Dominicans, who had at one time been closely allied with the Templars, had since become their bitterest enemies.

The circumstances which led Philip to attack the Tem­plars are variously reported. The story most generally received is, that one Squin of Floyrac or Florian, a native of Beziers, who had been prior of Montfaucon, having been imprisoned at Paris for heresy and vicious life, became acquainted in prison with a Florentine named Noffo Dei, an apostate from the order; and that these wretches conspired to seek their deliverance by giving information of enormities alleged to be committed by the Templars. Squin of Florian refused to tell the important secrets of which he professed to be master to anyone but the king; and Philip heard the tale with eager delights. It appears that he spoke of the matter to the pope as early as the time of Clement’s coronation at Lyons; but nothing was done until later.

The pope summoned the masters and other chief dignitaries of the two great military orders from Cyprus, in order to a consultation as to the best means of carrying out an intended crusade. The master of the Hospitallers, Fulk de Villaret, was able to excuse himself, on the ground that he and his brethren were engaged in the siege of Rhodes; but the master of the Templars, James de Molay, a knight of Franche-Comté, who had been forty-two years in the order, obeyed the summons, and appeared in France with such a display of pomp and of wealth as naturally tended to increase the envy and the mistrust with which his brotherhood was already regarded. By Philip, to one of whose sons he had been godfather some years before, he was received with great honour, and the pope, in accordance with the invitation which had been given, consulted him as to the proposed crusade. But the Templars soon became aware that rumours of an unfriendly kind were current, and themselves requested the pope to investigate the truth of the suspicions which had been cast on them. The result of this inquiry was favourable to the order; but Philip held firmly to his purpose. On September the 14th, 1307 (the festival of the Exaltation of the Cross), orders were issued to his officers in all quarters, desiring them to prepare a force sufficient for the execution of certain instructions which were not to be opened until the 12th of October; and by these instructions they were charged to arrest all the Templars at one and the same time—a measure similar to those which the king had already employed towards the Jews and the foreign merchants. At the dawn of the following day the orders were carried out without any difficulty; for the Templars, unsuspecting and unprepared, made no attempt at resistance. So closely was Philip’s secret concealed, that, on the 12th of October, James de Molay had, at his request, been one of those who carried the wife of the king’s brother Charles to the grave; and within a few hours the master and his brethren were arrested, and conveyed to prison by a force under the command of William of Nogaret. The king took possession of the Temple, and throughout the kingdom the property of the order was placed under seal by his officers.

Philip lost no time in following up the arrest of the Templars. Next day the canons of the cathedral and the masters of the theological faculty in the university were assembled in the chapter-house of Notre Dame. The question was proposed to them whether the king might of his own authority proceed against a religious order; and, although the answer was not immediately given, it was foreseen and acted on—that the secular judge was not entitled to take cognisance of heresy, unless in cases remitted to him by the church; but that he might pro­perly arrest suspected persons, and might keep them for ecclesiastical judgment. On the following day, which was Sunday, the pulpits were filled with friars, who were charged to denounce the alleged crimes of the Templars; and some of the king’s ministers addressed assembled crowds on the same subject. Within a week from the time of the arrest, Philip set on foot an inquiry under his confessor, William Imbert, who also held the office of grand inquisitor, and, as a Dominican, was hostile to the Templars. The master and others of the order were examined, and it is said that De Molay admitted the truth of almost all the charges. In other parts of France also the investigation was carried on at the same time under the general superintendence of Imbert.

By taking it on himself to direct an inquiry into such charges against a body which was especially connected with the Roman see, the king gave great umbrage to the pope, who wrote to him in strong terms of remonstrance, desiring that the prisoners should be made over to two cardinals and reserved for his own judgment, suspending the powers of inquisitors and of bishops over them, and ordering that their property should be kept inviolate for the benefit of the Holy Land. At the same time the pope declared his willingness to co-operate with Philip by desiring other sovereigns to arrest the Templars within their dominions. To these demands Philip, after some delay, professed to yield; and by this concession he was able to overcome Clement’s opposition.

As in the case of Boniface, the king resolved to get up a national demonstration of concurrence in his policy; and with this view the estates of the realm were convoked at Tours in May 1308. From such an assembly the Templars could expect no favour. They were (for reasons which have been already explained) hated by the nobles and by the clergy; and the commons were prepossessed against them by the tales which had lately been circulated. To deal with the assembled estates was an easy task for the subtlety of Nogaret (to whom the eight chief barons of Languedoc had entrusted their proxies) and of Plasian; and the meeting resulted in a memorial by which the king was entreated to go on with the process against the Templars, even although the ecclesiastical power should refuse to support him.

While the French estates were sitting at Tours, the murder of Albert of Austria, by causing a vacancy in the empire, suggested to Philip a new object of ambition, for the attainment of which he desired to secure the pope’s assistance, and found it necessary to deal tenderly with him. Repairing from Tours to Poitiers, he laid before Clement the memorial of the estates, and offered to produce convincing evidence as to the guilt of the Templars. Seventy-two members of the order, carefully selected under the king’s direc­tions, were examined in the pope’s presence, where they confessed the truth of the charges against them; and some days later they heard their confessions read, and expressed their adhesion to them as true.

The master and other dignitaries of the order were on their way to Poitiers, when it was found that they were too ill to travel beyond Chinon; and there they were examined by three cardinals. It is said that De Molay confessed the charge of denying the Saviour in the ceremony of reception, and that he then referred the cardinals for further evidence to a serving brother of the order who attended on him. The avowals of his companions reached still further; but, in consideration of their professions of penitence, the cardinals were authorized by the pope to absolve them from the sins which they had acknowledged, and they commended them to the king’s mercy.

The pope professed to be convinced by the evidence which had been produced, and issued a number of documents in accordance with Philip’s wishes. The powers of the bishops were restored, so that each might take cognisance of the matter within his own diocese; and, until the meeting of the intended general council, the king was to retain the custody of the accused, in the name of the church, and was to maintain them out of their property, which was allowed to remain in his hands.

On the 12th of August appeared a bull, which begins with the words Faciens misericordiam. In this the pope, after having mentioned the reports which were current against the order, with the avowals which had been made by some members of it, both in his own presence and elsewhere, and having declared that King Philip acted in the matter not from rapacity, but from zeal for the orthodox faith—appoints commissioners to inquire into the case of the Templars in each province of France, and authorizes them to call in, if necessary, the aid of the secular arm. By another document of the same date he orders that all property belonging to the Templars shall be given up, and threatens severe penalties against all persons, however eminent, who should venture to detain any part of it.

Another bull, which is known by the title of Regnans in coelis, bears the same date with the Faciens misericordiam, and has much in common with it. By this bull the archbishop of Narbonne, the bishop of Mende (William Durantis, nephew and successor of the famous canonist and ritualist whose name he bore), the bishops of Bayeux and Limoges, and other ecclesiastics, were commissioned to investigate the matter of the Templars, with a view to the intended general council; and a list of 127 questions was annexed, embodying the charges already mentioned, with others of a like odious character. The inquiries of the commissioners were to concern themselves with the order generally, while the cases of individuals were left to the ordinary judges of such offences. Their first sitting was on the 7th of August 1300. The confessions formerly made were put in evidence, but an opportunity of disclaiming them was allowed; and, although the archbishop of Narbonne and other members of the commission often absented themselves, as if ashamed of their work, the examination was in general conducted with mildness.

On the 26th of November, the master, De Molay, was brought before the commissioners, and was asked whether he would defend the order. He answered that it was confirmed and privileged by the apostolic see, and contrasted the hasty character of the proceedings against it with the long delay of thirty-two years which had taken place before the deposition of the emperor Frederick II. For himself, he professed that he had neither the wisdom nor the skill necessary for the defence of the order; but that he must deserve contempt and infamy if he should fail to do what he could for a body to which he owed so much. He spoke of himself as a prisoner, with but four deniers in the world, but said that he wished to have assistance and counsel, so that the truth might be known with regard to the order. The commissioners offered him time and other facilities, but told him that in cases of heresy the proceedings must be simple and straightfor­ward, and that the arts of advocates were inadmissible. They then read to him the pope’s bull, in which his own confession before the cardinals at Chinon was mentioned. On hearing this he crossed himself twice, and made other demonstrations of the utmost astonishment and indignation. “If,” he said, “the commissioners were persons of another sort, they would hear something of a different kind from him.” To this they replied that they were not to be challenged to the ordeal of battle; whereupon the old knight rejoined that he had not thought of such things, but only wished that in this case the same rule might be observed which was observed by the Turks and Saracens—that false accusers should have their heads cut off or should be cleft down the middle of their bodies. He then, observing William of Plasian, who had attended the session uninvited, desired leave to speak with him. The old man’s confidence was won by Plasian’s professing to love him as a brother knight, and affecting to caution him against imprudence in the management of his cause; and the examination was adjourned until the next day but one. When the master was again brought forward, the effects of Plasian’s in­sidious counsels were evident. He declared that, as an unlearned and poor man, he would not undertake the defence of the order; but, as it appeared from the bull that Clement had reserved to himself the judgment of the chief officers, he desired that he might be carried before the pope with as little delay as might be. On being told by the commissioners that their business was to deal with the order, and not with individuals, he asked leave to state three facts in favour of the brotherhood—that he knew of no order in which the divine services were better performed or with greater splendour of ornaments; none in which almsgiving was more liberal; no religious order, and no kind of persons, who more readily shed their blood for the Christian faith, or were more dreaded by its enemies.

The commissioners remarked that unless the founda­tion of faith were sound, all these things were unavailing; to which De Molay assented, and, in proof of his own orthodoxy, stated his belief in the chief articles of the Christian creed. Nogaret, who was present, asked some questions as to the stories which were current against the order, but the master replied that he had never heard of them. He begged Nogaret and the commissioners that he might be allowed to enjoy the offices of religion with the services of his chaplains, and they promised to see to the matter.

Of the other knights who were examined, some said that they would defend the order; some, that they were willing to do so, if they might have their liberty and their property restored to them, but that in their captive and destitute condition the question was a mockery; some, apparently in the belief that the order was doomed, and tempted by the hope of making good terms for themselves, declined to stand up for it; one expressed a belief that, by administering the holy Eucharist to those who gave evidence on opposite sides, a Divine judgment might be obtained for the manifestation of the truth.

On the 28th of March 1310, about 550 knights from all parts of France, who had professed themselves willing to undertake the defence of the order, were assembled in the orchard of the bishop’s palace at Paris. The charges were read over in Latin by a notary, but when he was proceeding to restate them in French, a cry arose that this was needless, that they did not care to hear in the vulgar tongue such a mass of charges, too vile and abominable to be mentioned. When asked whether they would defend the order, they said that they were ready to do so if permitted by their superiors. They were de­sired to name six, eight, or ten persons as proxies; and Peter of Boulogne, a priest, was appointed, with three others, although they said that they could not act without the master’s sanction.

After the meeting in the bishop’s orchard, the commissioners visited the various houses in which the Templars were confined. In the course of these visits it became evident that a great part of the confessions to the dis­advantage of the order had been wrung out by torture, by hunger, or by the other hardships of their long imprisonment. The torments which had been applied are described by some of the sufferers, and, among them, by one who had been racked by the original accuser, Squin of Florian. He professes himself willing to endure death in any form, but unable to withstand the protracted agony of the torture—by which some of the knights declare that they might have been wrought to confess anything whatever, even the guilt of having put the Saviour to death. They entreat that no layman, or other person who might be likely to disturb them, may be allowed to be present at the examinations, and protest that, when their terrors and temptations are considered, it was not wonderful that some should lie, but rather that any should venture to speak the truth. They complain bitterly of the rigorous treatment which they met with; that they were miserably lodged, loaded with chains, and scantily fed; that they were deprived of the ministrations of religion; that their brethren who had died in prison had been excluded from the last sacraments and from Christian burial; that they themselves, in addition to other heavy charges, were even compelled to pay, out of the wretched pittance which was allowed them, a fee for unloosing and refastening their chains, and a toll for their passage across the Seine, on every day of their examination. They represent that they cannot act in behalf of the order without the master’s leave; they urgently entreat that, as being nearly all unlearned men, they may be allowed the assistance of advocates, and that so much of the order’s property may be granted to them as would suffice for the costs of their defence.

In the meantime Philip had set another engine in motion for the accomplishment of his purpose. By exerting a strong pressure on the pope, he had contrived that Philip de Marigny, a young brother of his favourite counsellor, Enguerrand de Marigny, should be promoted to the archbishopric of Sens. The new archbishop received his pall at Easter 1310, and on the 10th of May he opened at Paris a provincial council, before which a number of Templars, who had retracted their confessions, were brought to trial as relapsed heretics. Some of them yielded, and were allowed to escape altogether, or with slight punishment; others were put to penance, or were sentenced to imprisonment for life; but those who adhered to their retractation were condemned to be made over to the secular arm—such of them as belonged to the clerical order being previously degraded.

While the commissioners were engaged in their investigations, they were informed of the summary processes by which the archbishop of Sens was sentencing men to death, and the four chosen defenders of the order put in an appeal to them, lest the knights who had offered to defend it should be dealt with in like manner; but they answered that they had no power to interfere, as the archbishop was independent of them by virtue of the pope’s late decree, which had restored to the French prelates their ordinary jurisdiction in such matters. They sent, however, a message to the council, requesting that it would delay its proceedings, as the report of these had so terrified the witnesses before the commission as to render them incapable of giving evidence calmly; but their envoys were not allowed to see the archbishop, and they made no further attempt to interposed

On the 12th of May fifty-four Templars were, by the sentence of the council, conveyed to a field near the convent of St. Antony, where a stake had been prepared for each. It was announced that anyone who would confess should be set at liberty, and the unhappy knights were beset by the importunities of their kindred and friends, entreating them to save themselves by accepting this offer. But although deeply affected by the feelings which are natural in such a case, not one of the whole number flinched. They endured the slow ‘kindling of the faggots, and the gradual progress of the flames which were to consume their bodies; and with their last breath they attested their orthodoxy by invoking the Saviour, the blessed Virgin, and the saints’. The courage and constancy of these brave men impressed the popular mind deeply and widely; but it soon became manifest that their fate had struck terror into the hearts of many among their brethren. On the following day, a Templar named Aimeri de Villars was brought before the commissioners, and appeared as if beside himself from terror and excitement. With vehement gestures, beating his breast, tossing his arms in the air, and imprecating on himself the most frightful curses unless his words were true, he declared that the charges against the order were all false, although under extremity of torture he had before admitted some of them; but that the sight of the victims, as they were dragged in carts to the place of execution on the preceding day, had so terrified him that, rather than endure the fire, he was ready to own whatever might be imputed to him, even if it were said that he had slain the Saviour.

The commissioners, in disgust at the cruelties which had been committed, and in despair of obtaining trustworthy evidence so long as the impression of the terror should be fresh, adjourned their sittings from the 19th to the 30th of May, and afterwards for a longer time; and when they met again, in the middle of October, the effect of the late proceedings was plainly shown. Many knights, who had professed their readiness to defend the order, now renounced the defence, lest they should make themselves liable to the doom of relapsed heretics from the archbishop of Sens and his suffragans. Of the four chosen representatives, Peter of Boulogne had disappeared; another had become disqualified through having been degraded from his orders by the council; and the remaining two declared that, after the loss of their colleagues, they were no longer equal to the task. From this time the evidence before the commissioners was more in accordance with the wishes of the prosecutors than before; it seemed as if the fate of the order were hopeless, and as if its members were bent only on trying, by whatever means, to secure their individual safety. Between August 1309 and the end of May 1311, two hundred and thirty-one witnesses were examined; and at length the commissioners sent off the report of the evidence to the pope without pronouncing any judgment of their own on it. In the meantime both councils and commissioners in other parts of France had been engaged on the affair of the Templars. The only council of which a record has been preserved is one of the province of Reims, which met at Senlis; and by its sentence the body of a dead Templar was dug up and burnt, while nine members of the order perished at the stake, steadfastly declaring their innocence of the crimes imputed to them.

We may now proceed to examine the charges which were brought against the order of the Temple, with the evidence which was drawn forth by the inquiry.

The ceremonies of initiation are described with an amount of variety which proves that they must have differed according to places, times, and other circumstances; but the avowals of those who confessed may be thus summed up as to their general substance. The candidate, on bended knees, requested that he might be admitted into the society of the order, and might be allowed to share in its bread and water and clothing. He was told, by way of answer, that what he asked was a great thing. He was warned that he must prepare himself to endure hardships; that he must not judge of the order by the splendid appearance and equipments of the knights; but that he might have to walk instead of riding, to be hungry when he might wish to eat, to thirst when he might wish to drink, to go when he might wish to stay, to watch when he might wish to sleep, to give up his liberty for absolute obedience and servitude. If he still persevered in the desire to be admitted, he was then questioned as to his freedom from impediments, such as debts or secret ailments; he was required to profess his Christian faith, and in some cases to kiss the cross; he took the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and swore to observe the statutes of the order; after which an instruction in his duties as a member of it was addressed to him. Then, according to the confessions of many Templars, the new knight was led into some small chapel or other secret place; a cross, either plain or with an image of the Saviour on it, was produced; and he was required (in some cases thrice) to deny God and to spit on the cross—perhaps also to trample on it. He was next required to kiss the receiver on various parts of his body—sometimes in the most obscene and degrading manner. In some instances, it was said, the new member was told that unnatural lust was permitted in the order: sometimes an idol was produced, a cord was passed round its head, and this (or, at least, a cord which was supposed to bear some mysterious meaning) was very commonly worn by the Templars. In some instances these offensive ceremonies were not required until some days after the more legiti­mate form of reception.

As to the alleged abominations of the initiation, there is first the question of fact; and with regard to such of the circumstances as may be accepted for facts, there remains the question how they are to be understood. A late writer supposes the whole to be symbolical—that the applicant for admission was represented as sunk in the depths of sin and apostasy, and that from this state the order was supposed to raise him. But of this ingenious theory there is no proof, nor has the supposed symbolism any real analogy to the Festival of Fools and other such things, with which the writer in question would compare it. Rather we may perhaps suppose that the ceremonies were imposed—injudiciously and blamably indeed, but without necessarily involving any evil meaning—as a test of the obedience which had just been professed; in order to typify, by the denial of that which had been acknow­ledged as holiest, by compliance with degrading and disgusting requirements, the entire and unreserved submission which the new member of the order had become bound to yield to the commands of his superiors. That this intention was not explained, would seem to have been of the very essence of the system: the Templars were left to interpret it for themselves; they were forbidden to communicate with each other as to the mode of reception, and many of them may have failed to understand a meaning which may nevertheless have been really intended. In many cases no such ceremonies were enforced at all; many Templars asserted that they had never heard of them until after the arrest of the order; and men who deposed that they themselves had been obliged to submit to them deposed also that in later re­ceptions, which they had witnessed or in which they had themselves acted the part of receivers, the offensive forms were not required. The witnesses all declared that they had been horrified at hearing these proposed—that they would rather have been on their way to the galleys, in the depths of the earth, even in purgatory itself, than be put to such a trial, and that they had earnestly endeavoured to escape it. In some cases resistance had been successful in obtaining an exemption from the ceremonies either wholly or in part; but more commonly the novices were told that they were bound to submit, in virtue of the obedience which they had sworn, and because these were points established in the order; while, for the satisfaction of their scruples, they were assured that the denial of the Saviour was merely a form, a jest, an imitation of St. Peter’s denials; that it was to be made with the mouth only, not with the heart, and was not contrary to Christian religion, or dangerous to the soul. All declared that their denials had been made with the mouth alone, and some professed to have uttered a like declaration at the time when they were received. All declared that their spitting had not been on the crucifix or cross, but near it, and some had been told by their receivers that the mere pretence of spitting was enough. Although they were usually told they must make no confession except to the clergy of the order, they had invariably carried their tale of the initiation to some other confessor, who had listened to it with astonishment and horror, and had enjoined some penances by way of expiation. Sometimes the receivers themselves, while requiring submission, told the candidates that they might confess to whomsoever they would. In one case the confessor suggested that the denial of the Saviour had been required in order to test the novice’s spirit, and that, if he had steadfastly refused, he would have been considered fit to be sent earlier to the Holy Land, and to encounter the dangers of intercourse and captivity among the infidels. All the witnesses agreed in testifying that after their admission no attempt had been made to confirm them in apostasy; that the order adored the cross on Good Friday and on the festivals of its Invention and Exaltation; and that they considered their brethren in general to be true Christian believers, although some of them suspected that those who had enforced such ceremonies at the reception could not be sound in the faith.

With regard to the kissing which was said to be a part of the rite of admission to the order, and to have been the subject of much ridicule from their rivals of the Hospital, it appears that the clerical members were usually excused from it; that a formal appearance of kissing the receiver between the shoulders, or in some such place, was considered to be enough; and that when objections were taken to any further kissing, it was never enforced.

The most revolting of the accusations against the order might be supposed to have grown out of a charge which was given to the new members that each should share his bed with a brother, if required—a charge of which the true sense was, that they should be ready to give up their own convenience for that of others. Some witnesses, indeed, deposed that they were expressly authorized to indulge in unnatural lusts. But, even if this were true, the real intention might have been, not to sanction such abominations, but (as has been already suggested with regard to the denials) to try the spirit of the new members by the shock of an apparent contrast with the vows of religion and purity which had just been taken; and it is certain that acts of the kind in question were denounced in the institutes of the Templars as deadly sins, that they were regarded with abhorrence, and that, in the very rare instances which were detected they were visited with severe punishment, such as lifelong imprisonment in chains, or expulsion from the order.

The tales as to the use of idols are very indistinct and perplexing. Some witnesses deposed that an idol had been produced at their reception, but could give no satisfactory account of it. They said that they had been too much disturbed in mind to look at it; one stated that at the sight of it he had run away in terror. And the de­scriptions of its appearance were very various: that it had one head, and that it had three; that it had two feet in front and two behind; that it was a bare human skull, that it was black, that it was. gilt and silvered, that it had a long white beard, and that its eyes were glowing carbuncles; that it was the head of St. Peter or of St. Blaise, of one of St. Ursula’s virgin companions, of a master who had apostatized to Islam and had introduced the guilty customs into the order,—or of a cat. Some declared that they had often seen an idol—to which the name of Baphomet (a corruption of Mahomet) was given—produced for adoration at chapters of the order at Montpellier, and even at Paris. But there is no evidence as to actual use elsewhere, nor, although the suddenness of the arrest would have put it out of the power of the Templars to conceal their idols, if they had possessed any, was any such object discovered in any of their houses. Perhaps, therefore, the charge of idolatry may have had no other foundation than the use of reliquaries made (as was very common) in the form of a human head, to which credulity annexed the wild stories which were current.

The practice of wearing a cord round the body was established by the evidence; but the object of it was very variously explained. Although some witnesses deposed that the cord, which was given to them at their initiation, had been previously applied to an idol, the greater number knew nothing of such a contact, and stated that the cord had not been delivered to them on the part of the order, but that they were allowed to procure it for themselves.

On the question at what time and on what occasion the offensive rites had been introduced into the order, no satisfactory or consistent testimony was to be obtained. There were stories of their having been instituted by a master who had been captive to a sultan; it was said by some that they had been used under the last four masters only; but other witnesses declared that nothing was known on the subject.

The mystery in which the proceedings of the order were shrouded gave occasion for much popular suspicion against it. The receptions and the chapters were held with closed doors, sometimes by night or in the faint light of dawn, and the members were forbidden to talk even among themselves of what took place on these occasions. A witness who did not belong to the order was told by one of the high officers that, at the proceedings of the chapters, there was one point so wonderful and so secret that, if the king of France himself were by chance to witness it, those who held the chapter would be compelled to secure his silence by putting him to death. The same officer had also declared that, in addition to the ordinary book of statutes, the Templars had another, so mysterious that he would not for the whole world allow it to be seen; and other witnesses deposed that the members in general were not allowed to see the rules or the statutes, except by special permission. The suspicion of guilty secrets was supported by the charge that the Templars were bound to confess to no one but the chaplains of their own order. But it appears that, although such an injunction was laid on them, it was not strictly observed, and that an exception was made as to cases of necessity; and if such exceptions were allowed, the rule cannot fairly be blamed as unreasonable, or as really warranting the suspicions which were not unnaturally founded on it. Another accusation was, that the master and other lay officers took it on themselves to grant absolution. As to this, it is clear from the evidence that the only offences for which absolution was really given by laymen were breaches of the rules of the order; but the testimony of some witnesses appears to show that this distinction was not always rightly apprehended, and that some Templars may have shared in the popular opinion which supposed it to supersede the necessity of absolution from a priest. With regard to the charge that the priests of the order, in reciting the canon of the mass, omitted the four words on which the consecration of the host was supposed to depend, the greater part of the witnesses declared that they knew nothing of it; and those who admitted that they had heard of it, denied that they had observed any such omission in the performance of the office. The practice of the order as to almsgiving was among the subjects of inquiry; and the result of the answers appears to be that, notwithstanding the grand­master’s claim in behalf of his brethren as to this point, the Templars did not enjoy the reputation of liberality; that they exercised hospitality towards persons of wealth and condition rather than charitable bounty to the poor; and that in many places their alms had of late years become less than before.

The charges that they were enjoined to gain acquisitions for the order by wrongful as well as by rightful means, appeared by the evidence to have no other foundation than vague reports. One member deposed that at his reception he was told to practise such arts without scruple, but only against the Saracens; and others declared that they had been charged to avoid all ways of unfair gain.

The circumstance that there was no novitiate, although explained on the ground that the members ought, immediately on their admission, to be ready to proceed to the holy war, excited much suspicion—as if the rites of initiation were such that no one who had witnessed them should have an opportunity of leaving the order; and terrible stories were told of persons who, after having gone through those rites, never smiled again. It was said that one expressed his grief by causing a signet-ring to be made with an inscription which described him as lost, and that within a year and a half after his reception he pined away. An English witness related that a Templar spoke of himself as having lost his soul by joining the brotherhood. Another said that his grand­father entered the order in full health and in high spirits, taking his hawks and dogs with him; and that three days later he was a dead man. Another knight, who had before been rallied by his friends as to the popular stories of the manner of reception, came out from the ceremony pale and overwhelmed with sorrow; and on being urged to relate the details, as he had promised, he sternly for­bade all questioning on the subject. Some professed to have forsaken the order on account of the abominations which were connected with it; others said that they had wished to leave it, but that they and many others were kept in it by fear; but these witnesses appear to have been men of low character, and little entitled to belief. It is indeed impossible to decide as to the value of much of the evidence. The witnesses make confessions to the discredit of the order; they avow that they had done this from a wish to save themselves at its expense, retract their confessions, and yet afterwards retract their retractations. Many of them declare that they had yielded to force or to the fear of tortures, and that by the same means they might have been wrought to confess anything, however false or monstrous. Many had been won by the blandishments which were practised on them, and by the hopes of royal favour which were held out, to give testimony agreeable to Philip’s designs; and many—especially in the south of France—when they were pressed with the avowals which had been extracted from the grand-master and others, declared that there was no truth in them.

In other countries, also, inquiries as to the Templars had been carried on, and with results less doubtful than in France.

With England, Clement, notwithstanding his subserviency to the French king, had studied to be on friendly terms. As archbishop of Bordeaux, he had been subject to the English sovereign. As pope, he had released Edward I from his oath to observe the charters, and had allowed him to levy ecclesiastical tenths throughout the British islands for two years; and in consideration of this he had himself been permitted to extort large sums from the English church, notwithstanding strong remonstrances of the parliament. He had countenanced the attempts to subdue Scotland, had suspended the Scottish bishops who were obnoxious to Edward, and had excommunicated Robert Bruce, who, after the execution of Wallace in August 1305, had become the champion of the national freedom. He had suspended the English primate, Robert Winchilsey, who had offended Edward by acts which have been in part already mentioned; and by these and other compliances he had established a friendly understanding, although he had declined the king’s request that Bishop Grossetete of Lincoln, whom the court of Rome could not but regard as an enemy, should receive the honour of canonization. At the time when the process against the Templars was begun in France, Edward II, who had just succeeded to the English crown, was about to marry a daughter of Philip, who wrote to bespeak his co-operation against the order; and Clement, by a bull dated on the 22nd of November 1307, after reciting the confessions which were alleged to have been made by the master and other members, desired him to imprison the Templars of his dominions, and to commit their property to the custody of independent per­sons until the charges against them should be investigated.

In compliance with these letters—although Edward had before regarded the Templars with great favour, and was still so little inclined to believe the charges, that even at this time he wrote to the kings of Spain, Portugal, and Sicily, desiring that they would not too readily take part against the order—all the Templars in the British islands (for Scotland was then under the English do­minion) were arrested in January 1308, with the same suddenness which had before been used against their brethren in France. Councils of the two provinces were held at London and at York respectively, and showed themselves disposed to treat the accused with fairness. The pope had ordered that the witnesses should be examined by torture,—a novelty in English procedure; and the York council ask, with visible repugnance, what should be done if no one capable of applying it should be found in England—whether torturers should be brought from abroad? to which no other answer was given than that it must not be so applied as to maim the victims for life.

Forty knights were examined before the bishop of London, and after these followed a number of other witnesses, who did not belong to the order. The interrogations, which were furnished by the pope, were eighty-seven in number, and to these twenty-four were afterwards added. The evidence (of which some portions have been quoted already) presents the same features with which we have become familiar in that of the French Templars. There are stories of denying the Saviour, of spitting on the cross, of obscene ceremonies and abomi­nable licenses as connected with the reception. One witness, Stephen of Staplebridge, who is described as a fugitive and apostate from the order, and professed much contrition for his sins, states that there were two ceremonies of reception—a good and a bad—and that he himself had gone through both; he believed that any who should refuse compliance with the objectionable rites were put to death in foreign countries, but was not aware of any such case in England. There is much about idols, brazen heads with either one face or two, a cat, a calf, a black monster with glowing eyes; and one witness, a Franciscan friar, had been told by a “veteran,” who had left the order, that there were four principal idols in England. Yet on this point there was no clear testimony from personal knowledge, and it was com­monly stated that, with very few exceptions, the faith of the members was sound. There were tales of the mystery in which the order delighted, and of the terrible effects which an initiation into its secrets had in some cases produced.

The councils both of London and of York were inclined to greater lenity than the French tribunals. Many of the accused were persuaded to forswear all heresy, on which they were absolved, and placed in monasteries for penance until the expected general council should decide the fate of the order. But for those who persisted in a denial of guilt, severer measures were used. Thus one was shut up for the time “in a most vile prison, being bound with double irons;” and the grand preceptor, William de la More, was reserved for the pope’s judgment, and died in prison.

In Scotland, only two knights—both of English birth—were arrested. They admitted that the great officers were accustomed to give absolution as if by authority from God, St. Peter, and the pope. One of them said that at his reception he was charged to accept no service from a woman—not so much as water to wash his hands. Many witnesses not belonging to the order were examined, but nothing beyond mere suspicions could be drawn out from them. The abbot of Dunfermline stated that he had never heard of any reception as having taken place in Scotland.

In Ireland, after some Templars had been examined without admitting any of the charges, the evidence came chiefly from Franciscans, who were bitter enemies of the order. One who had been a servitor in it had heard that many Templars had been put into sacks and thrown into the sea; but when questioned as to the story that one was lost at every general chapter, he said that he had himself disproved it by counting them as they went in and as they came out. Another deposed that at the elevation of the host Templars had been known to look down to the ground; and that from this and other circumstances he believed them all and each to be conscious of some guilty secret.

In Italy, although the usual avowals to the discredit of the order were extorted in the papal states and in the southern kingdom, which was under the influence of France, the result of inquiries elsewhere was favourable. The archbishop of Ravenna, as inquisitor for Tuscany and northern Italy, held two synods for the consideration of the subject, where it was resolved that the guilty members should be punished and that the innocent should be absolved; that those who retracted confessions made under torture should be reckoned as innocent; and that, as the innocent outnumbered the guilty, the order should be allowed to retain its property.

In the Spanish kingdoms the affair took a peculiar course. The Templars of Castile and Aragon, warned by the sudden arrest of their brethren in France, shut themselves up in their castles, and offered to do battle for the defence of the order. Some of their fortresses were reduced by the king of Aragon, and were made over by him to papal commissioners. The case of the Aragonese Templars was considered by synods at Tarragona in 1310 and 1312—between which times some of them had been put to torture, but without making any confession. At the second synod they were declared to be innocent of heresy; but as the pope had already dis­solved the order, it was decreed that, until he should determine further, they should be allowed to hold houses and income within the dioceses where their property lay, and to live under the inspection of the bishops.

For the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, the inquiry was carried on by a commission which sat at Medina del Campo, and afterwards by a synod at Salamanca, in 1310. The prelates who were present expressed great satisfaction that no crime had been established against the Templars, but referred the decision of the case to the pope, on the ground that an acquittal by him would carry greater weight than one pronounced by an inferior tribunal; but eventually the Templars of Castile were involved in the general fate of the order.

In Germany, the Templars of Mainz, Toul, and Verdun denied all the charges. The case of the order was brought before a council at Mainz in 1410, when, to the astonishment of the assembled prelates, Hugh, count of the Rhine and waldgrave, the provincial head of the Templars, appeared with twenty companions, in the full armour and habit of the Temple. On being asked by the archbishop of Mainz, Peter Aichspalter, to explain their business, the count said that he and his brethren protested against the charges of “enormous and more than heathen crimes,” which had been brought against them; that the innocence of those who had been burnt elsewhere had been proved by a miracle, their white cloaks and red crosses having been unconsumed by the fire; and he appealed to a future pope and to a general council. The archbishop answered that he would refer the matter to the pope; and in the following year a second council was held, by which it was declared that the Templars were innocent. Yet at Mainz the property of the order was confiscated; and in other parts of Germany there were serious commotions, and some of its members perished at the stake.

The pope wrote to the king of Cyprus and to the Latin patriarch of Constantinople, urging inquiry into the case of the Templars, and enjoining the use of torture. In reply, Amaury of Cyprus reported that he had not been able to arrest the knights, as they had been warned against a surprise; but that they had waited on him, asserting their innocence, and offering to submit to the papal judgment.

Within a few months after the beginning of Philip’s pro­ceedings against the Templars, the empire had been left without a head by the death of Albert of Austria, who, while on his way to suppress an insurrection of the Swiss, was murdered by his nephew John, within sight of the castle of Hapsburg, the original seat of their family. His eldest son, Frederick, became a candidate for the vacant dignity, but found that his hope of gaining the electors was destroyed by their remembrance of Albert’s harshness, and of the policy by which he had strengthened the crown. Philip now conceived the scheme of gaining the empire for a member of his own family—which, in addition to France and Navarre, already possessed the thrones of Naples and Hungary, and through agents at Florence and at Rome swayed the affairs of central Italy; and (as we have seen) he lost no time in visiting Clement at Poitiers, with a view to secure the pope’s interest for his brother, Charles of Valois. It has, indeed, been supposed by some writers that this interest was the object of the secret article which Philip was said to have exacted from Clement before his election. But the pope had reason to dread the vast aggrandizement of French influence which was designed; and although, in compliance with Philip’s wishes, he wrote in favour of Charles to the electors, he at the same time took measures underhand to defeat the king’s policy. In consideration of his apparent subserviency, not only as to the Templars but as to the empire, he was allowed to leave Poitiers, and Philip was about to visit him at Avignon, in order to press his suit with greater advantage at the head of 6,000 cavalry. But Clement, having been informed of this design by a member of the king’s council, employed Cardinal Nicolas of Prato (who had been alienated from Philip by his bitterness against the memory of Boniface) to urge the electors that they should choose speedily, and to recommend to them, as the fittest candidate, Duke Henry of Luxemburg, who had lately visited the papal court. The important see of Mainz was at this time occupied by Peter of Achtzpalt (Aichspalt or Aspelt), who having been sent to solicit it for Henry’s brother Baldwin, and having recommended himself to the pope by his medical skill, had himself been promoted from the see of Basel to the German primacy, for which Baldwin was considered to be too young; and within two years he had been able to console Baldwin by procuring for him the archbishopric of Treves. Through the exertions of Peter Aichspalter, aided by Baldwin, it was now contrived that the election should fall on Henry—a petty prince who had not at first been thought of as a candidate, but who had been distinguished by the justice and the vigour of his administration within his own small territory, and was renowned as the most accomplished knight in Europe. The archbishop of Mainz and the other electors took, as was usual, the opportunity to secure large privileges or other advantages for themselves and their successors; and the pope, in ratifying the election, exacted from Henry an engagement that he would confirm the grants of former emperors to the church, that he would extermi­nate heresies and heretics, that he would never intermarry or ally himself with Saracens, heathens, or schismatics, and that he would secure to the Roman church the lands which had been mentioned in former compacts.

Philip—whether or not he knew or suspected that the pope’s duplicity had been the cause of his failure as to the empire,—was rendered eager to console himself for the disappointment by pursuing his suit against the memory of Boniface; and, although it had been intended that the matter should be reserved for the general council, which had been summoned to meet in October 1310, Clement was urged to a more speedy trial. He announced an intention of hearing the case in Lent 1310, and summoned Philip and his sons, with Nogaret and Plasian, to appear as accusers. The king and the princes, how­ever, declined to undertake that character in a question of heresy; and thus the task was thrown on Plasian and Nogaret, who had staked their all on the process.

Witnesses were on their way from Italy, under Reginald of Supino, who had been concerned in the attack on the palace of Anagni, when, within three leagues of Avignon, they were assailed by some of Boniface’s partisans, who had been lying in wait for their arrival. Some of the Italians were killed; the rest were scattered and returned across the Alps; and their leader hints, in a protest which he made at Nimes, that the scheme for thus getting rid of their evidence had not been unknown to pope Clement. The power and wealth of Boniface’s family had provided him with able advocates, when, on the 16th of March, 1310, the question came before the pope in his consistory. The French king’s civilians were confronted by men learned in the ecclesiastical law, among whom the most conspicuous was Baldred Bisset, a canon of Glasgow, whose name has already come before us in connexion with the question as to the Scottish crown. By each party an attempt was made to deprive its opponents of a standing in the court. On the one side, it was said that a man who was dead, and who was charged with heresy, was not entitled to counsel: on the other, that a dead man ought not to be brought to trial, since he had been cited before a higher tribunal; that a pope could not be judged by any man—not even by his own successor, forasmuch as an equal has no power over an equal; or, at least, that he could not be judged by any authority less than a general council. To this it was rejoined that Boniface, being dead, was no longer pope; that the pope represented the whole church, so as to render a general council superfluous; while Clement himself disclaimed the right to try his predecessor. Nogaret objected to some of the cardinals, as unfit to be judges on account of their partiality; while the opposite party asserted that Nogaret himself ought not to be heard on account of his notorious enmity against Boniface, of his acts against that pope, and of the excommunication which he had incurred. Against Plasian, too, disqualifying circumstances were alleged, Nogaret and his advocate, Bertrand of Roccanegata, re­plied that he had not incurred excommunication; that, since he had spoken with Boniface before the pope’s death, he could not be in an excommunicate state; but the pope said that, although this opinion was held by some lawyers, it could not be admitted. Both Plasian and Nogaret asserted those doctrines of royal, as opposed to ecclesiastical, power which were characteristic of their class—maintaining, among other things, the right of the sovereign to prevent his subjects from going out of the realm, and to take the property of the clergy without their consent. The trial went on for many months.

Evidence, partly obtained by a commission sent to Italy, partly given by witnesses who appeared in person, was brought to prove a long list of accusations. It was said that Boniface had been a blasphemer from his youth upwards; that he had not only disbelieved the chief articles of the Christian faith, but had openly and habitually scoffed at them; that he had neglected the outward duties of religion, and had not confessed for thirty years; that he had been a gamester and a profligate; that even in extreme old age he had indulged in the most odious and abominable forms of dissoluteness; that he had declared the sins of the flesh to be as much a matter of indifference as the act of washing the hands; that he had been seen by night performing pagan sacri­fices and incantations, while voices of demons had been heard in the air; that he had worshipped a devil enclosed in a ring, and an idol given to him by a famous sorcerer. And, together with these and other such monstrous tales, was brought up the old history of the irregularities con­nected with the resignation of Celestine and his own promotion, and of the cruelties which he was said to have exercised on his predecessor, of whose death he was even alleged to have been guilty.

Clement found himself in a great perplexity. Was he to give up the reputation of Boniface, and with it the credit of the papacy, the validity of Benedict’s election and of his own? or was he to tax Philip with falsehood, fraud, and subornation of perjury in the persecution of the deceased pope? He had already requested the intervention of Charles of Valois, whose hopes of the empire he had lately frustrated. The kings of Castile and of Aragon also remonstrated with Philip against his proceedings and at length a compromise was agreed on, to which Philip was the more readily brought to consent, because the new emperor’s successes in Italy suggested the fear that in him the pope might find another protector. In consideration of being allowed to carry out his designs against the Templars—with whom an attempt had been made to connect Boniface by a story that he was aware of their heresy, but had been bribed to con­nive at it—the king agreed to forego the fullness of his triumph over the memory of his old antagonist, to leave the judgment of Boniface’s case to the pope and cardinals, and never to question their decision. A special bull was issued, by which it was declared that all Boniface’s acts against the king and kingdom of France were annulled; they were to be erased from the papal registers, and it was forbidden under penalties that any one should keep a copy of them. The bulls known as Unam sanctam and Remnon novamonly were excepted, and these were to be understood in a qualified and inoffensive sense. At the same time Philip, after a number of cardinals and others had, at the pope’s request, testified to the purity of his zeal, was pronounced to be free from all blame in his proceedings against Boniface—to be innocent as to the attack on the pope, and as to the plunder of his treasures; and it was declared that neither the existing pope nor his successors should molest the king on account of Boniface. All who had been concerned in the contest with Boniface were forgiven, except the authors of the outrage at Anagni, and even for these some other way of release was to be used. Nogaret himself was absolved ad cautelam, on condition that he should perform pilgrimages to Compostella and certain other places, and that in the next crusade—an expedition which was never to be made—he should serve until the pope should authorize his return.

The council of Vienne, after having been deferred from time to time, met on the 16th of October 1311. The number of bishops and mitred abbots is given by one writer as 114; by others as upwards of 300. The pope, in his discourse at the opening of the proceedings, announced three subjects for consideration—the case of the Templars, a crusade, and the reform of the church; and, in addition to these, the question as to Boniface was discussed. Three advocates—a civilian, a decretalist, and a theologian—appeared in his behalf, and it is said that two Catalan knights offered to do battle for the deceased pope’s memory, but that no one took up their challenge. The question both as to Boniface’s character and acts, and as to the French king’s opposition to him, was settled on the footing of the compromise which has been already mentioned.

On the subject of reform in the church, the bishops gave in written statements of their views; one of these memoirs, by Durantis, bishop of Mende, displays so much of knowledge and understanding, that it has led some writers to draw from it a presumption in favour of the judgment which he formed as a commissioner in the affair of the Templars.

In this tract the bishop, with a great display of canoni­cal learning, treats the principal subjects which appeared to him to require the council’s attention. He urges a thorough reform of the church, from the head downwards. He would have the character of the Roman primacy exactly defined; that the pope should not, in contradiction to the prohibition of Gregory the Great, be styled universal bishop, and that in various ways his pretensions should be limited. If the papacy should be vacant more than three months, the right of election ought to pass from the cardinals to certain other representatives of the church. He proposes that a general council should be assembled once in ten years, and that the power of making general laws should belong to such councils alone. He urges the restoration of the rights of the episcopate in cases where they had been invaded from various quarters, as by the undue preference of cardinals and members of the pope’s household above the bishops, and by those grants of dispensations and exemptions to monastic communities which had been found ruinous to discipline, and had often led even the inferior members of such communities to fancy themselves equal to bishops and archbishops. He denounces simony, pluralities, the system of granting monastic and other benefices to cardinals in commendam, the employment of bishops and clergy in secular affairs, improper promotions, the pride, luxury, and ignorance of the clergy, the want of decent ornaments and vestures in churches, defects in the per­formance of the services, and the profanation of Sundays and holydays by giving them up to unseemly merriment. He urges reform among the bishops and clergy, and, while maintaining the immunity of the clergy from secular courts, he would guard against the abuse of this privilege as a protection to unworthy persons. He proposes that the decretal De clericis conjugatis should be revoked, as having been made by pope Boniface without the concurrence of a general council; that the western discipline as to the marriage of the clergy should be conformed to that of the eastern church; and he suggests the revival of those canons by which the offspring of the amours of the clergy were condemned to servitude. But although the question of reform had been thus fully brought forward, the council did little to effect a reformation in the points which had been indicated as faulty.

The subject of a crusade was discussed, but languidly. A grant of tenths for six years was voted for the purpose; money and jewels were contributed, and some knights, among whom were Philip of France, Edward II of England, and Lewis of Navarre, son of the French king, took the cross with a view to the expedition. But nothing came of these acts, and, although attempts were made to aid the cause by a report that the books of the Mussulmans themselves foretold a speedy extinction of the false religion, it was more manifest than ever that the period of crusading enthusiasm was over. A chronicler relates that, when some thousands of crusaders, in obedience to the pope’s summons, made their appearance at Avignon, Clement absolved them from their vow, and desired them to return to their homes; “and thus,” says the writer, “their labours and very great expenses became like a mockery and had no effect.”

While the council was engaged in hearing and considering the evidence which had been collected as to the case of the Templars, seven knights presented themselves at one of the sessions; and at a later meeting, two more appeared in like manner, offering to defend the order, and stating that from 1500 to 2000 of their brethren, concealed at Lyons and in its neighbourhood, were ready to support them; but the pope in alarm ordered them to be arrested and imprisoned. In February 1312, Philip, impatient at the slowness of the council, appeared before the gates of Vienne at the head of a large force, declaring an intention to “make the cause of Christ triumphant,” and demanding the abolition of the order, on the ground that it had been convicted of heresies and crimes. A vast majority of the council, however—all but one Italian bishop and the archbishops of Sens, Rouen, and Reims, who had been concerned in the burnings of the French Templars—desired that the accused should be heard; and Clement in perplexity caught at a suggestion which had been made by the bishop of Mende, that the order should be abolished, not on grounds of law, but as a measure of expediency for the good of the church. On the 22nd of March, he brought the question before his secret consistory, when no objection was raised against the course which he proposed; for the members of the council had been gradually subdued to the papal influence. And at the second general session, on the 3rd of April, when king Philip and three of his sons were present, the dissolution of the order was proclaimed, “not,” as the pope avowed, “by way of definitive sentence, forasmuch as, according to the inquisitions and processes which have been held, we cannot of right pass such a sentence, but by the way of provision or apostolical ordination.” Thus the very instrument by which the abolition of the order was determined left the question of its guilt or innocence open, and has left it to perplex later ages, without even such assistance towards the solution of it as might have been derived from a papal judgment. A writer who lived near the time, and who professes to have special authority for his statement, reports Clement as having said that the order could not be destroyed in the way of justice, but that it must be destroyed by the way of expediency, “lest our dear son the king of France should be offended”.

The members of the order individually were left to the judgment of provincial synods. For those who should seek and receive absolution, a maintenance was to be provided; and the property of the order in France was made over, for the benefit of the Holy Land, to the Hos­pitallers, who had achieved the conquest of Rhodes at the very time when the great rival society was in the agonies of ruin. Many members of the dissolved order were received into that of the Hospital, while others sank into humbler conditions of life. But such was the rapacity of Philip, and so effectually did he use the means of extortion which he possessed, that his exactions for the temporary custody of the property, and under other pretexts, are said to have left the Hospitallers for a time rather losers than gainers by the great possessions which were thus transferred to them. The property of the Templars was also bestowed on the knights of the Hos­pital in Germany, England, and other countries; but a different arrangement was made as to Spain, where the lands of the dissolved society were assigned to the sovereigns, with a view to the continual war against the Moors; while some smaller brotherhoods, devoted to the prosecution of that war, grew out of its ruins, and were in part composed of persons who had been among its members.

The grand-master, James de Molay, and three other great dignitaries of the order, had spent six years and a half in prison when it was at length resolved to bring their case to a final decision. They were produced for trial before a commission, of which the archbishop of Sens was president, were condemned on their old confessions to imprisonment for life, and on March 11th 1314 were brought forward in the presence of two cardinals on a platform which had been erected in the parvis of the cathedral. The cardinal of Albano began to read out their confessions; but suddenly this was interrupted by the grand-master, who denied and repudiated the avowals imputed to him, declaring himself to deserve death for having, from fear of torture and in flattery of the king, made a false confession. The master of Normandy adhered to him in his protest; but the other two brethren, worn out and dispirited by their long imprisonment, had not the courage to join them. The cardinals, at a loss how to act on this unexpected emergency, adjourned the further proceedings until the morrow: but Philip, on being informed of the scene which had taken place, at once, and without consulting the cardinals or any other clerical advisers, gave orders for the execution of the two who had retracted their confessions. On the same day De Molay and the master of Normandy were led forth to death on a little island of the Seine, below the island of the City, to which it has since been joined. Molay requested that his hands might be unbound, and that in his last moment the image of the blessed Virgin might be held before his eyes; and, as the flames gradually rose around him and his companion, they firmly protested their orthodoxy and the innocence of their order. Philip watched from the bank the death of his victims, whose constancy in suffering produced a deep impression on the people, so that their ashes were carefully collected and were treasured up as relics, while their fate was generally ascribed to the king’s insatiable rapacity. It was afterwards currently believed that Molay at the stake summoned the pope and the king, as the authors of his death, to appear before the judgment-seat of Christ within forty days and a year respectively, and that each of them died within the time assigned. This story, however, does not appear at all in contemporary writings; and the earliest versions of it are without those coincidences of time which would at once give it a prophetic character, and furnish a strong presumption of its falsehood. The two knights who had hung back from taking part with the master in the parvis of Notre-Dame ended their days in prison.

 

ITALY

 

In Italy the enmities of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions had continued with unabated bitterness. The head of the Guelf party was Robert of Naples, who, on the death of his father, Charles II, had been preferred by the pope, on account of his maturer age and of his abilities, to the son of his elder brother, Charles of Hungary. Robert had received the crown from the pope’s hands at Avignon, which was within his own territory of Provence; and at the same time he had been excused the payment of a very large debt which his grandfather and father had incurred to the Roman see on account of their Sicilian wars.

Since the deposition of Frederick II at the council of Lyons in 1245, no king of the Romans had received the imperial crown; and Albert as well as Rudolf had been severely rebuked in Dante’s enduring verse for neglecting Rome and Italy. Yet while the empire was thus in a state of abeyance or weakness, the idea of the emperor’s power, as an absolute monarch and supreme arbiter, had been raised higher than before through the exertions of the lawyers, who grounded their theories on the old legislation of Justinian, and had never been in greater authority than at this time. For Henry of Luxemburg his want of territorial power and family connexions made it important that he should be invested with the imperial crown; and in August 1309 he announced to an assem­bly at Spires his intention of proceeding into Italy for this purpose. At Lausanne, where many representatives of Italian princes and parties waited on him, in October 1310, he renewed the oath which his envoys had already taken to the pope; and towards the end of the same month he crossed the Mont Cenis, with a force which did not in all exceed 5000 men. On the Epiphany 1311 —the second anniversary of his coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle—he was crowned at Milan as king of Italy by the archbishop of that city. From a throne erected in a public place at Milan he proclaimed that he desired to know nothing of party, but everywhere to establish peace and justice, and to restore the exiled citizens; and the people wept for joy at the announcement. The factions of the Milanese, which were headed respectively by the families of Visconti and Della Torre, were not, however, to be at once appeased; and the exactions to which Henry was driven by his necessities produced a commotion, in consequence of which he was led to expel the Della Torres, who, from having been the first to welcome him, had afterwards turned against him. In faithful adherence to his declara­tion that he had not come into Lombardy for the benefit of a party, but of all, Henry proceeded from city to city, everywhere restoring the exiles, whether Ghibellines who had been banished by Guelfs, or Guelfs who had been banished by Ghibellines. But some of the Lombard cities rose against him on account of this impartial procedure, and it was not without much labour that he was able to reduce them; while the detention thus caused (as at Brescia, which did not capitulate until after to having been reduced to extreme distress by a siege of four months) involved the loss of opportunities which might have enabled him to make himself master of central and southern Italy. At Genoa, where he spent four months—partly on account of the illness and death of his queen—he received ambassadors from Robert of Naples, proposing term of friendship and alliance; but on pro­ceeding southward, he found that Robert was exerting all his influence against him, and that the king’s brother, John, prince of Achaia, was in possession of the approach to Rome by the Ponte Molle, and of some strong places within the city. After some negotiation he compelled John to withdraw from the bridge (although the prince professed to do so for strategical reasons); and he gradually got possession of the Capitol, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and other strongholds on the left bank of the river. But the Capitol was recovered by the Neapolitan party, through the influence of money. The Vatican quarter and the Trastevere, with that part of the Campus Martius which is nearest to the river, were in the hands of John and of his allies, the Orsini; bloody encounters were frequent in the streets; and after repeated attempts to gain possession of St. Peter’s, by force or by treaty, with a view to his imperial coronation, Henry was obliged to submit to receive the crown on St. Peter’s day in the half- ruinous church of St. John Lateran, which had lately been in great part destroyed by fire. For this there was a precedent in the case of Lothair III, who had been crowned in the Lateran because St. Peter’s was occupied by the antipope Anacletus, and it was sanctioned by a decree of the Roman senate and people;  but the three cardinals who had been commissioned by the pope to officiate, did not consent to such a deviation from the usual practice until after much difficulty and under pro­test; and the ceremony, shorn of its usual splendour, was performed in the midst of danger and alarm.

Immediately after the coronation, the duke of Bavaria and others of Henry’s supporters left Rome with their troops, in fear of the heats which had so often been fatal to the Germans; and the emperor himself, who had been reduced to great straits by the diminution of his force, finally took his departure on the 20th of August. It was in vain that Clement desired Henry and Robert, as sons of the church, to make peace; for Henry, having been advised by his legal counsellors that the pope was not entitled to interfere thus between him and his vassal, was determined to assert the fullness of his imperial rights.

After some previous formalities, he uttered at Pisa the ban of the empire, by which Robert, on account of treasons and other offences which were recited, was declared to have forfeited both his southern kingdom and the county of Provence. His subjects were absolved from their allegiance, and, as an outlaw, he was threatened, if he should fall into the emperor’s hands, with the same death which his own grand­father, the founder of the Angevine dynasty, had inflicted on the unfortunate Conradin. The pope declared this sentence to be null, and reminded Henry of his oaths to the apostolic see; to which Henry replied that he had taken no oath of fealty to any one; and, having made this declaration solemnly before witnesses, he caused it to be formally recorded.

Henry’s army had been greatly reduced by defections, war, and sickness, and he was obliged to wait for reinforcements from Germany. Yet the firmness with which he held to his purpose, and the other great qualities which he displayed, were such as even to extort the admiration of those who were opposed to him. Being as yet unable to attack Robert directly, he laid siege to Florence, which now for the first time began to take a prominent part in the general politics of Italy; but the strength of the defence and a sickness among his troops obliged him to relinquish the attempt. The pope, greatly incensed, threatened excommunication and interdict against anyone who should invade the Neapolitan kingdom, as being a fief of the church; but Henry replied to his legate, “If God be for us, neither the pope nor the church will destroy us, so long as we do not offend God.” The pope, instigated by Philip’s influence in behalf of his Neapolitan kinsmen, pronounced his curses; but before the publication of them, Henry had died at Buonconvento, on the 24th of August 1313, at a time when his power was greater and when his prospects appeared brighter than they had ever before been. His death appears to have been really occasioned by natural causes but its suddenness gave countenance to the suspicion of poison, which was said to have been administered in the eucharistic cup by his confessor, a Dominican named Bernard of Montepulciano, who had been bribed (according to various theories) by Robert of Naples, by Philip of France, by the Florentines, or by the pope.

With Henry’s attempt to restore the dignity of the empire Dante’s famous treatise ‘Of Monarchy’ is con­nected by its subject, although it was probably composed somewhat earlier. From one of the poet’s letters it is inferred that he waited on the emperor at his appearance in Italy and his interest in Henry personally appears from a well-known passage of the ‘Paradise’. The treatise ‘Of Monarchy’ may be regarded as a remarkable instance of the manner in which the advance of the papal claims provoked the development of a rival theory, which invested the emperor with a majesty partly derived from the remembrance of the ancient Roman greatness, and partly borrowed from the theocratic idea of the papacy. The author proposes to himself three questions whether monarchy be necessary for the well­being of the world; whether the Romans acquired their empire rightfully; and whether the monarch’s authority be derived from God immediately, or through some other power;—and all these questions he decides in favour of the imperial pretensions. He argues that in every society there must be a head, and in the great human society this head must be a monarch. He regards this monarchy as absolute and universal, and declares that such a government is the only means of establishing universal peace, which never existed except under the empire of Augustus Caesar. The Romans, he says, were the noblest of peoples, and therefore were worthy of universal empire. They got their empire rightfully; for they got it by war, and war is a recourse to the Divine arbitration. In proof of this, he alleges stories of miracles from Livy and from Virgil; and he argues that, if the empire were not of right, the Saviour, by being born under it, would have sanctioned wrong. In the third book, Dante discusses the question of the emperor’s de­riving his authority from God immediately or mediately. He admits that the secular power is under certain obligations to the spiritual power; but he denies that the phrase of the “two swords” showed St. Peter to be possessed of temporal as well as spiritual government. He combats such deductions from the “two great lights” and from other scriptural language as would make the temporal power inferior to the spiritual; and, without questioning the genuineness of the donation ascribed to Constantine, he denies the inferences from it as to the emperor’s having made over his power to the pope. As the empire existed in its fullness before the church, it could not be derived from the church; the emperor has his power immediately from God, and he is chosen by God alone, while the so styled electors are merely the instruments for declaring the Divine will. The whole treatise—and nothing in it more signally than the wild inconsequence of some of the arguments—may be regarded as evidence of the fascination which the idea of the imperial grandeur and the traditional dignity of Rome as its seat could exercise over a mind lofty, solitary, perhaps unequalled in some elements of greatness, but ill fitted for the practical work of human politics.

The pope had been embroiled with the Venetians as to Ferrara, where, on the death of Azzo III, in 1308, the succession was disputed between his brother Francis, and his illegitimate son Frisco. Frisco, finding himself odious to the Ferrarese, called in the aid of the Venetians, to whom he afterwards sold his interest; while his uncle threw himself on the protection of the pope. The Venetians, who had always been inclined to hold themselves independent of Rome in ecclesiastical matters, persisted in keeping their questionable acquisition; while Clement advanced an apocryphal claim to Ferrara as a dependency of the Roman see. A papal nuncio was insulted, and even stoned, at Venice; and on Maundy Thursday 1309, the pope issued a bull so monstrous that even the papal annalist Rinaldi is ashamed to transcribe it at full lengths Clement declared by it that, unless the Venetians would submit, they should be excluded from religious offices, from civil intercourse, and from all benefit of laws; their magistrates were to be branded as infamous, their doge was to be stripped of the ensigns of office, their whole property was to be subject to confiscation, they were to be liable to slavery, and their goods were to be at the mercy of any who might care to plunder them. Princes were invited to carry out these outrageous denunciations, and a crusade was proclaimed against the republic, with the usual promise of indulgences. The clergy and monks withdrew from Venice in obedience to the pope’s order, and multitudes were readily found to catch at the license to plunder which was held out in the name of religion. In England and in France the pro­perty of Venetian traders was violently seized; at Genoa and in the ports of the Romagna, of Tuscany, and of Calabria, many of them, in addition to the loss of their effects, were reduced to slavery, or even were slain. Cardinal Arnold of Pelagrue, whom the pope had commissioned as legate for Tuscany and northern Italy, marched an army to Ferrara, which he took with great slaughter by the aid of the party opposed to Frisco; and he exercised cruel vengeance on the Venetians who fell into his hand. The interdict on Venice continued in force until the year 1313, when Francis Dandolo (afterwards doge) was sent to the papal court at Avignon, and, by the adroitness of his submission, was able to obtain the absolution of his countrymen.

Feeling his health declining, Clement in 1314 resolved to seek a restoration of it by a visit to his native province; but he had proceeded no further than Roquemaure, on the western bank of the Rhone, when death came on him on the 20th of April. His body was removed to Carpentras for burial; and it was said that, having been left unattended in a church, it was partly burnt in a conflagration occasioned by the candles which were placed around it. Notwithstanding the expenses of his court and the rapacity of his mistress, he left vast wealth to his nephews.

Ignominious as Clement’s subserviency to the king of France appears, he had yet been able by his policy to gain some points which would have been certainly lost if he had attempted to carry on the lofty manner of Boniface. His underhand dealings had frustrated Philip’s attempt to gain the imperial crown for the reigning family of France; he had succeeded in rescuing the memory of his predecessor from reprobation, and by so doing had rescued the credit of the papacy itself.

The last years of Philip the Fair were not happy, and many saw in the troubles which befell him the punishment of his outrages against Pope Boniface or of his injustice to the Templars. He was dishonoured in his family by the infidelity of his queen and of the wives of his three sons. The falsification of the coinage, and his other oppressive means of raising moneys although they failed to enrich him, provoked discontents which sometimes found a vent in insurrection and compelled him to withdraw his offensive measures. But in the meantime his piety and his cruelty were shown at once in the punishment of religious error, as in the case of Margaret Porrette, a native of Hainault, who in 1310 was burnt for having produced a book on the Love of God, written in a strain of mystical fervour which seems to have bordered on the errors of the sect of the Free Spirit. So noted was Philip’s zeal for orthodoxy, that Arnold of Villeneuve, a Provencal physician, and professor in the university of Paris, after having published a book against the prevailing religious system, thought it well to secure his safety by seeking a refuge in Sicily. After a reign of twenty-nine years, Philip, although he had reached only the age of forty-six, was prematurely broken and worn out. An accident which befell him while hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau produced an illness, which he is said to have borne with great patience; and on the 29th of November 1314 he died, leaving the memory of a rule more despotic and oppressive than any that had been known in France.

 

 

 

CHAPTER II.

FROM THE DEATH OF POPE CLEMENT V TO THAT OF THE EMPEROR LEWIS IV,

A.D. 1314-1347.