CHAPTER IV
1
THE view from Ludgate, high on its hill, was across the Fleet River and the substantial bridge which had been built to bear the heavy traffic from the west. Between the Fleet and the Old Roman Wall was a sour little piece of swampy land which had been given to the Dominicans. Undemanding and gentle, they had drained the land and turned it into a habitable quarter after all. On the other side of the Fleet the land was quite different; it was fair and very dry and, where it followed the long arch of the Thames, it was dotted with many noble houses.
The largest and busiest of these was like a small town in itself. Behind a gray stone wall could be seen the crowded roofs and domes of many buildings, including a round structure which obviously was a church and an elaborate chapel on the bank. This establishment had long since overflowed the walls, and there was an open stretch of fifteen acres where the ground had been trampled to the consistency of hard clay by military games and the exercising of horses. Beyond this was a row of utility buildings on the site of what is now Fleet Street. There were several smithies, with sparks flying from the chimneys and out of the open doors while knights in white robes with the red cross on the shoulder (the cut of the robe far removed from the popular tabard) waited for their horses to be shod. Beyond there was a squatty structure which seemed to be devoted to the storing of exotic supplies—spices, pepper, salt, and herbs—a long grain house, a windmill, and a row of stables which were regular beehives of activity.
Over the front entrance in the wall, barred, strong, severe, floated the beauséant. It consisted of two bars, the upper one black to denote death to their enemies, the lower white, denoting love and peace for mankind. On the banner was the legend Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini, tuo da gloriam. This was the banner of the Order of the Knights Templar.
The Order of the Knights Templar had been founded to protect the pilgrims who walked to the Holy Land during the period of the Crusades; a noble endeavor which attracted only the bravest and least selfish of men. Consisting of nine knights only at first, it grew rapidly. It was an ascetic order. The uniform was white, in token of chastity. The good knights existed on two meals a day and had meat only three times a week. They spoke rarely and used signs at table to indicate their wants. They went to bed immediately after compline and slept in their shirts and breeches, and with lights beside the beds, to be ready in case of emergency. They seldom bathed. They forswore communication with the rest of the world. No letters could be received and none sent except by the express permission of the Master. Being men of wealth for the most part, they turned all their possessions into the common fund and respected the orders of the Grand Master as they would the commands of heaven. They had done a magnificent work over the years.
But the Crusades were over now and the Templars had been driven from the Holy Land. Even their fabulous Castle Pilgrim, a seemingly impregnable fortress near Acre, with springs and orchards and fields of grain inside its walls, had been taken. Their reason for being had come to an end.
Over the years, however, the Templars had become wealthy, by donation and legacy. When their fighting days seemed at an end, they turned their attention to the utilization of their possessions; with so much success that they had become the bankers of civilization. It was no wonder that they were rich. They owned nearly ten thousand manor houses and estates scattered over the face of Europe. They paid no taxes, they were not subject to the laws of state or Church, and although usury was illegal they were allowed to charge interest, disguised as rents, on loans. In England they had custody of the crown jewels. Taxes were collected and paid through them, a percentage staying in the hands of the order. Pensions were paid through the Temple. They provided facilities for the transfer of funds from one country to another. A pilgrim could deposit funds in London and draw on the order in Jerusalem. They issued letters of credit which were honored everywhere. They loaned money to kings, to members of the nobility, and to the great merchants, and were always allowed to charge interest. Money and prized possessions were deposited in the Temple, and the owners could call at intervals to reassure themselves that the stuff was still there. In other words, they had on their own initiative developed an international organization which operated as the banks do today.
Kings looked with envy on the great stores of wealth which time and these exceptional opportunities had made possible. When Edward I had completed his conquest of Wales, he faced arrears for the pay of his troops. His pockets empty, he went with one Sir Robert Waleran to the Temple on the pretext of wanting to see his mother’s jewels, which were being kept there. While waiting, he broke open one of the coffers (how he could do this in such a well-conducted and closely defended establishment was never explained) and carried off gold bullion and jewels to the value of fifty thousand pounds. This relieved him of his immediate difficulties and he was afterward able to compound his indebtedness to the order.
It was said that when Edward II first became king he decided to follow the nefarious example of his father. He went to the Temple and took forcible possession of great stores of silver and gold belonging to the Bishop of Chester. The story went that he turned it all over to Piers Gaveston. It was even hinted that the Gascon went with the king and aided in the robbery.
The knights were still ready for any demand on their services. If another crusade had been launched, the Templars in their white robes, with their long beards and short hair, would have responded in full force. But the crusading fever no longer boiled in human veins, and so gradually a change had come about. The knights were not now stinted at the table and their waistlines were broadening. Each member was allowed to have three horses, where one had done for two men at the start, and a squire as well. It was whispered about that instead of the coarse clothing of drugget and sacking, which had once sufficed, the knights now wore silken underclothing and appeared at the evening meal in sable-lined cloaks over velvet doublets. Whether or not this was true, it was certain that they cut a noble appearance in public. They rode mettlesome Arabian steeds, and their stirrups were of gold. Their swords had gold and jeweled hilts.
Inevitably the order became the target of criticism. Strange rumors began to circulate, actuated by envy and tipped with malice. In the beginning the Templars had established secrecy in their proceedings and rites. The meetings of the chapters were held at midnight behind locked doors. For the reception of new members, sessions were held at dawn and no one was allowed to speak afterward of what happened. Sitting over their small fires at night, with the window shutters barred against the devil, people talked of these midnight rites of the Templars and shuddered as they tried to conjure up the nature of them. It was a common topic in the taverns. The story most often told, and most eagerly believed, was that the Templars had turned away from the true religion and had become devil worshipers. They knelt before an idol in the form of a black cat which was called Baphomet. Still more revolting things were hinted at, and mothers called their children in from play when they saw a white-robed knight approaching.
In England the order was held in better repute than elsewhere, although some of the stories got into circulation. Children were warned about “the Templar’s kiss,” which meant death. There was a popular saying in England, “to drink like a Templar.”
In spite of these indications of a gradual weakening of discipline in the order, the fact remains that the Grand Masters often showed the iron fist in dealing with misdemeanors. Commenting on the white and black bars on their banner, someone said, “The Templars were wholly white to the Christians they served but black and terrible to members who became miscreants.” Here is a case in point. There is a narrow stair leading to the triforium of their church in London, and looking out on it is a penitential cell, four feet six inches by two feet six inches, in which no one can either stand up or lie down. In this torture chamber Walter de Bachelor, Grand Preceptor of Ireland, was kept until he starved to death for disobeying the Grand Master. He had one consolation only: through some bars in the cell he could listen to mass in the church.
They could be impervious to pity where their own members were concerned. Geoffrey de Magnaville died while under a ban of excommunication. His body was soldered in lead and hung up on a tree in the orchard. It was not taken down until evidence was found that he had expressed contrition before dying. He now lies in the Temple Church.
2
It has already been told how Philip the Fair tried to kidnap Pope Boniface VIII. When Boniface died in 1305 because of his rough handling at Anagni he was succeeded by a frail old man, Benedict XI, who lived for a short time only. It was believed that he had been poisoned, and the cardinals, cowering at Perugia in fear and trembling, took the better part of a year to select a successor. Owing to the influence and gold of France, the Pope finally selected was a Gascon, Bertrand de Goth, the Archbishop of Bordeaux. The story is related that he was given the post on six conditions, imposed by Philip, and that the sixth was sealed. He was not to know the nature of it until the time came for Philip to demand of him its fulfillment. It is hard to believe that even for the exalted glory of the pontificate a man would accept such conditions, but the events which followed lent some trace of substance to the story.
In 1304 one Florian of Béziers, who was under sentence of death, received a pardon for issuing a revelation of the iniquities of the order. An apostate Templar named Nosso de Florentin, who had been condemned to life imprisonment for impiety, made a statement of the abominations he had seen while a member of the order. They charged jointly that on initiation each new member was required to spit on the cross and that on Good Fridays the cross was trampled underfoot. At all the midnight sessions there was worship of Baphomet (which was believed to indicate an inclination toward Mohammedanism) and that evil spirits in the guise of beautiful and seductive women were introduced into the chapters. After these major accusations, the informers descended to absurdities such as the smearing of idols with the fat from roasted children and a liking for standing in circles and tossing the bodies of newborn children from one to another until they died. It was even stated that at each meeting of the general chapter one of the priors would disappear and never be heard of again, which was accepted as evidence of human sacrifice.
Philip decided that the time had come to proceed against the order and he laid out his plan of campaign with fascistic ingenuity and lack of all scruples. First he gave it out that he believed all the orders which had grown out of the Crusades—the Templars, the Hospitalers of St. John, and the Teutonic Knights—should be merged into one organization to be called the Order of the Knights; with headquarters, of course, in France. In response to an invitation to discuss the plan, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, came to France, prepared to oppose it, bringing with him sixty knights and so much of the accumulated wealth held at Cyprus that twelve horses were needed to transport it. This was deposited in the Temple in Paris.
In the meantime Philip and his machiavellian minister, Guillaume de Nogaret (one of the blackest and most villainous intriguers of all time), had introduced twelve spies into the order with definite instructions as to what they were to report. The French king then went to Clement V and informed him that the Templars must be abolished. It is said that Clement, who had been a compliant tool in most matters, hesitated at this. If he did, the crowned instrument of evil may have reminded him of the sixth, and still sealed, condition.
With all the evidence needed and the chief fly already in the parlor, the trap was sprung. Philip went to the Grand Inquisitor, Guillaume of Paris, who had authority to act without the knowledge or consent of the Pope, and secretly denounced the Templars as guilty of heresy. On September 14, 1307, writs were sent to the royal seneschals in every town of France which owned a Templar chapter, with orders to prepare for a nationwide coup. On the night of October 13 they were to surround the chapter houses, arrest all the knights, seize the archives, and take possession of all property. The utmost secrecy was enjoined. Not a hint of the royal purpose must leak out.
The plan was carried out without a hitch, and by midnight on the date set every Templar in France was under arrest. Jacques de Molay was in the toils with all of his attendant knights. The way had been prepared for one of the most diabolical and ghoulish betrayals in all history.
This was on a Friday. On the Saturday morning the bewildered knights were brought into courts all over France and formally charged with a catalogue of crimes which shocked the world. Needless to state, they pleaded their innocence. On the Sunday, complaisant preachers talked in the open to the populace, rehearsing the whole list of startling but absurd charges.
The authorities proceeded then to extract confessions by torture. The officers of the king, under the direction of the admirable Nogaret, applied the instruments. If a prisoner resisted their efforts, he was turned over to the agents of the Grand Inquisitor, who were experts at loosening tongues. Of one hundred and forty knights put to the torture in Paris, thirty-six died, protesting their innocence to the end. Many lost the use of their feet from the torture of fire. Their legs were fastened in an iron frame, the soles of their feet greased over; they were placed before the fire and a screen was drawn backward and forward to regulate the heat. Victims of this roasting operation often went raving mad. There were other “most revolting and indecent torments such as can only be made public in a dead language.” Forged letters purporting to come from Grand Master de Molay were shown to the prisoners exhorting them to confess themselves guilty. Many Templars finally confessed whatever was required of them.
The results were completely satisfactory from the standpoint of the king. Of the prisoners in Paris, 138 confessed, including the Grand Master, who, being old and frail, could not stand the agonies inflicted on him. At a public appearance Jacques de Molay confessed to denying the divinity of Christ and spitting on the cross. He swore to his innocence on all other charges.
A new Archbishop of Sens had been appointed, a creature of the king’s named Philip de Martigny. His authority extended over Paris, and one of his first acts was to drag before the Provincial Council of Sens all Templars who had made confessions and then revoked them. They were accused of being relapsed heretics and were condemned to death by fire. The next morning fifty-four Templars were led to execution into the open country at daybreak near the Porte St. Antoine des Champs at Paris and were fastened to stakes surrounded by fagots and charcoal. They persisted in their innocence and were burned to death in a most cruel manner in slow fires. They met their fate with great fortitude.
Meanwhile hundreds of other Templars were dragged from Paris dungeons before the Archbishop of Sens and his council. Neither the agony of torture nor fear of death could force confessions from some of them, and these were condemned to perpetual imprisonment as unreconciled heretics. Those who made the required confessions of guilt and continued to repeat them received absolution, were reconciled to the Church and set free.
Later still, 113 more were condemned as relapsed heretics and burned at stakes in Paris. Others were burned in Lorraine, Normandy, Carcassonne; twenty-nine others were burned by the Archbishop of Rheims at Senlis. One dead Templar who had been the treasurer of the Temple in Paris was dragged from his grave and his moldering corpse burned as a heretic.
But Philip the Unfair realized that the order could not be abolished without the co-operation of the other monarchs. Not consulting Pope Clement, who was still highly distressed and unwilling to proceed to the final extremity, he wrote to the kings of England, Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Germany, demanding that they follow his lead. To the great credit of his son-in-law, he found Edward of England not prepared to do anything without making a thorough investigation, even though the arch instigator sent a special agent, one Bernard Pelletin, to coerce him. Edward even wrote to the other kings, questioning the wisdom of following the French course. The Spanish kings showed reluctance and Portugal refused flatly to take any action.
In the meantime the tom-toms of incitement were being beaten frantically in all parts of France. New charges were constantly being added to the shocking catalogue. It was now said that the Templars had confessed to worshiping an idol covered with animal skin and with carbuncles for eyes, and of burning the bodies of diseased members and mixing their ashes into a powder to be given to new members.
The Pope now took an active part in the conspiracy. In 1308 he issued a bull demanding the arrest of all Templars. This had the expected effect. Action was taken in England, as will be explained later, in the Spanish countries, and in Cyprus. Some of the knights defended themselves in their strong castles of Monzon and Castellat, but both were finally reduced. In October of 1311 a Grand Council was summoned by the Pope at Vienne, where Philip took his seat at the right hand of the Pope. The latter came out into the open in a sermon which condemned the order officially. In a second bull, Ad providam, published in May 1312, the properties of the order, except in a limited number of countries where the prosecution had been light, were assigned to the Knights of St. John. This decision was the first reverse Philip had experienced; he wanted all the property himself. However, there were methods of circumventing the papal order which he pursued later.
3
The final act of the great tragedy had the old and feeble Grand Master as main character. Up to this point Jacques de Molay had played an inglorious part because of his inability to withstand torture. He had confessed to some of the indictment and had later reiterated his avowals at public hearings.
Philip, shaken by the decision to transfer the property to the Knights of St. John, decided on a dramatic step. As the Grand Master had never failed to shrink into weakness when threatened with the fires of recantation, it was believed that he would do so again. Accordingly he was summoned from his cell to appear on a scaffold in front of Notre Dame. With him were Gaufrid de Charney, the master of Normandy, Hugh de Peralt, the vicar-general, and Guy, the son of the dauphin of Auvergne. There was a large gathering to witness the final humiliation of the heads of the order.
The four knights, loaded with chains, were brought to the scaffold by the provost of Paris. The Bishop of Alba read their confessions aloud and the papal legate called upon the prisoners to confirm their depositions. Hugh de Peralt and one other, Gaufrid de Charney, assented. But when the name of Jacques de Molay was called, the Grand Master, whose hair had turned white in prison and whose face was thin and pallid, stepped to the front of the platform and raised his chained arms to heaven.
“I do confess my guilt,” he cried, “which consists in having, to my shame and dishonor, suffered myself, through the pain of torture and the fear of death, to give utterance to falsehoods, imputing scandalous sins and iniquities to an illustrious order which hath nobly served the cause of Christianity. I disdain to seek a wretched and disgraceful existence by engrafting another lie upon the original falsehood.” He was interrupted by the provost and his officers, and the platform was hurriedly cleared.
Philip moved then with fierce determination and dispatch. He did not consult the officials of the Church or the Inquisitor. The next day the Grand Master and his younger companion were taken to what was called “the little island” in the Seine which lay between the king’s gardens and the convent of St. Augustine. Here they were bound to stakes over small fires of charcoal and slowly burned to death.
The horrified spectators heard the voice of the Grand Master cry out from the flames: “We die innocent. The decree which condemns us is an unjust decree, but in heaven there is an august tribunal to which the weak never appeal in vain. To that tribunal I summon the Roman pontiff within forty days.”
The witnesses shuddered when the tortured voice continued: “Oh, Philip, I pardon thee in vain, for thy life is condemned. At the tribunal of God, within a year, I await thee.”
All that is left to tell is that Clement V, that weak and ambitious man, died of dysentery early the next year and that Philip the Fair expired a few months after.
The summary execution of the Grand Master and his companion did not provoke the officials of the Church to any protest. The only action came from the Augustinians, who objected to the trespass on their land!
4
For a short while, and to his honor, Edward II forbade the infliction of torture upon Templars in his dominions. He really believed in their piety and the decency of their morals, but, being a weak character, he was speedily overcome by the influence of the Pope, who wrote him in June 1310 upbraiding him for not submitting the Templars “to the discipline of the rack.”
Influenced by admonitions of the Pope and solicitations of the clergy, Edward on August 26 sent orders to the constable of the Tower, John de Cromwell, to deliver all Templars in his custody, at the request of the inquisitors, to the sheriffs of London, so that the inquisitors might proceed more conveniently and effectually. On the same day Edward directed the sheriffs who received the prisoners from the Tower to place them in care of jailers, appointed by the inquisitors, who would confine them in prisons in various parts of London at such places as they and the bishops considered most expedient. They were to do with “the bodies of the Templars whatever should seem fitting in accordance with ecclesiastical law.”
On September 21, 1310, the ecclesiastical council in London met and had further inquisitions and depositions taken against the Templars. These were read aloud, and immediately disputes arose touching on various alterations observable in them. Now began further questioning of the Templars to try to extract the “truth,” and if “by straitenings and confinement they would confess nothing further, then the torture was to be applied.” But it was provided that the examination by torture should be conducted without the “perpetual mutilation or disabling of any limb, and without a violent effusion of blood.”
The inquisitors and bishops of London and Chichester were to notify the Bishop of Canterbury of the results of the torture, that he might again convene the assembly for purposes of passing sentence, either of absolution or condemnation.
On October 6 the king sent fresh instructions to the constable of the Tower and to the sheriffs. Apparently the Templars were shuttled back and forth to various prisons at the will of the inquisitors. At this time it is recorded that many of the jailers actually showed reluctance in carrying out orders and were often merciful and considerate of the unhappy Templars.
Orders were also sent to the constable of the Castle of Lincoln, the mayor and the bailiffs of the city, where many Templars were being held. On December 12, 1310, by command of the king, they were taken to London and placed in solitary confinement in different prisons and even in private houses, where soon came orders to load them down with fetters and chains.
In some way the Templars had heard reports of the fate of their brothers in France and that they were promised freedom if they swore to untruths. They refused the offer. They continued to declare that everything that had been done in their chapters in respect of absolution, reception of brethren, and other matters, was honorable and honest and might well and lawfully be done. After such affirmations the Templars were sent back to their dungeons loaded with more chains. During April 1311 seventy-two witnesses against the Templars were examined in the chapter house of the Holy Trinity in London. Nearly all were monks—Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Minorites. The evidence was entirely hearsay.
The final outcome of all this examining and torturing, this shuffling of prisoners from one dungeon to another, was that the order was dissolved and all property of the order was confiscated. There were no executions, no rising of flames about the writhing bodies of innocent men. The knights were permitted to drift into civil life.
In view of the nature of the evidence, this seems drastic and unwarranted; but, knowing what had happened to their brothers in France, the English Templars counted themselves fortunate.