Europe's inner demons

Early in 1308 Clement made his one real attempt at resistance. He refused to condemn the order; he suspended the inquisitorial powers of inquisitors and bishops; and he explicitly reserved to himself all decisions concerning the fate of the Temple and its possessions. Philip’s answer was to intensify the propaganda campaign against the Temple and to launch one against the pope. In May 1308 the Estates General met at Tours to consider the matter — a huge assembly, to which the third estate alone sent some 700 delegates. The summons, written by Nogaret, already declared the Temple guilty: “Oh grief! The abominable error of the Templars, so bitter, so lamentable, is not hidden from you…” All the accusations — denying Christ, spitting and trampling on the cross, worshipping idols, indecent kisses, sodomy — are solemnly listed as proven offences, which together represent a threat to the very cosmos: “Heaven and earth are agitated by the breath of so great a crime, and the elements are disturbed.... Against so criminal a plague everything must rise up: laws and arms, every living thing, the four elements.... ”⁽²⁵⁾

No wonder that the Estates General voted almost unanimously for the execution of the Templars.

Next came a great consistory of clergy and laity at Poitiers, where the pope lived; stage-managed by the king, with the king himself present and with royal officials as the chief speakers. Speeches prepared by Nogaret were declaimed for the pope’s benefit. “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat”—the opening words of the coronation anthem provided the text for the first oration, and were given a new significance.⁽²⁶⁾

Never, since he first triumphed over the Devil in the crucifixion, had Christ won such a swift and wonderful victory as now, when his delegates had miraculously uncovered the heresy of the Templars — a heresy which had long been working in secret, to the peril of souls, the overthrow of the faith and the destruction of the Church. In its beginnings the struggle had been a terrible one, for the accusers were weak, the accused immensely strong (one recognizes a perennial paranoid theme...). But its development had been most gladsome; for, once delivered into the hands of the king and his officers (men devoid of cupidity and ambition, true servants of Christ), some of the Templars had hanged themselves or hurled themselves to their death while almost all the remainder had willingly confessed; one had even given up the ghost while confessing.

Through the pompous phrases the horrors of the torture chamber can be divined easily enough; but the orator knew how to divert attention from that thought. The Templars, he pointed out, had long been suspect, because “they held their chapters and their meetings at night, which is the custom of heretics, he who does evil flees the light”. Down the centuries this argument had never changed, and had never lost its force.

In all this the king’s spokesman was concerned not simply to discredit the Temple but also, and above all, to intimidate the pope; and he ended his speech with an unmistakable threat. The fact of the Templars’ guilt neither could nor should be questioned by any true Catholic; nobody — least of all the pope — should worry about how the truth had been discovered, by what means or in whose presence. All that mattered was that the facts had come to light and were now notorious; to doubt them would be tantamount to aiding and abetting heresy. In other words, if Clement questioned Philip's right to imprison and torture the Templars, he would lay himself open to a charge of heresy.

He would also be setting himself against the will of the French people. Pamphlets and orations from the pen of the royal publicist Pierre Dubois hammered the point home: the aggressor is regaining his strength, he will counterattack, he may be victorious; if the pope will not take action to forestall this, the people of France will take the law into their own hands. The pope must do his duty: he must formally condemn the Temple, and he must set the inquisitors free to continue their work.⁽²⁷⁾