Europe's inner demons

Their fears were only too well founded. Under inquisitorial procedure, any heretic who withdrew his confession was due for burning. And although the papal commission had assumed that those who appeared before it would be safe, at least until it had completed its investigation, there was no formal agreement to that effect. The evidence accumulating before the commission was endangering King Philip’s whole plan; and he intervened ruthlessly. He forced the pope to appoint a young man of twenty-two, who was also the brother of his superintendent of finances, to the archbishopric of Sens, which included Paris. The new archbishop, acting in council, at once seized fifty-four Templars who had withdrawn their confessions and offered them the choice of either going back on their recantation or else of being handed over to the secular arm for burning. All fifty-four stood firm, and even in the flames continued to proclaim their innocence and the purity of the order. Others stood firm also: in all, some 120 perished in Paris, as against a mere two who chose the easier course.

The burnings achieved their purpose nevertheless. As one Templar put it, on the day after the burning of the fifty-four, rather than be burned he would swear not only that all the accusations against the order were true but also, if required, that he himself had killed Jesus Christ.⁽³⁰⁾

Defenders stopped coming forward. The papal commission, though reduced to a farce, solemnly continued its work; but of the Templars who remained to be heard, none was prepared to withdraw the confession which had previously been extracted by torture or the fear of torture.

King Philip had still to secure what had been his aim throughout: the suppression of the Temple. The pope lacked the nerve to perform this final act; so, in an effort to provide at least a semblance of legitimacy, an œcumenical council was convened at Vienne, near Avignon, during the winter of 1310-11. But things did not turnout as hoped. By five or six to one, the assembled prelates refused to condemn the order without first examining some of its members. Moreover, nine Templars suddenly presented themselves and demanded the right to defend the order before the council. Once more it looked as though the long tale of torture, terror and perjury would be revealed, this time to an international audience of princes of the Church. The pope had the nine Templars arrested and imprisoned, but he was unable to move the council from its decision. Again it was Philip who took the decisive step. Since it was impossible to get the order formally condemned without the council’s participation, he persuaded the pope to suppress it himself, by papal decree. The deed was done on 22 March, while the council stood adjourned; and the reassembling cardinals could only register, with vexation, the very thing they had tried to prevent.

Not everything went Philip’s way. His fantasy of himself and his descendants as hereditary grand masters of a new crusading order— this proved indeed mere fantasy. For after much discussion, pope and council decided against the creation of a new order; and in this matter Philip had to give way. On the other hand, he succeeded in holding on to the wealth of the suppressed order. Pope and council decided to transfer the Temple’s property to its old rival, the Hospital; but in France the decision remained a dead letter. There much of the order’s wealth had already vanished into the royal coffers; and the Hospital never managed to wrest the remainder from Philip or his successors.

In May 1312 the pope pronounced on the fate of the surviving Templars. Except for the relapsed heretics — those who had confessed and subsequently withdrawn their confessions — they were to be sent in small groups to various monasteries, there to pass the remainder of their days. Thereafter the mass of individual Templars vanish into obscurity. It was another matter with the four great officers of the Temple in France, and particularly with the grand master, Jacques de Molay. It would have been too dangerous to set these men free, so they were sentenced to imprisonment for life.