THE FATE OF THE TEMPLARS

[1Sidenote: [1311-1313 A.D.]]

2The end of Clement himself and of Clement’s master, the king of France, drew near. But the pope and the king must be preceded into the realm of darkness and to the judgment-seat of heaven by other victims. The tragedy of the Templars had not yet drawn to its close.[107] The four great dignitaries of the order, the grand-master De Molay, Guy the commander of Normandy, son of the dauphin of Auvergne, the commander of Aquitaine Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France Hugues de Peraud, were still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on their fate. The king and the pope were now equally interested in burying the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named. The grand-master and the rest were found guilty, and were to be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.

3Six years of dreary imprisonment had passed over their heads; of their valiant brethren the most valiant had been burned alive, the recreants had purchased their lives by confession; the pope in a full council had condemned and dissolved the order. If a human mind, a mind like that of De Molay, not the most stubborn, could be broken by suffering and humiliation, it must have yielded to this long and crushing imprisonment. The cardinal-archbishop of Albi ascended a raised platform; he read the confessions of the knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged on the criminality of the order, on the holy justice of the pope, and the devout, self-sacrificing zeal of the king; he was proceeding to the final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand-master advanced; his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awe-struck apprehension.

4In a calm, clear voice De Molay spoke: “Before heaven and earth, on the verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the pope and of the king; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and orthodox brotherhood.”

5The cardinals stood confounded; the people could not suppress their profound sympathy. The assembly was hastily broken up; the provost was commanded to conduct the prisoners back to their dungeons: “To-morrow we will hold further council.”

6But on the moment that the king heard these things, without a day’s delay, without the least consultation with the ecclesiastical authorities, he ordered them to death as relapsed heretics. On the island in the Seine, where now stands the statue of Henry IV, between the king’s garden on one side and the convent of the Augustinian monks on the other, the two pyres were raised (two out of the four had shrunk back into their ignoble confessions). It was the hour of vespers when these two aged and noble men were led out to be burned. Both, as the smoke rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to their vital parts, continued solemnly to aver the innocence, the Catholic faith of the order. The king himself beheld this hideous spectacle.

7[Sidenote: [1313-1316 A.D.]]

8The wonder and the pity of the times which immediately followed not only arrayed De Molay in the robes of the martyr, but gave him the terrible language of a prophet. “Clement, iniquitous and cruel judge, I summon thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of the Most High.” According to some accounts this fearful sentence included the king, by whom, if uttered, it might have been heard. The earliest allusion to this awful speech does not contain that striking particularity which, if part of it, would be fatal to its credibility--the precise date of Clement’s death. It was not till the year after that Clement and King Philip passed to their account.

9The poetic relation of Godfrey de Paris simply states that De Molay declared that God would revenge their death on their unrighteous judges. The rapid fate of these two men during the next year might naturally so appal the popular imagination as to approximate more closely the prophecy and its accomplishment. At all events it betrayed the deep and general feeling of the cruel wrong inflicted on the order; while the unlamented death of the pope, the disastrous close of Philip’s reign, and the crimes of his family seemed as declarations of heaven as to the innocence of their noble victims.

10The health of Clement V had been failing for some time. From his court, which he held at Carpentras, he set out in hopes to gain strength from his native air at Bordeaux. He had hardly crossed the Rhone when he was seized with mortal sickness at Roquemaure. The papal treasure was seized by his followers, especially his nephew; his remains were treated with such utter neglect that the torches set fire to the catafalque under which he lay, not in state. His body, covered only with a single sheet, all that his rapacious retinue had left to shroud their forgotten master, was half burned (not, like those of the Templars, on his living body) before alarm was raised. His ashes were borne back to Carpentras and solemnly interred.

11Clement left behind him evil fame. He died shamefully rich. To his nephew (nepotism had begun to prevail in its baleful influence) he bequeathed not less than 300,000 golden florins, under the pretext of succour to the Holy Land. He had died still more wealthy but that his wealth was drained by more disgraceful prodigality. It was generally believed that the beautiful Brunisand de Foix, countess of Talleyrand Périgord, was the pope’s mistress; to her he was boundlessly lavish, and her influence was irresistible even in ecclesiastical matters. Rumour ran that her petitions to the lustful pontiff were placed upon her otherwise unveiled bosom. Italian hatred of a transalpine pope, Guelfic hatred of a Ghibelline pope, may have lent a too greedy ear to these disreputable reports; but the large mass of authorities is against the pope; in his favour, hardly more than suspicious silence.[b]