The colony of Latins left in Palestine had proved a most unsuccessful experiment; the climate enervated their constitutions; the _poulains_, as those were called who were born in the East, had all the bad qualities of degenerate races, and were the scorn, and derision of Arabs and Europeans alike; nor could the defence have been kept up at all, had it not been for the constant recruits from cooler climates. Adventurous young men tried their swords in the East, banished men there sought to recover their fame, the excommunicate strove to win pardon by his sword, or the forgiven to expiate his past crime; and, besides these irregular aids, the two military and monastic orders of Templars and Hospitallers were constantly fed by supplies of young nobles trained to arms and discipline in the numerous commanderies and preceptories scattered throughout the West.
Admirable as warriors, desperate in battle, offering no ransom but their scarf, these knightly monks were the bulwark of Christendom, and would have been doubly effective save for the bitter jealousies of the two orders against each other, and of both against all other Crusaders. Not a disaster happened in the Holy Land but the treachery of one order or the other was said to have occasioned it; and, on the whole, the greater degree of obloquy seems usually, whether justly or not, to have lighted on the Knights of the Temple. They were the richer and the prouder of the two orders; and as the duties of the hospital were not included in their vows, they neither had the same claims to gratitude, nor the softening influence of the exercise of charity, and were simply stern, hated, dreaded soldiers.
After a desperate siege, Acre fell, in 1292, and the last remnant of the Latin possessions in the East was lost. The Templars and Hospitallers fought with the utmost valor, forgot their feuds in the common danger, and made such a defence that the Mussulmans fancied that, when one Christian died, another came out of his mouth and renewed the conflict; but at last they were overpowered by force of numbers, and were finally buried under the ruins of the Castle of the Templars. The remains of the two orders met in the Island of Cyprus, which belonged to Henry de Lusignan, claimant of the crown of Jerusalem. There they mustered their forces, in the hope of a fresh Crusade; but as time dragged on, and their welcome wore out, they found themselves obliged to seek new quarters. The Knights of the Hospital, true to their vows, won sword in hand the Isle of Rhodes from the Infidel, and prolonged their existence for five centuries longer as a great maritime power, the guardians of the Mediterranean and the terror of the African corsairs. The Knights Templars, in an evil hour for themselves, resolved to spend their time of expectation in their numerous rich commanderies in Europe, where they had no employment but to collect their revenues and keep their swords bright; and it cannot but be supposed that they would thus be tempted into vicious and overbearing habits, while the sight of so formidable a band of warriors, owning no obedience but to their Grand Master and the Pope, must have been alarming to the sovereign of the country. Still there are no tokens of their having disturbed the peace during the twenty-two years that their exile lasted, and it was the violence of a king and the truckling of a pope that effected their ruin.
Philippe IV., the pest of France, had used his power over the French clergy to misuse and persecute the fierce old pontiff, Boniface VIII., and it was no fault of Philippe that the murder of Becket was not parodied at Anagni. Fortunately for the malevolent designs of the King, his messengers quailed, and contented themselves with terrifying the old man into a frenzied suicide, instead of themselves slaying him. The next Pope lived so few days after his election, that it was believed that poison had removed him; and the cardinals remained shut up for nine months at Perugia, trying in vain to come to a fresh choice. Finally, Philippe fixed their choice on a wretched Gascon, who took the name of Clement V., first, however, making him swear to fulfil six conditions, the last and most dreadful of which was to remain a secret until the time when the fulfilment should be required of him.
Lest his unfortunate tool should escape from his grasp, or gain the protection of any other sovereign, Philippe transplanted the whole papal court to Avignon, which, though it used to belong to the Roman empire, had, in the break-up after the fall of the Swabian house, become in effect part of the French dominions.
There the miserable Clement learned the sixth condition, and, not daring to oppose it, gave the whole order of the Templars up into his cruel hands, promising to authorize his measures, and pronounce their abolition. Philippe's first measure was to get them all into his hands, and for this purpose he proclaimed a Crusade, and actually himself took the Cross, with his son-in-law Edward II., at the wedding of Isabel.
Jacque de Molay, the Grand Master, hastened from Cyprus, and convoked all his chief knights to take counsel with the French King on this laudable undertaking. He was treated with great distinction, and even stood godfather to a son of the King. The greater number of the Templars were at their own Tower of the Temple at Paris, with others dispersed in numbers through the rest of France, living at ease and securely, respected and feared, if not beloved, and busily preparing for an onslaught upon the common foe.
Meanwhile, two of their number, vile men thrown into prison for former crimes-one French, the other Italian-had been suborned by Philippe's emissaries to make deadly accusations against their brethren, such as might horrify the imagination of an age unused to consider evidence. These tales, whispered into the ear of Edward II. by his wily father-in-law, together with promises of wealth and lands to be wrested from them, gained from him a promise that he would not withstand the measures of the French King and Pope; and, though he was too much shocked by the result not to remonstrate, his feebleness and inconsistency unfitted him either to be a foe or a champion.
On the 14th of September, 1307, Philippe sent out secret orders to his seneschals. On the 13th of October, at dawn of day, each house of the Templars was surrounded with armed men, and, ere the knights could rise from their beds, they were singly mastered, and thrown into prison.
Two days after, on Sunday, after mass, the arrest was made known, and the crimes of which the unfortunate men were accused. They were to be tried before the grand inquisitor, Guillaume Humbert, a Dominican friar; but in the meantime, to obtain witness against them, they were starved, threatened, and tortured in their dungeons, to gain from them some confession that could be turned against them. Out of six hundred knights, besides a much greater number of mere attendants, there could not fail to be some few whose minds could not withstand the misery of their condition, and between these and the two original calumnies, a mass of horrible stories was worked up in evidence.
It was said that, while outwardly wearing the white cross on their robe, bearing the vows of chivalry, exercising the holy offices of priests, and bound by the monastic rules, there was in reality an inner society, bound to be the enemies of all that was holy, into which they were admitted upon their reviling and denying their faith, and committing outrages on the cross and the images of the saints. It was further said that they worshipped the devil in the shape of a black cat, and wore his image on a cord round their waists; that they anointed a great silver head with the fat of murdered children; that they practised every kind of sorcery, performed mass improperly, never went to confession, and had betrayed Palestine to the Infidels.
For the last count of the indictment the blood that had watered Canaan for two hundred years was answer enough. As to the confessional, the accusation emanated from the Dominicans, who were jealous of the Templars confessing to priests of their own order. With respect to the mass, it appears that the habits of the Templars were similar to those of the Cistercian monks; who, till The Lateran Council, had not elevated the Host to receive adoration from the people.