The accusation of magic naturally adhered to able men conversant with the East. The head was found in the Temple at Paris. It was made of silver, resembled a beautiful woman, and was, in fact, a reliquary containing the bones of one of the 11,000 virgins of Cologne. But truth was not wanted; and under the influence of solitary imprisonment, hunger, damp and loathsome dungeons, and two years of terror and misery, enough of confessions had been extorted for Philippe's purpose by the year 1309.
Many had died under their sufferings, and some had at first confessed in their agonies, and, when no longer tortured, had retracted all their declarations with horror. These became dangerous, and were therefore declared to be relapsed heretics, and fifty-six were burnt by slow degrees in a great inclosure, surrounded by stakes, all crying out, and praying devoutly and like good Christians till the last.
Having thus horribly intimidated recusant witnesses, the King caused the Pope to convoke a synod at Paris, before which the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was cited. He was a brave old soldier, but no scholar, and darkness, hunger, torture, and distress had so affected him, that, when brought into the light of day, he stood before the prelates and barons, among whom he had once been foremost, so utterly bewildered and confused, that the judges were forced to remand him for two days to recover his faculties.
When brought before them again, he was formally asked whether he would defend his order, or plead for himself. He made answer that he should be contemptible in his own eyes, and those of all the world, did he not defend an order which had done so much for him, but that he was in such poverty that he had not fourpence left in the world, and that he must beg for an advocate, to whom he would mention the great kings, princes, barons, bishops, and knights whose witness would at once clear his knights from the monstrous charges brought against them.
Thereupon he was told that advocates were not allowed to men accused of heresy, and that he had better take care how he contradicted his own deposition, or he would be condemned as relapsed. His own deposition, as three cardinals avouched that he had made it before them, was then translated to him from the Latin, which he did not understand. In horror-struck amazement at hearing such words ascribed to himself, the old knight twice made the sign of the cross, and exclaimed, "If the cardinals were other sort of men, he should know how to deal with them!"
He was told that the cardinals were not there to receive a challenge to battle. "No," he said, "that was not what he meant; he only wished that might befall them which was done by the Saracens and Tartars to infamous liars-whose heads they cut off."
He was sent back to prison and brought back again, less vehement against his accusers, but still declaring himself a faithful Christian, and begging to be admitted to the rites of religion; but he was left to languish in his dungeon for two years longer, while two hundred and thirty-one witnesses were examined before the commissaries. In May, 1311, five hundred and forty-four persons belonging to the order were led before the judges from the different prisons, while eight of the most distinguished knights, and their agent at Rome, undertook their defence. Their strongest plea was, that not a Templar had criminated himself, except in France, where alone torture had been employed; but they could obtain no hearing, and a report was drawn up by the commissaries to the so-called Council of Vienne. This was held by Clement V. in the early part of 1312; and on the 6th of March it passed a decree abolishing the Order of the Temple, and transmitting its possessions to the Knights of St. John.
There were other councils held to try the Templars in the other lands where they had also been seized. In England, the confessions of the knights tortured in France were employed as evidence, together with the witness of begging friars, minstrels, women, and discreditable persons; and on the decision of the Council of Vienne, the poor knights confessed, as well they might, that their order had fallen under evil report, and were therefore pardoned and released, with the forfeiture of all their property to the hospital. Their principal house in England was the Temple in Fleet street, where they had built a curious round church in the twelfth century, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem. The shape was supposed to be like the Holy Sepulchre, to whose service they were devoted; but want of space obliged them to add a square building of three aisles beyond. This, with the rest of their property, devolved on the Order of St. John, who, in the next reign, let the Temple buildings for L10 per annum to the law-students of London, and in their possession it has ever since continued. The ancient seal of the knights, representing two men mounted upon one horse, was assumed by the benchers of one side of the Temple, though in the classical taste of later times the riders were turned into wings, and the steed into Pegasus; while their brethren bear the lamb and banner, likewise a remembrance of the Crusaders who founded the round church, eight of whom still lie in effigy upon the floor.
In Spain the bishops would hardly proceed at all against the Templars, and secured pensions for them out of the confiscated property. In Portugal they were converted into a new order for the defence of the realm. In Germany, they were allowed to die out unmolested; but in Italy Philippe's influence was more felt, and they were taken in the same net with those in France. There the King's coffers were replenished with their spoil, very little of which ever found its way to the Knights of St. John. The knights who half confessed, and then recanted, were put to death; those who never confessed at all, were left in prison; those who admitted the guilt of the order, were rewarded by a miserable existence at large. The great dignitaries-Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master, and Guy, the son of the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Commander of Normandy, and two others-languished in captivity till the early part of 1314, when they were led out before Notre Dame to hear their sentence read, condemning them to perpetual imprisonment, and rehearsing their own confession once more against them.
The Grand Master and Guy of Auvergne, both old men, wasted with imprisonment and torture, no sooner saw the face of day, the grand old cathedral, and the assembly of the people, than they loudly protested that these false and shameful confessions were none of theirs; that their dead brethren were noble knights and true Christians; and that these foul slanders had never been uttered by them, but invented by wicked men, who asked them questions in a language they did not understand, while they, noble barons, belted knights, sworn Crusaders, were stretched on the rack.
The Bishops present were shocked at the exposure of their treatment, and placed them in the hands of the Provost of Paris, saying that they would consider their case the next morning. But Philippe, dreading a reaction in their favor, declared them relapsed, and condemned them to the flames that very night, the 18th of March. A picture is extant in Germany, said to have been of the time, showing the meek face of the white-haired, white-bearded Molay, his features drawn with wasting misery, his eyes one mute appeal, his hands bound over the large cross on his breast. He died proclaiming aloud the innocence of his order, and listened to with pity and indignation by the people. His last cry, ere the flames stifled his voice, was an awful summons to Pope Clement to meet him before the tribunal of Heaven within forty days; to King Philippe to appear there in a year and a day.
Clement V. actually died on the 20th of April; and while his nephews and servants were plundering his treasures, his corpse was consumed by fire caught from the wax-lights around his bier. His tyrant, Philippe le Bel, was but forty-six years of age, still young-looking and handsome; but the decree had gone forth against him, and he fell into a bad state of health. He was thrown from his horse while pursuing a wild boar, and the accident brought on a low fever, which, on the 29th of November, 1314, brought him likewise to the grave. He left three sons, all perishing, after unhappy marriages, in the flower of their age, and one daughter, the disgrace and misery of France and England alike.