The Real History Behind the Templars

by Sharan Newman

  The first day they met no one came.

  The second day no one came.

  The third day no one came, even though the porter, John, had shouted the invitation all over the city.

  The same thing happened for the following five days. Finally, the commission was about to adjourn and try again in November. After all, everyone knows August is when the French all leave Paris for someplace cooler.

  However, they made one last attempt. They sent a letter to the bishop of Paris asking if he could hurry things up a bit. The bishop decided to go to see the Templars for himself and found that some did want to testify. It’s hard to get away to attend a meeting when you’re shackled to a wall.

  The next day seven Templars appeared, including the Visitor, Hugh de Pairaud. However, each one told the commission that they were “simple knights, without horse, arms or land and had no idea how to defend the order.”37When Hugh was led in, he said only that the Templars were an honorable order and only the pope should judge them.38

  This wasn’t the defense the commission had in mind.

  A few men did straggle in later. One, Peter of Sorayo, had left the Templars some time before and had come to Paris looking for work. No, he didn’t know anything bad about the order, but could the commission give him a handout? Another couple of men had been sent by Templars in Hainault in the north, to find out what was going on.39 They didn’t know what they were supposed to defend.

  The commission adjourned until November.

  THE INTERVIEWS

  When the cardinals returned in November, they found an entirely different situation, although the first witness didn’t give any indication of that. It was Jacques de Molay.

  The Grand Master of the Templars insisted that he thought it unlikely that the pope would want to destroy an order that had done so much for the faith. He added that he couldn’t afford counsel, for he had only four denarii to his name. The commission had his previous confession read to him. Upon hearing it, “he made the sign of the cross twice over his face and moved his hands in other signs, seeming to be stupefied by this.”40

  Either Jacques was a great actor or his two years in prison had rattled his brains.

  Undaunted, the commission continued to interview Templars. Some repeated their confessions but, day by day, they seemed to gain courage. Ponsard of Gizy, preceptor of the first commandery at Payns, admitted that he had previously confessed to all the charges. Then he told the cardinals that he and the others had only done so through force and fear because they had been tortured, and all information gathered that way was false.

  Ponsard then told the commission whom he thought might have had a grudge against the order. One of the four men he listed was Esquin de Floyran.41

  Other Templars began to come forward. Some recanted their confessions. Others, who had never confessed, told of the torture they had endured, designed to get them to admit wrongdoing. Some had had their hands tied behind their backs and then were pulled up by their wrists until their arms were dislocated.42 One man told the commission that weights had been hung from his genitals and other parts of his body during the questioning.43 Another had had grease rubbed over his feet and then held to a fire until the skin was burned away.44 Many had been starved and confined in spaces too small to rest in comfort. Even the ones who hadn’t been tortured knew that it was happening. Several men admitted that the threat of torture had been enough to make them give in.

  Eventually nearly seven hundred Templars came forward. Most of them felt that they were too ignorant to present a solid legal defense but finally one of the priests of the order, Peter of Bologna, was convinced to speak for all. Peter had been trained as a lawyer and had been the Templar representative to the papal court in Rome.45His rhetoric was a match for that of the king’s counselors.

  On April 23, 1310, Peter and three other defenders came before the commission and declared that the actions of King Philip had been outside of law and reason. “The proceedings against the Order had been ‘rapid, unlooked for, hostile and unjust, altogether without justice, but containing complete injury, most grave violence and intolerable error,’ for no attempt had been made to keep to proper procedures.” He added that as a result of this sudden and horrible arrest, imprisonment, and torture, the Templars had been deprived of “freedom of mind, which is what every good man ought to have. Once a man is deprived of his free will, he is deprived of all good things, knowledge, memory and understanding.”46

  This passionate speech was followed by a demand for all the documentation heretofore gathered in the case, along with the names of all witnesses called and to be called. The defenders also demanded that witnesses not be allowed to talk with each other and that the testimony be kept secret until it was sent to the pope.47

  The commission agreed. Suddenly, there seemed to be a hope that the Templars would be declared innocent and at last, after two long years, set free.

  PHILIP’S END RUN AROUND THE PAPAL COMMISSION

  It was now May of 1310, almost three years after the arrests. The Templars had not yet been judged as an order. Most were still imprisoned at various places in France. Philip the Fair still did not have legal access to their property. It was beginning to look as though he might have to give it all back. Philip needed to take decisive action.

  By an odd coincidence, the new archbishop of Sens, Philip de Marigny, was the brother of King Philip’s new favorite counselor, Engerrand de Marigny. Now, at that time, Paris was under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Sens. It also happened that, while the commission had been set up to try the Templars as an order, the local bishops had the right to try and sentence individual Templars. The archbishop decided to do just that. He announced that the Templars imprisoned in Paris would be tried in the archiepiscopal court.

  This sent the defenders into a panic. Peter of Bologna and the others hunted down the commission even though it was a Sunday. Peter begged them to prevent the archbishop from taking them, especially those who had confessed under torture and then recanted. The level of terror is clear even in the notorial records, which repeat the plea verbatim.

  “It would be against God and justice and completely overturn this investigation. . . . We call upon the Pope and the Apostolic See both out loud and in writing . . . that all the brothers who have offered or will offer a defense be taken under the protection of the Apostolic See. We beg the pope, again we beg, and we beg with the greatest urgency!”48

  The image of these brave men standing in the chapel of St. Eligius at the monastery of St. Genevieve, in the Sunday calm, pleading for their lives, is a haunting one. We don’t know how it affected the commissioners. Gilles Aycelin, who was also a counselor of the king, excused himself from making a decision. The other commissioners asked the Templars to return at vespers that afternoon, to hear their answer.

  This is one of those times when it’s hard for me to keep a scholarly objective.

  The commissioners William Durant, bishop of Mende; Reginald of La Porte, bishop of Limoges; Matthew of Naples; and John of Mantua, archdeacon of Trent, joined by John of Montlaur, archdeacon of Maguelonne, returned to face Peter and his comrades.

  They told the Templars that there was nothing they could do. The law was clear on this and they couldn’t poach on the territory of the archbishop of Sens. They were very sorry, but that was that.49

  Were these men sticklers for the law? Were they cowards, afraid of Philip the Fair? Did they believe that the Templars were guilty and deserved whatever they got? They definitely knew that they were putting all the Templars in grave danger.

  Two days later, the archbishop of Sens ordered the burning of fifty-four Templars. They “were burned outside of Paris in a field not far from the convent of the nuns of Saint Anthony.”50 The victims seem to have been picked at random from those who had not yet been reconciled with the Church. Only a few of them had said they would defend the order.51

  And yet, they all died proclaiming their innocence. “All of them, not o
ne excepted, refused to admit to the crimes of which they were accused and persisted firmly and consistently in general denial, not ceasing to declare that it was without cause and unjust that they were sentenced to death. A great number of people saw this with great astonishment and excessive shock.”52

  The shock rippled back to the Templars still in prison. Now no one was eager to defend the order. The pope either wouldn’t or couldn’t protect them. The pillar they had trusted to support them had crumbled.

  The next witness brought before the commission, Aimery of

  Philip the Fair watches as Templars burn. (The British Library)

  Villiers-le-Duc, was so terrified that he told the commission he would confess anything as long as it would keep him from the flames. Trying to distance himself from the order as much as possible, Aimery appeared with his beard shaved and without his Templar mantle. He was clearly upset. “And when the commissioners saw that the witness was at the edge of a precipice,” they told him to go home and not to reveal anything of what he had said.53

  Things were looking bad for the Templars, but they were about to get worse. The next time that the commissioners asked to see Peter of Bologna, the best trained of the defenders, they were told that he had vanished. When they asked for more information, they were told that he had suddenly returned to his former confession, then broken out of jail and fled.54

  Right.

  There weren’t many Templars who had the legal training to argue their case, and his loss was a severe blow.

  PETER of Bologna was never seen or heard from again. You can draw your own conclusions.

  One scholar has suggested that the increased interest in education shown by the Hospitallers in the fourteenth century might be due to “how much the illiteracy and legal incompetence of the Templars had contributed to their downfall.”55 The effect of the loss of their main advocate seems to support this theory.

  The commission continued off and on until June 1311 but the heart had gone out of it. Most of the Templars who came forward did not attempt to defend the order but rather to confess their crimes. They seemed eager to outdo each other in the details of their blasphemous reception into the order. They minutely described the crosses they had spat on or next to. The heads they were supposed to have adored were gold or copper or flesh. They looked like a woman, a monster, or a man with a long gray beard.56Everyone seems to have had their own personal idol.57

  In the end the commissioners closed the proceedings and had all the information sent to Pope Clement at Avignon. They made no recommendation as to the fate of the Templars.

  That was now up to Pope Clement and the Council of Vienne.

  1Sophia Menache, Clement V (Cambridge University Press, 1998) p. 17. Catherine’s death just before the arrest of the Templars (see below) may have forced Charles to revise his plans for conquest.

  2Jean Favier, Phillippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978) p. 315.

  3Ibid., p. 309.

  4Georges Lizerand, Le Dossier de L’Affaire des Templiers (Paris, 1923) p. 16. “Res amara, res flebilies, res quidam cogitatu horribilis, auditu terribilis, detestabilis crimine, execrabilis scelere, abhominabilis opers, detestanda flagicio, res penitus inhumana, immo ab omni humanitate seposita.”

  5Lizerand, p. 18, “gerenets sub specie agni lupum et sub religionis habitu notre religioni fidei nequiter insultantes, dominum nostrum Jhesum Christum, novissimis temporibus, pro humani generic redemtione crucifixum.”

  6Ibid., “juxta prophanus ordinis sui ritum.”

  7Ibid., “professionis sue voto se obligant quod alter alterius illius horribilis et tremendi concubitus vicio.”

  8If you believe this, I have some land in Atlantis I’d like to sell you.

  9Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge University Press, 1978; new edition forthcoming) p. 47.

  10Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis, Chroniques capétiennes Tome II 1270-1328 (Paris: Paleo, 2002) p. 92. Guillaume was attached to the court of Philip and his chronicle follows the information given in the public announcements.

  11Barber, p. 48.

  12Lizerand, p. 37, “immo dixit puram veritatem propter salutem anime sue.”

  13Quoted in Alan Forey, The Fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001) p. 3.

  14Barber, p. 69.

  15Quoted in Menache, p. 207.

  16Barber, p. 80. And darned brave it was of them, too.

  17Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons.

  18Jules Michelet, Le Procés des Templiers (Paris, 1841-51; rpt. Paris: CNRS, 1987) Vol. I p. 36.

  19There are a number of books that address this. For medieval attitudes: Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (Routledge University Press, 1991), and Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (St. Albans, 1976). Also anything by Jeffrey Burton Russell.

  20Alan Forey, The Fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001) p. 2.

  21Barber, p. 66.

  22Translated in Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, The Templars: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated (Manchester University Press, 2002) p. 256.

  23Barber and Bate, p. 257.

  24Alain Demurger, Jacques de Molay: Le Crepuscule des Templiers (Paris: Payot, 2002) p. 294. Demurger leans to this belief. He feels that the reception ceremony existed but was a sort of hazing.

  25This is the premise in, Maichael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982). I do not, under any circumstances, recommend this book.

  26Barber, p. 54.

  27Guillaume de Nangis, p. 94.

  28Ibid.

  29 Menache, p. 218.

  30Lizerand, p. 84, “la bougrerie du Templiers.” My modern dictionary says it means “idiocy.” Maybe it does today but, trust me, that’s not what it meant in the fourteenth century. Actually, the word only came into use in the thirteenth century, and was applied to the Cathars and so carried with it a sense of heresy as well as homosexual practice.

  31Lizerand, p. 86.

  32Menache, p. 48.

  33Lizerand, p. 87, note 4.

  34Lizerand, p. 96. “Cum instancia devote supplicat populus regni Francie quatinus advertat regia majestas quod quelibet . . . pro domino popa allegate (sunt) super dsicordia punitionis Templariorum inter vos commota, fidem catholice profitbatur se tenere et tenebat.”

  35Michelet.

  36Barber, p. 126.

  37Michelet, vol. I, p. 28, “quod simplex miles, sine equis, armis et terra, erat, et non posset nec sciret ipsum ordinem defendere.”

  38Ibid., vol. I, p. 29.

  39Ibid., vol I. pp. 32-33.

  40Ibid., vol. I, p. 34, “bis signum cruciscoram facie sua et in aliis signis pretendere, videbatur se esse valde stupefactum de hiis.”

  41Ibid., vol. I, p. 36. While most of the report is in Latin and only gives the gist of what each man said, this part, in Middle French, seems to be a direct quote.

  42Ibid.

  43Ibid., Vol. I, p. 218, “fuit questionatus ponderibus apensis in genetalibus suis et in aliis menbris quasi usque ad exeminacionam.”

  44 Ibid.

  45Barber, p. 244.

  46Quoted and summarized in Barber, pp. 168-69. Where is Peter of Bologna when we need him?

  47Barber, pp. 169-70.

  48Michelet, pp. 264-65.

  49Michelet, p. 265; Barber, p. 177.

  50Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis, vol. II, p. 279.

  51Barber, Trial, p. 179

  52Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis., p. 283.

  53Michelet, vol. I, p. 276.

  54Barber, pp. 181-82.

  55Anthony Luttrell, “The Hospitallers of Rhodes and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,” in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades ed. Bladimir P. Goss (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1986) p. 161.

  56Barber, p. 185.

  57For more on this, please see
chapter 40, Baphomet.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Charges Against the Templars

  When Jacques de Molay was first questioned, on October 24, 1307, about the sins of the Templars, the only accusations were about his entry into the order. Did he deny Christ and spit on a crucifix? Was he told that he could have sex with the other brothers?1 These seem to have been the only things that the accusers of the Templars had come up with at the time.

  In the next few months, the list of accusations grew to 127. Many of these, however, are almost identical. For instance, there are five that deal with spitting, trampling, or urinating on a cross. Then there are two more that say they did this “in contempt of Christ and the Orthodox faith,” and that the men who received them into the order made them do this.2 Templars confessed to just about everything suggested to them.

  One can imagine a Templar sergeant or knight brought in after several months of imprisonment and torture:

  “Good day,” the inquisitor begins. “We’re here from the church and the king and we only want the truth for the good of your soul.”

  The Templar is distracted by the smell of roast venison, which reminds him that he’s starving and also that his fate will be similar to the deer’s if he doesn’t get the answers right.