Part 8
At the same time Edward wrote to the Pope in similar terms. He declared that the Templars were universally respected by all classes throughout his dominions as pious and upright men, and begged the Pope to promote a just inquiry which should free the order from the unjust slander and injuries to which it was being subjected. But hardly was this letter despatched than Edward received another from the Pope, which had crossed his own on its way, calling upon him to imitate Philip, King of France, in proceeding against the Templars. The Pope professed great distress and astonishment that an order that had so long enjoyed the respect and gratitude of the Church for its worthy deeds in defence of the faith should have fallen into grievous and perfidious apostasy. He then narrated the commendable zeal of the King of France in rooting out the secrets of these men's hidden wickedness, and gave particulars of some of their confessions of the crimes with which they had been charged. He concluded by commanding the King of England to pursue a similar course, to seize and imprison all members of the order on one day, and to hold, in the Pope's name, all the property of the order till it should be determined how it was to be disposed of.
King Edward, notwithstanding his recent declaration of confidence in the integrity of the Templars, yielded obedience to this missive of the Pope. Whether he was overawed by the authority of the Pontiff, and deferred his own opinion to that of so great a personage, or whether, as some suppose, he desired to give the Templars a fair and honorable trial, and the opportunity of clearing themselves; or whether he gave way to the evil counsels of those who whispered that the great wealth of the Templars would be useful to the Crown, and that he might avail himself of the opportunity of taking all--as his predecessors had taken some--of their treasure; whatever may have been his real motive, and the cause of his change of conduct, it is certain that he issued an order for the arrest of the Templars, and the seizure of all their estates, houses, and property.
The greatest caution and secrecy were adopted. Instructions were sent to all the sheriffs throughout England to hold themselves in readiness to execute certain orders which would be given to them by trusty persons on that day. Similar arrangements were made in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and on January 8, 1308, every Templar was simultaneously arrested.
It was not till October in the following year that any trial took place. All this time the Templars had been suffering the miseries of imprisonment. More than two hundred men of high rank, many of them veterans who had fought and bled in Palestine, and who were now grown old and feeble after a life of hardship and privation, maimed with wounds, bronzed with exposure to the Eastern sun, languished under the tender mercies of jailers, with no opportunity of defending themselves or of raising up friends to say a word for them. Some were foreigners who happened to be in England on the business of the order. A few managed to evade the vigilance of the King's emissaries, notwithstanding the secrecy and suddenness of the arrest, and escaped in various disguises to the wild and remote mountain districts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
The court appointed by the Pope commenced its proceedings in London, in October, 1309, under the presidency of the Bishop of London. Several French ecclesiastics had come over to take their seat upon the bench as judges--an ill omen for the English Templars. After the usual preliminaries, which were long and tedious, the articles of accusation were read. They stated that those who were received into the order of the Knights of the Temple did, at their reception, formally deny Jesus Christ and renounce all hope of salvation through him; that they trampled and spat upon the cross; that they worshipped a cat(!); that they denied the sacraments, and looked only to the grand master for absolution; that they possessed and worshipped various idols; that they practised a variety of cruel, degrading, and filthy customs and rites; that the grand master and many of the brethren had confessed to these things even before they had been arrested. Such is a brief summary of the accusation, the original documents of which have happily come down to us.
It is not easy for us to understand how such a farrago of absurdity, profanity, and indecency could ever have been gravely produced in a so-called court of justice in England as a state paper--a bill of indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order that for two hundred years had been the right arm of the Church and the defender of Christianity against its most dangerous and ruthless enemies. No writer of fiction would have ventured on inventing such a trial, and no one unacquainted with mediaeval history would credit the record that grave prelates and learned judges drew up such a document, and then set themselves to prove the truth of its monstrous allegations by the use of torture.
Students of the Middle Ages know well that such things were done in those days. They remember Savonarola and Beatrice Cenci in Italy, Jeanne d'Arc in France, Abbot Whiting and others in England. They call to mind the cruelties and exactions practised so often upon the Jews in every country in Europe; and with the contemporary records in their hands, they do not hesitate to accept as undoubted historical fact what would otherwise be rejected as a slander upon humanity and an outrage upon common-sense.
If the Templars had been accused of the crimes vulgarly supposed to attach themselves to religious orders; if they had been charged with falling into the sins to which poor human nature by its frailty is liable; if erring members had been denounced, men who had entered the order through disappointment, or from some other unworthy motive, men such as Sir Walter Scott depicts in his imaginary Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, in his novel, _Ivanhoe_, we might well believe that some at least of the accusations against them were true.
It is singular that no such charges are alleged against the Templars, though they were freely brought, two hundred years later, against the regular monks by the commissioners of Henry VIII. This fact has been noticed by most thoughtful historians, and has been considered to tell strongly in the tribunal of equity in favor of the Templars. Instead of these probable or possible crimes, we find nothing but monstrous charges of sorcery, idolatry, apostasy, and such like, instances of which we know are to be found in those strange times; but which it seems altogether unlikely would infect a large body whose fundamental principle was close adherence to Christianity; a body which was spread all over the world, and which included in its ranks such a multitude and variety of men and of nationalities, among whom there must have been, to say the least, some sincere, upright, and godly men who would have set themselves to root out such miserable errors, or, if they were found to be ineradicable, would have left the order as no place for them.
Even Voltaire acknowledges that such an indictment destroys itself. It recoils upon its framers, and proves nothing but their intense hatred of their victims and their total unfitness to sit as judges.
When this extraordinary paper had been read, the prisoners were asked what they had to say to it, and, as might be expected, they at once and unanimously declared that they and their order were absolutely guiltless of the crimes of which they were accused. After this the prisoners were examined one by one.
It would be tedious to follow the long and wearisome questionings and to record the replies given by the several brethren of the Temple during their trial in London. One and all agreed in denying the existence of the horrible and ridiculous rites which were said to be used at the reception of new members; and whether they had been received in England or abroad, detailed the ceremonies that were used, and showed that they were substantially the same everywhere. The candidate was asked what he desired, and on replying that he desired admission to the order of the Knights of the Temple, he was warned of the strict and severe life that was demanded of members of the order; of the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and, moreover, that he must be ready to go and fight the enemies of Christ even to the death.
Others related details of the interior discipline and regulations of the order, which were stern and rigorous, as became a body that added to the strictness of the convent the order and system of a military organization. Many of the brethren had been nearly all their lives in the order, some more than forty years, a great part of which had been spent in active service in the East.
The witnesses who were summoned were not members of the order, and had only hearsay evidence to give. They had _heard_ this and that report, they _suspected_ something else, they had been _told_ that certain things had been said or done. Nothing definite could be obtained, and there was no proof whatever of any of the extravagant and incredible charges. Similar proceedings took place in Lincoln and York, and also in Scotland and Ireland; and in all places the results were the same, and the matter dragged on till October, 1311.
Hitherto torture had not been resorted to; but now, in accordance with the repeated solicitations of the Pope, King Edward gave orders that the imprisoned Templars should be subjected to the rack in order that they might be forced to give evidence of their guilt. Even then there seems to have been reluctance to resort to this cruel and shameful treatment, and a series of delays occurred, so that nothing was done till the beginning of the following year.
The Templars, having been now three years in prison, chained, half-starved, threatened with greater miseries here, and with eternal damnation hereafter; separated from one another, without friend, adviser, or legal defence, were now removed to the various jails in London and elsewhere, and submitted to torture. We have no particular record of the horrible details, but some evidence was afterward adduced which was said to have been obtained from the unhappy victims during their agony. It was such as was desired; an admission of the truth of the monstrous accusations that were detailed to them, which had been obtained, for the most part, from their tortured brethren in France.
In April, 1311, these depositions were read in the court, in the presence of the Templars, who were required to say what they could allege in their defence. They replied that they were ignorant of the processes of law, and that they were not permitted to have the aid of those whom they trusted and who could advise them, but that they would gladly make a statement of their faith and of the principles of their order. This they were permitted to do, and a very simple and touching paper was produced and signed by all the brethren. They declared themselves, one and all, good Christians and faithful members of the Church, and they claimed to be treated as such, and openly and fairly tried if there were any just cause of complaint against them. But their persecutors were by no means satisfied. Fresh tortures and cruelties were resorted to to force confessions of guilt from these worn-out and dying men. A few gave way, and said what they were told to say; and these unhappy men were produced in St. Paul's Cathedral shortly afterward, and made to recant their errors, and were then "reconciled to the Church." A similar scene was enacted at York.
The property of the Templars in England was placed under the charge of a commission at the time that proceedings were commenced against them, and the King very soon treated it as if it were his own, giving away manors and convents at his pleasure. A great part of the possessions of the order was subsequently made over to the Hospitallers. The convent and church of the Temple in London were granted, in 1313, to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whose monument is in Westminster Abbey. Other property was pawned by the King to his creditors as security for payment of his debts; but constant litigation and disputes seem to have pursued the holders of the ill-gotten goods.
Some of the surviving Templars retired to monasteries, others returned to the world and assumed secular habits, for which they incurred the censures of the Pope.
HENRY HART MILMAN
The tragedy of the Templars had not yet drawn to its close. The four great dignitaries of the order, the grand master Du 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 Cardinal-Archbishop of Albi, with two other cardinals, two monks, the Cistercian Arnold Novelli, and Arnold de Fargis, nephew of Pope Clement, the Dominican Nicolas de Freveauville, akin to the house of Marigny, formerly the King's confessor. With these the Archbishop of Sens sat in judgment on the Knights' own former confessions. The grand master and the rest were found guilty, and were to be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.
A scaffold was erected before the porch of Notre Dame. On one side appeared the two cardinals; on the other the four noble prisoners, in chains, under the custody of the Provost of Paris. Six 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 Du Molay--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 awestruck apprehension. In a calm, clear voice Du 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."
The 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 counsel." But 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; they were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, while the fire was still curling round their extremities, to recant their bold recantation. But there was no sign, no word of weakness. Du Molay implored that the image of the Mother of God might be held up before him, and his hands unchained, that he might clasp them in prayer. Both, as the smoke rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to their vital parts, continued solemnly to aver the innocence and the Catholic faith of the order. The King himself sat and beheld, it might seem without remorse, this hideous spectacle; the words of Du Molay might have reached his ears. But the people looked on with far other feelings. Stupor kindled into admiration; the execution was a martyrdom; friars gathered up their ashes and bones and carried them away, hardly by stealth, to consecrated ground; they became holy relics. The two who wanted courage to die pined away their miserable life in prison.
The wonder and the pity of the times which immediately followed, arrayed Du Molay not only 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, _i.e._, the precise date of Clement's death. It was not till the year after that Clement and King Philip passed to their account. The 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 disgraceful crimes which attainted the honor of his family seemed as declarations of heaven as to the innocence of their noble victims.
JAMES VAN ARTEVELDE LEADS A FLEMISH REVOLT
EDWARD III OF ENGLAND ASSUMES THE TITLE OF KING OF FRANCE
A.D. 1337-1340
FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT
Having defeated the Flemings at Mons-la-Puelle in 1304, Philip the Fair of France found that they were unsubdued and ready to renew their war against him. Therefore he very soon acknowledged their independence under their count, Robert de Bethune. But Philip continually violated the treaty he had made, and just before his death (1314) he again began hostilities against Flanders.
Little of historical importance occurred in that country between the death of Philip the Fair and the accession of Philip of Valois (1328). His first act was to take up the cause of Louis de Nevers, then Count of Flanders, whom the independent burghers of most of the chief cities had united to deprive of his territories, leaving him only Ghent for a refuge. In the first year of his reign Philip gained a victory over the Flemish "weavers" at Cassel, and laid all Flanders at the feet of its rejected count.
In 1338 began the Hundred Years' War, arising from the claim of Edward III of England to the French throne. Edward's most important measure in preparation for the war was the securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry of both Flanders and England.
At last, by prohibiting the exportation of wool to Flanders, Edward reduced the Flemings to despair and forced them to fling themselves into his arms. Many of them emigrated to England, where they helped to lay the foundation of manufactures. But the Flemish towns burst into insurrection and proceeded to organized action in the manner here related by Guizot, who draws largely upon the narrative of Froissart.
The Flemings bore the first brunt of that war which was to be so cruel and so long. It was a lamentable position for them; their industrial and commercial prosperity was being ruined; their security at home was going from them; their communal liberties were compromised; divisions set in among them; by interest and habitual intercourse they were drawn toward England, but the Count, their lord, did all he could to turn them away from her, and many among them were loath to separate themselves entirely from France. "Burghers of Ghent, as they chatted in the thoroughfares and at the cross-roads, said one to another that they had heard much wisdom, to their mind, from a burgher who was called James van Artevelde, and who was a brewer of beer. They had heard him say that, if he could obtain a hearing and credit, he would in a little while restore Flanders to good estate, and they would recover all their gains without standing ill with the King of France or the King of England.
"These sayings began to get spread abroad insomuch that a quarter or half the city was informed thereof, especially the small folk of the commonalty, whom the evil touched most nearly. They began to assemble in the streets, and it came to pass that one day, after dinner, several went from house to house calling for their comrades, and saying, 'Come and hear the wise man's counsel.' On December 26, 1337, they came to the house of the said James van Artevelde, and found him leaning against his door. Far off as they were when they first perceived him, they made him a deep obeisance, and 'Dear sir,' they said, 'we are come to you for counsel; for we are told that by your great and good sense you will restore the country of Flanders to good case. So tell us how.'
"Then James van Artevelde came forward, and said: 'Sirs comrades, I am a native and burgher of this city, and here I have my means. Know that I would gladly aid you with all my power, you and all the country; if there were here a man who would be willing to take the lead, I would be willing to risk body and means at his side; and if the rest of ye be willing to be brethren, friends, and comrades to me, to abide in all matters at my side, notwithstanding that I am not worthy of it, I will undertake it willingly.' Then said all with one voice: 'We promise you faithfully to abide at your side in all matters and to therewith adventure body and means, for we know well that in the whole countship of Flanders there is not a man but you worthy so to do.'" Then Van Artevelde bound them to assemble on the next day but one in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke, which had received numerous benefits from the ancestors of Sohier of Courtrai, whose son-in-law Van Artevelde was.