The order went out on 14 September 1307 to make the arrests that took place at dawn a month later, on 13 October, but the case had been prepared years before. French government spies had joined the Templars to discover its inner workings and to gather anything with which they could be slandered. The sinister force behind this was William of Nogaret, who in 1303 had taken part in the attempt to overthrow Pope Boniface VIII, since when he had remained excommunicated. William’s family had suffered persecution because his grandfather had been a
Cathar, but by his cleverness and cynicism he had risen in Philip’s court and was ennobled in 1299, becoming the king’s Keeper of the Seals and his right-hand man. These facts may have contributed to William of Nogaret’s contempt for the Papacy and his unscrupulous ambition to make France the greatest power in the world.
Many of those arrested were simple men, not battle-hardened Templar knights, but ploughmen, artisans and servants who helped keep the order running, and these would have succumbed to torture or even the threat of torture fairly quickly. The knights themselves, however, had been long prepared for the worst in Outremer, for that day when they might be captured and thrown into a Muslim dungeon, be tortured or face execution unless they abjured their faith. And yet these too rapidly and all but unanimously confessed. The tortures could be savage: scores died undergoing what was called ‘ecclesiastical procedure’, which was meant not to break limbs or draw blood but routinely included being kept chained in isolation and fed on bread and water; being drawn on the rack until the joints were dislocated; being raised over a beam by a rope tied to the wrists that had been bound behind the victim’s back; and having fat rubbed into the soles of the feet, which were then placed before a fire-one tortured Templar priest being so badly burnt that the bones fell out of his feet. Another of the accused said that he would have agreed ‘to kill God’ to stop his torment.
fet physical torture was farfrom the only element in the confessions. Instead, one of the worst problems for the Templars was the overturn of their spiritual and social universe. They had spent their lives in the enclosed world of a military elite group to which they owed absolute loyalty and were constantly reminded of the support they in turn received from the rest of society. But now they were reviled, told that they were heretics, and no support seemed to be forthcoming from any quarter. The walls, ceiling and floor of their enclosed world had fallen away leaving them exposed, bewildered and lost. Under these conditions it is not surprising that James of Molay, the Grand Master, and Hugh of Pairaud, whose rank of Visitor made him the most elevated Templar in Western Christendom after James of Molay, were both among the near unanimity of Templars who rapidly confessed-and indeed there is some uncertainty whether the Grand Master was ever tortured.
The further truth of the confessions was that they were gained quickly because the Templars were accused of something that actually existed and to which they could admit, though it had been distorted in the hands of the Inquisitor. This was the fruit of the information gathered by the government spies.
On 19 October 1307 the Inquisitorial hearings began at the Paris Temple. On 25 and 26 October James of Molay was called to testify. His confession was recorded and sent to the Pope as proof of heresy. In less than two weeks since their arrest, the Templars’ honour had been stained forever, and the news of their guilt reverberated throughout the whole of Christendom.
World History
