582 



KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 



him about the best mode of supporting the kings 

 of Armenia and Cyprus. He desired them to 

 come as secretly as possible, and with a very small 

 train, as they would find abundance of their knights 

 this side the sea; and he directed them to provide 

 for the defence of Limisso in Cyprus during their 

 short absence. Fortunately perhaps for himself 

 and his order, the master of the Hospitallers was 

 then engaged in the conquest of Rhodes, but 

 Jacques de Molay, the master of the Templars, 

 Immediately prepared to obey the mandate of the 

 pope, and he left Cyprus with a train of sixty 

 knights, and a treasure of 150,000 florins of gold, 

 and a great quantity of silver money, the whole 

 requiring twelve horses to carry it. He proceeded 

 to Paris, where he was received with the greatest 

 honour by the king, and he deposited his treasure 

 in the temple of that city. It is, as we have said, 

 not impossible that it was the intention of Molay 

 to transfer the chief seat of the order thither, and 

 that he had, therefore, brought with him its trea- 

 sure and the greater part of the members of the 

 chapter. At all events, he had no suspicion of 

 the king or the pope ; and perhaps at that time there 

 was no just ground for suspecting either of them, 

 though the letter of Clement to Philip in August, 

 1305, proves that the king had already accused the 

 order to the pope of some "almost incredible and 

 impossible matters," and that the heads of it had 

 challenged inquiry. Shortly afterwards Molay 

 proceeded to Poitiers, as the pope wished to con- 

 sult with him respecting the recovery of the Holy 

 Land and the union of the orders. On the former 

 subject the opinion of the grand-master was, that 

 nothing short of a union of all the powers of 

 Christendom would suffice ; the latter he objected 

 to on various grounds, one of which was, that they 

 would disagree, inasmuch as the Templars were 

 liberal of their goods, the Hospitallers avaricious, 

 and farther, that the Templars were more esteemed 

 and supported by the laity ; he also dwelt on the 

 superior strictness and austerity of the mode of 

 life of his own order. He acknowledged, however, 

 that the new order would be more powerful against 

 the heathen than the two separate ones, and that 

 it could be managed at less expense. The grand- 

 master was then dismissed by the pope, and he re- 

 turned to Paris. 



It is difficult to say how early the project of 

 attacking the Templars entered into the minds of 

 Philip and his obsequious lawyers, or whether he 

 originally aimed at more than mulcting them under 

 the pretext of reformation ; and farther, whether 

 the first informers against them were suborned or 

 not. The remaining records leave a considerable 

 degree of obscurity on the whole matter. All we 

 can learn is, that a man named Squin de Flexian, 

 who had been prior of the Templars, and had been 

 put out of the order for heresy and various vices, 

 was lying in prison at Paris or Toulouse, it is un- 

 certain which. In the prison with him was a 

 Florentine named Noffo Dei, " a man," says Vil- 

 lani, "full of all iniquity." These two began to 

 plan how they might extricate themselves from 

 the confinement to which they seemed perpetually 

 doomed. The example of the process against the 

 memory of pope Boniface showed them that no 

 lie was too gross or absurd not to obtain ready cre- 

 dence, and they fixed on the Templars as the 

 objects of their true or false charges. Squin told 

 the governor of the prison that he had a communi- 

 cation to make to the king, which would be of 



more value to him than if he had gained a king- 

 dom, but that he would only tell it to the king in 

 person. He was brought to Philip, who promised 

 him his life, and he made his confession, on which 

 the king immediately arrested some of the Tem- 

 plars, who are said to have confirmed the truth of 

 Squin's assertions. Shortly afterwards, it is said, 

 similar discoveries were made to the pope by his 

 chamberlain, cardinal Cantilupo, who had been in 

 connection with the Templars from his eleventh 

 year. 



Squin Flexian declared, 1. that every member 

 on admission into the order swore on all occasions 

 to defend its interests right or wrong; 2. that the 

 heads of the order were in secret confederacy with 

 the Saracens, had more of Mohammedan unbelief 

 than of Christian faith, as was proved by the mode 

 of reception into the order, when the novice was 

 made to spit and trample on the crucifix, and blas- 

 pheme the faith of Christ ; 3. that the superiors 

 were sacrilegious, cruel, and heretical murderers ; 

 for if any novice, disgusted with its profligacy, 

 wished to quit the order, they secretly murdered 

 him, and buried him by night ; so, also, when 

 women were pregnant by them, they taught them 

 how to produce abortion, or secretly put the infants 

 to death ; 4. the Templars were addicted to the 

 error of the Fraticelli, and, like them, despised 

 the authority of the pope and the church; 5. that 

 the superiors were addicted to the practice of an 

 unnatural crime, and if any one opposed it, they 

 were condemned by the master to perpetual impri- 

 sonment ; 6. that their houses were the abode of 

 every vice and iniquity; 7. that they endeavoured 

 to put the Holy Land in the hands of the Sara- 

 cens, whom they favoured more than the Chris- 

 tians. Three other articles of less importance 

 completed this first body of charges. It is remarka- 

 ble, that we do not find among them those which 

 make such a figure in the subsequent examination? ; 

 namely, the devil appearing among them in the 

 shape of a cat ; their idolatrous worship of an 

 image with one or three heads, or a skull covered 

 with human skin, with carbuncles for eyes, before 

 which they burned the bodies of their dead bre- 

 thren, and then mingled the ashes with their drink, 

 thereby thinking to gain more courage; and finally 

 their smearing this idol with human fat. 



The historians do not precisely state the date of 

 Squin Flexian 's confessions, or whether they were 

 prior to the month of April, 1307, in which month 

 Jacques de Molay, accompanied by the preceptors 

 of Beyond-sea, Poitou, Aquitaine, and France, re- 

 paired to the pope at Poitiers, to justify the order 

 from the imputations of corruption every day cast 

 upon it, in which, as he thought, he succeeded, 

 and again returned to Paris. Philip having now 

 all things prepared, sent, like his descendant 

 Charles IX. previous to the St Bartholomew mas- 

 sacre, secret orders to all his governors to arm 

 themselves on the 12th of October, and on the 

 following night, but not sooner on pain of death, 

 to open the king's letter, and act according to it. 

 On Friday the 13th of October, all the Templars 

 throughout France were simultaneously arrested at 

 break of day. In Paris, on the following day, the 

 heads of the university assembled in the church of 

 Notre Dame, where in their presence, and several 

 of the royal officers, the chancellor Nogaret accused 

 the knights of their heresies. On the 15th the 

 university met at the temple, where the grand- 

 master and some of the heads of the order were 



