356 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Order, and give their goods to another Order of Knights. As usual, 

 the hesitation manifested by Clement when at a distance from Philip 

 vanished under the influence of a personal interview ; and the Pope, 

 by his bull of the 22nd March, beginning " Yox clamantis," dissolved 

 the Order. This bull has only recently been discovered in Barcelona 

 by Gams, the German Benedictine. Clement gave six reasons for his 

 action : viz., that the Order had become of evil notoriety through 

 heresy ; that the Grand Master and many other Companions of the 

 Order had made confessions of heresy, and of the other charges brought 

 against them ; that the Order was much hated by prelates and kings ; 

 that no righteous person was willing to defend them ; that they had 

 become useless for the Holy Land, for the defence of which they had 

 been established ; and, finally, that through putting o:ff the sentence 

 the goods of the Templars might be lost.^ 



By a further bull of the 2nd May, " ad providam," he handed over 

 all the possessions of the Templars to the Hospitallers. ^ In this 

 document he expressly stated that he had dissolved the Order ''non 

 per modum definitivae sententiae, cum earn super hoc secundum 

 inquisitiones et processus super his habitos non possemus f erre de jure, 

 sed per viam provisionis seu ordinationis apostolicae," thus showing 

 that the dissolution of the Order was grounded not on justice but on 

 motives of expediency. By letters, also, of the same date, he ordered 

 commissioners for carrying out this decree in England, Ireland, &c. 

 The persons of the Templars were to be handed over to the provincial 

 Synods, except the Grand Masters and three others, whom he reserved 

 to himself. Philip, however, induced him to hand them over to a 

 Commission of three Cardinals and the Archbishop of Sens, with the 

 result that, on the Grand Master (De Molay) and the Grand Preceptor 

 of jS'ormandy declaring themselves innocent, they were condemned to 

 be burnt ; while the other two, who confessed, were condemned to 

 prison for life. 



It will be well now to consider how the Templars, imprisoned in 

 Ireland, had been getting on. As we have seen, soon after their 

 imprisonment the Earl of Cornwall had allowed them to retain their 

 manors of Kilclogan, Crook, and Kilbarry for their sustenance. But 

 it was one thing to manage their lands when they were free agents 

 and in possession of enormous power, and quite another to obtain the 



1 Yon Hefele, "Conciliengeschicte," vol. vi., p. 524. 



2 Ibid., p. 523 J Eymer's " Fedeia," vol. ii., p. 167. 



