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promises which Bertrand de Goth had made, and which CHAP. it was most repugnant for him to fulfil, since every testimony taken, and every sentence passed for such purpose, must fling disgrace upon the Church and the Pontificate. Clement at first evaded the royal solicitations on this subject by referring the matter to a future council. And soon after, another monstrous trial and sacrifice arose to occupy the demoniac activity of Philip and his legists.

The age was one of reaction against the clergy, — a reaction that no one had more contributed to augment than Philip himself. But so much was he the creature of passion, the slave of his own omnipotence, that he struck on the right side or the left, as his ire or his caprice happened to be directed. A quarrel having arisen at Toulouse between Foulques, the chief inquisitor, and some of the Dominicans or preaching friars, one of the king's seneschals, John of Picquigny, took active part against the inquisitors. These were accused of making use of their power to imprison noble and ignoble, releasing those only who paid ransom. De Picquigny made a descent upon the prison of the Inquisition and liberated the prisoners. Philip, in his parliament, published on this occasion an ordonnance, so descriptive of the judicial mode of procedure of the time, that it is worth recording:

"He, Foulques, commenced his processes by arrest and torture, for which he invented unheard-of torments. Those whom he accused of heresy were forced by torture to confess all that was laid to their charge, or if they stedfastly and courageously denied, false witnesses were suborned to bring forward evidence to condemn them." The ordonnance accordingly proceeded to forbid that any arrests should be henceforth made, save by order of the seneschal, and it withdrew the Jews altogether from the arbitrary jurisdiction of the inquisitor.

CHAP.
VIII.

Such legislation as this opened the hearts of the Languedocians to Philip, and they supported him with far more zeal than the northerns in his quarrel with Pope Boniface. The king, to show his gratitude, made a journey to the south,-confirmed most of the municipal privileges of the region, and acted the popular sovereign. This, however, was whilst the war of Flanders was raging, and to counteract the bad effect of the taxes which he was heaping on the towns of Languedoc. Whether, owing to the pressure of these, or to the opposition of the king and his functionaries to the exactions of the clergy, priests and magistrates of many cities in the south began to show turbulence, and it was said that even heresy revived. This the monarch found himself compelled to crush some years later, when many of the citizens and magistrates of Narbonne and Carcassonne were executed, and the towns deprived of their privileges.

The discontent of the civic classes with Philip in these later years of his reign was not confined to Languedoc. In 1306, a serious sedition broke out in Paris, occasioned by the adulteration of the coin. The householders, says the continuator of Nangis, demanded their rents in the old coin, as the king's edict warranted. This was tripling the price to the tenants, and the lower orders rose in consequence against the house proprietors and the king. They besieged the latter in the Temple, where he kept his treasure, and which was in fact his office of finance. The strength of the building protected Philip, but the mob wreaked their vengeance on one of his councillors, Stephen Barbette, a rich citizen, and destroyed his house in St. Martin in the Fields. The tumult soon abated, when Philip found no difficulty in seizing the most culpable, and hanging them to the trees which stood before the entrances to Paris.

There is no reign in French history so little illus

VIII.

trated by the pen of the chronicler as that of Philip CHAP. the Fair. No knight or noble was the companion of his hours of either pastime or business, and no De Joinville could record his acts or his words; of the clergy he made no confidants. It is remarkable, that when his tent was surprised by the Flemings, the intimate attendants upon royalty who fell on that occasion were two citizens of Paris. Law and finance were his occupation and his pleasure, and those whom he trusted and consulted in these matters fell after Philip's death into the power of their enemies, and had their property and papers confiscated, so that no record remains except what was published in ordonnances or inserted upon the rolls of parliament.

We are therefore left to conjecture what was the origin of the deadly grudge which the monarch owed to the Templars. Their position was certainly one that excited envy. They possessed great wealth, both in landed revenues and hoarded coin, of which they were most chary. When St. Louis wanted money of them to pay his ransom in Egypt, it was only on the threat of breaking open their coffers that they advanced the sum demanded. Philip in his necessities must have felt irritated at his inability to tax this rich monastic order. He demanded to be admitted a knight of the Temple, but the fraternity respectfully declined the honour. Brother Hugh, visitor of the Temple, signed one of the collective letters of adherence to Philip in his quarrel with Pope Boniface, but that the order zealously supported him against the Pope may be doubted. Joined to any such personal objection to the Templars, there were no doubt public and just grounds of dissatisfaction with them. The order had been established and endowed on the express condition of defending the Holy Land, yet very few of them had been there in the last fatal years. Their occupation was now gone, Palestine being irrecoverably

CHAP.
VIII.

lost. And the presence of some 15,000 military monks,
the greater number of them French, in Europe, might
be cause of alarm, and could not be of advantage.
They were accused, like all monks, of being untrue to
their vows, and their lives and ceremonies in the interior
of their religious houses were shrouded in mystery.
Moreover, the Templars do not seem to have been
so highly connected as has been alleged, or to have
been chosen from the first ranks of the aristocracy.
Guy, brother of the Dauphin of Auvergne, was in this
respect the most eminent of the order. Of gentle birth
they were no doubt; but a perusal of their interroga-
tories produces the conviction that they were illiterate
men, of no superior minds or attainments, dignified
neither by birth nor letters. It was impossible for
such a class of men long to maintain so enviable a
position. And when charges were brought against them,
they were neither able to defend themselves, nor had
they friends or connections to stand up for them.

The probability is, that it was their wealth that
tempted Philip, who knew by experience the rich spoil
that was to be won by confiscating the property of cor-
porations or large bodies. He had seized the Italian
bankers in the beginning of his reign. The plunder of
the Jews had filled his treasury. The king always pro-
ceeded by stealth, crushing his victims unawares, lest
they should secrete their property; and he pursued the
same course with the Templars.

The first accusation against them was made by persons of the worst character, by the prior of Montfaucon, whom the grand master had degraded and condemned to prison, and by one Noffo Dei, or Squin. They, evidently to ameliorate their lot, announced that they had most fearful revelations to make against the Templars. The objectionable character of the informers in nowise abated the zeal of the king's legists or of the monarch himself. The charges were sufficient to ruin the order, and place it and its wealth at the king's mercy. As to truth or

1

VIII.

justice, these never entered into the consideration of CHAP. Philip; the sole care of the king was to get the treasure and the grand master of the order from Palestine to France. He then opened the matter to Pope Clement. The churchman endeavoured to pacify the vindictive ardour of the monarch; but, once embarked in a state prosecution, Philip knew no rest. He issued orders in October, 1307, for the simultaneous arrest of the Templars in all their chief residences on the same night. They were fully and successfully executed: the grand master and a hundred and forty knights were seized by Nogaret in the Temple of Paris at the appointed time. On the following Sunday the king caused to be publicly proclaimed in the palace hall and in the churches the crimes for which the Templars were accused and had been arrested. The accusation was, that every new recipient into the order of the Temple was made to spit upon the cross, tread upon it, and deny the Saviour, those refusing being thrown into a dungeon or condemned to die. Moreover that they worshipped a head, wore a string which was consecrated by having touched or encircled this head, and practised the most abominable and unnatural crimes.

These accusations, framed on the testimony of the two informers, were arranged in a list of questions, to produce affirmative answers to which the unfortunate Templars were subjected to the torture. The examiners and operators on the occasion were no other than the inquisitors, the same whom Philip's ordonnance had long since condemned. The mode of procedure then denounced was now adopted against the Templars. When the list of questions was put to them, the necessary consequence of their total denial was a continuance or aggravation of torture. Thirty-six of their number perished under the pressure of these torments in Paris.* The

Triginta sex de dictis fratribus fuerunt mortui Parisiis per jainnam
- Procès des Templiers.

et tormenta.