THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
3
Arrests and Torture
By 1306, the Temple had become a focus of particular attention for King Philippe IV of France, known as Philippe le Bel. Philippe was enormously ambitious. He had grandiose designs for his country, and little compunction about crushing whomever or whatever stood in his way. He had already engineered the kidnapping and murder of one Pope, Boniface VIII, and is widely believed to have orchestrated the death, probably by poison, of another , Benedict XI, who followed. By 1305, he had installed his own puppet on the papal throne — Bertrand de Goth, formerly Archbishop of Bordeaux, who became Pope Clement V. In 1309, Philippe hijacked the Papacy itself , uprooting it from Rome and re- locating it on French soil, at Avignon, where it became, in eff ect, a mere appendage of the French crown. This inaugurated the so- called Avignon Captivity, a schism which was to produce rival popes and divide the Catholic Church f or the next sixty- eight year s, until 1377. With the Papacy thus in his pocket, Philippe had the latitude he needed to move against the Temple.
He had a number of motives for doing so, and a personal grudge against the knights as well. He had asked to be received into the Order as an honorary Templar — the kind of status previously conferred on Richard I – and had been insultingly refused. Then, in June 1306, a rioting mob had forced him to seek refuge in the Paris Temple, where he witnessed at first- hand the staggering extent of the Order ’ s wealth and resources. Philippe desperately needed money, and the Templar treasure must have made him salivate. In the king’ s attitude towards the knights, greed was thus dangerously compounded with humiliation and vindictiveness. Finally, the Templars posed — or would have seemed in Philippe’ s eyes to have posed — a very real threat to the stability of his kingdom. In 1291, as we have seen, Acre, the last bastion of the Western crusader s in the Holy Land, had fallen to the Saracens, and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem had been ir retrievably lost. This had left the Templar s — the best- trained, best- equipped, most professional military force in the Western world — without a raison d’ être and, more ominously f or Philippe, without a home.
They had already established a provisional base on Cyprus, but harboured more ambitious designs. Not surpr isingly, they dreamed of a state or principality of their own, similar to the Ordenstadt created by their kindred Order , the Teutonic Knights, in Prussia and on the Baltic. But the Ordenstadt was on the extreme fringe of Christian Europe, far beyond the reach of the Papacy and the power of any secular potentate. Moreover , the Ordenstadt could be rationalised and justified as another form of crusade — a crusade against the heathen tribes of north- eastern Europe, against the pagan Prussians and Balts and Lithuanians, against the Orthodox (and theref ore heretical) city- states of north- western Russia such as Pskov and Novgorod. The Templar s, on the other hand, who already wielded immense influence in France, contemplated creating their own Ordenstadt in the very heart of European Christendom — in the Languedoc, which, during the previous century, had ef f ectively been annexed by the French crown. 1 For Philippe, the prospect of a Templar principality on his southern door step — a principality encompassing territory to which he laid claim — could only foster resentment and alarm.
Philippe planned his stratagem meticulously. A catalogue of charges was compiled, partly from the king’ s spies who had inf iltrated the Order , partly from the voluntary confession of an alleged renegade knight. Armed with these accusations, Philippe was f ree to act; and when he administered his blow, it was sudden, swift and lethal. In an operation worthy of a modern secret police raid, the king issued sealed orders to his seneschals and bailiffs throughout the country. These order s were to be opened everywhere simultaneously and implemented at once. At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307, all Templar s in France were to be seized and placed under arrest by the king’ s men, their preceptories placed under royal sequestration, their goods conf iscated. But although Philippe’ s objective of surprise seemed to have been attained, the most alluring prize of all — the Order ’ s legendary wealth — eluded him. It was never found, and what became of the fabulous ‘ treasure of the Templar s’ has remained a mystery.
In fact, it is questionable whether Philippe’ s surprise coup was as unexpected as he, or subsequent historians, believed. There is considerable evidence to suggest the Templar s received some kind of advance warning. Shortly before the swoop, for example, the Grand Master , Jacques de Molay, called in many of the Order ’ s books and extant rules, and had them burnt. A knight who withdrew from the Temple around this time was told by the Treasurer that he was extremely ‘ wise’ , as some sort of crisis was imminent. An official edict was circulated to all French preceptories, stressing that no information about the Order ’ s rites or rituals was to be released.
In any case, whether the Templar s were warned in advance or whether they simply sensed what was in the wind, certain precautions were definitely taken. In the f irst place, many knights fled, and those who were captured seem to have submitted passively, as if under instructions to do so — at no point is there any record of French Templar s actively resisting the king’ s seneschals. In the second place, there are indications of an organised f light by a par ticular group of knights, vir tually all of whom were in some way associated with the Order ’ s Treasurer . 2
Given these manifestations of preparedness, it is not surprising that the treasure of the Temple, together with almost all its documents and records, should have disappeared. Under interrogation by the Inquisition, one knight spoke of the treasure being smuggled from the Paris preceptory shortly before the ar rests. The same witness declared that the Preceptor of France also left the capital with fifty horses, and put to sea — there is no indication from where — with eighteen galleys, none of which was ever seen again. 3
Whether this was true or not, the whole of the Templar fleet does seem to have escaped the king’ s clutches. There is no repot of any of the Order ’ s ships being taken — not only then, but ever . On the contrary, the ships appear to have vanished utterly, along with whatever they might have been carrying. In France, the ar rested Templar s were tried and many were subjected to hideous tor ture. Accusations grew ever wilder , and strange confessions were extracted. Grim rumour s began to circulate about the country. The Templar s, it was said, worshipped a demonic power called ‘ Baphomet’ . At their secret ceremonies, they supposedly prostrated themselves bef ore a bearded male head, which spoke to them and invested them with magical virtues. Unauthor ised witnesses of these ceremonies were reported to have disappeared. And there were other charges as well, even more vague. The Templar s were accused of infanticide, of teaching women how to abort, of obscene kisses at the induction of postulants, of homosexuality. But one charge levelled against them stands out as most bizarre and seemingly improbable. These soldier s of Chr ist, who had f ought and laid down their lives for Christendom by the hundreds, were accused of ritually denying Christ, of repudiating, trampling and spitting on the Cross.
This is not the place to explore the validity or otherwise of these charges. We our selves have considered them in detail elsewhere. 4 So have numerous other commentators. Indeed, entire books have been written on the trials of the Templar s and the question of the Order ’ s guilt or innocence. In the present context, it is sufficient simply to acknowledge that the Templar s were almost certainly ‘ tainted’ with religious heterodoxy, if not full- f ledged heresy. Most of the other accusations against them, however , were in all likelihood trumped up, fabricated or exaggerated out of all proportion. Of all the knights interrogated and subjected to torture, for example, only two, according to the Inquisition records, ever conf essed to homosexuality. If homosexuality did exist within the Order , it is unlikely to have done so on a scale greater than in any other closed male community, military or monastic.
The trials commenced within six days of the initial arrests. At first, the prosecution of the Temple was under taken by the king’ s legal officers. But Philippe also had a pope in his pocket, and quickly bullied his puppet into supporting him with all the august weight of papal authority. The persecution inaugurated by the French crown rapidly spread f ar beyond France, and was taken over by the Inquisition. It was to continue for seven years. What seems to us today a minor , generally obscure fragment of medieval history was to become the single most dominant issue of its time, dramatically eclipsing events in far – away Scotland, galvanising opinions and reactions across the Christian world, sending tremor s throughout Western culture. The Temple, it must be remembered, was, with the sole exception of the Papacy, the most important, most power ful, most prestigious, most apparently unshakable institution of its age. At the time of Philippe’ s attack, it was nearly two centuries old and was regarded as one of the central pillars of Western Christendom. For most of its contemporar ies, it seemed as immutable, as durable, as permanent as the Church her self . That such an edifice should be so summarily demolished rocked the foundation upon which rested the assumptions and belief s of an epoch. Thus, for example, Dante, in The Divine Comedy, expresses his shock and his sympathy f or the persecuted ‘ White Mantles’ . Indeed, the superstition which holds Friday the 13th to be a day of misfortune is believed to stem from Philippe’ s initial raids on Friday, 13 October 1307.
The Order of the Temple was officially dissolved by Papal decree on 22 March 1312, without a definitive verdict of guilt or innocence ever being pronounced. In France, however , the knights were to be harried for another two years. Finally, in March 1314, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master , and Geoffroi de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, were roasted to death over a slow fire on the Î le de la Cite in the Seine. A plaque on the site commemorates the event.
The Inquisition
The zeal with which Philippe harried the Templar s is more than a little suspicious. One can under stand his seeking to extirpate the Order within his own domains, but to go so f ar as to seek out every Templar in Christendom is surely a little obsessive. Did he fear the Order ’ s vengeance? He can hardly have been motivated by moral fervour . Nor is it likely that a monarch who had contrived the death of at least one pope, and probably a second, would be f astidious about purity of faith. As for loyalty to the Church, the Church had effectively become his. He did not have to be loyal to it. He could define his own loyalty.
In any case, Philippe badgered his fellow monarchs to join him in his persecution of the Temple. In this endeavour , he met with only qualified success. In Lorraine, for example, which was part of Germany at the time, the Templar s were supported by the reigning duke. A few were tried and quickly exonerated. Most appear to have obeyed their Preceptor , who reputedly instructed them to shave their beards, don secular garb and melt into the local populace — who, significantly enough, did not betray them.
In Germany proper , the Templar s openly defied their would- be judges, appearing in courtfully armed and manifestly prepared to defend themselves. Intimidated, the judges promptly pronounced them innocent, and when the Order was officially dissolved, many German Templars found a welcome in the Order of St John or in the Teutonic Order . In Spain, too, the Templar s resisted their persecutors and found a haven in other Order s, especially Calatrava. And a new Order was created, Montesa, primarily as a refuge for fugitive Templars.
In Portugal, the Templar s were cleared by an inquiry and simply modified their name, becoming the Knights of Christ. They survived under this title well into the sixteenth century, their maritime explorations leaving an indelible mark on history. (Vasco da Gama was a Knight of Christ; Prince Henry the Navigator was a Grand Master of the Order . Ships of the Knights of Christ sailed under the Templar s’ familiar red patté cross. And it was under the same cross that Columbus’ s three caravels crossed the Atlantic to the New World. Columbus himself was married to the daughter of a former Grand Master of the Order , and had access to his f ather - in- law’ s char ts and diaries.)
If Philippe found little support for harrying the Templar s elsewhere on the Continent, he had reason to expect greater co- operation from England. Edward II, af ter all, was his son- in- law. But Edward was initially reluctant. Indeed, the English monarch makes it clear in his letter s that he not only found the charges against the Templars incredible, but also doubted the integrity of those making them. Thus, on 4 December 1307, less than a month and a half after the first arrests, he wrote to the kings of Por tugal, Castile, Aragon and Sicily:
He [Philippe’ s envoy] dared to publish bef ore us . . . certain horrible and detestable enormities repugnant to the Catholic faith, to the prejudice of the aforesaid brother s, endeavour ing to per suade us [that we] ought to impr ison all the brethren . . .5
And he concluded by requesting that the recipient: . . . turn a deaf ear to the slander s of ill- natured men, who are animated, as we believe, not with the zeal of rectitude, but with a spirit of cupidity and envy . . . 6
Ten days later , however , Edward received from the Pope an official bull sanctioning and provisionally justifying the arrests. This obliged him to act, but still he did so with marked reluctance and a signal lack of fervour . On 20 December , he wrote to all sheriffs in England, instructing them three weeks later to take ‘ ten or twelve men they trusted’ and arrest all member s of the Temple in their domains. In the presence of at least one reliable witness, an inventory was to be made of all possessions found on Templar premises. And the Templar s themselves were to be placed in custody, but not ‘ in hard and vile prison’ . 7
English Templar s were held at the Tower of London, as well as at the castles of York, Lincoln and Canterbury. The action against them proceeded in a decidedly dilatory f ashion. Thus, for example, the English Master , William de la More, was arrested on 9 January 1308, and lodged in Canterbury Castle, along with two other brethren and sufficient possessions to ensure him considerable comfort, if not luxury. On 27 May, he was released and, two months later , granted the income from six Templar estates for his suppor t. Only in November , as a result of renewed pressure, was he re- arrested and subjected to a har sher discipline. By then, however , most English Templar s had had ample opportunity to escape, by going to ground amid the civilian populace, by f inding a refuge in other orders or by f leeing the country.
In September 1309, the papal inquisitors arrived in England, and such Templar s as had been arrested were lodged for interrogation in London, York or Lincoln. During the course of the next month, Edward, as if prompted by an after thought, wrote to his representatives in Ireland and Scotland, ordering that all Templars not yet arrested were to be apprehended and placed in the castles at Dublin and Edinburgh. 8 It is thus clear that a great many Templar s were still at large, and with the king’ s knowledge.
Between 20 October and 18 November 1309, some forty- seven Templar s were interrogated in London on the basis of a list of eightyseven charges. No conf essions were elicited apart f rom the acknowledgement that officers of the Order , like priests, claimed the right to grant absolution from sin. Frustrated, the Inquisitor s decided to resort to torture. As travelling emissaries of the Pope, they had, of cour se, no machinery or manpower of their own with which to administer torture, and had to make formal application to the secular authorities. They did this in the second week of December . Edward granted them permission only f or ‘ limited tor ture’ , and this, too, failed to elicit confessions.
On 14 December 1309 — more than two years after the first arrests in France and a year af ter the demand f or more stringent measures in England — Edward again wrote to his sheriffs. He had heard, he said, that Templar s were still ‘ wander ing about in secular habit, committing apostasy’ . 9 Once again, however , neither he nor his officers pursued the matter with any inordinate vigour . On 12 March 1310, he wrote to the Sheriff of York: ‘ As the king under stands that he [the sheriff ] permits the Templar s . . . to wander about in contempt of the king’ s order ,’ 10 they are to be kept inside the castle. And yet on 4 January 1311, Edward once more wrote to the Sheriff of York, noting that, despite all previous order s, Templar s were still allowed to wander about. 11 In the mean time, while this desultory fuss was developing over Templar s already in captivity, nothing was done about the numerous knights in England who had escaped ar rest. More zealous efforts on the part of the Inquisition led to the discovery and apprehension of only nine such fugitives. The Pope complained to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to other prominent prelates elsewhere, that a number of Templar s had so completely integrated themselves with the civilian populace as to marry — which they could not have done without at least some co- operation f rom English authorities.
By this time, tor ture was already being applied to members of the Order in custody. In June, 1310, however , the Inquisition produced a document detailing their lack of success. They protested that they had had difficulty in getting torture applied correctly and effectively. It did not, they complained, appear native to English justice; and even though the king had reluctantly consented to it, the jailor s had offered only tepid co- operation. A number of suggestions were made to render the trials more effective. Among these was a recommendation that the arrested Templar s be transfer red to France, where they could be ‘ properly’ tortured by men with both the taste and the expertise for such pastimes.
On 6 August 1310, the Pope wrote a letter of protest castigating the English king f or his refusal to allow sensible torture. At last, Edward capitulated and instructed that Templars in the Tower be taken to the Inquisitors for what was euphemistically called ‘ the application of ecclesiastical law’ . Even this, however , seems to have been less than successful, for twice in October the king had to repeat his decree.
At last, in June 1311, the Inquisition in England made the breakthrough it had been seeking for so long. This breakthrough did not, significantly enough, result from further torture of Templar s already in captivity, but from a fugitive Templar only recently apprehended in Salisbury, one Stephen de Stapelbrugge. Stephen became the first Templar in England to confess to heretical practices within the Order . During his induction, he reported, he was shown a crucifix and instructed to deny that ‘ Jesus was God and man and that Mary was his mother ’ . 12 He was then, he said, ordered to spit on the cross. Stephen also confessed to many of the other charges levelled against the Templar s. The Order ’ s ‘ er ror s’ , he declared, had originated around the Agen region in France.
This last assertion adds a measure of plausibility to Stephen’ s testimony. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Agen had been one of the hotbeds of the Albigensian or Cathare heresy, and Cathares had survived in the vicinity at least as late as 1250. There is overwhelming evidence that the Templar s had become ‘ inf ected’ , to use the clerical term, with Cathare thought, and even provided a haven for Cathares fleeing the Inquisition. 13 Indeed, one of the Order ’ s most important and influential Grand Master s, Bertrand de Blanchefort, came from a long- established Cathare f amily. Moreover , Agen lay in the Templar province of Provence. Between 1248 and 1250, the Master of Provence was one Roncelin de Fos. Then, between 1251 and 1253, Roncelin was Master of England. By 1260, he was again Master of Provence, and presided in that capacity until 1278. It is thus quite possible that Roncelin brought aspects of heretical Cathare thought f rom their native soil in France to England. This suggestion is supported by the testimony bef ore the Inquisition of Geoff roy de Gonneville, Preceptor of Aquitaine and Poitou. According to Geoffroy, unnamed individuals alleged that all evil and perverse rules and innovations in the Temple had been introduced by a certain Brother Roncelin, former ly a Master of the Order . 14 The Brother Roncelin in question is bound to have been Roncelin de Fos.
Perhaps a bit too conveniently, Stephen de Stapelbrugge’ s confession was quickly followed by two others which substantiated it, from Thomas Tocci de Thoroldeby and John de Stoke. According to Thomas, a f ormer Master of England, Brian de Jay, had said that ‘ Christ was not the true God, but a mere man’ . John de Stoke’ s testimony was particularly important, for he had previously been Treasurer of the Temple in London. As Treasurer , he would have been the highest ranking non-military officer of the Order in England; and as the London Temple was also a royal depository, he would have been personally known to both Edward I and Edward II. He was to be the most importantly placed Templar in England to conf ess to anything.
In his previous testimonies, John de Stoke had denied all accusations. Now, however , he declared that on a visit to Temple Garway in Heref ordshire, the Grand Master Jacques de Molay had claimed Jesus to be ‘ the son of a cer tain woman, and since he said that he was the Son of God, he was crucified’ . 15 According to John de Stoke, the Grand Master had instructed him, on that basis, to deny Jesus. The inquisitor s asked him in whom or what he was supposed to believe. The Grand Master had enjoined him, John said, to believe in ‘ the great omnipotent God, who created heaven and ear th, and not in the Crucifixion’ . 16 This is not even Cathare: f or the Cathares God the creator was evil. It could be construed as more or less orthodox Judaism or Islam; and certainly, during years of activity in the Holy Land, the Temple had absorbed a good deal of both Judaic and Islamic thought.
The Inquisition was quick to exploit the confessions of Stephen de Stapelbrugge, Thomas de Thorolde by and John de Stoke. Within a few months, most of the Templars in captivity in England had made essentially similar admissions. On 3 July 1311, most of them reconciled themselves to the Church, either by conf essing to certain specific crimes and abjuring them, or by admitting to a general formula of guilt and agreeing to do penance. The proceedings at this point amounted, in effect, to a kind of ‘ plea- bargaining’ , or even to an ‘ out- of – court settlement’ . In return for their co- operation, English Templar s were treated lightly. There were no wholesale burnings such as there were in France. Instead, the ‘ penitents’ were consigned to monasteries to rehabilitate their souls. Reasonable funds were provided f or their upkeep.
It is wor th noting, however , that of the confessions obtained in England, most were from elderly and infirm knights. England, after all, was neither a front line for military activity nor , so far as the Order was concerned, a major political or commercial centre such as France. It therefore provided a kind of ‘ rest home’ . Ageing or ill veterans of the Holy Land would be, so to speak, ‘ pensioned off ’ to preceptories in England as sinecures. 17 At the time of their trial, a number of them were too f eeble to move very far f rom where they had been incarcerated. ‘ They were so old and infirm that they were unable to stand,’ 18 reports one notary who recorded the proceedings. These were the men whom Edward’ s officer s ar rested when the king finally bowed to the pressure imposed upon him. By that time, as we have noted, younger and more active Templars would have had ample time to escape. And their number , as we shall see, would have been swollen by refugees f rom elsewhere.
Escape from Persecution
Medieval man did not share our passion for , or precision in, statistics. When chroniclers of the time speak of armies, for example, rough estimates are bandied about, more of ten than not exaggerated for propaganda purposes. Numerals denoting thousands or even tens of thousands are invoked quite routinely and often quite implausibly, with an often exasperating disregard for accuracy and even credibility. In consequence, there is no reliable or definitive compilation of the Templar s’ numerical strength at any given point in their history. Nor , for that matter , has any complete list survived (assuming one ever existed outside the Order ’ s own archives) of Templar holdings, in Br itain or anywhere else. As we have already noted, official documents and rolls often omit a number of installations — preceptories, manors, estates, houses, farms and other property — that are known from other sources to have been Templar . Thus, for example, the Order ’ s major installations at Bristol and Berwick, both of which almost cer tainly included wharves and port facilities, do not appear on any official list.
According to medieval accounts, the Temple, at the time of its suppression, numbered many thousands of personnel across Europe. Some reports run as high as twenty thousand, although of these it is doubtful that more than a small percentage were full- fledged mounted knights. At the same time, it was established procedure in the Middle Ages for every knight to be attended by an entourage — an equerry or squire and, in battle, at least three foot- sergeants or men- at- arms; and French records indicate that this policy obtained in the Temple as well. Much of the Order ’ s strength, therefore, would have consisted of fighting men who were not knights.
But the Temple, as might be expected of such an institution, also relied on an immense support staff — bureaucrats, administrator s, clerks, a substantial number of chaplains, servants, villeins, artisans, craftsmen, masons — and it is rarely clear how many of these are included in such official records as survive. There are other areas, too, in which no documentation whatever exists, and in which even rough estimates are impossible. It is known, for example, that the Templar s possessed a considerable fleet — merchant as well as naval vessels — which operated not only in the Mediter ranean, but in the Atlantic as well. Medieval accounts contain numerous passing references to Templar ports, Templar ships, Templar naval resources. There are even documents bearing signatures and seals of Templar naval officers. And yet no detailed information, of any kind, has survived of Templar maritime activity. There is no record anywhere of the fleet’ s strength, or of what happened to it after the Order was suppressed. Similarly, a late twelfth- century account in England speaks of a woman being received into the Temple as a Sister , and seems quite clear ly to imply some sort of feminine wing or adjunct to the Order . But no elaboration or clarification of the matter has ever been found. Even such inf ormation as might have been contained in official Inquisition records has long since disappeared or been suppressed.
An exhaustive consideration of both English and Inquisition documents, and a detailed study of the work of other historians, leads us to conclude that in 1307, Templar strength in England numbered some 265 men. Of these, up to twenty- nine would have been fullf ledged knights, up to seventy- seven sergeants, and thir ty- one would have been chaplains. If the chaplains and other support staff are omitted, the number of f ighting Templar s comes to at least thir ty- two, and possibly as many as 106. Only ten of these were definitely arrested and listed by the Inquisition, though another three Templar s in captivity were also probably military men. This leaves something approaching ninety- three military Templar s at large — men who escaped completely the clutches of the Inquisition and were never found. 19 That figure does not include fighting men of the Order who escaped persecution in Scotland and Ireland.
The population of Europe in the Middle Ages was a fraction of what it is today, and although such number s, by modern standards, would appear to be small, in the context of the time they would have been proportionately higher . It must be remembered, moreover , that the effectiveness of medieval armies, even more perhaps than in later times, was determined not by numerical superiority, but by training. At Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898, 23,000 British and Egyptian troops def eated more than 50,000 dervishes, inf licting some 15,000 casualties while losing fewer than 500 themselves. In the action dramatised in the film Zulu, 139 British soldier s at Rorke’ s Drift in 1879 held at bay some 4000 Zulus, inflicting 400 casualties while suffering twenty- five. At the Siege of Malta in 1565, f ewer than a thousand Knights of St John, together with their auxiliaries, repelled a Turkish force of 30,000 and inflicted 20,000 casualties. Statistics could be equally lopsided during the Middle Ages, with weight of horses, weight of armour , rigour of discipline and sophistication of tactics proving as decisive as firepower was to be later . In the Holy Land during the Crusades, a force of a dozen fully armoured mounted knights, charging on heavy horses, would function like twentieth- century tanks, easily scattering a force of two or three hundred Saracens. A massed charge of a hundred or so mounted knights could crush two or three thousand adversaries.
In consequence, the prospect of perhaps as many as ninety- three trained Templar s at large in Britain was not to be dismissed. With their professional discipline, their up- to- date weaponry and their martial expertise, they could easily have proved decisive against the amateur soldiery and czonscr ipted peasants involved in most European campaigns.
Just such a campaign was then being conducted in Scotland.
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