ions of
their public usefulness and their real strength; a position fraught with
perils for them, for it inspired the sovereign powers of the state with
the spirit rather of jealousy than fear of them.

In 1303 the king and the pope simultaneously summoned from Cyprus to
France the Grand Master of the Templars, James do Molay, a Burgundian
nobleman, who had entered the order when he was almost a child, had
valiantly fought the infidels in the East, and fourteen years ago had
been unanimously elected Grand Master. For several months he was well
treated, to all appearance, by the two monarchs. Philip said he wished
to discuss with him a new plan of crusade, and asked him to stand
godfather to one of his children; and Molay was pall-bearer at the burial
of the king's sister-in-law. Meanwhile the most sinister reports, the
gravest imputations, were bruited abroad against the Templars; they were
accused "of things distasteful, deplorable, horrible to think on,
horrible to hear, of betraying Christendom for the profit of the
infidels, of secretly denying the faith, of spitting upon the cross, of
abandoning themselves to idolatrous practices and the most licentious
lives." In 1307, in the month of October, Philip the Handsome and
Clement V. had met at Poitiers; and the king asked the pope to authorize
an inquiry touching the Templars and the accusations made against them.
James de Molay was forthwith arrested at Paris with a hundred and forty
of his knights; sixty met the same fate at Beaucaire; many others all
over France; and their property was put in the king's keeping for the
service of the Holy Land. On the 12th of August, 1308, a papal bull
appointed a grand commission of inquiry charged to conduct, at Paris, an
examination of the matter "according as the law requires." The
Archbishops of Canterbury in England and of Mayence, Cologne, and Troves
in Germany, were also named commissioners, and the pope announced that he
would deliver his judgment within two years, at a general council held at
Vienne, in Dauphiny, territory of the Empire. Twenty-six princes and
laic lords, the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the Counts of Flanders,
Nevers, and Auxerre, and the Count of Talleyrand de Perigord, offered
themselves as the Templars' accusers, and gave powers of attorney to act
in their names. On the 22d of November, 1309, the Grand Master, Molay,
was, called before the commission. At first he firmly denied all that
his