onviction, not
truth, was the end in view, torture was a welcome and efficacious ally.

All this was but too sadly exemplified in the proceedings against the
Templars in France. No sooner were those who had made confessions of
guilt while under torture released from their tormentors than they
disavowed their forced admissions and proclaimed their innocence and the
purity of their order, appealing to history and the testimony of their
own day for evidence of their courage and devotion to the Catholic
faith.

Upon hearing of this Philip immediately ordered the rearrest of the
Templars, and, proceeding against them as relapsed heretics, they were
condemned to be burned alive. In Paris alone one hundred and thirteen
suffered this terrible punishment, and many more were burned in other
towns. In Spain, Portugal, and Germany, proceedings were taken against
the order; their property was confiscated, and in some cases torture was
used; but it is remarkable that it was only in France, and in those
places where Philip's influence was powerful, that any Templar was
actually put to death.

Everywhere else the monstrous charges were declared to be unproved, and
the order was declared innocent of heresy and sacrilegious rites.

In October, 1311, a council was held at Vienna to dissolve the Order of
the Temple, but the majority of the bishops were decidedly opposed to
such a proceeding against so ancient and illustrious an order, till its
members had been heard in their own defence in a fair and open trial.
The Pope was furious at this and dismissed the council, and in the
following year, 1312, by a papal brief, abolished the order and forbade
its reconstitution. The property of the order in France was nominally
made over to the Hospitallers, but Philip laid claim to an immense sum
for the expenses of the prosecution, and by this and other means he
obtained what he had all along desired--the greatest part of the
possessions of the order. Similar proceedings took place in other
countries. In some, new orders were founded in the place of the
Templars, with the sovereign at their head, by which means the estates
came into the possession of the Crown as completely as if they had
been actually confiscated.

In France the Templars who survived their torture and the horrors of
their prisons were either executed or left to linger out a miserable
existence in their dungeons till death released them. The grand master
and a few other breth