Untitled - Shattering Denial

1 88 THE INQUISITION
peror wished simply to get rid of his personal enemies,
and that he had put to death many who were not heretics
at all.
The personal interests of
Philip the Fair were chiefly
responsible for the trial and condemnation of the Tem
plars. Clement V himself and the ecclesiastical judges
were both unfortunately guilty of truckling in the whole
affair. But their unjust condemnation was due chiefly
to the king s desire to confiscate their great possessions. 1
Joan of Arc was also a victim demanded by the political
interests of the day. If the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre
Cauchon, had not been such a bitter English partisan, it
is very probable that the tribunal over which he presided
would not have brought in the verdict of guilty, which
sent her to the stake; 2 she would never have been con
sidered a heretic at all, much less a relapsed one.
1 The tribunals of the Inquisition were perhaps never more cruel than
in the case of the Templars. At Paris, according to the testimony of
Ponsard de Gisiac, thirty-six Templars perished under torture. At Sens,
Jacques de Saciac said that twenty-five had died of torment and suffering.
(Lea, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 262.) The Grand Master, Jaques Molay, owed his
life to the vigor of his constitution. Confessions extorted by such means
were altogether valueless. Despite all his efforts, Philip the Fair never
succeeded in obtaining a formal condemnation of the Order. In his bull of
July 22, 1773, Clement XIV says: "Etiamsi concilium generale Viennese,
cui negotium examinandum commiserat, a formali et definitiva sententia
ferenda consuerit se abstinere." Bullarium Romanum, Continuatio, Prati,
1847, vol. v, p. 620. On the trial of the Templars, cf. oi>. Lea,
pp. 249-320; Langlois, Histoire de France, vol. iii, 2 e
cit., vol. iii,
partie, 1901.
2 The greatest crime of the trial was the substitution, in the documents, of
a different form of abjuration from the one Joan read near the church of
Saint- Ouen.