It seems that Esquiu’s revelations reached the ears of Philip the Fair in the autumn of 1305, and that the king passed them on to the pope that winter. As a religious order, the Temple came under papal, not royal, jurisdiction, and any investigation ought by rights to have been carried out under papal auspices. But, as we have seen, the usually harmonious relations between king and Temple became less harmonious in the course of 1306, and Esquiu’s story acquired a new value for the king. It may also have acquired a new credibility. There was in Philip at least as much of the fanatic as of the cynic, and he may well have persuaded himself that an organization which was capable of thwarting his aims was capable of any iniquity. It is said that he even planted a dozen spies in the various French provinces of the Temple, in an effort to obtain confirmatory evidence — a vain effort as it turned out, for not one of these men was even called as a witness against the Temple.
However that may be, once Philip had decided to use Esquiu’s revelations to destroy the Temple, he took no chances. Late in August 1307 Pope Clement informed him that he proposed to carry out an investigation. Philip realized that a papal investigation, carried out while the Templars were still at liberty and able to conduct their defence, would be unlikely to result in the condemnation and suppression of the order. His misgivings must have been reinforced by the unperturbed behaviour of the grand master. Jacques de Molay knew of Esquiu’s charges, and his response was to urge the pope to investigate, so that the order could clear its name. On 11 September he visited the pope at Poitiers, where the two men discussed not the affairs of the Temple but plans for a possible new crusade. Clearly, if the order was to be destroyed, the king must take charge of the proceedings: the Templars must be got into the hands of the royal officials, without hope of escape. When Philip struck, he did so without asking the pope; and several weeks were to pass before he communicated with him at all.
The order for the arrest of the Templars was drawn up on 14 September and dispatched, in the king’s name, to officers of the crown throughout the kingdom. It is a model of the dehumanizing use of language. Each word is chosen with the object of setting the Templars outside the bounds of humanity:(7)
A bitter thing, a thing to weep over, a thing horrible to think of and terrible to hear, a detestable crime, an abominable act, a fearful infamy, a thing altogether inhuman, or rather, foreign to all humanity has, thanks to the report of several trustworthy persons, reached our ears, smiting us with grievous astonishment and causing us to tremble with violent horror; and, as we weigh its gravity, an immense pain rises in us, all the more cruelly because we cannot doubt that the enormity of the crime makes it an offence to the divine majesty, a shame for mankind, a pernicious example of evil and a universal scandal.... (These people) are like beasts of burden which have no understanding, indeed they surpass unreasoning beasts in their astounding bestiality, they expose themselves to all the supremely abominable crimes which even the sensuality of unreasoning beasts abhors and avoids.... Not only by their acts and their detestable deeds but even by their hasty words they defile the earth with their filth, they undo the benefits of the dew, they corrupt the purity of the air and bring about the confusion of our faith.
The royal missive goes on to detail the offences to which the Temple is supposed to be addicted, and concerning which the Templars are to be interrogated. These can be summarized as follows:
When a new member is received into the order, a secret ritual follows the ceremony of reception in the chapel. The commander takes the newcomer aside, for instance behind the altar or into the sacristy. There he shows him a crucifix, and the newcomer has to deny Christ thrice, and to spit thrice on the crucifix. Next he has to strip naked. The commander gives him three kisses, one at the base of the spine, one on the navel, one on the mouth. He also tells him that if a fellow-Templar should desire to commit sodomy with him, he must let him do so, for that is required by the statutes of the Temple. Many Templars do in fact practise sodomy together, each wearing a belt which is part of his permanent uniform. It is said that these belts have previously been placed around the neck of a great idol, in the form of a man’s head with beard, and that at the meetings of the provincial chapters, the chief officers of the order kiss and worship this head — though the ordinary knights know nothing of this cult. Moreover, the priests of the order refrain from consecrating the eucharistic wafer for the mass.
Such were the charges on which the Templars were tried and to which many of them confessed, and such were the grounds on which, in the end, the Temple was suppressed. For five centuries thereafter these charges were accepted by historians at their face value — the first to cast doubt on them was Raynouard, in 1813. Since then serious historians have refused to accept them en bloc — yet only a few have been willing to reject them en bloc, either.(8) Most people have always found it difficult to believe that even the most autocratic ruler could or would fabricate an entire body of accusations out of nothing, and then compel great numbers of innocent victims to substantiate them. With the example of Stalin’s trials before our eyes, we should have no such difficulty. It is time to reaffirm the conclusion which Heinrich Finke pronounced in 1907: the charges against the Templars were absolutely without foundation.
There is no mystery about the ritual by which new recruits were received into the Temple. There exists a detailed prescription for the ceremony; and nothing could be more sober.(9) The commander of the house warns the candidate of the hardships he will have to endure as a Templar. The candidate in his turn swears before God and the Virgin to obey the grand master; to live in chastity and without personal property; to maintain the good customs of the order; and to fight for the Holy Land. The ceremony ends with the formula of reception: “And so we promise you bread and water and the poor robe of the house and much hardship and labour.” This prescription is incontestably genuine, and there is no reason to think that initiations were ever conducted in any other way.
An initiation in these terms would have been perfectly acceptable to the young men — many of them from the noblest houses, many of them deeply pious — who presented themselves as candidates. But how could they possibly have submitted to rituals which, being obscene and blasphemous, were a denial of everything that had attracted them to the order? Did no recruit ever protest at such a gross imposture? The indictments argue that those who protested were killed or imprisoned— but in that case, why did none of their powerful kinsmen take action? And why did noble families continue to send their young men as recruits? Or are we to suppose that scores of young Templars simply vanished, without anyone ever noticing?
The impression of implausibility grows when one comes to examine the charges in detail. We know that on his reception into the order the new recruit had to take a vow of chastity. Is it conceivable that the commander who had just demanded and received such a vow would go on to explain that the statutes of the order encouraged sodomy? We know that the Templars were always ready to give their lives fighting for Christ against the infidel, and that many of them, rather than deny their Lord, spent long years in the prisons of Syria and Egypt. Is it likely that, by way of fortifying them for such sacrifices, their own leaders would make them deny Christ and spit on the crucifix? As for the curious ritual of the three kisses, even the interrogators became confused about that; for whereas some of their victims duly confessed that they had received such kisses from the commander, the majority said that they had given the kisses to their commander. From the trial records it is obvious, too, that in some cases Templars imprisoned together agreed on a non-committal confession: many stated that, while such things were undoubtedly the rule, at their own initiation the whole performance had had to be broken off — whether because a horde of Saracens had suddenly appeared on the horizon, or simply because it was time for dinner!(10)