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Temple (SOLOMON'S investigation)

SOLOMON'S investigation on behalf of the order, mills, candy factories, and a cold-storage when suddenly the commission was plant. It has a sanitarium, two hosstartled by the news that the provincial pitals, and a public library. Pop. (1910) council of Sens was about to sentence without further hearing those Templars who had offered to defend the order.

On May 12, 1310, 54 knights were slowly burned to death. The commission at once suspended its sittings, but at length, after many delays, on June 5, 1311, transmitted its report to Clement to help the General Council in its deliberations. The closing act in this drama of papal duplicity was Clement's failure to gain over the Council at Vienne, and the suppression of the order without formal condemnation, by the bull "Vox in excelso" (March 22, 1312). The bull "Ad Providam" (May 2) laid it under perpetual inhibition, and transferred its property to the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. The persons of the Templars were handed over to the provincial councils, with the exception of the chiefs of the order, who were reserved to the jurisdiction of the Holy See. On March 19, 1314, Jacques de Molay and the gray-haired Geoffrey de Charney, Master of Normandy, were brought from prison to receive judgment, when, to the dismay of the churchmen and the astonishment of all, they rose and solemnly declared their innocence and the blamelessness of the order. That same day, on the Isle des Juifs in the Seine, they were slowly roasted to death, declaring with their last breath that the confession formerly wrung from them by torture was untrue.

In England the trials were conducted with much less inhumanity. The charges for the most part failed to be established, and most of the prisoners were granted penances and permitted to escape with a formal abjuration, while a fair provision was made for their support. The last Master of the Temple in England, William de la More, died a prisoner in the Tower, to the last maintaining the innocence of the order. The memory of the various preceptories and possessions in England, Scotland, and Ireland survives in place names; the round Temple Church in London, consecrated in 1185, was restored by the Benchers of the Inner and Portugal and Germany the order was found innocent; almost everywhere in Italy, save in the case of six at Florence, the charges broke down.