Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/267

 THE TEMPLARS. 251 examined in France, England, Spain, Italy, and Germany, whoso evidence could be used, it shows that the whole number can only have been insignificant in comparison with what had been general- ly imagined. Cyprus was the headquarters of the Order after the fall of Acre, yet at the time of the seizure there were but one hun- dred and eighteen members there of all ranks, and the numbers with which we meet in the trials everywhere are ludicrously out of proportion with the enormous total popularly attributed to the Order. A contemporary, of warmly papalist sympathies, ex- presses his grief at the penalties righteously incurred by fifteen thousand champions of Christ, which may be taken as an approxi- mate guess at the existing number ; and if among these we assume fifteen hundred knights, we shall probably be rather over than un- der the reality. As for the wealth of the Order, in the general ef- fort to appropriate its possessions it was every one's interest to con- ceal the details of the aggregate, but we chance to have a standard which shows that the estimates of its supereminent riches are gross- ly exaggerated. In 1244 Matthew Paris states that it possessed throughout Christendom nine thousand manors, while the Hospi- tallers had nineteen thousand. Nowhere was it more prosperous than in Aquitaine, and about the year 1300, in a computation of a tithe granted to Philippe le Bel, in the province of Bordeaux, the Templars are set down at six thousand livres, the Hospitallers at the same, while the Cistercians are registered for twelve thousand. In the accounts of a royal collector in 1293 there are specified in Auvergne fourteen Temple preceptories, paying in all three hun- dred and ninety-two livres, while the preceptories of the Hospital- lers number twenty-four, with a payment of three hundred and sixty-four livres. It will be remembered that a contemporary writer estimates the combined revenues of the two Orders at eight hundred thousand livres Tournois per annum, and of this the larger portion probably belonged to the Hospital.* 53.— Schottmuller, op. cit. I. 465.— Ferreti Vicentini Hist. (Muratori S. R. I. IX. 1018).— Matt. Paris, aim. 1244 (p. 417).— Dom Bouquet, XXI. 545.— Chassaing, Spicilegium Brivatense, pp. 212-13. An illustration of the exaggerations current as to the Templars is seen in the assertion, confidently made, that in P.ouss'llon and Cerdagne the Order owned
 * Proces des Templiers, I. 144.— Raynald. aim. 1307, No. 12 ; arm. 1311, No.