Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/280

 264 POLITICAL HERESY. — THE STATE. were instructed to acquire property for the Order by fair means or foul, and all the above were declared to be fixed and absolute rules of the Order, dating from a time beyond the memory of any member. Besides these, it was reproached for the secrecy of its proceedings and neglect in the distribution of alms. Even this, however, did not satisfy the public imagination, and the most absurd exaggerations found credence, such as we have so frequently seen in the case of other heresies. The Templars were said to have admitted betraying St. Louis and the stronghold of Acre, and that they had such arrangements with the Soldan of Babylon that if a new crusade were undertaken the Christians would all be sold to him. They had conveyed away a portion of the royal treasure, to the great injury of the kingdom. The cord of chastity was magnified into a leather belt, worn next the skin, and the mahom- merie of this girdle was so powerful that as long as it was worn no Templar could abandon his errors. Sometimes a Templar who died in this false belief was burned, and of his ashes a powder was made which confirmed the neophytes in their infidelity. AVhen a child was born of a virgin to a Templar it was roasted, and of its fat an ointment was made wherewith to anoint the idol wor- shipped in the chapters, to which, according to other rumors, human sacrifices were offered. Such were the stories which passed from mouth to mouth and served to intensify popular abhorrence.* It is, perhaps, necessary at this point to discuss the still mooted question as to the guilt or innocence of the Order. Disputants have from various motives been led to find among the Templars Manichsean, Gnostic, and Cabalistic errors justifying their destruc- tion. Hammer-Purgstall boasted that he had discovered and identified no less than thirty Templar images, in spite of the fact that at the time of their sudden arrest the Inquisition, aided by the eager creatures of Philippe, was unable to lay its hands on a single one. The only thing approaching it was a metal reliquary in the form of a female head produced from the Paris Temple, wmich, on being opened, was found to contain a small skull preserved as a relic of the eleven thousand virgins. + 129 sqq. — Raynouard, p. 50. — Grandes Chroniques V. 188-90. — Chron. Auon. (Bouquet, XXI. 137).— Naucleri Chron. ann. 1306. t Wilcke, II. 424.— Proces des Templiers, II. 218. — The flimsiness of the evi-
 * Pissot, pp. 41-2. — Procks des Templiers, I. 89 sqq. — Mag. Bull. Roman. IX.