Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/312

 296 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE STATE. This ferocious expedient accomplished its purpose. When, on the day after the executions at Paris, May 13, the commission opened its session, the first witness, Aimery de Villiers, threw himself on his knees, pale and desperately frightened ; beating his breast and stretching forth his hands to the altar, he invoked sud- den death and perdition to body and soul if he lied. He declared that all the crimes imputed to the Order were false, although he had, under torture, confessed to some of them. When he had yes- terday seen his fifty -four brethren carried in wagons to be burned, and heard that they had been burned, he felt that he could not endure it and would confess to the commissioners or to any one else whatever might be required of him, even that he had slain the Lord. In conclusion he adjured the commissioners and the nota- ries not to reveal what he had said to his jailers, or to the royal officials, for he would be burned like the fifty-four. Then a pre- vious witness, Jean Bert-rand, came before the commission to sup- plicate that his deposition be kept secret on account of the danger impending over him. Seeing all this, the commission felt that during this general terror it would be wise to suspend its sittings, and it did so. It met again on the 18th to reclaim fruitlessly from the Archbishop of Sens, Penaud de Provins, who had been put on trial before the council. Pierre de Boulogne was likewise snatched away and could not be obtained again. Many of the Templars who had offered to defend the Order made haste to withdraw, and all effort to provide for it an organized hearing before the Council of Yienne was perforce abandoned. Whether Clement was privy to this high-handed interruption of the functions of his commission is perhaps doubtful, but he did nothing to rehabilitate it, and his quiescence rendered him an accomplice. He had only succeeded (Bouquet, XXL 654-55). — Contin. Guill. Nangiac. ann. 1310. — Grandes Chro- niques,V. 187.— Chron. Cornel. Zantfliet ann. 1310 (Martene Ampl. Coll. V. 158).— Bessin, Concil. Rotomagens. p. iii. — Raynouard, pp. 118-20. It was not all bishops who were ready to accept the inquisitorial doctrine that revocation of confession was equivalent to relapse. The question was dis- cussed in the Council of Narbonne and decided in the negative. — Raynouard, p. 106. The number of those who refused to confess was not insignificant. Some papers respecting the expenses of detention of Templars at Senlis describe sixty- five as not reconciled, who therefore cannot have confessed. — lb. p. 107.