Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/337

 THE TEMPLARS. 321 Clement vainly used every effort to win over the Council. The most that he could do was to prolong the discussion until the middle of February, 1312, when Philippe, who had called a meet- ing of the Three Estates at Lyons, hard by Vienne, came thence with Charles de Yalois, his three sons and a following numerous enough to impress the prelates with his power. A royal order of March 14 to the Seneschal of Toulouse to make a special levy to defray the expenses of the delegates sent by that city successively to Tours, Poitiers, Lyons, and Vienne, " on the business of the faith or of the Templars," shows how the policy, begun at Tours, of overawing the Church by pressure from the laity of the king- dom was unscrupulously pursued to the end. Active discussions followed. Philippe had dexterously brought forward again the question of the condemnation of Boniface VIII. for heresy, which he had promised, a year previous, to abandon. It was an impossi- bility to grant this without impugning the legitimacy of Boniface's cardinals and of Clement's election, but it served the purpose of affording an apparent concession. The combined pressure brought to bear upon the council became too strong for further resistance, and the Gordian knot was resolutely severed. In a secret con- sistory of cardinals and prelates held March 22, Clement presented the bull Vox in excelso, in which he admitted that the evidence did not canonically justify the definitive condemnation of the Order, but he argued that it had been so scandalized that no honorable men hereafter could enter it, that delay would lead to the dilapida- tion of its possessions with consequent damage to the Holy Land, and that, therefore, its provisional abolition by the Holy See was expedient. April 3 the second session of the council was held, in which the bull was published, and Clement apologized for it by Hist. Eccles. Lib. xxiv. (Muratori S. R. I. XL 1236).— Ray nouarcl, p. 187.— Cf. Raynald. aun. 1311, No. 55. If Schottrauller's assumption be correct as to the "Deminutio laboris exami- nantium processus contra orclinem Templi in Anglia," printed by him from a Vatican MS. (op cit. II. 78 sqq.) — that it was prepared to be laid before the commission of the Council of Vienne, it shews the unscrupulous manner in which the evidence was garbled for the purpose of misleading those who were to sit in judgment. All the favorable testimony is suppressed and the wild- est gossip of women and monks is seriously presented as though it were incon- trovertible. III.— 21