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LEFT TEMPLARS 290 TEMPLABS bull in 1172 rendeoed independent of the authority of the oishops, owning alle- giance to the Pope alone. Their houses enjoyed right of sanctuary, and they often preserved the treasure of kings and nobles. The Templars, at once knights and monks, realized the two dearest of mediseval ideals, and men of the highest courage and purest devotion flocked into their ranks, bringing with them their wealth to fill their coffers. Already by 1260 the order is said to have numbered 20,000 knights, and these perhaps the finest fighting men the world has seen. Charges of pride, of immorality and im- pieties, of secret heresies, and even of be- traying Frederic II. to the infidel (1229) and St. Louis to the Sultan of Egypt (1250) were yet to be hurled against the order; never, from the beginning to the end of their two centuries of history, was a Templar charged with cowardice be- fore the enemy. The most famous suc- cessors of Hugues de Payen (died 1136) were Bernard de Trenielai, who fell at Ascalon in 1153; Eudes de Saint- Amand (died 1179), who won a glorious victory over Saladin at Ascalon (1177), only to fall next year into the Sultan's hands after a disastrous battle; Gerard de Riderfort, who suffered a terrible defeat near Nazareth in 1187, a second at Hit- tin two months later, and died in battle under the walls of Acre in 1189; Robert de Sable, who aided Richard Cceur de Lion to gain a glorious victory in the plain of Arsouf (1191), and bought from him the island of Cyprus, which was soon transferred to Guy de Lusignan, whereupon Acre became the seat of the order, the famous stronghold of Pilgrim's Castle being built, whose stupendous ruins exist to this day; Peter de Mon- taigu, whose courage helped to take Da- mietta in 1219; Hermann de Perigord, who rebuilt the fortress of Safed; Guil- laume de Sonnac, slain beside St. Louis at the Nile in 1250; Thomas Berard, an Englishman, under whom Safed was lost in 1266, Jaffa and Antioeh in 1268; and GuiUaume de Beaujeu, who lost Tripoli in 1290, and fell in the bloody capture of Acre in 1291. The remnant of the Tem- plars sailed to Cyprus, and the latest flying gleams of the order's vigor in the East were the rash attempts to capture Alexandria (1800), and to establish a set- tlement at Tortosa (1300-1302) under the last and most ill-fated of its grand- masters. ■The Templars had failed in their work; their usefulness was past; the order had now only to sink into extinction in one of the darkest tragedies of history. Their wealth and pride had sowed a har- vest of fear and hatred; their loyalty to the Pope and their exceptional privileges had long since aroused the jealousy of the bishops; their bitter quarrels with the Hospitallers, which blazed into open warfare in Palestine in 1243, had shocked the moral sense of Christendom; and the exclusiveness and secrecy with which all their affairs were conducted opened a door for all manner of sinister suspicions among the populace. Philip the Fair of France was a king who covered with a thin veneer of piety a character of com- plete unscrupulousness; he had succeeded in placing Clement V., a miserable crea- ture of his own, on the papal throne (1305), and in his minister Guillaume de Nogaret and the officers of the Inquisi- tion he found servants of character un- scrupulous as his own. In the wealth of the Templars he saw a tempting prize, and the train of treachery was soon com- plete. The Grand-master Jacques de Molay was summoned from Cyprus by the Pope in 1306; he went taking with him the treasure of the order, and awaited his fate in France. On Oct. 13, 1307, the Grand-master and 140 Templars were seized at the Temple and flung into prison. Two degraded Templars sup- plied some of the charges the king re- quired; tortures, infamous beyond the infamies of the Inquisition, provided the remainder. In August, 1308, Clement sent throughout Christendom the 127 articles of interrogation for the accused, and evi- dence in detail self-contradictory beyond all parallel was quickly accumulated. In the 225 witnesses sent to the papal com- mission (1310-1311) from various parts of France the depositions, as Mr. Lea points out, occur most suspiciously in groups of identity according to the bish- ops from whose preliminary tribunals they had come. Philip held a so-called national assem- bly at Tours (May, 1308) which ob- sequiously expressed its approval of the condemnation. The Pope now took the formal responsibility upon himself by per- sonally examining 72 Templars brought before him, when those who had already confessed under torture confirmed their confessions, knowing well that the pen- alty of retraction was burning forthvinth as a relapsed heretic. The Pope con- tended that the fate of the order as an institution must be submitted to a gen- eral council. Meantime, to the public commission appointed to examine into the charges at Paris, there came (March, 1310), as many as 546 Templars who of- fered to defend the order against all the charges. Four of these were at length commissioned to be present at the