'PASTORALIS PRAEEMINENTIAE' AGAINST THE TEMPLARS

Old memories of St Michael's Mount, Cornwall

Today it's a cold and rainy day and The Grandma has decided to go to the library to spend some hours reading something interesting. She has chosen the biography of Pope Clement V because she's very interested in his participation against the order of the Knights Templar.

The Grandma and her friends are fans of the Knights Templar history and they have visited lots of places where this Order lived some centuries ago.

Before going to the library, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 20).

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Pope Clement V (1264-1314), born Raymond Bertrand de Got and also occasionally spelled de Guoth and de Goth, was Pope from 5 June 1305 to his death in 1314. He is remembered for suppressing the order of the Knights Templar and allowing the execution of many of its members, and as the Pope who moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, ushering in the period known as the Avignon Papacy.

Born in Villandraut, Aquitaine, as the son of Bérard, Lord of Villandraut, Bertrand became canon and sacristan of the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, then vicar-general to his brother Bérard de Got, the Archbishop of Lyon, who in 1294 was created Cardinal-Bishop of Albano. He was then made Bishop of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the cathedral church of which he was responsible for greatly enlarging and embellishing, and chaplain to Pope Boniface VIII, who made him Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1297.

First castle of the Knights Templar, Soure, Coimbra

In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two orders.

Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation.

According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English, decided to seize upon the rumours for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.

More information: National Geographic

Early in 1306, Clement V explained away those features of the Papal bull Clericis Laicos that might seem to apply to the king of France and essentially withdrew Unam Sanctam, the bull of Boniface VIII that asserted papal supremacy over secular rulers and threatened Philip's political plans, a radical change in papal policy.

On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of the Knights Templar were arrested in France, an action apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this move, but it has also embellished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V's coronation, the king charged the Templars with usury, credit inflation, fraud, heresy, sodomy, immorality, and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were heightened by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church, but would proceed independently.

Chastel Pelerin, Haifa, Israel

Pastoralis praeeminentiae was a papal bull issued by Pope Clement V on 22 November 1307 to all Christian monarchs. It ordered the arrest of all Knights Templar and to seize their properties on behalf of the church.  

Clement was forced to support the campaign against the Templars by Philip IV of France, who owed them a great deal of money and had initiated the first arrests against the Templars on 13 October 1307.

Despite the papal request, not all the monarchs complied immediately, most notably, Edward II of England who at first refused to believe the allegations, but later carried out the order.

Following the arrests, a period of trials was sanctioned against the Templars, enforced by torture and pain-induced confessions.

Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.

More information: History

With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.

As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession. Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. 

Comanda de Barbens, Pla de l'Urgell, Lleida

De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer.

According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows : Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort, God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death". Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.

The remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation, with virtually none convicted, absorbed into other Catholic military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller except in the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. 

More information: Time

Portugal was the first country in Europe where they had settled, occurring only two or three years after their foundation in Jerusalem and even having presence during Portugal's conception.

With the protection of the Portuguese king, Denis I, who refused to pursue and persecute the former knights as had occurred in all other sovereign states under the influence of the Catholic Church, in effect , causing the dissolution of the Templars by the rival order.

Templar organizations simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to the renown Order of Christ and also a parallel Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See in which both are considered the successors.

In pursuance of the king's wishes, Clement V in 1311 summoned the Council of Vienne, which refused to convict the Templars of heresy. The Pope abolished the order anyway, as the Templars seemed to be in bad repute and had outlived their usefulness as papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East. Their French estates were granted to the Knights Hospitallers, but Philip IV held them until his death and expropriated the Templars' bank outright.

More information: Quora

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