The Knights Templar.

a paroxysm of despair . Witnesses were brought forward and formall y heard ; the crime appeared proven ; the pretended sorcerer ' s wife was burnt as an accomp lice , and Marigni , notwithstanding his rank of gentleman and chevalier , was sentenced to the gibbet . Such are the features of the age iu which the Templars were condemned ; such were the violent measures to which their remorseless accusers resorted for

the accomplishment of their nefarious machinations . To the corruption and errors of the age , as mnch as to the passions of certain persons in power , may be attributed the cruel tribulations , the preposterous accusations raised against the Templars , and whereof they all at once became the victims . Whoever may hesitate to believe that the inquisitor , Guillaume de Paris

, has proceeded against the Templars in a barbarous manner , cannot in justice refuse the attestations of historians , the complaints of the accused , the assertions of the judges , ancl above all , the instructions given by the inquisitor to his commissaries . * These instructions require confidential persons to be selected ; these persons are secretly to be instructed how to proceed ; an oath is to be administered to

them ; they are to understand at the same time that the king is informed of the crimes of the Templars by his holiness ancl by the church . They are to seize the property and persons of the Templars , ancl to cast them into prison ; not to permit them to have any intercourse with each other ; they are to have them interrogated , and finally to make use of the rack if it be necessary . Their confidential agents were to offer them pardonif they confessed what

, the inquisitor calls the truth ; and if they persisted in not confessing it , they were to let them know that they should suffer death . The inquisitor points out the pretended facts , whereof the commissaries or the racks were to extort the confession . He recommends not to have the interrogatories committed to writing ; nor to send them to the king unless the accused acknowledged themselves guilty .

What kind of proceedings are those which commence with torture ! What sort of judges are those who commence by declaring to the accused that unless he confesses the crimes which are imputed to him , he shall be condemned to death ! What injustice to commit to writing the answers only , which are made to the charge against the accused 1 Let nobody persume to say that those instructions have not been exactl y

complied with . Dupui states the interrogatories put to thirteen Templars at Caen . "The last of which Templars , on refusing to confess anything , was put to the torture , & c . " Many cotemporary historians relate the tortures which the Templars suffered . f . They were not exempt from torture even in Arragon , where their persecutors dared not condemn them . f