242 POLITICAL HERESY. — THE STATE. in the crusade preparing against Manfred, and was removed by Urban IV. When ordered to resign his commission he boldly replied to Urban that no pope had ever interfered with the inter- nal affairs of the Order, and that he would resign his office only to the Grand Master who had conferred it. Urbau excommuni- cated him, but the Order sustained him, being discontented be- cause the succors levied for the Holy Land were diverted to the papal enterprise against Manfred. The following year a new pope, Clement IV., in removing the excommunication, bitterly re- proached the Order for its ingratitude, and pointed out that only the support of the papacy could sustain it against the hostility of the bishops and princes, which apparently was notorious. Still the Order held out, and in common with the Hospitallers and Cis- tercians, refused to pay a tithe to Charles of Anjou, in spite of which Clement issued numerous bulls confirming and enlarging its privileges.* That this antagonism on the part of temporal and spiritual potentates had ample justification there can be little doubt. If, as we have seen, the Mendicant Orders rapidly declined from the enthusiastic self-abnegation of Dominic and Francis, such a body as the Templars, composed of ambitious and warlike knights, could hardly be expected long to retain its pristine ascetic devotion. Already, in 1152, the selfish eagerness of the Grand Master, Ber- nard de Tremelai, to secure the spoils of Ascalon nearly prevented the capture of that city, and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was hastened when, in 1172, the savage ferocity of Eudes de Saint-
- Prutz, op. cit. pp. 38-41, 43, 45, 47-8, 57, 64-9, 75-80.— J. Delaville le
Roulx, Documents concernant les Templiers Paris, 1882, p. 39. — Bini, Dei Tem- pieri in Toscana, Lucca, 1845, pp. 453-55. — Raynald. ann. 1265, No. 75-6. — Mar- tene Thesaur. II. Ill, 118. ' The systematic beggary of the Templars must have been peculiarly exasper- ating both to the secular clergy and the Mendicants. Monsignor Bini prints a document of 1244 in which the Preceptor of Lucca gives to Albertino di Pontre- moli a commission to beg for the Order. Albertino employs a certain Aliotto to do the begging from June till the following Carnival, and pays him by empow- ering him to beg on his own account from the Carnival to the octave of Easter (op. cit. pp. 401-2, 439-40). For the disgraceful squabbles which arose between the secular clergy and the Military Orders over this privileged beggary, see Fau- con, Registres de Boniface VIII. No. 1950, p. 746.
