266 POLITICAL HERESY. — THE STATE. fact that the rules and statutes of the Order were reserved exclu- sively for its chiefs, and it has been assumed that in them were developed the secret mysteries of the heresy. Yet nothing of the kind was alleged in the proceedings ; the statutes were never offered in evidence by the prosecution, although many of them must have been obtained in the sudden seizure, and this for the best of reasons. Sedulously as they were destroyed, two or three copies escaped, and these, carefully collated, have been printed. They breathe nothing but the most ascetic piety and devotion to the Church, and the numerous illustrative cases cited in them show that up to a period not long anterior to the destruction of the Order there were constant efforts made to enforce the rigid Eule framed by St. Bernard and promulgated by the Council of Troves in 1128. Thus there is absolutely no external evidence against the Order, and the proof rests entirely upon confessions extracted by the alternative of pardon or burning, by torture, by the threat of torture, or by the indirect torture of prison and starvation, which the Inquisition, both papal and episcopal, know so well how to employ. We shall see, in the development of the affair, that when these agencies were not employed no admissions of criminality could be obtained.* ]So one who had studied the criminal juris-
- Writers unfamiliar with the judicial processes of the period are misled by
the customary formula, to the effect that the confirmation of a confession is not obtained by force or fear of torture. See Raynald. ann. 1307, No. 12, and Bini, Dei Tempieri in Toscana, p. 428. Wilcke asserts positively (op. cit. II. 318) that de Molay never was tortured, which may possibly be true (Amalr. Auger. Vit. Clem. V. ap. Muratori III. ii. 461), but he saw his comrades around him sub- jected to torture, and it was a mere question of strength of nerve whether he yielded before or after the rack. Prutz even says that in England neither tort- ure nor terrorism was employed (Geheimlehre, p. 104), which we will see below was not the case. Van Os (De Abol. Ord. Tempi, pp. 107, 109) is bolder, and argues that a confession confirmed after torture is as convincing as if no torture had been used. He carefully suppresses the fact, however, that retraction was held to be relapse and entailed death by burning. How the system worked is illustrated by the examination of the Preceptor of Cyprus, Raimbaud de Caron, before the inquisitor Guillaume, Nov. 10, 1307. When first interrogated he would only admit that he had been told in the presence of his uncle, the Bishop of Carpentras, that he would have to renounce Christ to obtain admission. He was then removed and subsequently brought back, when he remembered that at his reception he had been forced to renounce
