THE TEMPLARS. 209 of the Order, of ages ranging from ten or eleven years upward.* High-born knights, priding themselves on their honor, priests, la- borers, husbandmen, menials of all kinds were brought in, and, if we are to believe their evidence, they were without notice obliged, by threats of death and lifelong imprisonment, to undergo the severest personal humiliation, and to perform the awful task of renouncing their Saviour and spitting on, or even more outra- geously defiling, the cross which was the object of their veneration and the symbol of their faith. Such a method of propagating heresy by force in the Europe of the Inquisition, of trusting such fearful secrets to children and to unwilling men of all conditions, is so absurd that its mere assertion deprives the testimony of all claim to credence. Equally damaging to the credibility of the evidence is the self- contradictory character of its details. It was obtained by examin- ing the accused on a series of charges elaborately drawn up, and by requiring answers to each article in succession, so that the gen- eral features of the so-called confessions were suggested in advance. Had the charges been true there could have been little variation in the answers, but in place of a definite faith or a systematic ritual we find every possible variation that could suggest itself to witnesses striving to invent stories that should satisfy their tort- urers. Some say that they were taught Deism — that God in heaven alone was to be worshipped.f Others, that they were forced to renounce God.:}; The usual formula reported, however, was simply to renounce Christ, or Jesus, while others were called upon to renounce Notre Sire, or la Profeta, or Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints.§ Some professed that they could not recollect whether their renunciation had been of God or of Christ. II Some-
- Proces, I. 241, 412, 415, 602, 611 ; II. 7, 295, 298, 354, 359, 382, 394.— Regie,
§7, p. 211. t Proces, I. 213, 332 ; II. 388,404.— Raynouard, p. 281.— In this and the fol- lowing notes I can only give a few references as examples. To do so exhaust- ively would be to make an analytical index of the whole voluminous mass of testimony. I Proces, I. 206, 242, 302, 378, 386, etc. ; II. 5, 27, etc. § Proces, I. 254, 417 ; II. 24, 62, 72, 104.— Bini, Dei Tempieri in Toscana, pp. 463, 470, 478. U Proces, II. 42, 44, 59.
