2S6 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE STATE. the bishops were soon busily at work. Curiously enough, some of them doubted whether they could use torture, and applied for in- structions, to which Clement answered that they were to be gov- erned by the written law, which removed their misgivings. The papal instructions indicate that these proceedings only concerned those Templars who had not passed through the hands of Frere Guillaume and his commissioners, but there seems to have been little distinction observed as to this. Clement urged forward the proceedings with little regard to formality, and authorized the bishops to act outside of their respective dioceses, and without respect to the place of origin of the accused. The sole object evidently was to extract from them satisfactory confessions, as a preparation for the provincial councils which were to be sum- moned for their final judgment. Those who had already confessed were not likely to retract. Before the papal commission in 1310, Jean de Cochiac exhibited a letter from Philippe de Yohet and Jean de Jamville, the papal and royal custodians of the prisoners, to those confined at Sens at the time the Bishop of Orleans was sent there to examine them (the archbishopric of Sens was then vacant), warning them that those who revoked the confessions made before " los quizitor " would be burned as relapsed. Yohet, when summoned before the commission, admitted the seal to be his, but denied authorizing the letter, and the commission prudent- ly abstained from pushing the investigation further. The nervous anxiety manifested by most of those brought before the commis- sion that their statements should accord with what they had said before the bishops, shows that they recognized the danger which they incurred.* The treatment of those who refused to confess varied with the temper of the bishops and their adjuncts. The records of their tribunals have mostly disappeared, and we are virtually left to gather what we can from the utterances of a few witnesses who made to the commission chance allusions to their former ex- periences. Yet the proceedings before the Bishop of Clermont would show that they were not in all cases treated with undue harshness. He had sixty-nine Templars, of whom forty confessed,
- Du Puy, pp. 110, 125.— Raynouard, p. 130.— Regest. Clement. PP. Y T. IV.
pp. 453-55, 457-8.— Proces, I. 71-2, 128, 132, 135, 463, 511, 540, etc.
