THE TEMPLARS. 319 already been tortured three years before, but now all were tort- ured again, with the result of obtaining the kind of testimony re- quired, including demon- worship.* In spite of all these precautions it required the most arbitrary use of both papal and kingly influence to force from the council a reluctant assent to what was evidently regarded by Christendom as the foulest injustice. It is, perhaps, significant that the acts of the council vanished from the papal archives, and we are left to gather its proceedings from such fragmentary allusions as occur in contemporary chroniclers and from the papal bulls which re- cord its results. Good orthodox Catholics have even denied to it the right to be considered (Ecumenic, in spite of the presence of more than three hundred bishops from all the states of Europe, the presidency of a pope, and the book of canon laws which was adopted in it, no one knows how.f The first question to be settled was Clement's demand that the Order should be condemned without a hearing. He had, as we have seen, solemnly summoned it to appear, through its chiefs and procurators, before the council, and had ordered the Cardinal of
- Bini,p. 501. — Raynouard, pp. 233-5, 303. — Vaissette, IV. 140-1.
f Hefele, Conciliengeschichte I. 66. — Franz Ehrle, Archiv f. Litt.- u. Kirchen- geschichte, 1886, p. 353. — The apologetic tone in which it was felt necessary to speak of the acts of the council with regard to the Templars is well illustrated by a Vatican MS. quoted by Raynaldus, ann. 1311, No. 54. Only fragments have reached us of the vast accumulation of documents re- specting the case of the Templars. In the migrations of Clement V. doubtless some were lost (Franz Ehrle, Archiv fur Litt- u. Kirchengesch. 1885, p. 7) ; others in the Schism, when Benedict XIII. carried a portion of the archives to Peniscola (Schottmuller, I. 705), and others again in the transport of the papers of the curia from Avignon to Rome. When, in 1810, Napoleon ordered the papal archives transferred to Paris, where they remained until 1815, the first care of General Radet, the French Inspector-general of Rome, was to secure those concerning the trials of the Templars and of Galileo (Regest. Clement. PP. V., Romae, 1885, T. I. Proleg, p. ccxxix.). During their stay in Paris Ray- nouard utilized them in the work so often quoted above, but even then only a few seem to have been accessible, and of these a portion are now not to be found in the Vatican MSS.« although Schottmuller, the most recent investigator, ex- presses a hope that the missing ones may yet be traced (op. cit. I. 713). The number of boxes sent to Paris amounted to 3239, and the papal archivists com- plained that many documents were not restored. The French authorities de- clared that the papal agents to whom they had been delivered sold immense quantities to grocers (Reg. Clem. V. Proleg. pp. ccxciii.-ccxcviii.).
