324 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE STATE. year became condemnation for heresy. General instructions were given that the impenitent and relapsed were to be visited with the utmost penalties of the law. Those who, even under torture, denied all knowledge of error afforded a problem insoluble to the wisdom of the council and were referred to the provincial councils to be treated as justice and the equity of the canons required : to those who confessed, the rigor of justice should be tempered with abun- dant mercy. They were to be placed in the former houses of the Order or in monasteries, taking care that no great number should be herded together, and be decently maintained out of the property of the Order. Interest in the subject, however, passed away with the alienation of the property, and few provincial councils seem to have been held save those of Tarragona and Xarbonne already men- tioned. Many Templars rotted to death in their dungeons ; some of the so-called "relapsed"' were burned; many wandered over Europe as homeless vagabonds ; others maintained themselves as best they might by manual labor. In Xaples, curiously enough, John XXII. in 1318 ordered them to be supported by the Domin- icans and Franciscans. When some attempted to marry, John XXII. pronounced that their vows were still binding and their marriages void, thus admitting that their reception had been regu- lar and not vitiated. He likewise assumed their orthodoxy when he permitted them to enter other Orders. A certain number of them did so, especially in Germany, where their fate was less bitter than elsewhere, and where the Hospitallers welcomed them by formal resolution of the Conference of Frankfurt -am-Mayn in 1317. The last Preceptor of Brandenburg, Frederic of Alvensleben, was re- ceived into the Hospital with the same preferment. In fact, popu- lar sympathy in Germany seems to have led to the assignment to them of revenues of which the Hospitallers complained as an in- supportable burden, and in 1318 John XXII. ordered that they should not be so provided for as to enable them to lay up money and live luxuriously, but should have merely a living and garments suited to spiritual persons.*
- Bern. Guidon. Flor. Chron. (Bouquet, XXL 722).— Godefroy de Paris, v.
6028-9.— Ferreti Vicentin. Hist. (Muratori S. R. I. IX. 1017).— Le Roulx, Docu- ments, etc., p. 51. — Havemann, Geschichte des Ausgangs,p. 290. — Fr. Pipini Chron. c. 49 (Muratori IX. 750).— Joann. de S. Victor. (Bouquet, XXI. 658). — Vaissette,
