The Templars had for some time past been aware of the charges against them. On the 6th of June 1306 Pope Clement had sum moned Jacques de Molay, the grand master, from Cyprus to France, in order to consult him on the projected crusade. He had obeyed the call, and, in an interview with the pope, had taken the opportunity to demand a full inquiry. They had, however, taken no measures to defend themselves; the sudden action of the king took them wholly by surprise ; and on the night of Friday, the 13th of October 1307, their arrest was effected without difficulty, Jacques de Molay himself with sixty of his brethren being seized in Paris.
The Templars were caught in toils from which there was no escape. To force them to confess, they were first tortured by the royal officials, before being handed over to the inquisitors to be, if need were, tortured again. In Paris alone thirty-six died under the process. The result was, at the outset, all that the king could desire. Of 138 Templars examined in Paris between the 19th of October and 24th of November, some of them old men who had been in the order the greater part of their lives, 123 confessed to spitting on (or "near") the crucifix at their reception. Many of the prisoners confessed to all the charges, however grotesque. But the most damning confession was that of the grand master himself, publicly made with tears and pro testations of contrition and embodied in a letter (October 25) sent to all the Templars in France. He had been guilty, he said, of denying Christ and spitting on the cross.
To the pope, meanwhile, the proceedings in France were to the highest degree unwelcome. He had, indeed, become con vinced, if not of the general guilt of the order, at least of the guilt of some of its members. But the affair was one which he desired to reserve for his own judgment ; Philip's action he interpreted, rightly, as an encroachment of the civil power on the privileges and property of the Church, and his fears were increased when the French king, without consulting him, sent letters to King James of Aragon, Edward II. of England, the German king Albert and other princes, calling upon them to imitate his example. On the 27th of October Clement issued letters suspending the powers of the Inquisition in France. What followed is not clear, for the documentary evidence for these months is very defective; but on the 22nd of November the pope issued a bull calling on all kings and princes to arrest the Temp lars everywhere, his motive probably being to forestall the prob able action of the secular powers and keep the affair in his own hands. All scruples and hesitations now vanished. In England the Templars were arrested on the loth of January 1308, in Sicily on the 24th of the same month, in Cyprus on the 27th of May; in Aragon and Castile the process was less easy, for the knights, forewarned, had put their fortresses into a state of defence, notably their strong castle of Monzon, which was only taken after a long siege on the i 7th of May, while the last of the Templars' strongholds, Castellat, did not fall until Nov. 2nd.
Meanwhile, on the 26th of May, Philip had made his solemn entry into Poitiers, where the pope and cardinals had already assembled for the purpose of conferring with the king on the matter. After stormy debate, an arrangement was made. The king agreed to hand over to the papal commissioners the property • and persons of the Templars ; Clement, for his part, withdrew the sentence of suspension against the grand inquisitor of France and ordered an inquisition into the charges against individual Temp lars by the diocesan bishops with assessors nominated by himself. The examination of the grand master, of the grand visitor of France, and of the grand preceptors of Cyprus, Normandy and Aquitaine he reserved to himself. Inquisition was to be made into the conduct of the order in each country by special papal commissions; and the fate of the order as a whole was to be decided by a general council, summoned at Vienne for the ist of October 131I, when the question of the guilt of the order might be considered. Meanwhile the pope and cardinals had elaborated the organization of the new inquisition. There was much confusion and delay, however, and the actual public trial did not begin till the 11th of April, 131o. Many Templars, trusting in the assurance implied in their citation, had volunteered to defend the order and withdrew their previous confessions. They were soon undeceived ; the commission was packed with creatures of the crown. The evidence given in Paris for or against the order was, it was soon found, used against the individual Temp lars on their return to the provinces; the retractation of a con fession, under the rules set up for the diocesan inquisition, was punished with death by fire. Sixty-seven Templars perished in this way during May 131o. Meanwhile Clement and Philip had come to terms. The pope condemned the Templars. The council of Vienne met in October 1311. A discussion arose as to whether the Templars should be heard in their own defence. Clement, it is said, broke up the session to avoid compliance; and when seven Temp lars offered themselves as deputies for the defence he had them cast into prison. Towards the beginning of March Philip came to Vienne, and he was seated at the pope's right hand when that pontiff delivered his sermon against the Templars (3rd April 1312), whose order had just been abolished, not at the general council, but in private consistory (22nd March). On 2nd May 1312 he published the bull Ad Providam, transferring the goods of the society, except for the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Portu gal and Majorca, to the Knights of St. John.