The Knights Templars.

witnesses with each other , strangers as well as Templars , because several did not testify against themselves , but agaiusfc other persons . The Archbishop of Sens , who was paying the price of his elevation to a hard creditor , and pressed by the

King to despatch the business , resolved to dispense with this , as the accused would challenge the depositions against them—in all probability prove their utter falseness ; while the length of the proceedings , and the great number of the witnesses , made the other members of the Council side with

him in rejecting this course . They declared the crimes proved , and he'd that there was no necessity for confronting the witnesses . They were tired of being employed eighteen months on the process . On the 26 th of May , the Archbishops of

Sens and Rheims pronounced their definite and sovereign sentence against the Order . They discharged all the Grand Officers , Preceptors , and brethren of the Temple , from their engagements to the Order ; a kind of preparation for its

abolition . They discharged . and absolved those against whom there was no charge , and gave them their liberty , but the number was very small . They divided the guilty into four classes , of whom three had avowed their crimes , asked pardon , and been reconciled to the church . In the first of these three classes were those against whom the charges

were light . Upon these they imposed a penance , after fulfilling which , the Templars were to be set at liberty . In the second were those Knighis convicted of gi'ave crimes , but nevertheless pardonable : they ordered that these should be shut up in

prison , all the time it should be judged proper to expiate their crimes . In the third , wore those convicted of the most criminal offences , such as idolatry ; they ? were condemned " to be shut up within four walls " for the rest of their lives . The

fourth class consisted of fifty-nine Templars who had revoked their first deposition , declaring it to be false , and persisted in this revocation , maintaining the innocence of the Order , and of those who had undertaken its defence . The Archbishop

of Sens had a number of this class brought before him , and he interrogated them once more himself .

" You have / ' he said , " avowed that at your receptions of Knights , you renounce Christ , defile the Cross , and permit those you receive to commit the most abominable crimes . You have also acknowledged that you have fallen into heresy . By your confession and your repentance , you

have merited absolution and reconciliation with the Church . If you revoke your confessions , the Church will cease to regard you as reconciled , but as having returned to your former errors . You are therefore relapsed , aud the relapsed are condemned to the flames . "

The Templars , in reply , pointed out that their religion , and the principles of their theology , were the same as those of the inquisition , and as over a tribunal of inquisitors the Archbishop of Sens at that moment presided , they could say if this was

not the truth . " The public acis upon which you have power to judge our Order and ourselves , are in all times and in all laws , conformable to the dogmas , the morals , and thd discipline of the Catholic Church . You pretend that in secret \

vehave sacrilegious customs , aud entertain heretical opinions . But how do you prove these pretended , crimes ? By material proof ? No ! By proper declarations freely aud voluntarily given ? No I Your only proofs have been declarations torn from

us by . violence and torture . We have revoked these declarations , which are null according to reason and law . We therefore hold the same

position as we did before being tortured . ; we are not heretics , and we cannot be considered as such . Why , to-day , do you call us heretics ; why do you treat us as guilty of heresy ; if , at the same time , you hold by the maxim , that a free retraction ,

voluntary and evidently dictated by a sentiment of truth and honour , does not destroy the proof , which you suppose is the result of our forced and involuntary declarations ; why do you confine the application of that strange maxim to us ? When

we desire to withdraw these confessions of guilt , you declare us relapsed ! The relapsed are those who , having once committed an error which they have avowed and been absolved from , fall , again into the same error . This is not our case . We confessed to crimes we never committed . That confession we now retract . Since we have been in

prison , have we of new committed these pretended impieties of which you accuse us ? Can you prove such ? Without doubt , no ! nor have you dared to charge us with them . And it is for us to judge the relapsed , and to condemn them in our own

chapters ; we being their natural judges . What right have you to violate the order of jurisdiction . Far from you , we have left our dungeons , in expectation of finding here the tardy daj r of justice . We consented to come to Paris to defend the Order , as the Papal Bull gave us permission and