350

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

THE NEMESIS OF POWER 351
William of Nogaret-all demanding that he speed up the process against the dead Pope. It finally began in March
1310, more than a year after it was originally scheduled, and the Pope continued his delaying tactics, postponing
one of its hearings because he said he had a nosebleed, another because he had a stomach ache. William of
Nogaret was the prosecutor; Pope Clement did not dare remove him from the case, though the late Pope's
defenders vigorously demanded it, but he did personally refuse him Easter Communion, since he was still
excommunicated for the crime at Anagni.l6s
On May 12, 1310 a French provincial Church council sentenced 54 accused Templars to execution for
heresy by burning at the stake, despite the fact that all had withdrawn their earlier confessions before a papal
commission, and now protested their innocence to the last. l66 It was clear that Philip IV and his ministers were
determined to retain effective control of the disposition of the Templar prisoners. The reasons for their
determination to destroy the Templars have never been fully clear; though they obtained some of the order's
property and funds, much of it eventually went to the other crusading order, the Knights of the Hospital, which
was clearly not involved in the prosecution. 167 It was probably simply an exercise in state terrorism, to impose
the absolutist regime of Philip IV more firmly upon France. The astonishingly vicious prosecution of the
Templars was essentially the work of the same man who had planned and carried out the assault on Pope
Boniface VIII:
The relentless pursuit of the Templars shows the same tactics as those employed against
Boniface VIII and Guichard de Troyes: a war of propaganda, the summoning of the Estates, speeches
to the common
people, violence, charges of heresy and grotesque accusations of dealings with succubi and incubi.
The whole course of the trial reveals the undisguised hand of Nogaret.. . .
It is impossible to know for certain whether Nogaret inspired the king's policy, or was simply
carrying out the orders of Philip the Fair. In any case, the king and his minister together contrived the
suppression of
the Templars. To achieve their ends, they exerted overbearing pressure on a pope poor in health and
weak and conciliatory in character. They blackmailed Clement V by constantly threatening him with
the resumption of the trial of Boniface VIII. In this way they succeeded in overcoming the pontiffs
distaste for the task, and forced him to make the most regrettable concessions. 168
Mollat, Popes at Avignon, pp. xvii, 247-248; Lizerand, Clement V et Philippe le bel, pp. 130-132, 180-182, 184-185,
195, 215-216; Curley, Conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV, pp. 179-184.
166
Mollat, Popes at Avignon, p. 238; Lizerand, Clement V et Philippe le bel, pp. 146147; Howarth, Knights Templar,
pp. 298-299.
167
Strayer, Philip the Fair, p. 288 argues that Philip did not expect this outcome, but rather to be able to arrange
for the Templar wealth to go to a new religious order controlled by his family.
168
Mollat, Popes at Avignon, pp. 245-246.
Meanwhile there had been a change of Emperors. Albert of Habsburg was assassinated in May 1308 by
Duke John of Swabia and three companions on a forest path. Six months later the Count of Luxemburg, vigorous
and in the prime of life, was elected Emperor Henry VII by six of the seven electoral votes. Henry obtained the
cooperation of Frederick of Austria, Albert's son, despite the fact that he had been passed over in the election.
Pope Clement V confirmed Henry's election in June 1309 and announced that he would crown him in St. Peter's
in February 1312. The new Emperor sent messengers to the major Italian cities announcing his election and his
intention to come soon to Italy to establish peace and his authority there. In September 1310 the Pope formally
declared that Henry VII was worthy of the imperial crown and that Italians should support and obey him as their
temporal lord."' Dante hailed his advent:
This is he whom Peter, the vicar of God, exhorts us to honor, and whom Clement, the present successor
of Peter, illumines with the light of the apostolic benediction; that where the spiritual r~ suffices not,
there the splendor of the lesser luminary may lend its light. l
Henry VII entered Italy in late October, and early in November the Pope announced an alliance between
him and the Angevin royal family of Naples, which hopefully would heal at last the destructive division between
Guelf and Ghibelline in Italy. By this time Philip IV was distinctly uneasy with Pope Clement's strong support of
the vigorous new Emperor. If Henry were able to establish himself as ruler of northern Italy and allied with the
king of Naples in southern Italy, this would create a strong counterweight to France as the greatest power in
Christendom. Clement V would no longer be effectively controlled by the pressures Philip could bring to bear
against him. He signalized this in January 1311 by sharply criticizing Philip for pillaging the property of the
Templars, seizing Lyons, and challenging the rights of the Emperor, warning him not to follow the course of his
ancestor and namesake Philip II Augustus at the beginning of the thirteenth century. 171
This impressive and dramatic advent of a new Emperor intervening actively in Italy may well be the reason
that at this point Philip IV abated some of his pressure on Pope Clement V and showed a willingness to settle the

Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 91-93, 97; Mollat, Popes at Avignon, p. 190; William M. Bowsky, Henry VII in
Italy; the Conflict of Empire and City-Satte, 1310-1313 (Lincoln NE, 1960), pp. 19-22, 48; Holmes, Florence, Rome,
Renaissance, pp. 190-191. 17°Holmes, Florence, Rome, Renaissance, p. 191.
171
Bowsky, Henry VII in Italy, pp. 23-25, 55; Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 98; Mollat, Popes at Avignon, pp. 190-
191, 248; Strayer, Philip the Fair, pp. 366-367; Lizerand, Clement Vet Philippe le bel, pp. 216-217.