The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Bauer Susan Wise

Author:Bauer, Susan Wise [Bauer, Susan Wise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

59.1 The Papal Palace at Avignon.

Credit: Photo by author

He then recanted this, but the damage was done. Wielding the Grand Master’s confession, interrogators convinced other Templars to confess to a whole range of blasphemous and idol-worshipping rituals, including black magic and ritual acts of sodomy. In 1310, Philip IV ordered fifty-four Templars burned at the stake outside the walls of Paris; on March 24, 1312, Clement V officially abolished the Templars, with “bitterness and sadness of heart . . . by an irrevocable and perpetually valid decree.” In 1314, the elderly Grand Master was removed from his prison cell and burned to death on a tiny island in the middle of the Seine.12

Meanwhile, Clement V continued his policy of royal appeasement.

In 1308, Albert of Germany had been assassinated; in his place, the German electors chose Henry of Luxembourg as King Henry VII of Germany. Henry wanted to become the next Holy Roman Emperor; Clement V did not dare enter Rome, but he agreed to send cardinals who would crown Henry there.

Henry made a long journey south, crossing into Italy in the fall of 1310. There he was welcomed by the Ghibellines. The Guelphs, who had the upper hand in Florence thanks to Charles of Valois’s support of the Neri, encouraged other Guelphs throughout northern Italy to hinder Henry’s approach. “The Florentines, the Bolognese, the Lucchese, the Sienese, the Pistoians, and they of Volterra, and all the other Guelf cities . . . held a parliament,” Villani writes, “and concluded a league together, and a union of knights, and swore together to defend one another and oppose the Emperor.”13

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