The Persecution of the Templars by Alain Demurger

Author:Alain Demurger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2018-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

The spokesmen for the Temple

The four spokesmen whom the Templars chose included two priests of the Order and two knights from Auvergne.

Pierre de Bologne

Pierre de Bologne de Rotis was born in 1263 into a family of that name which a lively tradition, but one without true foundations, claimed to be originally from Bergamo. He probably studied law at the University of Bologna and entered the Temple in that city in 1282, received by Guillaume de Noves, who was commander of Lombardy at that time. He was present in Venice in 1288, when he attended an Order reception. His intellectual training led him to be chosen as general procurator of the Order at the Roman Curia, probably beginning in 1298. He followed the Curia to France, and in particular to Poitiers, when Pope Clement was elected. He was in Paris when he was arrested and imprisoned in the Temple and interrogated on 7 November 1307 (he confessed); he was transferred from the Temple to the Bois de Vincennes on 30 January 1308 with twenty-three other Templars, including Renaud de Provins. He was taken back to the Temple when he proved to be a defender of the Order in February 1310. He very quickly assumed the task of spokesman for the Templars. Undoubtedly brought before the Council of Sens on 11 and 12 May 1310, he probably saved his skin by returning to his initial confession, but his escape in the following days and his return to Italy are noted in the records of the papal commission.76 In Bologna he escaped the pursuits undertaken against the Templars, as the archbishop of Ravenna, Rinaldo da Concorrezzo, who presided over the papal commission in north-east Italy (including Emilia-Romagna), did not recognise as valid the confessions obtained under torture, and the Templars who appeared before him were exonerated. Pierre’s death in Bologna is noted with a very laudatory epitaph dated 6 May 1329:

Brother Pierre Rota, general procurator of the Order of the Knights Templar, who, after the year 1315, went to that of the Hierosolymitans [the Order of the Hospital,] a very strong champion of the Faith who, in a thousand trials, confirmed with his own blood the truth of the Christian religion, finding himself in Bologna, where he had his house following the installation in the same area of the Rota de Bergame family, finished his life and was interred in the church of Sainte-Marie du Temple, called the ‘Maggione’.77

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