Discourse of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre

They were all arrested in the Kingdom and led to various prisons.

He himself went to the temple after having had the Grand Master and the principal officers led to prison, and he seized their effects.

Here are the crimes of which the Order was accused:

1. Compelling those received into the Order to renounce J.C. Jesus Christ and to spit on the crucifix.

2. Practicing sodomy and the prohibition of the use of women.

3. Kissing the one who received them on the mouth, the navel, and the buttocks (or behind) observation on this object by explanation.

4. Placing in a certain secret ceremony a head of gilded or silvered wood with a beard, which was adored by all those who attended.

They worked relentlessly on their trial; they heard more than 140 witnesses; they delivered all the prisoners to the most frightful tortures. Several lost their lives there while maintaining their innocence. Some claim that the Grand Master Despréaults Jacques de Molay was among those who endured the various tortures while maintaining the contrary. Of this number was De Gony, brother of the Dauphin. It does not seem that Despréaults was convinced of the facts of which they were accused, since it is said that it was on August 21, 1309 the time that is struck in the Master's degree that they appeared, and that three days later, being interrogated in public, their confession was read to them. The Grand Master Despréaults was extremely surprised; in the first instance, raising his voice and looking with indignation

at his judges, he exclaimed, "Is it possible that there are Christians capable of inventing such black calumnies? They deserve to be treated like the Saracens Muslims and like the traitorous barbarians, the infamous liars to whom one must open the belly sign of response in the Scottish Rite and cut the head to cut the head is a sign, etc., for the apprentice. Jesus Christ, avenge my innocence." Several confessed the fault by yielding to the violence of the torments and retracted afterward, preferring to suffer the most cruel death than to save their lives by a lie. There were 74 who declared that all the articles of which they were accused were false and abominable and that it could only be villains and traitors like Possedy and the Prior of Montfaucon accusation in the Master's degree who could have put forward the authors, and that those who had confessed under torture and what had been demanded of them had only done so because of the violence of their pains, to which they had been unable to resist, and that they were persuaded that none of them, if he were at liberty, would say the contrary.

The Commissioners remained in Paris from the month of August 1309 until the month of April 1311. The sentences they rendered against all the people (convinced according to them) of these crimes are an evident proof of their injustice.

Some were condemned to certain punishments, others absolved, others to perpetual imprisonment, others for a limited time. There were 74 burned over a slow fire outside the St. Antoine gate after having been degraded when the recipient is made to pass through fire. They maintained their innocence in the flames until their last breath, and the falsity of the imputations that were made against them. In 1311, the bull of condemnation was published and a