Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (important books to read .txt) 📗

suddenly hands them back tothe king. Why does this happen? Molay retracts his confession;Clement allows him a defense, and three cardinals are summoned tointerrogate him. On November 26, 1309, Molay proudly defends theorder and its purity; he even goes so far as to threaten itsaccusers. But then he is visited by an envoy from the king,Guillaume de Plaisans, whom Molay considers a friend. He is givensome obscure advice, and two days later, on November 28, he issuesa meek and vague deposition, in which he claims to be a poor,uneducated knight, and he confines himself to listing the (nowremote) merits of the Temple, its acts of charity, the blood theTemplars shed in the Holy Land, and so on. To make matters worse,Nogaret suddenly arrives and reminds everyone that the Temple oncehad dubious contacts with Saladin. Now the implied crime is hightreason. Molay's excuses are pathetic. He has endured two years inprison, and in this deposition he seems a broken man, but he seemeda broken man immediately after his arrest, too. In March of thefollowing year Molay adopts a new strategy in a third deposition.Now he refuses to speak at all, saying that he will address thepope himself but no one else,

A dramatic twist, andhere the epic theater begins. In April of 1310, five hundred andfifty Templars ask to be allowed to speak in defense of the order.They denounce the torture to which they have been subjected anddeny the charges against them. They demonstrate that all theaccusations are implausible. But the king and Nogaret know what todo. Some Templars have retracted their confessions? Fine. Theirretraction only makes them recidivists and perjurers¡Xrelapsi¡Xaterrible charge in those days. He who confesses and repents may bepardoned, but he who not only does not repent but also retracts hisconfession, forswears himself, and stubbornly denies that he hasanything to repent, he must die. Fifty such perjurers are condemnedto death.

It is easy to predictthe response of the other prisoners. If you confess, you stayalive, though locked up, and you can wait and see what happens. Ifyou do not confess, or, worse, if you retract your confession, yougo to the stake. The five hundred surviving retractors retracttheir retraction.

As it turns out, theones who repented chose wisely. In 1312 those who have notconfessed are sentenced to life imprisonment, whereas those whoconfessed are pardoned. Philip is not looking for a massacre; hejust wants to dissolve the order. The freed knights, broken in mindand body by four or five years in prison, quietly drift into otherorders. All they want is to be forgotten, and this silentdisappearance will fuel the legend of the order's undergroundsurvival.

Molay was still askingto be heard by the pope. Clement had convened a council in Viennein 1311, but Molay had not been invited. The suppression of theorder is ratified and its property turned over to the Hospitalers,though temporarily it is to be administered by the king.

Another three years goby, and finally an agreement is reached with the pope. On March 19,1314, in front of Notre-Dame, Molay is sentenced to lifeimprisonment. He reacts with a surge of dignity. He had expectedthe pope to allow him to exculpate himself; he now feels betrayed.He knows that if he retracts yet again he will be condemned as arecidivist and perjurer. What does he feel in his heart as hestands there after almost seven years awaiting judgment? Does heregain the courage of his forebears? Or does he simply decide that,ruined as he now is, condemned to end his days in dishonor, buriedalive, he might as well die a decent death? Because he protests ina loud voice that he and his brothers are innocent. The Templars,he says, committed one crime and one crime only: out of cowardicethey betrayed the Temple. He will dp so no longer.

Nogaret is overjoyed. Apublic crime requires public condemnation, definitive, immediate.Geoffroy de Charnay, the Templar preceptor of Normandy, followsMolay's example. The king makes his decision that very day: a pyreis erected at the tip of the lie de la Cite'. At sundown, Molay andCharnay are burned at the stake.

Tradition has it thatbefore his death the grand master prophesied the ruin of hispersecutors. And, indeed, the pope, the king, and Nogaret all diebefore the year is out. Once the king is gone, Marigny comes undersuspicion of embezzlement. His enemies accuse him of witchcraft andhave him hanged. Many begin to think of Molay as a martyr. Dantehimself voices widespread indignation at the persecution of theTemplars.

And that is wherehistory ends and legend begins. One part of the legend insists thatwhen Louis XVI was guillotined, an unknown man climbed onto theblock and shouted: "Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!"

That was more or lessthe story I told that night at Pilade's, with constantinterruptions.

Belbo, for instance,would ask: "Are you sure you didn't read this in Orwell orKoestler?" Or: "Wait a minute, this is just what happened towhat's-his-name, that guy in the Cultural Revolution." AndDiotallevi kept interjecting, sententiously: "His-toria magistravitae." To which Belbo responded: "Come on, cabalists don't believein history." And Diotallevi invariably answered: "That's just thepoint. Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a masterbecause it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutationsthat matter."

"We still haven'tanswered the real question," Belbo finally said. "Who were theTemplars? At first you made them sound like sergeants in a JohnFord movie, then like a bunch of bums, then like knights in anilluminated miniature, then like bankers of God carrying on theirdirty deals, then like a routed army, then like devotees of asatanic sect, and finally like martyrs tt free thought. What werethey in the end?"

"Probably they were allthose things. ¡¥What was the Catholic Church?' a Martian historianin the year 3000 might ask. ¡¥The people who got themselves thrownto the lions or the ones who killed heretics?' All of theabove."

"But did they do thosehorrible things or didn't they?"

"The funny thing is thattheir followers¡Xthe neo-Templars of various epochs¡Xsay they did.And they offer justifications. For instance, it was like fraternityhazing. You want to be a Templar? Okay, prove you have balls, spiton the crucifix, and let's see if God strikes you dead.