Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [45]
When he learned what had happened, the pope hazarded a protest, but it was too late. The royal investigators had already brought out their irons and ropes, and many Knights had begun to confess under torture. When they confessed, they were handed over to inquisitors, who had methods of their own, even though they were not yet burning people at the stake. The Knights confirmed their confessions.
This is the third mystery. Granted, there was torture, and it must have been vigorous, since thirty-six Knights died in the course of it. But not a single one of these men of iron, seasoned by their battles with the cruel Tlirk, resisted arrest. In Paris only four Knights out of a hundred and thirty-eight refused to confess. All the others did, including Jacques de Molay.
“What did they confess?” Belbo asked.
“They confessed exactly what was charged in the arrest warrant. There was hardly any variation in the testimony, at least not in France and Italy. In England, where nobody really wanted to go through with the trial, the usual accusations appeared in the depositions, but they were attributed to witnesses outside the order, whose testimony was hearsay. In other words, the Templars confessed only when asked to, and then only to what was charged.”
“Same old inquisitional stuff. We’ve seen it often,” Belbo remarked.
“Yet the behavior of the accused was odd. The charges were that during their initiation rites the Templars denied Christ three times, spat on the crucifix, and were stripped and kissed in posteriori parte spine dorsi, in other words, on the behind, then on the navel and the mouth, in humane dignitatis opprobrium. That they then engaged in mutual fornication. That they were then shown the head of a bearded idol, which they had to worship. Now, how did the accused respond to these charges? Geoffroy de Charnay, who was later burned at the stake with Molay, said that, yes, it had happened to him; he had denied Christ, but with his mouth, not his heart; he didn’t recall whether he spat on the crucifix, because they had been in such a hurry that night. As for the kiss on the behind, that also had happened to him, and he had heard the preceptor of Auvergne say that, after all, it was better to couple with brothers than to be befouled by a woman, but he personally had not committed carnal sins with other Knights. In other words: Yes, it’s all true, but it was only a game, nobody really believed in it, and anyway it was the others who did it, I just went along to be polite. Jacques de Molay—the grand master himself—said that when they gave him the crucifix, he only pretended to spit on it and spat on the ground instead. He admitted that the initiation ceremonies were more or less as described, but—to tell the truth—he couldn’t say for sure, because he had initiated very few brothers in the course of his career. Another Knight said that he had kissed the master, but only on the mouth, not the behind; it was the master who kissed him on the behind. Some did confess to more than was necessary, saying that they had not only denied Christ but also called Him a criminal, and they had denied the virginity of Mary, and they had urinated on the crucifix, not only on the day of their initiation, but during Holy Week as well. They didn’t believe in the sacraments, they said, and they worshiped not only Ba-phomet but also the Devil in the form of a cat...”
Equally grotesque, though not as incredible, is the pas de deux that now begins between the king and the pope. The pope wants to take charge of the case; the king insists on seeing the trial through to its conclusion. The pope suggests a temporary suspension of the order: the guilty will be sentenced, then the Temple will be revived in its original purity. The king wants the scandal to spread, wants it to involve the entire order. This will lead to the order’s complete dissolution—politically, religiously,