Council of Vienne

The Knights Templar were a military order founded in the twelfth century to ensure the safety of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. In the following centuries the order grew in power and wealth. In the early 14th century, Philip IV of France urgently needed money to continue his war with England, and he accused the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques De Molay, of corruption and heresy. On 13 October 1307 Philip had all French Templars arrested, charged with heresy, and tortured until they allegedly confessed to their charges.[1] These forced admissions released Philip from his obligation to repay loans obtained from the Templars and allowed him to confiscate the Templars' assets in France.

The arrests of the Knights Templar, coupled with the defiance of the Colonna cardinals and Philip IV against Pope Boniface VIII, convinced Clement V to call a general council.[2] Though the site of Vienne was criticised for its lack of neutrality (being under the control of Philip), Clement nevertheless chose it as the site for the council.[3]

Pope Clement V

Pope Clement V convened the Council by issuing the bulls Faciens misericordiam and Regnans in coelis on 12 August 1308.[lower-alpha 1][5]

The opening of the Council was delayed, giving time to the Templars to arrive so they could answer the charges put against them, and was not convened until 16 October 1311.[6] The Regnans in coelis was sent to nearly 500 clerics, prelates, masters of militant Orders, and priors.[4][lower-alpha 2] The attendees consisted of twenty cardinals, four patriarchs, about one hundred archbishops and bishops, plus several abbots and priors. The great princes, including the rulers of Sicily, Hungary, Bohemia, Cyprus, and Scandinavia, as well as the kings of France, England, and the Iberian peninsula, had been invited. No king appeared,[lower-alpha 3] except Philip IV who arrived the following spring to pressure the council against the Templars.[6]

Knights Templar

Seal of the Knights Templar

The main item on the agenda of the Council not only cited the Order of Knights Templar itself, but also "its lands", which suggested that further seizures of property were proposed. Besides this, the agenda also invited archbishops and prelates to bring proposals for improvement in the life of the Church. Special notices were sent to the Templars directing them to send suitable defensores (defenders) to the Council. The Grand Master Jacques de Molay and others were also commanded to appear in person. Molay, however, was already imprisoned in Paris and trials of other Templars were already in progress.

The Council began with a majority of the cardinals and nearly all the members of the Council being of the opinion that the Order of Knights Templar should be granted the right to defend itself.[9] Furthermore, they believed that no proof collected up to then was sufficient to convict the order of the heresy of which Philip accused it. The discussion of Knights Templar was then put on hold.

In February 1312 envoys from the Philip IV negotiated with the Pope, without consulting the Council, and Philip held an assembly in Lyon to put further pressure on the Pope and the Council on the topic of the Templars. [10] Philip IV then went to Vienne on 20 March. Clement was forced to adopt the expedient of suppressing the Order of Knights Templar, not by legal methods (de jure), but on the grounds of the general welfare of the Church and by Apostolic ordinance (per modum provisionis seu ordinationis apostolicae). The Pope then presented to the commission of cardinals (for their approval) the bull to suppress the Templars in Vox in excelso (A voice from on high), dated 22 March 1312.[11]

The Council, to placate Philip IV of France, condemned the Templars, delivering their wealth in France to him.[12] Delegates for King James II of Aragon insisted the Templar property in Aragon be given to the Order of Calatrava.[13] The bulls Ad providam of 2 May and Nuper in concilio of 16 May confiscated Templar property.[14] The fate of the Templars themselves was decided by the bull Considerantes of 6 May.[15] In the bulls Licet dudum (18 Dec 1312), Dudum in generali concilio (31 Dec 1312) and Licet pridem (13 Jan 1313), Clement V dealt with further aspects of the Templars' property.

Disbanding the Beguines

In 1312, the Council and Clement's papal bull, Ad nostrum qui,[22] condemned the Beguines and Beghards movement, a group of laymen and laywomen that lived in semi-monastic communities,[23] as heretical.[24] According to the Council, members of this movement were deemed heretics because of their antinomian heresy of the "Free Spirit".[24] Following the Council's decision, there were instances where Beghards and Beguines were burned as heretics.[25]

Philip IV of France

University chairs

The Council decreed the establishment of chairs (professorships) of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic at the Universities of Avignon, Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca, although the chairs of Arabic were not actually set up.[33] The delegates from Aragon pushed for the creation of an adequate place to teach different languages so as to preach the Gospel to every man.[34]

Pope Celestine V

The Council ended on 6 May 1312.[38] A Parisian chronicler, John of Saint-Victor, stated, "It was said by many that the council was created for the purpose of extorting money."[6] The French ascendancy into the highest echelons of the Church hierarchy became very obvious at the Council.[39]

According to the Friedberg edition of the Corpus Iuris Canonici all of Clement's decrees were made at the Council of Vienne.[40] John XXII's prefatory letter, however, states Clement combined decrees drafted before and after the meeting at Vienne.[40] In 1312, in anticipation of a revised version of the Council being drafted at the time, Clement ordered that copies of the Vienne decrees that were then in circulation be recalled or burned.[40] The final draft was approved in March 1314, but Clement's death interrupted the distribution of the new copies.[40]

• Ames, Christine Caldwell (2015). Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Cambridge University Press.
• Barber, Malcolm (2012). The New Knighthood. Cambridge University Press.
• Barber, Malcolm (2012a). The Trial of the Templars. Cambridge University Press.
• Bellitto, Christopher M. (2002). The General Councils: A History of the Twenty-one General Councils from Nicaea to Vatican II. Paulist Press.
• Bradbury, Jim (2007). The Capetians: Kings of France 987–1328. London: Hambledon Continuum. ISBN 978-1852855284.
• Brown, Elizabeth A.R.; Regalado, Nancy Freeman (1994). "La grant feste: Philip the Fair's Celebration of the Knighting of His Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313". In Hanawalt, Barbara; Reyerson, Kathryn (eds.). City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe. University of Minnesota Press.
• Burr, David (2001). The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis. Penn State University Press.
• Devereux, Andrew W. (2020). The Other Side of Empire: Just War in the Mediterranean and the Rise of Early Modern Spain. Cornell University Press.
• Douie, Decima Langworthy (1932). The Nature and the Effect of the Heresy of the Fraticelli. Manchester University Press.
• Fasolt, Constantin (2002). Council and Hierarchy: The Political Thought of William Durant the Younger. Cambridge University Press.
• Field, Sean L. (2012). The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart. University of Notre Dame Pres. 262
• Finucane, Ronald C. (2011). Contested Canonizations: The Last Medieval Saints, 1482–1523. The Catholic University of America Press.
• Fudge, Thomas A. (2003). "Incest and Lust in Luther's Marriage: Theology and Morality in Reformation Polemics". The Sixteenth Century Journal. Sixteenth Century Journal. 34, No. 2, Marriage in Early Modern Europe (Summer): 319–345. doi:10.2307/20061412. JSTOR 20061412.
• Gardner, Julian (2018). "Painters, Inquisitors, and Novices". Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz. Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut. 60. Bd., H. 2: 223–254.
• Georgiou, Constantinos (2018). Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean: Propaganda, Liturgy and Diplomacy. Routledge.
• Havely, N. R., ed. (2004). Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the 'Commedia'. Cambridge University Press.
• Hughes, Philip (1947). History of the Church. Vol. 3: The Revolt Against The Church: Aquinas To Luther. Sheed and Ward.
• Irwin, Robert (2007). For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies. Penguin. ISBN 978-0140289237.
• Jotischky, Andrew (2017). Crusading and the Crusader States. Routledge.
• Menache, Sophia (1998). Clement V. Cambridge University Press.
• Provost, Alain (2016). "On the Margins of the Templars' Trial: The Case of Bishop Guichard of Troyes". In Nicholson, Helen; Crawford, Paul F.; Burgtorf, Jochen (eds.). The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314). Routledge. pp. 117–128.
• Rollo-Koster, Joëlle (2015). Avignon and Its Papacy, 1309–1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• Schilling, Heinz (2006). "Urban architecture and ritual in confessional Europe". In Muchembled, Robert; Schilling, Heinz; Monter, William; Tóth, István György (eds.). Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.
• Setton, Kenneth M. (1975). "The Catalans and Florentines in Greece, 1380–1462". In Hazard, Harry W. (ed.). A History of the Crusades. Vol. III: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. The University of Wisconsin Press.
• Tarrant, Jacqueline (1974). "The Clementine Decrees on the Beguines: Conciliar and Papal Versions". Archivum Historiae Pontificiae. Gregorian Biblical Press. 12: 300–308.
• Taylor, Claire (2013). "Evidence for Dualism in Inquisitorial Registers of the 1240s: A Contribution to a Debate". History. Wiley. 98, No. 3 (331) (July) (331): 319–345. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.12011.
• Venning, Timothy (2015). A Chronology of the Crusades. Routledge.
• Wacks, David A. (2019). Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World. University of Toronto Press.

• Catholic Encyclopedia
• Detailed history of the Knights Templar
• Outline of the Council and text of the bulls issued
• Council of Vienne