A bitter thing, a lamentable thing, a thing which is horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of, a detestable crime, an execrable evil, an abominable work, a detestable disgrace, a thing almost inhuman, indeed set apart from all humanity.

This high-flown rhetoric forms the opening of King Philip IV's secret orders to his baillis and sénéchaux throughout France, dated 14 September 1307, instructing them to make preparations for the arrest of the members of the Order of the Temple throughout the kingdom. To the king's great astonishment and horror, persons ‘worthy in the faith’ had recounted to him the criminality of the brothers of the Temple who, ‘entertaining a wolf under the appearance of a lamb’, have again crucified Christ; indeed they have brought ‘injuries more grave than those he underwent on the cross’. These men, while professing to be Christians, in fact, when they were received into the Order, denied Christ three times and spat three times on his image. Then, stripped of their secular clothing, and brought naked before the senior Templar in charge of their reception, they are kissed by him on the lower spine, the navel, and finally on the mouth, ‘in shame of human dignity, according to the profane rite of their Order’. Moreover, by a vow of their profession, they are then obliged to indulge in carnal relations with other members of the Order, ‘being required without the possibility of refusal’. Finally, ‘this unclean people forsake the font of life-giving water’ and make offerings to idols. Throughout the document the massive verbal onslaught is maintained. By their words and deeds, they ‘defile the land with their filth, remove the benefits of the dew and infect the purity of the air’.

The king admitted that at first he had doubted the truth of the accusations, because he felt that informers of this kind and carriers of rumours so unfortunate might have been acting more from ‘the malice of envy, or the stirring of hatred, or the roots of cupidity, than from fervour of the faith, zeal for justice, or the compassion of charity’.