Torture and Confession in The Templar I

Torture and Confession in the Templar
Interrogations at Caen, 28–29 October 1307

By S e a n L . F i e l d
A number of recently restored documents concerning the 1307 arrest and inter-
rogation of the French Templars were exhibited in 2011 at the Archives nation-
ales in Paris, and digital images of five of these documents were simultaneously
made available online.1 The result has been not only a renewed fascination with
the affaire des Templiers in France, but the opportunity for scholars around the
world to access digitally these long-neglected original manuscripts.2 Popular at-
tention in 2011 understandably centered on the restoration of the massive roll
(Paris, Archives nationales [hereafter AN] J 413, no. 18) preserving the notarized
I would like to thank Ghislain Brunel for advice, encouragement, and permission to consult the
original documents studied here; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Julien Théry, and
the journal’s anonymous reviewers for helpful criticisms and suggestions; Charles F. Briggs and Larry
F. Field for corrections to Appendix A, and Melissa Reynolds and Erin Pomeroy for corrections to
Appendix B; and Xavier Hélary for his help in consulting the Corpus philippicum at the Institut de
recherche et d’histoire des textes in Paris.
1
For the exhibit see [Ghislain Brunel et al.], L’affaire des Templiers, du procès au mythe: Paris, Ar-
chives nationales, 2 mars–16 mai 2011 (Paris, 2011). The digitized documents made available to this
point by Ghislain Brunel and his colleagues through the ARCHIM database at http://www.culture.
gouv.fr/documentation/archim /proces-templiers.html are AN J 413, no. 18 (notarized Latin record
of confessions of 138 Templars in Paris, 19 October–24 November 1307); no. 20 (vernacular record
of confessions of 13 Templars in Caen, 28–29 October 1303); no. 22 (copy of vidimus dated 21 Oc
tober 1307 by the bailli of Rouen of the arrest orders, the vernacular accompanying instructions,
and the letter from the inquisitor Guillaume de Paris to Dominican inquisitors, lectors, and priors);
no. 23 (vernacular record of confessions of 7 Templars in the bailliage of Rouen, 18 October 1307);
and no. 29 (vernacular inventories of Templar holdings in the bailliage of Caen, 13 October 1307).
J 413, no. 25 (confessions of 6 Templars given at Carcassonne beginning 8 November 1307), can also
be consulted through the “Florilége—Grands documents de l’histoire de France” section of the same
ARCHIM database at http://www.culture.gouv.fr/ Wave/image/archim /Pages/03818.htm. It is to be
hoped that all the Archives nationales’ unique documentation on the Templar process will eventually
be made available through this or a similar site.
2
For popular interest in France, see for example the cover story on the restoration project, led by
Ghislain Brunel, in Sciences et avenir no. 761 ( July 2010) (Elizabeth A. R. Brown kindly sent me a
copy). The 2011 exhibit at the Archives nationales was followed by the related exhibition “Templiers:
Une historie, notre trésor” at Troyes 16 June–31 October 2012, which was accompanied by a catalog
and volume of essays edited by Arnaud Baudin, Ghislain Brunel, and Nicolas Dohrmann, Templiers:
De Jérusalem aux commanderies de Champagne (Paris, 2012; an English language version is also
available), and by the associated conference cycle published as Les templiers dans l’Aube (Troyes,
2013). A volume based on a 28 January 2011 journée d’études at Montpellier was also edited by
Marie-Anna Chevalier, La fin de l’ordre du Temple (Paris, 2012). Slightly earlier, a series of conference
sessions to mark the seven hundredth anniversary of the Templar arrests in 2007 led to the important
collection of essays edited by Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson, The Debate
on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314) (Farnham, UK, 2010). Alain Demurger’s important new
book La persécution des templiers: Journal (1307–1314) (Paris, 2015) appeared only after the present
study had gone through final proofs.
Speculum 91/2 (April 2016). Copyright 2016 by the Medieval Academy of America.
DOI: 10.1086/684916, 0038-7134/2016/9102-0001$10.00.
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298 Torture and Confession at Caen
confessions of 138 Templars who were incarcerated in Paris; new scrutiny of
this precious record will surely advance scholarship beyond what has been pos-
sible when working from Michelet’s venerable edition.3 But the dossier of newly
digitized documents actually opens up particularly exciting possibilities to study
events in Normandy. The two extant documents (J 413, nos. 22 and 23) from the
bailliage of Rouen have recently been reedited and subjected to new analysis,4
and this article now focuses on an even more revealing dossier of three documents
pertaining to the neighboring bailliage of Caen.5 Perhaps more clearly than any-
where else in the documentation of the “Trial of the Templars,” these acts reveal
how royal agents extracted confessions from the Templars in the weeks following
their arrest.
The first act in this dossier (AN J 413, no. 29) is the detailed inventory of
Templar possessions in the bailliage of Caen that was compiled immediately fol-
lowing the arrests of 13 October 1307. It was edited by Léopold Delisle in 1903
and has even been translated into English.6 The second (AN J 413, no. 20) is a
vernacular document preserving confessions given at Caen on 28–29 October
1307 by the thirteen Templars arrested in the bailliage. Most (though not all) of
this document was edited by Heinrich Finke in 1907.7 The third document in the
Caen dossier (AN J 413, no. 17) is a notarized Latin version of the same confes-
sions from the same thirteen Templars, which has until now remained virtually
unstudied. Not only is it not among those that have (thus far) been digitized, but
it has never even appeared in print, aside from a small extract published in 1888
by Hans Prutz.8 Unfortunately, Prutz’s description was so misleading as to have
completely obscured the act’s true nature and interest.
The present article analyzes these documents together for the first time and
edits (in appendices) the two versions of the thirteen Templars confessions from
the bailliage of Caen. At the heart of this study is a detailed comparison of the
vernacular and Latin confessions. Such a comparison yields highly illuminating
results. Not only does it produce a fuller picture of what happened to thirteen
Templars over the weekend of 28–29 October 1307, but it shows how the same
group of six secular and ecclesiastical interrogators could highlight the use of tor
ture in one document while simultaneously suppressing it in another. The close
reading offered here thus exposes the way royal and ecclesiastical officials worked
3
First published 1841–51; reedited as Jules Michelet, Le procès des Templiers, 2 vols., new edition
with a preface by Jean Favier (Paris, 1987).
4
Sean L. Field, “Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen,” French Histori-
cal Studies 39, no. 1 (2016): 35-70.
5
On the formation of the bailliage of Caen (one of the six Norman bailliages along with Rouen,
Gisors, Verneuil, Caux, and the Cotentin; in turn divided into the viscounties of Caen, Falaise, Vire,
and Bayeux) see Joseph Reese Strayer, The Administration of Normandy under Saint Louis (Cam-
bridge, MA, 1932), 6–11, esp. 8–9.
6
Léopold Delisle, Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Nor-
mandie au Moyen-Âge (Paris, 1903), 721–28; this edition was then translated into English in Mal-
colm Barber and Keith Bate, The Templars: Selected Sources (Manchester, 2002), 191–201.
7
Heinrich Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, vol. 2 (Münster, 1907), 313–16.
8
Hanz Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens (Berlin, 1888), 325 (see below
for details on Prutz’s misleading indications). This document does not seem to have been used by
Michel Miguet for his important study Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie (Paris, 1995).
Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

Torture and Confession at Caen 299
Fig. 1. Paris, Archives nationales J 413, nos. 20 and 17. Used by permission of the Archives
nationales de France.
together in the bailliage of Caen to produce both a vernacular document that met
royal needs and a Latin document that adhered to ecclesiastical expectations. In
turn these findings have larger implications for reading other confessions gener-
ated by the interrogations of Templars across France, suggesting some of the hid-
den elements that may lurk behind their production.9
The basic sequence of events in the “trial of the Templars” is well known, but a summary may be
9
helpful. After the king’s arrest orders were issued 14 September, arrests took place all across France
on 13 October, with confessions recorded at multiple locations in October and November. Clement V,
who had not been consulted about the initial arrests, reacted with indignation but ordered the arrest
of all Templars across Christendom 22 November in an attempt to gain control of the proceedings.
Although Clement suspended French inquisitors’ and bishops’ powers to move against Templars in
January/February 1308, he relented in July after a group of Templars (handpicked by Philip IV’s men)
confessed in his presence. French ecclesiastics could once again proceed against individual Templars,
but a papal commission was simultaneously set up to investigate the overall question of the order’s
guilt or innocence. As this commission began hearing testimony in Paris, by spring 1310 nearly six
hundred Templars had rallied to defend the order’s innocence. This revolt was quashed by the arch-
bishop of Sens’ burning of fifty-four Templars outside Paris 12 May 1310. Many Templars renounced
their defense and were reconciled at regional councils in the ensuing months, and Clement V ulti-
mately suppressed the order at the close of the Council of Vienne in 1312.

Setting the Record Straight on the “Six Templars of Bayeux”
Confusion about the contents of and relationship between AN J 413, nos. 17

and 20, goes back to the very earliest scholarship on the Templar process. Among
the most unfortunate consequences has been the repeated assertion that no. 17
concerns interrogations of six Templars that supposedly took place at Bayeux.
In 1654 Pierre Dupuy’s pioneering work incorrectly indicated that no. 17 con-
tained interrogations done at Bayeux and Caen by the inquisitor Guillaume de
Paris. Not only did nothing related by this document take place in Bayeux, but
Guillaume de Paris was nowhere near Normandy at this moment. The confusion
presumably stemmed from a cursory reading of the document, which indicates
that the notary who prepared no. 17 (Henri le Gay) was from the diocese of
Bayeux, and that the Dominicans involved in the questioning cited Guillaume
de Paris’s authority. Dupuy’s summary further indicated that a Templar named
“Gaultier de Bullex” asked if he could save his life by telling the truth, and after
receiving an affirmative answer admitted to the accusations except for the charge
of adoring an idol; three other Templars then followed suit. This summary was
again misleading, since in fact the document contains the confessions of thirteen
Templars, not four. For no. 20, Dupuy correctly indicated that the document con-
tained the confessions of thirteen Templars in Caen, summarized the accusations
found there, and reported that the interrogations were carried out by religious
acting on the commission of Guillaume de Paris and by the knights Hugh de
Chastel and Enguerran de Villiers. The Templars were promised mercy and so
admitted to the charges, except for those concerning idolatry. The last Templar,
however, did not want to confess and was “put to the question,” after which he
duly confessed. This was all quite accurate, except that Dupuy nowhere indicated
that these thirteen Templars were the very same as those found in no. 17, or that
they were questioned by the same men; there is also no clear indication here that
the document was written in French.10
In 1813 François-Just-Marie Raynouard devoted somewhat more space to the
case of Caen. He began by mistakenly asserting that the seven Templars who had
confessed ten days earlier at Pont-de-l’Arche (J 413, no. 23) were also among the
thirteen who confessed at Caen. But Raynouard did accurately refer to a Latin
document containing the confessions of these thirteen and then indicated that a
second document reported the interrogations of the same thirteen (his extracts
would have shown that it was in French, though he did not stress the fact). He
knew that these interrogations had taken place in Caen (not Bayeux), rightly
emphasized the latter document’s value as evidence for how torture was used to
extort confessions, and mentioned in passing the names of Gautier de Bullens and
Mathieu Renaud.11
10
Pierre Dupuy, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France: Sçavoir la condamnation des Templiers,
avec quelques actes. L’histoire du schisme, les Papes tenans le siege en Avignon. Et quelques procez
criminels (Paris, 1654), 82, 89. These documents at the time bore the same nos. 17 and 20 within
carton 1 of the Trésor des Chartes.
11
François-Just-Marie Raynouard, Monumens historiques, relatifs à la condamnation des cheva-
liers du Temple et à l’abolition de leur ordre (Paris, 1813), 239–41. One must look to Raynouard’s

One or both documents were discussed by local érudits, such as Gervais de
la Rue (in 1820) and P. Carel (in 1886),12 but unfortunately the more influen-
tial treatment by Hans Prutz in 1888 was a step backward for scholarship. In
his survey of extant documentation concerning Templar interrogations, Prutz’s
document II was labeled “Bayeux” and gave a description of and brief excerpt
from J 413, no. 17. Prutz listed the names of six Templars, with no indication
that more existed, and said that they were interrogated “in domo Bayoci” by
the knight Hugh de Castro, 28 October 1307. Only part of the testimony from
“Galterus de Bullex” was actually given. Prutz’s document III was then labeled
“Caen. 1307. October 28.” Here he listed four Templars’ names from J 413,
no. 20, with no indication that there were any more, and no indication that these
men were the same as those that had just been listed for “Bayeux” (referring this
time to “Gautier de Dullens,” for instance, with no apparent recognition that he
was the same man as “Galterus de Bullex”).13 Thus Prutz not only misrepresented
the number of Templars involved and the relationship between the two docu-
ments, but he also inexplicably returned to Dupuy’s claim that separate interroga-
tions had taken place in Bayeux and Caen.
Finally, in 1907 Heinrich Finke produced his competent though not quite com-
plete transcription of no. 20. He omitted the list of charges found in the docu-
ment and gave a date that was off by one day (27–28 October) but otherwise
presented a largely sound edition of the text. Unfortunately, he made no reference
to no. 17 and so neither clarified the relationship between the vernacular and
Latin documents nor explicitly rectified any of the confusion around whether
no. 17 recorded confessions in Bayeux.14 A century later, the 2011 catalog from
the Archives nationales exhibit included a brief summary (and partial color im-
age) of no. 20, but made no mention of no. 17.15
This long history of confusion has affected even the best modern studies. For
example, Malcolm Barber’s second edition of The Trial of the Templars (2006)
makes the oft-quoted statement that “94 depositions survive from provincial hear-
ings held between October 1307 and January 1308,” with a footnote that reveals
that this count includes six depositions from Bayeux (and, separately, thirteen
appendix labeled “Indication et notice des pièces inédites qui sont citées dans cet ouvrage” (306) to
find that the documents referred to are nos. 17 and 20 (still in carton 1 of the Trésor des Chartes), and
even there the indications are less than explicit.
12
Essais historiques sur la ville de Caen et son arrondissment, par M. l’Abbé de la Rue, vol. 2 (Caen,
1820), 413–36, offered a fairly careful discussion of both the Latin and the French documents but
was marred by a tendentious attempt to argue for the Templars’ guilt. P. Carel, Histoire de la Ville
de Caen depuis Philippe-Auguste jusqu’à Charles IX (Paris, 1886), 54–62, edited much of the French
document, though with some errors, but made no reference to the Latin. Though these scholars were
in many ways more accurate than Prutz, their works of local erudition were far less influential for
later Templar scholarship.
13
Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang, 325–26.
14
Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, 2:313–16.
15
[Brunel et al.], L’affaire des Templiers, 28–29. No. 17 was not in fact exhibited in 2011, which
explains why the curators did not at that time notice how misleadingly it had been described in the
relevant literature.

from Caen). Moreover, he elsewhere mentions in passing that “at Bayeux, a
16
royal knight, Hugh of Chastel, presided” over interrogations.17 Alain Demurger,

the most widely cited French authority, published a helpful article in 1991 that
corrected a separate error introduced into the literature by Prutz, yet still relied
on Prutz in referring to Templars interrogated at Bayeux.18 Moreover, Demurger’s
wider 2005 study gave exactly the same numbers as those found in Barber’s foot-
note.19 Even the catalog for the 2011 Archives nationales exhibition referred to
the existence of six Templar confessions from Bayeux.20 Unfortunately, these six
were never anything but historiographic phantoms. AN J 413, nos. 17 and 20,
both record the same set of thirteen confessions given at Caen over the weekend
of 28–29 October 1307.
Orders, Arrests, and Inventories: 14 September–13 October
With the ghost of the illusory Templars interrogations at Bayeux laid to rest,
we can return to events in autumn 1307. On 14 September 1307 Philip IV had
issued letters to royal knights, baillies, and sénéchaux ordering that all Templars
in the kingdom be arrested. Along with this order went separate vernacular in-
structions detailing how arrests and interrogations should be carried out; this
French addition also conveyed a clearer list of charges than that contained in the
more florid Latin rhetoric of the royal letter itself (the charges will be returned
to below). Then, on 22 September, the royal confessor and papally empowered
inquisitor of heretical depravity Guillaume de Paris wrote to his fellow Domini-
can inquisitors, priors, and lectors across the kingdom to request their assistance
with the interrogations that would follow. While Guillaume repeated the same
charges in substance as those found in the king’s letter, he was not as specific as
the vernacular instructions afforded the secular officials. In other words, both the
royal officials and the Dominicans were given (slightly different) Latin versions of
the accusations, but the clearest and most detailed version was that related by the
vernacular instructions. None of these documents specified the date of the loom-
ing arrests, but they in fact took place on Friday, 13 October. As it happens, the
best-known example of these documents is the contemporary copy of the bailli of
Rouen’s vidimus of all three texts, prepared on 21 October (AN J 413, no. 22).21
Although no original or copy of the letters sent to Caen survives, royal officials
16
Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2006), 69 and n. 48. To be clear,
the point is not that no Templars from the diocese of Bayeux were arrested and interrogated; they
certainly were, as the present article demonstrates. It is that no interrogations actually occurred at
Bayeux, or at least none for which any evidence survives.
17
Barber, Trial, 73.
18
Alain Demurger, “Encore le procès des templiers! À propos d’un ouvrage récent,” Le Moyen Âge
97 (1991): 25–39. The error concerned Prutz’s assertion (as Demurger remarked, “difficilement expli-
cable”) that Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF) MS lat. 5490 concerned Templars
from Renneville; it in fact deals with the diocese of Bazas.
19
Alain Demurger, Les templiers: Une chevalerie chrétienne au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2005), 436.
20
[Brunel et al.], L’affaire des Templiers, 28.
21
New edition and analysis in Field, “Royal Agents and Templar Confessions”; digital image
available through ARCHIM.

and Dominicans there demonstrably did receive the same commissions as their
counterparts in Rouen (as we shall see).
These orders would have concerned the five Templar commanderies located
in the bailliage of Caen: Baugy, Bretteville-la-Rabel, Voismer, Courval, and Lou-
vigny. The first four were located in the diocese of Bayeux, and the fifth in the
diocese of Sées.22 The king’s letter of 14 September had ordered royal agents to
seize and hold all the possessions of the arrested Templars, and the accompanying
French instructions specified that inventories of all assets for each Templar house
were to be drawn up. It is fortunate that for this bailliage the inventories carried
out on 13 October survive, sewn into a single compilation (AN J 413, no. 29),23
which was in the possession of the royal advisor Guillaume de Nogaret at the
time of his death in 1313 and then entered the Trésor des Chartes.24 The material
details of these inventories are not of primary concern here, but a brief survey of
the people and places involved is essential for the analysis to follow.
The five inventories were made by five different groups of royal agents, in the
presence of the Templar brothers themselves, generally with a host of sergeants
and witnesses looking on. Many of these men will reappear in the records of
the Templars’ confessions at Caen. At Baugy, the bailli of Caen, Jean de Ver-
retot, compiled the inventory himself in the presence of the knight Richard de
Bretteville and five sergeants, including Richard le Tombeour, while the house’s
commander, Aubin (Langlois), and brothers Raoul (de Pérousse) and Guillaume
(le Raure) watched. At Bretteville-la-Rabel, Raoul Gloi made the inventory, in
the presence of the royal knight Hugh du Chastel, the vicomte of Caen Gautier
du Boisgilout, a number of other witnesses, and the commander and brothers of
the house. These brothers are not named in the document, but their subsequent
The crucial work on these commanderies is Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie.

22
The most important sections for the present study (in addition to the map on 16–17) are Miguet’s
discussion of the arrests and their documentation, 128–30; the prosopography of all the brothers dis-
cussed here, 130–37; and specific studies of the five commanderies in the bailliage of Caen, 153–215
(for Baugy, Bretteville-le-Rabet, Courval, and Voismer) and 462–67 (for Louvigny). In the body of
this article I have standardized the spelling of these Templars’ names in accordance with the forms
preferred by Miguet.
23
The extant document is on six sheets of parchment, sewn together end to end. These are not,
however, the original documents that must have been copied on the fly on October 13, but a compila-
tion made (presumably) shortly thereafter. The document was listed by Dupuy, Traittez concernant
l’histoire de France, 94, and used for nineteenth-century local studies such as De la Rue, Essais histo
riques sur la ville de Caen, 413-36; and (in more detail) Carel, Histoire de la Ville de Caen, 55–57.
It was edited by Delisle in Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en
Normandie au Moyen-Âge, 721–28, and translated into English in Barber and Bate, The Templars,
191–201. The inventory for Baugy is also edited and translated into modern French in Georges Lizer-
and, Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1964), 46–55, and discussed in Barber, Trial,
68–69. All the individual inventories are dated 13 October, except that of Louvigny, which is not
dated. On the inventories recorded in France generally, see Jochen Burgtorf, “The Trial Inventories
of the Templars’ Houses in France: Select Aspects,” in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars, ed.
Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, 105–15.
24
For Nogaret’s possesion of the “inventarium bonorum Templi in baillivia Cadomensi” see
Charles-Victor Langlois, “Les papiers de Guillaume de Nogaret et de Guillaume de Plaisians au Trésor
des Chartes,” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autre bibliothèques
39 (1909): 215– 41, at 235.

confessions indicate that the commander was Mathieu Renaud and the brothers
Geoffroy Hervieu and Jean Challet. At Voismer the cleric Jean du Chastel (citing
the authority of Hugh du Chastel and Gautier du Boisgilout) was responsible
for the inventory, made in the presence of numerous witnesses. The names of
those arrested are not given directly, but the possessions of Gautier de Bullens
(knight), Henri des Rochours, and Christophe de Louviers are mentioned, and
these three names are confirmed by the later confessions. At Courval the cleric
Thomas Alapenne took the inventory (again citing Hugh and Gautier’s author-
ity), accompanied by several agents of the vicomte and by sergeants and squires.
Present was the Templar commander Étienne de Neuchâteau and two unnamed
brothers, who must (based on the latter confessions) have been Richard Bellen-
guel and Guillain Tane. At Louvigny the royal knight Enguerran de Villers made
the inventory (with no mention of anyone accompanying him), and found that
only one Templar brother, Guy Panaye, was residing there. Though the lack of
precision in some of the documents prevents absolute certainty, it seems that the
thirteen brothers who would confess two weeks later are all accounted for here;
conversely, there is no specific indication that any brothers escaped these well-
coordinated arrests.25
Thus, with arrests made and inventories carried out, the thirteen Templars of
this bailliage were incarcerated, probably in the petit château of Caen where they
would eventually confess.26
Events Elsewhere, 15–26 October
The rapid unfolding of events elsewhere in the kingdom set the stage for the
confessions in Caen on 28–29 October. The first extant confessions recorded in
France were from the bailliages of Troyes and Rouen. Both have long been ig-
nored and have only recently become the subject of serious study. For Troyes,
three brothers confessed on 15 (in Isle) and 18 October (in Troyes).27 The confes-
sions of seven brothers in the bailliage of Rouen were more directly relevant to
events in Caen, because the careers of brothers in these two neighboring bailliages
were intertwined. The five Templars from the commandery of Saint-Étienne-de-
Renneville who were imprisoned at Pont-de-l’Arche confessed on Wednesday,
18 October. Brother Thomas Quentin first confessed to the complete list of
charges: When brother Philippe Agate, the commander of Sainte-Vaubourg, had
accepted him into the order, he was made to deny Christ three times, and to spit
25
At the same time, the inventories also clearly indicate that many other people (chaplains, servants
of various kinds, including women) lived or worked at these commanderies.
26
Charles-Laurent Salch, Dictionnaire des châteaux et des fortifications du Moyen Âge en France
(Strasbourg, 1979), 220–22.
27
The confessions have now been edited in Arnaud Baudin and Ghislain Brunel, “Les templiers en
Champagne: Archives inédites, patrimoines et destins des hommes,” in Les templiers dans l’Aube,
27–69, analysis at 40– 46, edition at 63–69 (image of J 413, no. 16 at 62 and again later in the same
volume at 217); for further analysis, Ghislain Brunel, “Le procès des templiers champenois,” in Tem-
pliers: De Jérusalem aux commanderies de Champagne, ed. Baudin, Brunel, and Dohrmann, 139– 46
(image at 143, and again in the accompanying catalog, 290–91).

on the cross, engage in indecent kisses, and agree to lie carnally with brothers of
the order if asked; he saw an idol on a table, and he believed that his belt had
been touched to the idol.28 The four other brothers from Saint-Étienne all acqui-
esced in this basic confession, as did a knight from the house of Sainte-Vaubourg.
Finally, brother Philippe himself, the commander of Sainte-Vaubourg, made a
separate confession, at the Château de la Roche d’Orival, in which he stated that
in his capacity as commander he had caused all those that he had accepted into
the order to spit on the cross and renounce Christ, just as he himself had done.29
Unfortunately for the Templars imprisoned in Caen, this Philippe had received at
least five of them into the order in his capacity as “preceptor of Normandy” (or
at least so their subsequent confessions stated). Thus by 18 October any protests
of innocence on their part could be met by reference to the damning confession
already given by the very man who had initiated many of them into the order.
Finally, and much more famously, the inquisitor Guillaume de Paris and his
team of witnesses and notaries began recording confessions at the Temple in
Paris on Thursday, 19 October. Over the first six days of questioning, thirty-five
brothers confessed. Among the most important of these was, of course, the grand
master Jacques de Molay (24 October).30 But more directly incriminating for
the Templars in Caen and Rouen were the admissions of Geoffroy de Charney
(21 October), preceptor of Normandy at the time of the arrests. Both men tried
to limit their confessions, but both admitted to the bottom line of denying Christ
at the time of their entry to the order.31 Moreover, both men were among those
whom Guillaume de Paris brought out for a public confession on 25 October
in the presence of university masters and other churchmen. Jacques, though ap-
parently not Geoffroy, again confessed the next day in front of an even larger
gathering.32
Thus the evidence of multiple confessions was already against the Templars in-
carcerated in Caen by the time they began to testify on Saturday, 28 October. The
confessions of the grand master and the preceptor of Normandy would probably
have been known in Caen by this time, and the fact (if not the text) of confessions
from neighboring Rouen would almost certainly have reached Caen as well.
28
These charges were part of a long tradition of assumptions about the inherent deviancy of any
accused heretical group, and more specifically part of the clear pattern of similar charges leveled at a
string of perceived enemies of Philip IV. For analysis see Barber, Trial, chapter 7.
29
AN J 413, no. 23. See Field, “Royal Agents and Templar Confessions”; and Miguet, Templiers et
Hospitaliers en Normandie, 138–39.
30
On Jacques see Alain Demurger, Jacques de Molay: Le crépuscule des Templiers (Paris, 2014;
updated édition de poche); Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the
Knights Templar: The Execution of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314,” Via-
tor 47/1 (2016): 229–92.
31
Geoffroy’s and Jacques’s confessions are conveniently translated into English (from Michelet’s
edition) in Barber and Bate, The Templars, 251–53; discussed in Barber, Trial, 77–79. Geoffroy did
insist that he had only once admitted a brother to the order in a manner that included renouncing
Christ.
32
Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, 2:307–13. For a new perspective on these staged confessions of
25–26 October see William J. Courtenay, “Marguerite’s Judges: The University of Paris in 1310,” in
Marguerite Porete et le “Miroir des simples âmes”: Perspectives historiographiques, philosophiques et
littéraires, ed. Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron (Paris, 2013), 215–31.

Confessions at Caen: October 28–29
Confessions began to be recorded at Caen Saturday, 28 October, and continued

into Sunday, 29 October. Present for these confessions were four Dominicans of
Caen, two knights acting in the name of the king, a notary, and a host of wit-
nesses. Interestingly, there is no sign of the bailli of Caen, Jean de Verretot, who
had compiled the inventory of Templar possession at Baugy.
The two surviving versions of these confessions must be read together. On one
level, comparing the two sources establishes the sequence of events as accurately
as possible. But, more importantly, it is the differences between the two docu-
ments—what they include and what they exclude—that reveal the discrete pur-
poses and audiences for which each was constructed. The distance between the
two accounts lays bare the process by which Templar confessions were obtained
and the ways in which that process was then obscured in the notarized Latin con-
fessions. Both acts were solemnly sealed and hence “official” in a certain sense,
and both were issued in the name of all four Dominicans and both royal secular
agents. But one was a Latin legal instrument drawn up by a notary and intended
to withstand potential scrutiny as formal evidence in an ecclesiastical court, while
the other was a vernacular record written as a report back to the royal court. The
two intended audiences doubtless account for the different ways in which events
were reported in the two documents.
The Latin Version of Events

Let us first follow events as they were recorded by the Latin notarized docu-
ment, J 413, no. 17. In his letter of 22 September, Guillaume de Paris had directed
Dominicans to inquire into the charges once Philip IV’s men brought the Tem-
plars before them. Confessions were to be recorded by a public notary if possible,
sealed by the Dominicans (as the inquisitor’s agents) and the knights (as the king’s
agents), and sent to the king and to Guillaume de Paris.33 J 413, no. 17, demon-
strates that these instructions were fulfilled to the letter in Caen.
According to the Latin document, the first session took place between the
hours of prime and nones on Saturday, 28 October, in the hall (aula) of the petit
château. Henri le Gay, cleric of the diocese of Bayeux and notary public, first re-
corded the presence of four Dominicans of Caen: Robert “called Henrichon” the
subprior, Michel “called Chouquet” the lector, and brothers Roger d’Argence and
33
AN J 413, no. 22 (edited Field, “Royal Agents”): “Nos . . . vos exhortamur in Domino vobis te-
nore presencium committentes ac vos singulariter deputantes quatinus nobis in adjutorium cause fidei
assurgentes non pigri sed vigiles adhibitis duabus religiosis personis et discretis cum personis suspectis
vobis per gentes domini regis predicti exhibendis inquiratis ex parte nostra immo potius apostolica
super premissis diligencius veritatem despositionibus eorumdem per publicam personam si comode
potest haberi aut per duos viros idoneos conscribendis. Et si premissa scelera inveneritis esse vera,
probis viris ordinis fratrum Minorum ac aliis religiosis viris negocium sic aperire curetis, quod apud
eos vel populum non oriatur scandalum ex hujusmodi processibus sed odor potius bone fame. Depo-
sitionesque talium testium domino regi et nobis in Francia sub vestris et dicti domini regis gencium
que ad predicta specialiter destinantur sigillis inclusas, fideliter mittere non tardetis.”

Jean de Margny. They are referred to as “commissioners (commissariis) of the re-
ligious and honorable man, brother Guillaume de Paris from the order of the said
brothers, chaplain of the lord pope, confessor of the most excellent prince Lord
Philip by the grace of God king of the Franks, and inquisitor of heretical deprav-
ity appointed by apostolic authority in the kingdom of France.” The notary then
proceeded to copy into the record a substantial part of the opening of Guillaume’s
22 September letter and its dating clause; that is, he saw fit to note Guillaume de
Paris’s actual “commission” to these Dominicans to act as his agent.34 Next the
notary recorded the presence of the noblemen Hugh de Chastel and Enguerran de
Villers, “knights of the lord king, appointed by the said lord king for those things
which follow, as far as was shown by letters patent from this same king.” Inter-
estingly, the notary did not feel it necessary to include an excerpt from the copy
of Philip IV’s 14 September arrest order for this bailliage, which must have been
addressed to these two men. Nevertheless, it is evident that both the Dominican
and the royal agents were properly fortified with their written commissions, and
that these were duly presented to the notary.
The knight Hugh (following this narrative) then took the lead in questioning
brother Gautier de Bullens, “knight of the Order of the Knights Templar, staying
at the house of Voismer.” Hugh posed each of the five articles of accusation to
Gautier: When first admitted to the order, had he been led to a secret place and
shown the cross and crucifix and made three times to deny Jesus Christ and spit
on the cross? Had the brother carrying out the reception kissed him on the base
of the spine, on the navel, and then on the mouth? Had he been ordered to receive
any brother who wanted to lie with him, since he was held to this by the statutes
of the order? Had he ever participated in a chapter meeting in which an idol in the
shape of a bearded head was venerated? Did the priests of the order consecrate
the Host as other priests were accustomed to do? Although there are some embel-
lishments (particularly on the question involving idol worship), the knight Hugh
was here simply taking the articles found in the vernacular instructions that had
accompanied the king’s letter of 14 September and turning them into questions.
Indeed, the questioning would necessarily have taken place in French, with the
notary responsible for translating into the Latin recorded here.
Even after two weeks of incarceration, Gautier was not ready to confess. Ac-
cording to this version of events, upon hearing these questions “he attempted to
evade with many oaths and refusals” (multis adiurationibus et tergiversationi-
bus). But in the end, after “many reproofs, reasonings, and leadings” (multis
obiurgationibus, rationibus et inductionibus) were made to him by the Domini-
cans, Gautier asked the Dominicans and the knights “whether he could tell the
truth about these things without loss of body or members.” The Dominicans and
knights responded that he could, “if he intended with a good and pure heart to
return to the truth faith and recognize Christ.” So Gautier, on bended knees and
with tears streaming down his face, asked for the mercy of the church and of his
34
The text of the commission as cited here shows some variants from the letter preserved in the
bailli of Rouen’s vidimus (AN J 413, no. 22), which should be considered in any future edition of
Guillaume de Paris’s letter.

own free will admitted that the first35 articles were true, but that he knew noth-
ing about the charges concerning an idol or the priests’ practices in celebrating
the Mass. When they heard this admission, the Dominicans received him into the
mercy of the church, and the knights, acting in the king’s name, freed him of all
corporal punishment.
The full interest of this version of events only becomes clear when it is com-
pared with the vernacular record. But even on its own terms, this is a remarkable
scene. Although French kings since Louis IX had ordered royal officials to aid in-
quisitors in their work,36 here the secular agents of the king go far beyond a sup-
porting role. It was the knight Hugh who posed the questions about a supposed
heretical initiation ceremony, even though Dominican representatives of the duly
empowered inquisitor of heretical depravity were present. And the Dominicans,
far from keeping their distance from this secular usurpation of inquisitorial au-
thority, chimed in with reproofs and reasonings when Gautier de Bullens did
not want to admit to the charges. Clearly the two groups were working together
smoothly, with the Dominicans actually allowing the royal agents to provide the
impetus. Indeed, it is the knights who were most clearly carrying out their charge
to the letter, since in the vernacular instructions they had been told to promise
pardon if the brothers would confess the truth and return to the faith of the
Holy Church. The Dominicans, by contrast, had not been given explicit instruc-
tions by Guillaume de Paris as to whether or how to offer any specific form of
reconciliation.
Returning to the notary’s record, the knight Hugh next explained the same ar-
ticles to five more brothers in sequence: Mathieu Renaud, preceptor of Bretteville-
la-Rabel (where Hugh had already carried out the commandery’s inventory
personally); Étienne de Neuchâteau, preceptor of Courval; Geoffroy Hervieu
(brother of the house of Bretteville, though that identifying information is oddly
omitted in this document); Jean Challet, brother at Bretteville; and Guillaume
le Raure, brother at Baugy. Each was examined separately and asked to tell the
truth about the accusations, which had been “so openly and lucidly confessed by
the said Gautier [de Bullens],” and they were urged by the Dominicans “as much
as they could” to “return to the truth.” Again, each Templar admitted sponta-
neously to the first articles, sought the mercy of the church and the relaxing of
corporal punishment (“with some imploring more than the others”), and denied
knowing anything about the final two articles. And again the Dominicans and
royal knights granted the desired mercy and freedom from corporal punishment.
These events must have taken several hours, since the notary now broke off
to authenticate the proceedings to this point, indicating that all this had tran
35
The text actually says that he admitted to the truth of the first four articles but knew nothing
about the last two; this is confusing, given that five (not six) charges are clearly listed. It is not clear
whether “four” was simply a slip on Gautier’s part or the notary’s, or whether in some way Gautier
interpreted the first three charges as constituting four separate ideas. At least in the written version,
the first charge is labeled “primo,” followed by four marked off by “item,” so the total of five would
seem clear.
36
For evidence from the reign of Louis IX see Yves Dossat, Les crises de l’inquisition toulousaine au
XIIIe siècle (1233–1273) (Bordeaux, 1959), 285; and Antoine Dondaine, “Le manuel de l’inquisiteur
(1230–1330),” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 17 (1947): 85–194, at 136–37.

spired “inter horam prime et horam none,” and listing the witnesses present. They
were hardly an impartial gathering: “Lord Richard de Bretteville, knight” and
the sergeant Richard le Tombeour had been present to keep order while the bailli
made the inventories at Baugy on 13 October; Robert de Caudebeq was not only
canon of Saint Stephen’s in Caen but “cleric of the lord king”; “lord Jean” was
Hugh du Chastel’s chaplain; Jean du Chastel had himself made the inventory at
Voismer, and Raoul Gloi had done so at Bretteville. While Henri Campion is oth-
erwise unknown (unless he is the same man as Pierre Campion listed later in the
document), Thomas de Tilya was the cleric of the vicomte of Caen (Gautier de
Boisgilout, who had been present at the arrests and inventory of Bretteville); and
the cleric Guillaume Marie appears in other documents receiving oaths on behalf
of the vicomte. In other words, most of the witnesses were the same agents who
had arrested the Templars two weeks earlier and inventoried their possessions.37
The second session reconvened between nones and vespers, with the same Do-
minicans, knights, and notary present. Only three more brothers confessed dur-
ing this session: Richard Bellenguel and Guillain Tane, brothers of Courval; and
Henri des Rochours, brother of Voismer. The same formulaic language is used to
recount how each brother was questioned and reasoned with by the royal knights
and the Dominicans; how each admitted freely that the first articles were true but
that they knew nothing about the last two; how each successfully sought mercy
of the church and remission of temporal punishment from the king. Present as
witnesses were again Richard de Bretteville and Robert de Caudebeq. “Jean Pa-
ganus” might perhaps be the “Jean chaplain of Hugh du Chastel” who witnessed
the first session, and “Pierre Campion” might perhaps be the same man as Henri
Campion. But the names of Bertrand de Monceaux, Guillaume Gervaise, Henri
Roussel, and Yvon de Crayo show that a substantially new group of witnesses
was indeed present for this second session, emphasizing the fact that a real halt
must have occurred between the first and second sessions.
Still following the Latin version of events, the third and last session was held
the following morning (Sunday, 29 October) again in the hall of the petit châ-
teau, “around prime.” The last four Templars were questioned one after another:
Aubin Langlois, preceptor of Baugy; Christophe de Louviers, brother of Voismer;
Raoul “called of Pérousse,” brother of Baugy; and Guy Panaye from the house
in Louvigny. The notary here wrapped things up in very terse language, merely
indicating that each brother acted exactly as the brothers before. The witnesses
were nearly the same as those from the first session: Richard de Bretteville, Rob-
ert de Caudebeq, Jean du Chastel, Raoul Gloi, Pierre Campion (which perhaps
indicates that he really was the same man as Henri Campion from the first list),
Thomas de Tilya, Richard le Tombeour, and Guillaume Marie.
To summarize events as recorded in this Latin document: In the first session
on Saturday morning, after the first Templar, Gautier de Bullens, capitulated and
admitted to the main charges (while denying knowledge of the last two), six
more brothers were questioned separately one after another and did exactly the
same thing. In the afternoon, three additional brothers followed suit, and finally
37
Further details on witnesses can be found in the notes to Appendix A.

the following morning, the last three brothers did the same in turn. The notary
closed each discrete session with a formal dating clause and list of witnesses,
with the second session having a substantially different list. He authenticated the
document, presumably still on Sunday morning, by indicating his personal pres-
ence at the “aforesaid confessions, petitions, receptions, and relaxations regard-
ing the mercy of the church and punishments of body and members,” certified
that he had written the document in his own hand in public form, and added
his seign manuel to the seals of the four Dominicans and two knights. He even
attested to the fact that a small interlineal addition had been made in his own
hand. It is notable that after the first Templar confession, and increasingly after
the first session, the accounts grow more and more terse, with almost no specific
details being recorded beyond the identifying information for each brother. One
has the impression, in this account, that after Gautier de Bullens capitulated,
everything proceeded smoothly, with the results more or less a foregone conclu-
sion. Moreover, from this document one would deduce that the Dominicans and
knights achieved such clear success through united, resolute, and reasoned per-
suasion, with only perhaps the implied threat of physical punishment lurking in
the background.
When this document was sent to the king and the inquisitor—as it surely was—
the Dominicans could feel that they had effectively carried out the instructions
sent by Guillaume de Paris to his brethren in Caen. A conscientious churchman
might have been taken aback by the extent to which the king’s secular agents,
not the Dominicans, had led the questioning in a case of heresy. But otherwise
the results here were entirely satisfactory; a formal record of thirteen confessions
neatly wrapped up, formally witnessed and notarized.
The Vernacular Version of Events

But the two royal knights also had their explicit instructions from the king.
While Philip IV’s formal Latin letter ordering arrests had been a bit vague, the
accompanying French instructions had been admirably precise. The royal agents
were to hold the Templars under secure guard, interrogate them first, and then
call in the commissioners of the inquisitor and inquire carefully into the truth
“with torture if necessary.” If admissions of the “truth” were produced they were
to record them in writing with witnesses. As far as conducting the inquiries was
concerned, the royal agents were to read out the articles and tell the Templars
that the pope and the king were already fully informed about these errors. The
brothers should be promised pardons if they confessed and told that they would
die if they did not.38
38
AN J 413, no. 22 (edited Field, “Royal Agents”): “Apres ce, il metront les persones souz boenne
et seure garde singulierement et cescun par soi, et enquerront de eus premierement et puis apeleront
les commissaires de l’inquisteur et examineront diligemment la verité, par gehine se mestier est, et se
il confessent la verité il escrivront leur deposicions tesmoigns apelés. C’est la maniere de l’enquerre.
L’en les enortera des articles de la foi et dira comment li pape et li roys sunt enfourmé par pluseurs
tesmoinz bien creables de l’ordre de l’erreur et de la bougrerie que il funt, especiaument en leur entree
et en leur profession, et leur prometront pardon se il confesse verité en retornant a la foi de sainte

Thus the knights Hugh and Enguerran probably would have understood that
they were charged with making their own record of confessions for the king,
separate from the notarized document that the Dominicans had been commanded
to produce. The existence of a separately recorded French version of events is not
an accident, and it does not merely reflect a preliminary stage in the proceedings.
One might at first be tempted to imagine that the French document could have
been written up as a sort of “first draft” taken down on the fly, which would then
have been used as an aid in producing the formal, notarized Latin instruments.
But this is clearly not the case. In fact, the two acts are both “formal” and “final,”
intended to be read and preserved as a record. Indeed, the French version (as we
shall see) was almost certainly written after the Latin. The two documents simply
resulted from the two semidistinct requests contained in the vernacular instruc-
tions and were sent back to the royal court for two different purposes. J 413,
no. 20, was intended to show that the royal knights had fulfilled their orders
as found in the vernacular instructions, independently of how the Dominicans
had fulfilled theirs. If no. 17 was crafted for a joint audience of inquisitor and
king and drafted in a notarized form intended (if necessary) to stand up in a fu
ture ecclesiastical court, no. 20 was aimed at the king and his advisors and in-
tended simply to prove that the two knights had done exactly as they had been
instructed. The fact that the Dominicans joined them in this report indicates their
own desire to please the king as well as the inquisitor.
Indeed, the French version of the confessions produces a rather different picture
of what transpired over this weekend in Caen. It is not clear exactly whose hand
drafted the document.39 But it was not drawn up until after interrogations were
complete on Sunday, because it begins by declaring itself a record of an “Exami-
nation done partly on Saturday the Feast of the Apostles Simon and June, 1307,
and partly the Sunday following, of the brothers of the houses of the Temple of
the bailliage of Caen, on the articles of their errors, sealed with the counterseal of
our lord the king.” The articles are then listed, and they are in fact taken nearly
word for word from the vernacular instructions that had indeed been sent under
the king’s counterseal.40 It has already been apparent from the Latin version of
the confessions that questioning took place on the basis of the vernacular charges
in the additional instructions; the vernacular version not only confirms this fact
but demonstrates that the language matched nearly exactly what was received
and employed in the neighboring bailliage of Rouen.
The document then states that the examination was carried out by “nous”—
Robert the subprior, Michel Chougnet the lector, Roger d’Argences, and Jean de
Margny from the Dominican house in Caen—in accordance with Guillaume de
Paris’s commission (no excerpt is given here, in distinction to the notarized Latin
document); and by “nous”—Hugh du Chastel and Enguerran de Villers, “knights
eglise, ou autrement qu’il soient a mort condemné. L’en leur demandera par serement diligemment et
sagement comment il furent receu et quel veu ou promesse il firent et leur demanderont par generaux
paroles jusque tant que l’en tire des eus la verité et qu’il perseverent en cele verité.”
39
The hand is similar to J 413, no. 29, but I do not think it is identical.
40
Because Finke omitted these charges, the fact that they were copied directly from the vernacular
instructions was not apparent in his edition.

of our lord the king deputed by this same lord for this, as it may appear from his
letter.” Only one list of witnesses is then given, based on the group from the first
and third sessions in the Latin version, and an imprecise reference to “many oth-
ers.” The account then begins in earnest:
Since we could not pull the truth out of the said Templars concerning the errors con-
tained in the said articles, although they had sworn twice and been examined as dili-
gently as we were able, we—the subprior, lector, Roger, and John mentioned above—in
the presence of us—the said Hugh and Enguerran—since these Templars had denied
everything, showed them individually and each by himself several reasons and ways
by which they could save body and soul, if they would admit the truth and repent of
their errors and return to the faith and unity of the Holy Church, and how the Holy
Church receives those who have erred and want to return to the faith, and we promised
to receive them to the mercy of the Holy Church if they wanted to do this. And we,
Hugh and Enguerran mentioned above, in the same way promised to absolve them of all
temporal punishment with which our lord the king could punish them for such errors.
And to more greatly move them, as far as pulling the truth from them, we showed them
how it was a well-known and manifest thing, that the greater part of the Templars of the
kingdom of France had recognized and confessed their errors, and that the evasions and
defenses they had proposed to the contrary were nothing that could help them.
So far, the most notable difference with the Latin account is that there is no men-
tion of three separate sessions, with each brother appearing in one of the three.
Instead, there is the statement, not found in the Latin document, that all the
brothers had sworn two separate times that the charges were false. What seems
to be described here are two rounds of questioning that must have taken place be-
fore Saturday, 28 October, in the two weeks following the arrests of 13 October
(and not the three separate sessions of 28–29 October, as recorded in the Latin
document). Otherwise the only additional piece of information is the statement
that the brothers were told that most Templars had already confessed, which was
an astute strategy to weaken their hopes of holding out.
But finally, the vernacular account adds a very telling phrase. The brothers at
last were told “that if they perjured themselves a third time, they should take care,
that it would be fitting that they should suffer such punishment as the case re-
quired.” To call this threat “ominous” would be something of an understatement.
With this ultimatum hanging in the air, “We proceeded to the examination on
the articles aforestated, and heard the said Templars one after the other, and they
deposed on the said articles in the manner that appears in their depositions writ-
ten below.” What follows then is the vernacular record of the same confessions
already traced in the Latin version, described here as taking place “in the hall of
the petit château of Caen, on the Saturday and Sunday said above, in the pres-
ence of the said witnesses.” And “in confirmation of the truth, we—the subprior,
lector, brothers Roger and John named above—have put out seals to this process,
with the seals of the said Hugh and Enguerran, present for the things written
below.”
In the confessions themselves, the general outlines of what had been recorded
in the notarized Latin version are quite recognizable. They proceed in exactly the
same order. But if similarities are apparent, the differences are startling. Now it

is specifically recorded that the first brother to be questioned, Gautier de Bullens,
“had sworn twice, and been examined diligently on the above said articles, which
he had entirely denied.” It is increasingly apparent that this document seeks to
make it clear that the Templars had been closely questioned in advance of the
formal sessions held over the weekend, and that these Templars had consistently
“perjured” themselves by denying the “truth” in those first rounds of question-
ing. But now, after the clear threat (nowhere mentioned in the Latin version) that
a third denial would not be tolerated, Gautier admitted and confessed to all the
articles, aside from insisting that he knew nothing about an idol and that he be-
lieved that the charge about priests’ improperly consecrating the host was false.
This version also adds the information that he had “already” confessed that he
had worn a belt next to his shirt as a sign of chastity, but that it had never touched
an idol. The interesting fact here is the apparent reference to “already”—presum-
ably in the two previous questionings—having made statements about how the
brothers’ belts had nothing to do with idol worship, providing a glimpse of these
earlier questionings and how Gautier may have tried to refute the charges at that
point. In the end (just as in the Latin version) Gautier sought the mercy of the
church and the remission of temporal punishment and was granted it.
For the next eleven brothers, the physical format of the document is particu-
larly interesting. The existing (1907) edition of the acts does not make clear that
the next eleven names (from Mathieu Renaud to Raoul de Pérousse) were re-
corded down the left-hand side of the parchment, with identifying information
about their house, position, and circumstances of their entry into the order. A
single statement runs down the right side, thus modifying all the names: Each of
these brothers had sworn twice and denied everything; after which, interrogated
a third time, they had individually confessed in the form and manner that Gautier
had, and had repented and returned to the unity of the church, asking for mercy
and remission of punishment, which was granted. Obviously, this summary rec
ord was made after the fact, with no interest in preserving the actual testimony
of these brothers, and no indication at all that they had been questioned in three
separate sessions, as the Latin document had made clear.
Finally, the fate of the thirteenth brother is recorded. Guy Panaye’s testimony
has long been available, since Finke published it in 1907. And yet it has not at-
tracted the attention it merits, providing as it does the clearest surviving evidence
of how confessions were extorted by royal agents. On other occasions Templars
themselves claimed to have been tortured.41 But here the royal agents describe
their own actions:
Brother Guy Panaye, dwelling alone in the Temple house of Louvigny . . . , had sworn
twice and been examined diligently on the above-mentioned articles, which articles he
had denied. Tortured (mis en gehine) on the above mentioned Saturday, during the tor-
ture (en la quelle gehine) he did not want to confess anything. The next day, asked, ques-
tioned, and examined on the said articles, he confessed the errors in the manner that
they had been confessed by the others listed above, as far as his statement and his true
41
See for example Barber, Trial, 70–71; and Demurger, Les Templiers, 443.

understanding, asking us—the subprior, lector, Roger and Jean mentioned above—for
mercy, and us—the said Hugh and Enguerran—for remission of temporal punishment,
which was granted to him.
Suddenly a number of seemingly unremarkable aspects of the notarized Latin
confession take on a startlingly different aspect. Guy had been brought out last
not by chance, but because he had been the only brother to hold out beyond the
first two rounds of questioning (those earlier rounds having gone unremarked
in any case in the Latin version).42 At some point on Saturday, while twelve of
his brothers were capitulating, he was tortured. The next day, after every other
brother had confessed, further resistance must have seemed futile, and he at last
fell into line.
The royal knights had described all that they had done with an eye to demon-
strating how precisely they had followed instructions and how successful they
had been. They had been ordered to interrogate the brothers and to promise
pardon and threaten death. They had done so. They had been told to employ
torture “if necessary,” and when necessity reared its head, they had carried out
their orders. Far from wishing to keep this use of torture in the dark, they in fact
made sure to stress it, because this clarified the fact that they had understood their
instructions and carried them out to the letter.
And they took these actions in tight tandem with the Dominican agents of the
inquisitor. These men seem to have been present at the preliminary two rounds of
questioning, and at least as the wording of this document has it, they were com-
plicit in the clear threat that a third denial would not be tolerated, while on the
other hand confession would mean forgiveness from both king and church. They
may or may not have been directly involved in deciding to use torture, but they
put their seals to this document and its explicit reference to torture with no hint
of reluctance. Perhaps they were comforted by the fact that the Latin document
already produced by the notary Henri le Gay had sanitized events, making no
mention of two rounds of preliminary interrogations, explicit threats, or torture.
Instead, the version drawn up by their notary suggested that an orderly, perhaps
even tedious, two days of questioning, reasoning, and cajoling had led to confes-
sions. Although inquisitors were legally allowed to call for the use of torture after
decrees by Innocent IV in 1252 and Alexander IV in 1256,43 inquisitorial records
only rarely make overt allusions to the employment of torture in this era.44
42
It may be relevant to note that Guy was the only Templar at Louvigny; perhaps his ability to hold
out reflected a lack of connection to his brethren.
43
Edward Peters, Torture, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1996), 62–67.
44
On the rarity of clear indications of torture recorded in inquisitorial sources, see James B. Given,
Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, 1997), 54
n. 8; and Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christian-
ity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2009), 166. Opponents of inquisitors in the first quarter of the
fourteenth century, such as Bernard Délicieux and Angelo Clareno, however, charged that torture was
used indiscriminately, and the analysis here suggests the possibility that it may sometimes lurk silently
below the surface of the surviving inquisitorial documents.

The Fate of the Thirteen Templars of Caen
Of Jean Challet and Guillaume le Raure, nothing more is known after 29 Octo-
ber 1307.45 The Templars who had been held at Caen were transferred to Gisors
at an unknown date before the end of 1309;46 perhaps Jean and Guillaume died
there. At any rate they do not appear in the records of the Templars who were
brought to Paris in early 1310 to defend the order’s innocence in front of the
newly appointed papal commission charged with hearing depositions pertaining
to the guilt or innocence of the order as a whole.47 The eleven other brothers,
without exception, stepped forward to claim their innocence at this point. On
26 February a large group of brothers declaring their readiness to defend the or-
der included Gautier de Bullens, Mathieu Renaud, Étienne de Neuchâteau, Rich-
ard Bellenguel, Henri des Rochours, Guy Panaye, Gillain Tane, Aubin Langlois,
and Christophe de Louviers. Then on 28 March, at an even larger gathering in the
bishop’s garden, all these men except Christophe de Louviers again declared the
order’s innocence,48 and they were now joined by Geoffroy Hervieu and Raoul
de Pérousse.49 Although these men knew full well that their confessions from
1307 were recorded in legally valid form and could easily be retrieved by royal
and ecclesiastical agents, they nevertheless unanimously insisted that those earlier
confessions had been false, coerced by the kinds of violence and threats so amply
documented in AN J 413, no. 20.
Yet after this moment of defiance, nothing further is known about most of
these men. Following the infamous burning of fifty-four Templars outside Paris,
12 May 1310, the order’s defense quickly collapsed, and most Templars rushed to
seek reconciliation with the church. Many of those who were still alive then gave
full confessions to the papal commission in 1311. But none of the original thir-
teen from Caen were among them. Some of those still present in Paris in spring
1310 may simply have slipped through the documentary cracks, since it is clear
that many living Templars were never brought before the papal commission in its
final phase of action. Others were dead by 1311. Aubin Langlois, for instance,
died between March 1310 and March 1311.50 The case of Mathieu Renaud is less
For the data assembled here I am deeply endebted to Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en
45
Normandie, 130–35.
46
A group of Templars who stated their intention to defend the order in Paris on 26 February was
said to have been transferred from Gisors. Nine of the Templars who had been questioned at Caens
were among them; see Michelet, Procès, 1:84–86, and analysis below.
47
For events in spring 1310 see Barber, Trial, chapters 5 and 6; and Dale R. Streeter, “The Templars
Face the Inquisition: The Papal Commission and the Diocesan Tribunals in France, 1308–1311,” in
The Debate on the Trial of the Templars, ed. Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, 87–95.
48
No evidence demonstrates whether Christophe actively decided not to continue defending the
order in March, whether his name might simply have been omitted by mistake, or whether he might
have died in the intervening weeks.
49
Again it is not clear whether these brothers only joined the defense at this late date, or whether
their names were accidentally omitted in February. For these names see Michelet, Procès, 1:85–86
and 105–6. Interestingly, Gautier de Bullens is listed separately from the rest of this group both times,
presumably by virtue of his knightly status.
50
Michelet, Procès, 2:26, 194.

clear, since on 19 April 1311 one Templar listed him among a group of brothers
whom he believed to be dead, whereas another Templar the very same day stated
that he believed Mathieu to be still alive.51
The fate of only one these brothers is beyond doubt. On 12 February 1311 a
Templar sergeant named Mathieu de Cressonessart testified about his own admis-
sion to the order some seventeen years earlier at Paris.52 According to his testi-
mony, the only other man admitted together with him that day was Gautier de
Bullens, now identified by the blunt phrase “burned at Paris.”53 Gautier, the first
of the men to confess on 28 October 1307, met his end almost certainly as one of
the Templars burned in May 1310, convicted of “relapse” into heresy by virtue
of having renounced that initial confession.
Conclusions
This examination of the two versions of the Templar confessions recorded at

Caen leads to a number of wider conclusions. First, the analysis is obviously rel-
evant to recently renewed debates as to whether some level of truth lay behind
the accusations against the Templars.54 AN J 413, no. 20, demonstrates that the
thirteen confessions from Caen are not credible as evidence for anything that
might or might not have happened at Templar initiations.55 As the interrogators’
own statements make clear, no brother was going to be allowed to escape without
having confessed to the core of the charges, which had in turn been given to the
royal agents by the king’s men. Thus the “confessions” were only repackaged
versions of the vernacular charges; they can offer no independent verification of
the truth of those charges.
51
Ibid., 194, 196; Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie, 136, considered it very likely
that Mathieu Renaud and Aubin Langlois were burned. This is certainly possible, but I know of no
specific evidence that proves they did not die of natural causes (or from the less natural effects of
imprisonment).
52
See Sean L. Field, “La fin de l’ordre du Temple à Paris: Le cas de Mathieu de Cressonessart,” in
La fin de l’ordre du Temple, ed. Chevalier, 101–32.
53
Michelet, Procès, 1:353.
54
This debate was reactivated with the provocative article by Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Were the
Templars Guilty?,” in The Medieval Crusade, ed. Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge, 2004). To my mind,
Riley-Smith’s claims have been fully refuted by recent work, including The Debate on the Trial of
the Templars, ed. Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson (particulary essays by Alan Forey and Thomas
Krämer); Alan Forey, “Were the Templars Guilty, Even If They Were Not Heretics or Apostates?,”
Viator 42 (2011): 115– 41; Field, “La fin de l’ordre du Temple à Paris”; and Julien Théry, “A Heresy
of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the ‘Perfidious Templars,’ and the Pontificalization of the French
Monarchy,” Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 39 (2013): 117– 48.
55
This is not to say that the mass of Templar testimony regarding brothers’ origins, status, home
commandery, and date and place of profession is not worth careful study. As Alain Demurger re-
marks, one need not simply “throw the hundreds of pages of the procedures against the Templars in
the waste basket.” But even when trying to use these records to gather basic prosopographic data one
must be cautious, because brothers may have tended to change even some of these details (such as
where and when and in whose presence a profession took place) to protect or incriminate others. For
Demurger’s remarks, see his “Conclusions” to La fin de l’Ordre du Temple, ed. Chevalier, 221–31,
at 231.

Second, the differences between the way events were recorded in no. 20 and in
no. 17 suggest something of the reality that must lie hidden behind the Latin re
cords of confessions taken down elsewhere in France in October and November.
The most famous example would of course be the 138 confessions recorded at
the Temple in Paris beginning on 19 October, generally similar in form and func-
tion to the Latin confessions notarized by Henri le Gay in no. 17. What did these
brothers in Paris undergo between 13 and 19 October? It has long been assumed
that they must have been subjected to a mix of threats, inducements, and physi-
cal pressures. But the texts of the confessions as they were ultimately recorded
by Guillaume de Paris’s team of notaries reveal few concrete details. Just as with
the Latin notarized version of the Caen confessions, the smooth surface of the
Parisian depositions indicates only what these Templars were finally induced to
say, while obscuring the struggles or negotiations or denials that may have gone
before. But, at least in rough terms, the vernacular record from Caen suggests the
several rounds of preliminary questioning that must have taken place at Paris in
the week before 19 October, the explicit threats of pain and promises of forgive-
ness that must have concluded that preliminary phase, and the physical force that
must have been used against brothers not yet willing to confess at that point.
Third, this study emphasizes the need for new attention to all the documents
that preserve confessions made in France during the initial weeks after the Tem-
plar arrests. In recent decades scholars have made enormous strides in publish-
ing and analyzing the documentary evidence for the course of the “Trial of the
Templars” outside France, providing much-needed wider context.56 The original
manuscripts preserving interrogations carried out in France before the end of
1307, by contrast, have only just begun to be reexamined in the last few years.
Ghislain Brunel has at last edited the testimony from Troyes (15–18 October),57
Andrea Nicolotti has produced an important new edition of the depositions from
Carcassone (beginning 8 November),58 and I have reedited documents from the
bailliage of Rouen (18 October) and an inquisitor’s report on two German Tem-
56
Anne Gilmour-Bryson, The Trial of the Templars in the Papal State and the Abruzzi (Vatican
City, 1982); Gilmour-Bryson, The Trial of the Templars in Cyprus: A Complete English Edition (Leiden,
1998); Helen Nicholson, The Proceedings against the Templars in the British Isles, 2 vols. (Farn-
ham, UK, 2011); Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Templars in the British
Isles, 1308–1311 (Stroud, 2009); Maeve Brigid Callan, The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish:
Vengeance and Heresy in Medieval Ireland (Ithaca, 2015), chapter 1; Alan Forey, The Fall of the
Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Aldershot, 2001). For essays covering the whole geographic range
of the Templar proceedings see Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, eds., The Debate on the Trial
of the Templars. For France, one of the most significant scholarly contributions in recent decades is
Roger Séve and Anne-Marie Chagny-Séve, eds., Le procès des templiers d’Auvergne (1309–1311)
(Paris, 1987), but these interrogations date from a later stage in the proceedings against the Templars.
57
Arnaud Baudin and Ghislain Brunel, “Les templiers en Champagne: Archives inédites, patri-
moines et destins des hommes,” in Les templiers dans l’Aube, 27–69, analysis at 40– 46; edition of
AN J 413, no. 16, at 63–69.
58
Andrea Nicolotti, “L’interrogatorio dei Templari imprigionati a Carcassonne,” Studi medievali,
3rd ser., 52 (2011): 697–729. I thank Julien Théry for bringing this study (editing AN J 413, no. 25)
to my attention.

plars sent from Chaumont (23 November).59 But in other cases scholars are still
dependent on century-old editions. Some of these are riddled with errors and
misleading statements similar to the ones that led to so much confusion around
AN J 413, no. 17. Others were competently prepared but still sometimes omitted
passages that seemed uninteresting; moreover, these studies rarely described man-
uscripts in any detail (if at all). For confessions recorded at Cahors (beginning
30 October) we are dependent on Finke’s sometimes incomplete transcriptions of
1907;60 for the richly documented confessions in Nîmes (beginning 8 November)
the only edition is still that of Ménard from 1744;61 and for Bigorre (beginning
21 December?) we have only Prutz’s summary and partial transcription.62 Finally,
although Michelet’s venerable transcription of the Paris confessions is a landmark
of nineteenth-century scholarship, a modern edition and full study of the manu-
script would certainly be most welcome.
Once these original documents are more accurately understood, they will need
to be studied together to present a new picture of how interrogations transpired
across the kingdom in fall 1307—with what commonalities directed from Paris
and what variations as agents attempted to interpret their orders.63 Only then will
scholars be in a position to confidently reconstruct the crucial first stages of the
“celebrated and still mysterious trial against the Templars.”64
Appendix A: AN J 413, no. 17

AN J 413, no. 17, is an act produced by the notary Henri le Gay, recording the confes-
sions of thirteen Templars from the bailliage of Caen to four Dominicans and two royal
knights. The questioning took place in the petit château of Caen, in three separate sessions
from the morning of Saturday, 28 October 1307, through the morning of Sunday, 29 Oc
tober. The notary prepared the document as the three sessions unfolded, pausing first after
nones on Saturday, reconvening for the second session between nones and vespers, and
then resuming at prime on Sunday morning. Different witness lists are recorded for each
of the three sessions.
59
Field, “Royal Agents and Templar Confessions” (AN J 413, nos. 22 and 23); Field, “The Inquisi-
tor Ralph of Ligny, Two German Templars, and Marguerite Porete,” Journal of Medieval Religious
Cultures 39 (2013): 1–22 (AN J 413, no. 15). I would like to rectify here two errors in my edition of
the latter document: on the last line of p. 16 the text should read “preceptorem in Alemania” (rather
than “preceptor in Alemania”) and in the second line on p. 17 the text should read “pro Deo” (not
“per Deo”).
60
Finke, Papsttum und Untergang, 2:316–21 (document in the archives of Barcelona).
61
Léon Ménard, Histoire civile, ecclésiastique et littéraire de la ville de Nismes, vol. 1 (Paris, 1744),
preuves, no. CXXXVI, 195–208 (BnF MS Baluze 396); recently the subject of illuminating study by
Thomas Krämer, “Terror, Torture, and the Truth: The Testimonies of the Templars Revisited,” in The
Debate on the Trial of the Templars, ed. Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, 71–85.
62
Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang, 324 (AN J 413, no. 14). Prutz’s transcription of the date
reads “anno domini Mo CCCo VIIo ante festum b. Thome apostoli.”
63
One important distinction is between the very first confessions (Troyes and Rouen) that were
obtained before Jacques de Molay’s public confession in Paris, and those that unfolded after it was
clear that the Templar leadership would not resist and that an overwhelming percentage of Templars
in Paris had already confessed.
64
Théry, “A Heresy of State,” 117.

The document is 351 mm wide x 430 mm long, on medium-quality parchment, lightly
ruled, with a ruled left margin of 25 mm and a ruled right margin of 8 mm. The initial cap-
ital I is ornamented with a face in profile. In the left margin, the beginnings of the second
and third sessions are indicated with a sign. A later hand has lightly underlined, in pencil,
names and some key phrases. The oldest endorsement (apparently contemporary with the
act), in the center top, reads “Instrumentum publicum de confessione templariorum.” Be-
low, a more modern hand has added the shelf mark “J . 413 . no. 17.” and another hand adds
vertically along the right side “1307 17 J 413”. The document at some point was folded
lengthwise four times and widthwise three times, with “17” in a later hand written on
the portion of the dorse that would have been left showing. The document originally had
six seals, presumably of the four Dominicans and two royal knights. Slits for all six seals
remain. For three of these (the third, fifth, and sixth from the left) no parchment strips or
trace of the seals remains. For the first slit, the farthest to the left, the attaching parchment
strip without seal remains, with an abbreviation for “suppriorus” still visible, indicating
that it bore the seal of Robert Henrichon, the Dominican subprior of Caen. The second
seal is still intact, with no inscription visible on the parchment strip, but “atia plen” and
“ave m” still legible around the outside of the seal itself, with letters that seem to be “h o”
and then, below, “v d” in the center. Most likely this was the seal of the Dominican lector
Michel Chouquet. On the fourth attaching parchment strip the word “Iohannes” can be
read, indicating that the remaining seal is that of the Dominican Jean de Margny (the writ-
ing around the seal is now illegible; a Virgin and child can still be made out in the center).
The bottom left-hand corner of the document bears the sign manual of Henri le Gay.
The document was listed by P. Dupuy, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France (Paris,
1654), 82 (but mistakenly referring to interrogations made at Bayeux and Caen by William
of Paris); discussed by F.-J.-M. Raynouard, Monumens historiques (Paris, 1813), 239–41
(brief summary of and excerpts from both no. 17 and no. 20, with a correct indication that
the two documents deal with the same thirteen Templars; but at the same time mistakenly
indicating that the same brothers who confessed at Pont-de-l’Arche [bailliage of Rouen,
J 413,, no. 23] also appear in this document); and by K. Schottmüller, Der Untergang des
Templer-Ordens mit urkundlichen und kritischen Beiträgen (Berlin, 1887), 1:256. This
document has been known chiefly through the brief extract and description provided by
H. Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang (Berlin, 1888), 325. His description, however, is
extremely misleading. Most seriously, Prutz identified it as an interrogation from “Ba
yeux,” apparently confused by the fact that the notary was from the diocese of Bayeux;
and he indicated that it contained the confessions of six men (for further comments on
Prutz’s analysis, see the body of this article). At the time of this writing, this document has
not been made available through the ARCHIM (or any other) database.
I have distinguished u from v, but always employ i even where the scribe occasionally
used a j. I have left the gemipunctus ( . . ) as it appears in the manuscript.
Text
Ϯ In nomine Domini amen. Anno nativitatis eiusdem mo ccco septimo, indictione
sexta, die vicesima octava mensis Octobris, tempore sanctissimi patris ac domini Do-
mini Clementis pape quinti anno tercio,65 in mei notarii publici et testium subscripto-
rum presencia, constitutis personaliter religiosis viris fratribus Roberto dicto Herichon
65
Notaries in Paris recording Templar confessions in October 1307 apparently considered this
date to have still been within Clement’s second regnal year, while Henri le Gay understood Clement’s
third regnal year to have already commenced. See, for example, AN J 413, no. 18, edited in Michelet,
Procès, 2:277, which switches to “anno tercio” only on November 24 (p. 411). Clement was elected
5 June 1305 and crowned 14 November, so perhaps the discrepancy has to do with the question of

suppriore, Michel dicto Chouquet lectore, Rogerio de Argenciis, et Johanne de Maigni,
de conventu fratrum predicatorum Cadomi, Baiocensis diocesis, commissariis a reli-
gioso et honesto viro fratre Guillelmo de Parisius de ordine dictorum fratrum, capel-
lano domini pape, confessore excellentissimi principis . . domini Philippi Dei gratia
regis Francorum, ac inquisitore heretice pravitatis in regno Francie auctoritate apos-
tolica deputato. Que commissio sic incipit . . Religiosis et venerabilibus fratribus in-
quisitoribus heretice pravitatis Tholose et Carcassone auctoritate apostolica deputatis,
prioribus conventualibus supprioribus et lectoribus ordinis fratrum Predicatorum in
regno Francie constitutis, eorum videlicet singulis . . frater Guillelmus de Parisius eius-
dem ordinis capellanus domini pape, confessor excellentis principis domini Philippi
Dei gratia Francorum regis, ac inquisitor heretice pravitatis regni Francie auctoritate
apostolica deputatus, salutem in actore et consummatore fidei Iesu Christo. Fratres
carissimi, scelus sceleratissimum, celeste flagicium, quale nec oculus vidit nec auris
audivit, nec in hominis cor ascendit.66 Res amara res flebilis, abhominabilis et valde
terribilis ex qua consuevit ira divina in diffidencie filios67 provocari. Commovetur terra
nimirum et omnia elementa turbantur, nomen divini nominis exuflatur, religionis ve-
nustas confunditur, laceratur stabilitas fidei Christiane. Nuper ad domini regis auditum
et nostrum pervenit videlicet quod fratres quamplures ordinis milicie Templi, si fratres
ordinis valeant appellari, falso religionis nomen tenentes et habitum, detestabilem he-
resim et alias inauditam profitentur occulte, ita eciam quod in ingressu fratris cuiuslibet
ordinis prefati, cruce Domini cum eius effugie [sic] preposita Iesus Christus Dominus
noster per eum qui recipitur ter negatur et vice qualibet conspuitur super crucem et
ymaginem Iesu Christi. Postque vestibus exuto et cetera. Et sic terminatur: Datum
Pontisare xxiio die septembris, anno Domini mo ccco septimo. Vocatis virtute commis-
sionis predicte una cum nobilibus viris . . dominis Hugone de Castro68 et Engerrando
de Villaris,69 domini regis militibus, a dicto domino rege ad ea que secuntur deputatis,
prout per patentes ipsius domini regis litteras apparebat.70 Qui dictus dominus Hugo,
fratri Galtero de Bullex, militi de ordine milicie Templi in domo de Vaymer commo-
ranti, induto et recepto Parisius per fratrem Hugonem de Peraut tresdecim annis iam
elapsis ut dicebat, articulos subscriptos publice et aperte exposuit, et dixit articulatim
sub hac forma: Primo, peciit ab ipso Galtero si prima die qua fuit inductus in ordinem
et professus, ille qui ipsum recipit duxit eum ad locum secretum et ostendit illi signum
crucis et ymaginem crucifixi, et fecit ipsum Iesum Christum ter negare, et ter in effigiem
spuere crucifixi. Item, utrum, roba sua exutus, dictus recipiens ipsum osculatus fuit,
primo in fine spine dorsi, postea in umbilico, et postea in ore.71 Item, utrum idem recep-
tor sibi iniunxerit quod si aliquis fratrum vellet secum habere coitum illicitum contra
naturam quod illum ad hoc sine contradictione aliqua reciperet, nec eciam illud petenti
denegaret, quia per statuta ordinis hoc facere tenebatur.72 Item, utrum fuit umquam ad
whether to date from election or enthronement; but in that case it is surprising that notaries record-
ing confessions at the Temple in Paris still dated “anno secundo” as late as 21 November. Ibid., 408.
66
1 Corinthians 2.9.
67
Ephesians 5.6.
68
The data gathered in the Corpus philippicum housed by the IRHT in Paris (section Gallia regia,
carton “Hotêl, chevaliers, clercs du roi,” folder “chevaliers du roi”) indicate that Hugh received a
mantel at Christmas in 1288 and was paid for thirty days of service, to 1 January 1302.
69
Enguerran became governor of Navarre, from at least 8 June 1310 to March 1313 (Corpus phi-
lippicum, same carton and folder as above in note 68).
70
This wording demonstrates that these two were personally named in the royal arrest orders for
this bailliage, which are no longer extant.
71
It is worth noting that the notary is clearly translating from accusations transmitted in the ver-
nacular instructions that accompanied the arrest orders of 14 September, rather than copying the less
precise accusations found in the body of the Latin arrest orders themselves.
72
Prutz’s excerpt from the document begins here.

capitulum in quo antiquior ordinis ut dicitur tenet in manibus suis quoddam ydolum
factum cupri aut eris ad similitudinem cuiusdam capitis barbam prolixam habentis,
et adorat eum coram antiquioribus quasi deum suum, et antiquiores de ordine hec
faciunt ibidem existentes. Item, utrum sacerdotes de ordine corpus Christi in altari
conficiunt, prout et alii presbiteri in vera fide credentes facere consueverunt. Istis audi-
tis, licet multis adiurationibus et tergiversationibus evadere attemptasset, in fine tamen
multis obiurgationibus, rationibus, et inductionibus a dictis fratribus predicatoribus
sibi factis, dictus Galterius dixit73 fratribus predicatoribus et militibus antedictis et
petiit ab ipsis utrum sine amissione corporis et membrorum veritatem super his dicere
posset.74 Qui dicti fratres et milites sibi responderunt si ex bono corde et puro intende-
bat redire ad veram fidem et recognoscere Christum, quod sic. Tunc ipse Galterus,
genua flectando faciem suam lacrimis irrigando et misericordiam75 ecclesie petendo,
spontanea voluntate recognavit quatuor primos articulos esse veros, asserens vero, et
dicens se de duobus ultimis articulis, videlicet de ydolo et sacramento per presbyteros
ordinis, nichil scire. Hoc audito, dicti fratres predicatores ad misericordiam76 ecclesie
ipsum receperunt. Et eciam milites predicti, nomine dicti domini regis, omnem penam
corporalem quitaverunt eidem et remiserunt77 . . Item illud idem exposuit dictus do-
minus Hugo et dixit fratri Matheo Renaut preceptori de Britavilla Larrabel, recepto
apud Britavillam per fratrem Philippum tunc preceptorem Normannie modo precep-
torem Sancte Euvaubourc, decem annis vel eo circa iam elapsis, ut dicebat; item fratri
Stephano de Novo Castro preceptori de Courval,78 recepto ut dicebat apud Sanctum
Stephanam de Renervilla per fratrem Girardum de Villaris tunc preceptorem Francie,
septem annis vel eo circa iam elapsis; item fratri Gauffri Hervei, recepto apud Britavil-
lam Larrabel per dictum fratrem Philippum, tribus annis ut dicebat iam elapsis vel eo
circa; item fratri Johanni Challet, socio apud Britavillam, recepto apud Barbonne per
fratrem Robertum tunc preceptorem de Barbonne quadraginta tribus annis ut dicebat
iam elapsis; item fratri Guillelmo le Raur, socio apud Baugye, recepto ut dicebat apud
Fontenetum juxta Sablies per fratrem Guillelmum Destrees tunc preceptorem illius
loci, viginti quatuor annis iam elapsis. Quolibet templario predicto per se singulariter
examinato et diligenter requisito de veritate dicenda super dictis articulis, sic aperte et
lucide a dicto Galtero confessatis, auditoque consilio fratrum predicatorum predicto-
rum qui quantum poterant dictos templarios sigillatim ad veritatem dicendam exor-
tabantur, quilibet templarius per se dictos quatuor primos articulos sponte recognovit,
misericordiam ecclesie et relaxationem penarum corporum et membrorum petendo, et
quidam plusquam alii implorando, dicentes et asserentes de duobus ultimis articulis
se penitus nichil scire. Qui fratres predicatores et milites predicti, nomine quo supra,
dictis templariis misericordiam et relaxationem predictas concesserunt. Actum apud
Cadomum, in aula castri parvi dicte ville, inter horam prime et horam none, anno,
indictione, mense, dieque predictis, presentibus domino Ricardo de Britavilla milite,
magistro Roberto de Calido Becto canonico Sancti Sepulchri de Cadomo et clerico
domini regis,79 domino Johanne capellano dicti domini Hugonis de Castro, Johanne de
The letters “do” were written and then crossed out.

73
Prutz read “possit.”

74
75
Prutz read this as an abbreviation for “veniam.”
76
Prutz read again “veniam.”
77
Prutz’s excerpt ends here.
78
These three words were added above the line by the notary, who then noted and verified this ad-
dition in his formal signature at the end of the document.
79
Robert de Caudebec is called “garde du sceau de la vicomté de Caen” in 1299; “clerc et procureur
du roi” in 1305; “procureur du roi” in 1307; and “procureur du roi en Normandy” in 1309, according
to the Corpus philippicum, section Gallia regia, carton “Normandie, bailliages et sénéchaussées, et
agents royaux et notaires.” In subsequent notes, Gallia regia refers to this carton.

Castro, Radalpho le Gloy,81 Henrico Campion, Thoma de Tilya clerico vicecomitati
80
Cadomi,82 Guillelmo Marie clerico,83 et Richardo le Tumbeour,84 testibus ad premissa

vocatis et rogatis . . ____ . . . _____
§ Item anno, indictione, mense, dieque predictis, in presencia mei publici notarii in-
frascripti et testium subscriptorum, constitutis fratribus predicatoribus et militibus ante-
dictis, qui examinaverunt templarios subscriptos, quemlibet per se, et primo fratrem
Richardum dictum Bennenguel, socium preceptoris de Courval, receptum ut dicebat
apud Burgout per fratrem Aimeredum tunc preceptorem Normannie, fueratque in or-
dine per sexdecim annos vel eo circa ut dicebat; item fratrem Guillanum Tane, recep-
tum apud Britavillam Larrabel, socium preceptoris de Courval, per fratrem Philippum
antedictum tunc preceptore Normannie, quatuor annis vel eo circa iam elapsis ut dice-
bat; item fratrem Henricum des Rottours, receptum apud Renervillam per predictum
fratrem Philippum novem annis ut dicebat iam elapsis. Quolibet sigillatim diligenter
requisito super articulis antedictis, auditis rationibus dictorum fratrum predicatorum
dictis templariis propositis, quilibet templarius singulariter et spontanea voluntate reco-
gnovit quatuor primos articulos antedictos veros esse, dicentes duos ultimos articulos
penitus ignorare, petendo misericordiam ecclesie et relaxationem penarum corporum
et menbrorum cum instancia, ac eciam implorando, que fratres predicatores et milites
antedicti, nomine quo supra, eisdem concesserunt. Actum apud Cadomum, in loco su-
perius scripto, inter horam none et vesperi, anno, indictione, mense, dieque predic-
tis, presentibus dictis domino Richardo de Britavilla milite, domino Roberto de Caldo
Becto, Johanne Pagani, Petro Campion, Bertando de Monceaux, Guillelmo Gervayse,85
Henrico Roussel, et Yvone de Crayo, testibus ad hoc rogatis et vocatis . .
§ Item anno, indictione, mense, die sequenti, in mei notarii publici et testium subscrip-
torum presencia, convenerunt fratres predicatores et milites predicti apud castrum Ca-
domi iam dictum, et ibidem examinaverunt quatuor templarios inferius nominatos
super articulis antedictis; et primo fratrem Albinum Anglici, preceptorem domus de
Baugeyo, receptum ut dicebat apud Renervillam per dictum fratrem Philippum tunc
preceptorem Normannie viginti quatuor annis vel eo circa iam elapsis; item fratrem
Christoforum de Louviers, socium de Waymer, receptum apud Renervillam per fratrem
Aimeredum tunc Normannie preceptorem, viginti quinque annis vel eo circa iam elapsis
ut asserebat; item fratrem Radulphum dictum de Perouse, socium domus de Baugeyo,
receptum ut dicebat in Burgondia apud Dole per fratrem Richardum de Boutencourt
tunc magne Burgondie et modo de Gastineis preceptorem, viginti duobus annis vel eo
circa iam elapsis; item fratrem Guydonem Pasnaye apud Louvigny in diocese Sagiense
commorantem, receptum apud Renervillam per dictum fratrem Girardum de Villaris
tunc Francie preceptorem, sex annis iam elapsis ut dicebat. Quolibet templario singula-
riter examinato et requisito diligenter de dictis articulis, quilibet per se viam et modum
80
Jean du Chastel is called “clerc, garde du sceau de la vicomté de Caen” in a document of 23 Sep
tember 1305 (Gallia regia).
81
Raoul Gloy is called “garde du scel de la vicomté de Caen” in a document of 25 July 1305;
another record shows he was still alive in 1311 (Gallia regia).
82
Thomas du Teil is called “garde du scel de la vicomté de Caen en la main le roi” in 22 April
1305, and appears with similar titles in numerous documents until 5 March 1313 (Gallia regia). The
vicomte of Caen at this moment was Gautier de Boisgilout, as shown by his role in the inventory of
Bretteville-le-Rabet, AN J 413, no. 29.
83
Guillaume Marie appears in documents of November 1314 and January 1316 as receiving oaths
on behalf of the vicomte (Gallia regia).
84
Richard Le Tombeur is “mentionné dans le registre du Parlement” as “sergeant du roi” in 1313
and 1314 (Gallia regia).
85
Guillaume Gervais was a “clerc” who is recorded making a payment on behalf of the vicomte of
Caen to the exchequer, 22 October 1298 (Gallia regia).

in omnibus et per omnia tenuit aliorum templariorum predictorum. Actum apud Ca-
domum, in parvo castro, in aula predicta, circa horam prime, anno, indictione, mense,
dieque sequenti predictis, presentibus dominis Richardo de Britavilla milite et Roberto
de Calido Becto predictis, Johanne de Castro, Radalpho le Gloy, Petro Campion, Tho-
mas de Tilya, Richardo le Tumbeour, et Guillelmo Marie clerico, testibus ad predicta
rogatis et vocatis.
Et ego Henricus dictus le Gay, clericus Baiocensis diocesis, auc

toritate alme urbis prefecti notarius publicus, predictis confes
sionibus petitionibus receptionibus et relaxationibus ad miseri-
cordiam ecclesie et ad penas corporum et menbrorum presens
fui, et ea omnia et singula ut prescribuntur manu propria scripsi,
et in hanc formam publicam redegi, meoque signo solito una
cum sigillis dictorum quatuor fratrum predicatorum et duorum
militum ad maiorem rei firmitatem signavi, rogatus. Interlinea-
rem super vicesima sexta linea, videlicet . . preceptori de Cour-
val, manu propria scripsi et approbo.86
Sign manual of Henri le

Gay, used by permission
of the Archives nationales
de France
Appendix B: AN J 413, no. 20

AN J 413, no. 20 is a sealed but unnotarized document containing a vernacular record
of the same questioning of the same thirteen Templars from the bailliage of Caen as found
in J 413, no. 17, carried out by the same four Dominicans and two royal knights. Unlike
no. 17, this account gives no indication that questioning took place in three separate ses-
sions, and it was evidently not drafted in its present form until after the interrogations
were complete (that is, on or after the morning of Sunday, 29 October). The document
measures 570 x 250 mm. The quality of parchment is mediocre, with some holes now
worn through. The ruling is uniform (continuing to the bottom of the page, with five
lines blank after the text ends), and both margins are ruled, although writing occasionally
crosses over into the right margin. A sign resembling w appears in the left margin at the
spot where each new confession begins. The document was folded five times lengthwise.
The only endorsements are in early modern/modern hands: along the top right “J. 413.
no. 20” and vertically along the top left side “1307 20 J 413”. No seals remain, but six
slits through the fold up are visible; four of these still have strips of parchment attached.
The document was listed by P. Dupuy, Traittez concernant l’histoire de France (Paris,
1654), 89; discussed by F.-J.-M. Raynouard, Monumens historiques (Paris, 1813), 239– 41
(brief summary of both no. 20 and no. 17); and by K. Schottmüller, Der Untergang des
Templer-Ordens (Berlin, 1887), 1:256 (mainly following Raynouard); and summarized
in H. Prutz, Entwicklung und Untergang (Berlin, 1888), 326 (listing only four names). It
was most fully edited in H. Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens (Münster,
1907), 2:313–16, but with the articles of accusation omitted, incorrectly dated to 27–28
Henri le Gay appears as a clerk of the diocese of Bayeux and notary as early as 4 July 1298. He
86
is called “deporteor” of the vicomté of Caen on 25 May 1308; “Garde du scel de la vicomté en la
main du roi” 23 December 1308; “lieutenant du bailli” 25 September 1316; and “procureur du roi
au bailliage” in 1328 (Gallia regia).

October, and with no mention of the physical layout of the document. Mostly recently, see
the discussion and image in [G. Brunel, et al.], L’affaire des Templiers, du procès au mythe
(Paris, 2011), 28–29.
A high-resolution digital image can now be consulted through the ARCHIM database
at http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/archim/dossiers.htm. Since this digital im-
age is now conveniently available, it seems most useful here to provide an edition that
employs modern punctuation and capitalization and adds apostrophes and accents where
necessary for clarity and in keeping with modern conventions in editing Old and Middle
French.
Names and places have already been identified either in the body of this article, or in
Appendix A, and so are not repeated here.
***
Examination faite le jour de samedi en la feste as sains apostres Symon et Jude, l’an
de grace mil CCC et sept pour partie, et le diemanche prouchain ensuiant ensement
pour partie, des freres de la maison deu Temple de la baillie de Caen, sur les articles
de lour erreurs, seelees deu contreseel notre seignor le roi, les quiex articles sont tex:
C’est assavoir, cil qui sont premierement receu, requierent le pain et l’eaue de l’ordre,
et puis le commandoour ou le maistre qui le receoit le meine secreement derriere l’autel
ou en revestiare ou aillors en secret et li monstre la crois et la figure de notre seignor
Iesu Crist et li fait renier le prophete, c’est assavoir notre seignor Iesu Crist, de qui cele
figure est, par trois fois, et par trois fois crachier sur la crois. Puis le fait despoillier
de sa robe, et cil qui le receoit le baise en bout de l’eschine souz le braieul, puis en
nombral, et puis en la bouche, et li dit que se aucun frere veult gesir charnelment alui
que il le seuffre, quer il le doit et est tenu a seuffrir selonc le statut de l’ordre, et que
pluseurs dels pour ceu par maniere de sodomie gisent l’un eveques l’autre charnelment.
Et ceint l’en chascun quant il est receuz d’une cordele sur lour chemise, et la doit le
freres touz jours porter sur soi tant comme il vivra, et entent que ces cordeles ont esté
touchiés et mises entour un ydole qui est en forme d’une teste d’omme, a une grant
barbe, laquele teste il baisent et aourent en lour chapitres provincialx mes ce ne sont
past tuit li frere fors li grant maistre et li ancien. . Item les prestres de l’ordre ne sacrent
pas sur l’autel le corps notre seignor Iesu Crist . .87 Laquele examination fut faite par
nous freres Robert souprior, Michel Chouquet lectour, Roger d’Argences, et Johan de
Margny deu couvent des freres preechoours de Caen, selonc la forme de la commis-
sion sur ceu faite de religieus homme frere Guillaume de Paris chapelain notre pere le
pappe, confessour notre sire le roi de France, et inquisiteur deputé d’iceli notre pere le
pappe en roiaume de France de la mauvestie de heresie; et par nous Hugues de Chastel
et Engerran de Villers chevalier notre sire le roi deputez d’iceluj seignor quant a ceu,
si comme il apparessoit par ses lettres. Pressenz a ceste examination les tesmoingz des
quiex les nons s’ensuient: C’est assavoir, monseignor Richard de Breteville chevalier,
maistre Robert de Caudebeq clerq notre sire le roi, monseignor Johan chapelain deu
dit monseignor Hugues, Johan deu Chastel clerq, Raoul Gloi, Thomas deu Toil clerq
de la visconte de Caen, Henri Campion, Richard le Tumbeour sergent notre sire le roi,
et pluseurs autres. Et pour ceu que nous ne povions traire verité des diz Templiers sur
les erreurs contenues es diz articles, ja soit ceu que il avoient juré par deux fois et esté
87
The charges listed here match very closely the vidimus of the royal instructions prepared by the
bailli of Rouen ( J 413, no. 22).

examinez le plus diligemment que nous povions, nous souppriour, lectour, Roger et
Johan desus diz, en la presence de nous, les diz Hugues et Engerran, pour ceu que iceus
Templiers avoient tout mis en nie, lour monstrasmez singulierement et a chascun par
soi pluseurs raisons et pluseurs voies par quoi eus povoient avoir sauvement deu corps
et de l’ame se eus vouloient verité recognoistre et soi repentir des erreurs et retorner a
la foi et l’unité de sainte eglise, et comme sainte eglise recevoit ceus qui avoient erré et
vouloient retorner a la foi, et lour promeismez a les recevoir a la misericorde de sainte
eglise se einsie le vouloient fere. Et nous, Hugues et Engerran desus diz, ensement lour
promeismez a quitier toute peine temporel, dont notre seignor le roi les porroit punir
de telx erreurs. Et meesmement pour plus mouvoir les, quant a traire verité dels, lour
deismez et monstrasmez comme il estoit chose notoire et manifeste que la graignor
partie des Templiers deu roiaume de France avoient cogneu et confessé les erreurs, et
que les oviations et les deffenses proposees de lour partie en contraire n’estoit chose
qui lour peust valoir, et que se eus se pariuroient terche fois, bien si gardassent que il
lour convendroit souffrir tel peine comme le cas requiert. Et ceu fait, nous alasmez
avant a l’examination sur les articles desus diz, et oismez les diz Templiers singuliere-
ment l’un apres l’autre, et deposerent sur les diz articles en la manere que il apparet
par lour depositions ci dedenz escriptes. Et furent les diz Templiers examinez en la sale
deu petit chastel de Caen, le samedi et le diemanche desus diz, en la presence des diz
tesmoingz. Et a confirmation de verité, nous souppriour, lectour, freres Roger et Johan
devant nommez, avons mis nos seux a cest proces, oveques les seaux des diz Hugues et
Engerran presenz as choses ci dedenz escriptes.
~ Frere Gautier de Bullens chevalier, nei de l’eveschie d’Amiens, compaignon de la mai-
son deu Temple de Vaymer, receu et vestu a Paris par frere Hugues de Peraut chevalier,
lequel frere Gautier a esté en l’ordre l’espace de XIII anz ou environ si comme il disoit,
qui avoit juré par deux fois, et esté examiné diligemment sur les articles desus diz les
quiex il avoit touz mis en nie. Requis, demandé et examiné derrechief sur les diz articles,
cognut et confessa touz les erreurs, excepté l’ydole fait afforme d’une teste d’omme,
lequel il disoit que il n’avoit onques veu ne aouré, ne riens n’en savoit. Et deu sacrement
de l’autel disoit que il creoit que les chapelains deu Temple sacroient le corps notre
seignor sur l’autel comme bons crestions, ne ne savoit pas le contraire et est bien voir
que il avoit autre fois confessé88 que il avoit esté chaint quant il fut vestu d’une cordelle
sur sa chemise en signe de chastee, et disoit que il ne savoit nule mauvestie, ne que elle
eust esté touchié a l’ydole. Et des erreurs que il confessoit se repentoit si comme il disoit,
et retornoit a la foi et a l’unité de sainte eglise, et requeroit a nous soupprior, lectour,
Roger et Johan desus diz, la misericorde de l’iglise [sic], et a nous, les diz Hugues et En-
gerran, remission de peine temporel, les quiex choses li furent de nous octriees.
This would appear to indicate a statement made during the two previous sessions of interroga-
88
tions referred to in the document’s preamble.

~ Frere Matieu Renaut commandoour de la maison deu Tem- Les quiex
ple de Breteville la Rabel, recheu et vestu par frere Philippe lors avoient juré par
commandoour de Reneville, a present commandoour de Sainte deux fois et esté
Evaubourg, et a esté en l’ordre l’espace de X anz ou environ si examinez dili
comme il disoit. gemment sur les
articles desus diz
~ Frere Estienne deu Noef Castel commandoour de la maison
sigulierement,
deu Temple de Court Val, receu et vestu a Saint Estienne de
les quiex articles
Reneville par frere Girart de Villers, lors mestre de France, et a
eus avoient nie a
esté en l’ordre environ sis anz si comme il disoit.
plein. Requis,
~ Frere Giefroi Hervieu compaignon de la maison de Breteville, demandez
receu et vestu a Breteville par le dit frere Philippe, et a esté et examinez
en l’ordre III anz aura a la mi caresme prochain, si comme il chascun par soi
disoit. derrechief sur
~ Frere Johan Challet compaignon de la maison de Breteville, les diz articles,
receu et vestu a Barbonne par frere Robert commandoour de cognurent et
Barbonne, et a esté en l’ordre XVII anz ou environ, si comme confesserent les
il disoit. erreurs contenus
es diz articles en
~ Frere Guillaume le Raure compaignon de Baugie, receu et la forme et en la
vestu a Fontenoi jouste Sablies par frere Guillaume de Trees, maniere que le
commandoour de Fontenoi, et a esté en l’ordre XXIIII anz ou dit frere Gautier
XXV ou environ, si comme il disoit. quant a vrai
~ Frere Richard Bellenguel compaignon de la maison de Court entendement et
Val, vestu et receu par frere Aimere lors commandoour de Ren- a sentence. Et
eville, et a esté en l’ordre XVI anz, si comme il disoit. des erreurs que
il confessoient
~ Frere Guillain Tone compaignon de Court Val, vestu et receu se repentoi-
par le dit frere Philippe a Breteville et a esté en l’ordre IIII anz, ent, si comme
si comme il disoit. il disoient, et
~ Frere Henri des Rochours compaignon de Vaymer, receu et retornoient a la
vestu a Reneville par le dit frere Philippe, et a esté en l’ordre IX foi et a l’unité
anz ou environs, si comme is disoit. de sainte eglise,
requeranz a
~ Frere Aubin Lenglois commandoour de Baugie, receu et nous soupprior,
vestu par le dit frere Aimere, et a esté en l’ordre XXIIII anz ou lectour, Roger
environ, si comme il disoit. et Johan desus
~ Frere Christofle de Loviers compaignon de Vaymer, receu et diz, la miseri-
vestu a Reneville par le dit frere Aimere, et a esté en l’ordre corde de sainte
XXV anz ou environ, si comme il disoit. eglise, et a nous
les diz Hugues
~ Frere Raoul de Perrousel compaignon a Baugie receu et vestu
et Engerran de
a Dole par frere Richard de Boutencourt lors commandoour
peine temporel.
de Bourgoigne et a esté en l’ordre XXII anz, si comme il disoit.
Les quieux choses lour furent otriees.
~Frere Guy Pesnee, demorant a la maison deu Temple de Louvigny tout soul, receu
et vestu par frere Richard de Villers lors commandoour de France, et a esté en l’ordre
environ VI anz si comme il disoit, le quel avoit esté juré par deux fois et esté examiné
diligemment sur les articles desus diz, les quiex articles il avoit nie. Mis en gehine le samedi

desus dit, en la quelle gehine il ne vout riens confesser, en lendemain requis, demandé
et examiné sur les diz articles, confessa les erreurs en la manere que il avoient esté
confessé des autres desus diz, quant a sentence et a vrai entendement, requerant a nous
souppriour, lectour, Roger et Johan desus dit misericorde, et a nous les diz Hugues et
Engerran, remission de peine temporel, la quelle chose lui fut otriee.
Sean L. Field is Professor of History at the University of Vermont (e-mail: Sean.Field@uvm

.edu)


Torture and Confession in The Templar I

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Torture and Confession in the Templar

Interrogations at Caen, 28–29 October 1307

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Setting the Record Straight on the “Six Templars of Bayeux”

Confusion about the contents of and relationship between AN J 413, nos. 17

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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royal knight, Hugh of Chastel, presided” over interrogations.17 Alain Demurger,

Orders, Arrests, and Inventories: 14 September–13 October

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The crucial work on these commanderies is Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie.

Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Events Elsewhere, 15–26 October

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Confessions began to be recorded at Caen Saturday, 28 October, and continued

The Latin Version of Events

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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The Vernacular Version of Events

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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The Fate of the Thirteen Templars of Caen

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This examination of the two versions of the Templar confessions recorded at

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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Appendix A: AN J 413, no. 17

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Speculum 91/2 (April 2016)

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The letters “do” were written and then crossed out.

Prutz read “possit.”

Et ego Henricus dictus le Gay, clericus Baiocensis diocesis, auc