But Philip the Handsome had attained his end:  he was in possession of the Templars’ riches.  On the 11th of June, 1311, the commission of inquiry terminated its sittings, and the report of its labors concluded as follows:  “For further precaution, we have deposited the said procedure, drawn up by notaries in authentic form, in the treasury of Notre-Dame, at Paris, to be shown to none without special letters from Your Holiness.”  The council-general, announced in 1308 by the pope, to decide definitively upon this great case, was actually opened at Vienne, in October, 1311; more than three hundred bishops assembled; and nine Templars presented themselves for the defence of their order, saying that there were at Lyons, or in the neighborhood, fifteen hundred or two thousand of their brethren, ready to support them.  The pope had the nine defenders arrested, adjourned the decision once more, and, on the 22d of March in the following year, at a mere secret consistory, made up of the most docile bishops and a few cardinals, pronounced, solely on his pontifical authority, the abolition of the order of the Temple:  and it was subsequently proclaimed officially, on the 3d of April, 1312, in presence of the king and the council.  And not a soul protested.

The Grand Master, James de Molay, in confinement at Gisors, survived his order.  The pope had reserved to himself the task of trying him; but, disgusted with the work, he committed the trial to ecclesiastical commissioners assembled at Paris, before whom Molay was brought, together with three of the principal leaders of the Temple, survivors like himself.  They had read over to them, from a scaffold erected in the forecourt of Notre-Dame, the confessions they had made, but lately, under torture, and it was announced to them that they were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.  Remorse had restored to the Grand Master all his courage; he interrupted the reading, and disavowed his avowals, protesting that torture alone had made him speak so falsely, and maintaining that

               “Of his grand order nought he wist
               ’Gainst honor and the laws of Christ.”

One of his three comrades in misfortune, the commander of Normandy, made aloud a similar disavowal.  The embarrassed judges sent the two Templars back to the provost of Paris, and put off their decision to the following day; but Philip the Handsome, without waiting for the morrow, and without consulting the judges, ordered the two Templars to be burned the same evening, March 11, 1314, at the hour of vespers, in Ile-de-la-Cite, on the site of the present Place Dauphine.  A poet-chronicler, Godfrey of Paris, who was a witness of the scene, thus describes it:  “The Grand Master, seeing the fire prepared, stripped himself briskly; I tell just as I saw; he bared himself to his shirt, light-heartedly and with a good grace, without a whit of trembling, though he was dragged and shaken mightily.  They took hold of him to tie him to the stake, and they were binding his hands with a cord, but he said to them, ’Sirs, suffer me to fold my hands a while, and make my prayer to God, for verily it is time.  I am presently to die; but wrongfully, God wot.  Wherefore woe will come, ere long, to those who condemn us without a cause.  God will avenge our death.’”