CHAP. I.]

ST. JOHN OE JERUSALEM.

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the warriors he eulogised as they deserved, at thevery moment he was inviting them into hisclutches. From which I am far from deducingany malignity of intention in him, but a weak andineffectual dislike of what he had promised; andtherefore he hesitated for a whole year, from whenLe Bel had all the Templars through his do-minions thrown into prison as malefactors inone day in 1307, which creates a confusion ofdates ; some historians counting from that kingly,and others from the Papal condemnation. ThePope had weighty displeasure, 1 at what the kinghad done, seized on the Templars to burn them,and confiscate their property, in 1307; and only in1308 his Holiness consented to condemn theirentire order. Bsovius, Gurtler, and all the annalistsof that unhappy body, are of one accord on thispoint. The miserable Pontiff made several attemptsto free himself from his horrible promises; butthey had been the price of his tiara, and his abjectnature was too eaten up by ambition to descry anyway but executing it. It seemed to him necessary;as if crime and injustice can ever be necessary.Not that Clement wished worse to the Templars, orbetter to the Hospitallers, but, as he condemnedone, he would have condemned both—abandoned1 Cod. Dipl. Geros.—Seb. Paoli : Osscrvazioni, iv. 526.