3 - The Papal Intervention

Summary

When Clement received news of the arrests of 13 October, he was staying some distance outside Poitiers. He hastened into the city, arriving on Sunday the 15th, and ordered a consistory to be held the next morning. This was a tribunal in which the pope and cardinals heard matters of complaint and accusation brought for settlement at the papal court. The urgency of the situation was underlined when the Cardinal Peter of la Chapelle, who had been travelling to Poitiers, but who had stopped some distance away because of illness, was ordered to resume his journey at once. At Poitiers the extent of the royal action had been forcibly brought home to Clement, for Hugh of Pairaud, who had been attending the papal court, together with sixteen or seventeen other Templars, had actually been seized at Poitiers and carried off to the neighbouring town of Loches. Only the cubicularii or treasurers of the Order, who had presumably been in the papacy's direct employment at this time, were left in Poitiers, ‘on account of reverence’ to the pope, according to a later witness. For several days Clement held a secret consistory inside a guarded room, and probably during this time he decided to challenge the French king on the issue. Perhaps he encouraged the Templars, for an anonymous correspondent at the papal court, probably one of the Templar treasurers, says that Clement told them to comfort themselves and not to despair or give way to terror.