The absolution formula of the templars
Among the accusations brought against the Templars by Pope Clement V. in 1308, there was one to the effect that the officers of the Order — the Master, the Visitors, and the Preceptors — absolved the brethren from their sins.
It is further asserted that de Molay admitted this in the presence of high personages before his arrest.' That the accusation was an afterthought is shown by the fact that it is not contained in the preliminary list of charges sent in September 1307, by Inquisitor Guillaume de Paris to his subordinates as a guide for them in the expected trials of the Templars.
Yet Clement was not the first to take note of this assumption of sacerdotal prerogatives, which, in fact, was well known to all who busied themselves with canon law, and public attention had already been called to it. In a diatribe on the disorders of the Church, written by men- mendicant friars apparently towards the end of the thirteenth century, all the three great Military Orders — the Hospital, the Temple, and the Teutonic Knights^are reproved for this usurpation of the power of the keys, although it is ascribed
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