Editing Pope Clement V (section)

===Clement V and the Knights Templar===
[[File:Bull (illustration). (FindID 65882).jpg|thumb|left|[[Bulla (seal)|Bulla]] of Clement V]]
Early in 1306, Clement V explained away those features of the [[Papal bull]] ''[[Clericis Laicos]]'' that might seem to apply to the king of France and essentially withdrew ''[[Unam Sanctam]]'', the bull of Boniface VIII that asserted papal supremacy over secular rulers and threatened Philip's political plans, a radical change in papal policy.{{sfn|Menache|2002|p=179}} Clement spent most of the year 1306 at Bordeaux because of ill-health. Subsequently, he resided at [[Poitiers]] and elsewhere.

On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of the [[Knights Templar]] were arrested in France, an action apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this move, but it has also embellished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V's coronation, the king charged the Templars with usury, credit inflation, fraud, [[Christian heresy|heresy]], sodomy, immorality, and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were heightened by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church but would proceed independently.<ref name="Howarth">Howarth, pp. 11–14, 261, 323</ref>

Meanwhile, Philip IV's lawyers pressed to reopen [[Guillaume de Nogaret]]'s charges of heresy against the late [[Boniface VIII]] that had circulated in the pamphlet war around the bull ''Unam sanctam''. Clement V had to yield to pressures for this extraordinary trial, begun on 2 February 1309 at Avignon, which dragged on for two years. In the document that called for witnesses, Clement V expressed both his personal conviction of the innocence of Boniface VIII and his resolution to satisfy the king. Finally, in February 1311, Philip IV wrote to Clement V abandoning the process to the future Council of Vienne. For his part, Clement V absolved all the participants in the abduction of Boniface at [[Anagni]].<ref name="Howarth"/>

In pursuance of the king's wishes, Clement V in 1311 summoned the [[Council of Vienne]], which refused to convict the Templars of heresy. The Pope abolished the order anyway, as the Templars seemed to be in bad repute and had outlived their usefulness as papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East.

False charges of heresy and [[sodomy]] set aside, the guilt or innocence of the Templars is one of the more difficult historical problems, partly because of the atmosphere of hysteria that had built up in the preceding generation (marked by habitually intemperate language and extravagant denunciations exchanged between temporal rulers and churchmen), partly because the subject has been embraced by conspiracy theorists and quasi-historians.<ref name="duffy">Duffy, pp. 403, 439, 460–463</ref>