252 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
were well-founded. The ambition and selfishness of Philip
the Fair made all his doings suspect, and the people were
inclined to favour the Templars against the king.
Philip claimed to have arrested the Templars with the
consent of the Pope, but Clement had agreed only to investi-
gate the Order, and the king knew that his position was
vulnerable. He hastened to forestall the criticism that he had
acted irregularly. On the day after the imprisonment of
the brethren (Saturday, October *i4th), the clergy of Notre
Dame were summoned to hear the charges against the Qrder,
and they obediently reported that their sovereign was amply
justified. The propaganda machine of Philip the Fair began
to work at full pressure, and it was an extremely efficient
instrument. The Franciscans and the Dominicans were the
king's propagandists, and on the same day they opened their
campaign by addressing huge audiences in the Palais Royal
and elsewhere. The theme of the preachers' discourse was
not a denial that Philip wanted to possess himself of the goods
of the Temple and break an Order which might threaten him 5
for while some people perhaps guessed that this was so,
Philip did not want the idea to be put into the heads of others,
even if he had considered that subjects had the right to think
such things of their monarch. The mission of the preachers
was to blacken the character of the Templars, convince the
regular clergy and the people that the brethren were guilty
of the foulest crimes, and stir up indignation against men who
were furiously denounced as idolators, monsters of iniquity,
betrayers of Christ, devotees of obscenities, and treacherous
to the cause of Christendom in the Holy Land.
Royal proclamations published throughout France specified
some of the enormities charged against the brethren and
explained that the king had arrested the Templars " at the
request of our brother in Christ, William of Paris, Inquisitor
of the heresy, who has begged for the assistance of the secular
power to stamp out the heretics and idolaters ". The people