32,8 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS
grave offences against the Church. De Nogaret and de
Plasian in turn objected to the presence on the tribunal of
several cardinals who, they claimed, were biased against
France, These were only the first of the squabbles that
marked the process. The charges against the dead pontiff
had been repeated many times, and now Philip's representa-
tives produced statements given under oath, and a long
succession of witnesses testified that Boniface was guilty of the
most monstrous crimes. It was a remarkable body of
evidence, and it is significant that, although torture was said
to have been used by the defence, none of the witnesses for the
prosecution complained of having been tortured or coerced
in any way: In the so-called trial of the Temple, Philip's
ministers had shown themselves to be expert fabricators of
evidence and highly successful in finding witnesses who would
swear to anything and everything that was required of them.
But the witnesses called by de Nogaret and de Plasian in the
process against Boniface came from provinces over which
Philip had no control. These witnesses may have been
bought with French gold to give perjured testimony, but that
is extremely unlikely, and it seems probable that the
deponents sincerely believed what they said before the papal
tribunal.
Yet most of the statements are almost incredible and
some of them are wholly incredible. Witness after witness
accused Boniface of the grossest depravity, of scoffing at the
sacraments of the Church, of keeping a familiar demon, of
engaging in black magic—one deponent told in great detail
how Boniface had killed a cock, scattered its blood in a magic
circle, and cast spells. The dead pontiff was alleged to have
openly propounded the theory that immortality was a myth
and recognised as such by intelligent people, although they
pretended to believe in it; for the best way to keep the vulgar
in subjection was to hold out the promise of a future life,
Boniface, said another witness, had declared that the Virgin