This edition of two quodlibets and an anonymous memorandum is a welcome addition to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica's series Studies and Texts. It is the work of two eminent scholars, William J. Courtenay, professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin, and his younger colleague, Karl Ubl, of the Universities of Tübingen and Köln. William Courtenay's accomplishments as text editor and expert on medieval logic and universities are legion. Karl Ubl's publications range from a book on the prohibition of incest in early medieval Europe to studies of Engelbert of Admont (d. 1331), Alexander of Roes (d. before 1300), and the master of theology of the University of Paris, Jean de Pouilly (d. ca. 1328), [1] student of Godefroid de Fontaines and professor in the faculty of theology of the University of Paris from 1307 to 1312. [2] Here Courtenay and Ubl have joined forces to produce an impressive edition of two of Jean's quodlibets, as well as an anonymous memorandum that Malcolm Barber believed Jean may have composed. [3]
The three works are linked by their focus on issues raised during the merciless pursuit of the Order of the Knights Templars by Philip the Fair of France (1268-1314, r. 1285-1314). Launched on 13 October 1307, Philip's attack on the Order resulted in many Templars' confession of offensive heretical practices, then in May 1310 in the burning of numerous Templars who before a papal commission revoked their earlier confessions, and finally in the Order's dissolution by Pope Clement V on 22 March 1312, not because it was judged heretical but because its reputation was believed so compromised that its reform was considered impossible. The persecution of the Templars did not end with the Order's demise, and on 18 March 1314 the grand master, Jacques de Molay, and an associate were executed summarily by French royal officials on a small island in the Seine the evening after papal delegates heard them abjure their original confessions and entrusted them to the prévôt of Paris to await sentencing.
It is easy to understand the enduring fascination of these dramatic, tragic events, recently witnessed by the success of Ghislain Brunel's impressive exhibition at the Archives nationales in Paris. [4] As in Philip the Fair's other attacks on enemies real and imagined, the royal ministers who directed proceedings against the Templars employed a range of tactics that eerily resemble those associated with subsequent (and current) prosecutions: the invention of outlandish accusations, torture of many kinds, rendition, suborning of witnesses, and the confection of propaganda to persuade the public of the justice of the government's cause. Masters of deceit, Philip the Fair and his ministers turned again to methods they had employed with some success against Boniface VIII in 1303, and attempted to enlist the support of the masters of the University of Paris for their vendetta against the Templars. [5]
The efforts of the king and his officers were only partly successful, as Courtenay has already shown, and as the introduction to this volume again demonstrates. In two essays published in 2008 [6] and 2010 [7] Courtenay emphasized the hesitancy of most university masters to endorse the king's most extreme claims and charges, and showed that unlike many others Jean de Pouilly was prepared to provide the king a good measure of the support and comfort he sought.
In his two essays, Courtenay focused on the first of the two quodlibetal questions published in this book. Composed in December 1307 or perhaps March 1308, the 19th question of Jean's second book of quodlibeta concerns the pope's right of access to the secrets of members of religious orders, and concludes (unremarkably) that indeed the pope must be able to know such secrets. In the course of his long and sometimes rambling analysis, Jean de Pouilly affirmed papal and episcopal authority but also managed to express approval of Philip the Fair's arrest of the Templars and, in the process, voice his belief that, as was charged, they were "most evil, apostates, and sodomites" (79 ll. 4-5).
The second question concerns a far more complex issue: the status of confessed heretics who after confession and reconciliation with the church revoked their confessions--which was the case of numerous Templars, including most spectacularly the master of the Order, Jacques de Molay. From the beginning the government took the position that any Templar who confessed and then abjured was ipso facto relapsed and was to be handed over to the secular authorities for punishment. [8] Philip the Fair's advisers seem to have believed that canon law, civil law, and common sense supported the position that it was indignum (which can mean both "shameful" and "intolerable") that someone could by his own testimony annul what he had openly and publicly confessed. [9] The question was not as clear-cut as the royal ministers presented it. As Courtenay and Ubl make clear, the legal issues were complex. Further, the courage manifested by the Templars who chose to die rather than affirm their original confessions made many doubt the justice or appropriateness of the penalty the secular arm inflicted. It was not lost on at least some of the chroniclers of the time (and is unlikely to have escaped more general notice) that Templars who confessed were well treated, those who refused to confess escaped with their lives, and only those who revoked their confessions were killed. [10] Writing of the executions in May 1310, the master inquisitor Bernard Gui expressed surprise that the Templars could have been judged on the basis of their original confessions, when they had all said they had confessed falsely because they had been tortured or feared they would be. [11] Gui was also surprised that the condemned had given no other reason for lying than torture or fear of torture, perhaps because he thought they should have been made of stronger stuff. [12] In dealing with this episode Gui did not mention relapse as a grounds for the Templars' condemnation, and later, in recounting events of 1314, Gui expressed considerable astonishment that after hearing that Jacques de Molay and his companion had revoked their confessions, the king, his sons, and his ministers had had them executed at once, without waiting for any ecclesiastical judgment, despite the presence in Paris of two cardinal priests.
The precipitateness of Philip the Fair's action in 1314 suggests that the king may have feared that the ecclesiastical judges who had heard Molay and his companion retract their confessions might not relinquish them to him as relapsed heretics. True, two contemporary chroniclers stressed that in 1310 expert canon lawyers and theologians were consulted before the abjuring Templars were handed over to the secular authorities for execution. The continuator of the chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis wrote that after taking counsel with experts in theology and canon law, the council that the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, had assembled in Paris [13] decided that some Templars should be absolved, some required to do penance before being released, some kept in close confinement and many in prison forever, and some, as relapsed heretics ("tamquam relapsos in heresim"), turned over to the secular court. [14] According to Tolomeo (Bartholomew) of Lucca (ca. 1226-1327), it was formally decided in this year that the revocation of confession constituted relapse, and this was the basis for the Templars' execution. [15] Whether or not Tolomeo himself approved of this determination is not clear. Perhaps significantly, he passed over in silence the summary execution of Jacques de Molay and his companion in 1314. The continuator of the chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis did not. He made clear that Jacques de Molay and his companion retracted their confessions after they and two other Templars whose judgment the pope had reserved to himself had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment by two cardinals in the presence of other ecclesiastics including Philippe de Marigny, the archbishop of Sens, that the cardinals had handed Molay and his companion over to the prévôt of Paris so that they could deliberate further on the following day, and that the king had then intervened. The manuscripts of the chronicle indicate that before acting, Philip the Fair took counsel with his clerical advisers (although the first editor of the chronicle reworked this to indicate that the king had consulted advisers other than clerics). Whether or not the king conferred with ecclesistics, it is in keeping with the biases of this work that the king is said to have acted "prudenti consilio." [16] The late fourteenth-century chronicler Amalric Auger, who largely relied on Bernard Gui, aptly commented that Philip the Fair and his council intervened because they did not want Molay and other Templars to be able to escape temporal death by revoking their confessions. [17] The abrupt haste with which Philip the Fair acted is particularly noteworthy in view of the fact that in a bull issued on 6 May 1312, Clement V counseled ecclesiastical judges to exercise mercy in dealing with all Templars except those who were relapsed or unrepentant. [18]
Thus, the question that Jean de Pouilly considered in the second quodlibet edited in this volume was of more than considerable interest to the king and his officials. Clearly Philip the Fair and his advisers resoundingly believed that "a confessed heretic who later revoked his confession before the church, saying that he had made false statements, should be considered relapsed"--and thus handed over to the secular authorities for punishment. This is the conclusion of the quodlibet, which occupies some 60 pages of text, six times the length of the first quodlibet.
The quodlibet is the 15th question in Jean's fifth book. Its length suggests its unusual nature. As part of the fifth book of Jean's quodlibets, it was not composed in its final form until well after the mass executions of 1310 and the death of Molay and his companion in 1314, since Jean worked on and edited the book between 1321 and 1328. [19] The accuracy of the statements it contains about the critical events clustered around 1310 and about those who opposed Jean's views is thus open to question. Time had passed, and the issue of relapsed Templars did not have the urgency and immediacy it once possessed. Further, Jean's own tribulations since 1314 may well have affected the version of the past he presented in the quodlibet. He had seen his own writings combed for error, and three of his declarations condemned by Pope John XXII on 24 July 1321 as "false, erroneous, and devoid of sound doctrine," and he had been forced to retract the pronouncements publicly in Paris. [20]
In the quodlibet Jean took pains to emphasize (and possibly magnify) his own importance and independence, and his early advocacy of the royalist position. Jean commenced with a bit of historical background, describing an assembly of prelates of different provinces in Paris, held during the year the Templars were captured, at which many issues were raised, and particularly whether those who retracted confessions were to be considered relapsed heretics. Jean said that he and two others affirmed the positive, whereas nineteen university colleagues opposed them. Jean and his colleagues advanced what he boastfully termed "beautiful and good arguments," which he rehearsed [21] before the prelates in the chapel of the bishop of Paris. According to Jean, "it was commonly said" that his minority opinion was approved by the prelates, especially those of Paris, which led the nineteen masters who opposed it to raise detailed objections. So it was, said Jean, that "after the Templars were expediti," the question was raised again, to see whose reasons were the strongest. This led, Jean continued, to his answering the objections in the quodlibet, whose references to the Council of Vienne show that it was written in 1312 or later, after the Templars had been "taken care of," as expediti may imply. At the end of the quodlibet, Jean expressed considerable umbrage at the fact that only two or three of his opponents had taken an active part in preparing answers to his points, and he said that if all had participated the answers would not have been as "frivolous" as they were--and he would not have answered them as he did, but rather with "due and fitting reverence."
The quodlibet is puzzling not only in terms of the dates to which its contents seem to refer, but also because of its style and contents. The arguments that are advanced and refuted seem contrived, inflated, and tendentious, and the positions that Jean ascribes to his opponents are often difficult to grasp and unconvincing; "frivolous" aptly describes most of them, and Jean's refutations are hardly profound. In attempting to follow the arguments, the analyses the editors present are useful, although the clarity of their summaries often cloaks the involutedness of the arguments themselves.
The five arguments Jean himself advanced are wordy, complex, and generally unpersuasive, based as they are on the assumption that the Templars were guilty of apostasy and that their original confessions were true and legitimate. Indeed, Jean apparently thought that the council of Vienne, which he had attended, condemned the order as heretical (or apostate), which is simply not true (99 ll. 12-14, 103 ll. 13-16; cf. 93 ll. 1-4). [22] Nowhere is the issue of torture and forced confession squarely confronted. [23] It is difficult to imagine that any of those who had witnessed the deaths of the Templars or pondered the reasons for their executions would have been persuaded to accept the justice of the royal action by the arguments that Jean presented. Or that the arguments would earlier have convinced prelates gathered in council. Or that the Templars would have welcomed the thirteen contorted "arguments" that Jean said his opponents presented. One thing is clear: Jean took great pride in stressing that the church had followed and adopted his position (99 ll. 14-15; 145 ll. 25-26), and that he had been a leader in supporting the government's position.
The editors make a valiant and laudable effort to anchor the account presented by Jean against the realities of the prosecution of the Templars. It is not clear to me, however, why they consider relevant the documents describing the prosecution of Marguerite Porete as a relapsed heretic in the spring of 1310, since the issue of relapse in those documents is very different from the Templars' retractions of their confessions. It is worth emphasizing that until the original documents concerning Marguerite Porete and Guiard de Cressonessart have been thoroughly analyzed, the relationship of the prosecution described in the documents to the attack on the Templars remains an open question. It should, however, be emphasized that pace Courtenay and Ubl (see p. 41), the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny (brother of the royal minister Enguerran de Marigny), is not known (or said in the documents) to have produced for the trial judges any material relating to Marguerite's past activities in Cambrai.
The third document edited by Courtenay and Ubl is the shortest of the three. The memorandum (filling nine pages in the edition) responds to four questions involving the Templars, including the issue of abjuration. As Barber has stressed, the responses were "completely favourable to the government's position." [24] First, no account should be taken of the grand master's revocations of his confessions, since his guilt was clear and God's "secret judgment" condemned him to well-deserved temporal punishment. Second, the essence or substance of the profession made by those entering the Order was corrupt, for multiple reasons. Third, no defender was to be given to individual Templars, or to the Order, since the Templars' guilt was proven by the members' confessions, and the king of France and the whole realm's ecclesiastics and people cried out to the church to take action in a case so clear-cut that a defender would have nothing to say, except to uphold their indefensible practices. The final arguments were directed against the notion that the existence of innocent members might stand in the way of the Order's dissolution.
This document is far more impassioned than the quodlibets, vigorously insisting on the necessity of prosecuting the Order, and decrying the shame and scandal that would result from failure to attack its heretical practices. The document was partially edited by Heinrich Finke and later by Georges Lizerand, [25] and it is good to have the entire act finally available. The editors' detailed references to the canon law and scriptural sources mentioned in the memorandum are particularly useful, and they present possible grounds for linking its composition with proceedings at the Council of Vienne. Their edition is virtually flawless and corrects errors in the earlier editions.[26]
The authorship of the memorandum has been long discussed. Finke (and later Johannes Fried) [27] suggested Guillaume de Nogaret, Lizerand raised the alternative possibilities of Guillaume de Plaisians and Pierre Dubois, whereas Malcolm Barber advanced the name of Jean de Pouilly. Here the editors (or at least one of them) [28] opt for Guillaume de Plaisians because of verbal similarities between the document and a speech Plaisians gave before the pope on 6 June 1308 and because the script of corrections and additions to the document seemed similar to that of Plaisians. In fact, however, there is no question that Guillaume de Nogaret corrected and expanded the memorandum, [29] which he seems to have retained among his papers, [30] and which I believe he probably drafted himself. [31] Nogaret's hand is unmistakable, as is his often idiosyncratic orthography. [32] His distinctive voice is audible throughout, and the emphasis on scandal and scandalizing thoroughly typical of him. [33] The similarities to Plaisians' discourse are easily explained by Nogaret's habitual role in drafting statements that Plaisians declaimed.
Courtenay and Ubl deserve thanks and congratulations for the useful introduction and the care with which they have analyzed and presented the documents, and prepared the indices. The attention devoted to the volume's publication reflects the high standards for which the Monumenta Germaniae Historica is famed. The one possible improvement I can suggest is the inclusion of photographic reproductions of at least portions of the manuscripts and acts that are being published.
ADDENDUM: 7 April 2016, Elizabeth Brown would like to note that some of the views she expressed in this review she now believes are erroneous: first, regarding the date of the execution of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny (11 March rather than 18 March 1314) and, second, regarding the nature of the involvement of Philip the Fair and his ministers in the execution. Please consult her article, “Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar: The Execution of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314,” Viator 471 (2016): 229-292.
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Notes:
1. "Haeretici relapsi. Jean de Pouilly une die juristischen Grundlagen für die Hinrichtung der Tempelritter," in 1308. Eine Topographie historischer Gleichzeitigkeit, ed. Andreas Speer and David Wirmer (Miscellanea Mediaevalia des Thomas-Instituts der Universität von Köln], 35; Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2010), 161-70.
2. On Jean, see Ludwig Hödl, "The Quodlibeta of John of Pouilly (+ ca. 1328) and the Philosophical and Theological Debates at Paris 1307-1312," in Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, The Fourteenth Century, ed. Christopher Schabel (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, 7; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 199-220.
3. The Trial of the Templars, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 80 (referring to the document as coming "from government sources"), 171-74 (esp. 173, "one possible candidate is John of Pouilly").
4. See the exhibition catalogue, L'affaire des Templiers, du procès au mythe, Paris, Archives nationales, 2 March-16 May 2011, to which I contributed an entry on Marguerite Porete (50-51, no. 28).
5. See Barber, Trial, 80-81, 171.
6. "Learned Opinion and Royal Justice: The Role of Paris Masters of Theology During the Reign of Philip the Fair," in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kay, and E. Ann Matter (The Middle Ages Series; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 149-63, 280-85.
7. "The Role of University Masters and Bachelors at Paris in the Templar Affair, 1307-1308," in 1308 (see n. 1), 171-81.
8. The questions submitted to masters of the University of Paris for their determination began with a series of statements said to admit no doubt, one of which declared that "if a person is contumacious and pertinacious in his contumacy, or relapses after abjuring his error (concerning which it is not to be presumed that he, who has done these things, remains firm), although weeping and grieving the church hands over such contumacious and relapsed individuals to the secular court. The church does not issue temporal judgments or temporal condemnations concerning such persons, and indeed it prays for the relapsed who again make clear their error, against whom the secular court exercises the strength of its power." ("al[iter] si contumacem in pertinacia / uel relapsum post abiuracionem erroris / de quo non est presumendum eum stare qui sic egit / licet lugens & dolens ecclesia / tales contumaces uel relapsos dimittit curie seculari / non eos iudicat temporaliter nec condempnat / immo pro relapsis errorem iterum agnoscentibus orat / contra quos curia secularis vires sue potestatis exercet. Circa hoc autem nemo dubitat." See AN, J 413, no. 31, edited in Heinrich Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols. (Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen, 4; Münster i. W.: Aschendorff, 1907) 2:101-7. The punctuation in the document makes clear that the phrase licet...dolens modifies ecclesia. I am grateful to Charles Donahue and Kenneth Pennington for advice on the translation of the ambiguous phrase de quo...egit, which can be interpreted as meaning that the relapsed person might waver either in his abjuration or in adhering to his error. Cf. Ubl, "Haeretici relapsi," 164, stating that in the list of questions "wird die Frage des Widerrufs nicht berührt."
9. "quod secundum iuris canonici regulas et civilis & prout ostendit ratio naturalis nimis est indignum / quod illud quod quis est palam et publice confessus proprio valeat testimonio infirmare": Paris, Archives nationales (hereafter AN), J 413, no. 32, in Gelehrte Gutachten, 149, and in Finke, Papsttum 2:101-7, at 102).
10. See particularly the trenchant comments in the Memoriale historiarum of the generally reliable Jean, canon of Saint-Victor, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris: Victor Palmé, H. Welter, Imprimerie nationale, 1738-1904) 21: 655, 658; on his work, see Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Le Memoriale historiarum de Jean de Saint-Victor. Un historien et sa communauté au début du XIVe siècle (Bibliotheca Victorina, 12; Turnhout: Brepols, 2000).
11. See Vitae paparum Avenionensium, 4 vols., ed. Étienne Baluze and Guillaume Mollat (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1914-27) 1:56 (from Gui's Cathalogus brevis Romanorum pontificum), and 68, 76 (from his Cathalogus pontificum Romanorum or Flores chronicorum).
12. According to the memorandum mentioned in n. 9 above and edited in this volume, Jacques de Molay had asked to be tortured so that he would not be thought to have confessed voluntarily, but the author of the memorandum protested "Vanus timor pene future non potuit hominem sic constanter inducere ad talia confitendum." See Gelehrte Gutachten, 149; and also Finke, Papsttum, 102 (with the incorrect reading pene figure).
13. None of the chronicles states that the meetings of the council were held in the episcopal palace in Paris, pace Ubl, "Haeretici relapsi," 165-66, where the date 10 May 1312 should be corrected to 11 May 1310 (cf. ibid., 161); note too (cf. 165-66, n. 19) that Jean de Saint-Victor mentioned no meeting in Paris in 1310, and that the correct page reference to his account of 1310 is Recueil des historiens 21:654-55; note also that for these years the continuation of the chronicle of the Dominican Géraud de Frachet depends on that of the chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis and hence should not be considered a separate and independent source (Recueil des historiens 21:3). On Géraud, see Régis Rech, "Géraud de Frachet: l''engagement d'un historien au XIIIe siècle. Édition de sa Chronique universelle," Positions des théses de l'École des chartes (1993): 141-47.
14. "juxta consilium tam in jure divino quam canonico peritorum, sacro approbante concilio adjucatum est ac etiam diffinitum": Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 À 1300 avec les continuations de cette chronique de 1300 À 1368, 2 vols., ed. Hercule Géraud (Publications de la Société de l'histoire de France, nos. 33, 35; Paris: Jules Renouard, 1843). 1:377. The continuator of Guillaume de Nangis went on (378) to note that the Templars did not acknowledge their guilt before dying and that "multi de populo non absque multa admiratione stuporeque vehementi conspicere nullatenus potuerunt." See also his treatment of the execution of Jacques de Molay in 1314 on 402-4 (403, "non absque multorum admiratione" and on 404 "cunctis videntibus admirationem multam intulerint ac stuporem"). Jean de Saint-Victor described those who were executed in 1310 as prolapsi (Recueil des historiens 21:655). The continuation to 1316 of Guillaume de Nangis' Chronique abrégée des rois de France (Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 10132, fol. 92), considered the Templars guilty for not recognizing their errors, and declared that their souls wold be condemned forever for having misled others, mentioning (with Guillaume d'Ercuis; see Gelehrte Gutachten, 35 n. 95) that one of the executed Templars had been the king's almoner.
15. "Movetur questio contra eos, utrum talis revocatio posset dici relapsio, et iudicatur contra eos, quod sic. Unde Parisius comburuntur...": Historia ecclesiastica nova nebst Fortsetzungen bis 1329, ed. Ottavio Clavuot with Ludwig Schmugge (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 39; Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2009), 670, 687. On Tolomeo, see James M. Blythe, The Life and Works of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca) (Disputatio, 16; Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); and idem, The Worldview and Thought of Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca) (Disputatio, 22; Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). According to Blythe (Life and Works, 112-16), Tolomeo was in Avignon at the papal court from October of 1309 until November of 1311, and thus he was well placed to learn of events at the French court. Tolomeo sometimes reported details absent from other chronicles, such as that in the spring of 1311, after the process against the memory of Boniface VIII had been dropped and Guillaume de Nogaret absolved, ambassadors of the French king offered 100,000 florins to the papal treasury "as if in compensation for efforts in the said affair" ("quasi pro quadam recompensatione laborum circa dictam causam") (Historia ecclesiastica nova, 674). Tolomeo also seems to have embroidered the reports he received, since his account of the Grand' Feste held in Paris at Pentecost 1313 contains improbable details not found elsewhere, although he accurately reported the privilege regarding Gascon appeals that Philip the Fair bestowed on this son-in-law Edward II (ibid., 686).
16. See Nangis, ed. Guérout, 1:402-3. As reworked by d'Achery: "confestim ut ad aures regis, qui tunc erat in regali palatio, hoc verbum insonuit, communicato cum suis, quamvis proinde clericis non vocatis, prudenti consilio...mandavit." Cf. 403, n. 1, noting that the text as given was substituted for the MSS' "communicato quamuis proinde cum suis clericis."
17. "Nam Philippus Rex Francie cum consilio suo noluit pati quod propter revocationem confessionis sue, quam prius fecerat dictus magister militie Templi et multi alii sui ordinis, evaderent mortem temporalem": Baluze 1:110. Amalric Auger dedicated his Actus pontificum Romanorum to Urban V (r. 1362-70), whose chaplain he was: Molinier and Polain 4:98-99.
18. Gelehrte Gutachten, 56, where the editors seem to suggest that Philip the Fair was following these guidelines when he had Molay and his companion summarily executed in 1314, even though the papal instructions were addressed to ecclesiastics and in the bull Clement V had expressly reserved judgment of Molay and three other Templars to himself, in whose name the ecclesiastical judges in Paris were acting.
19. Hödl, "Quodlibeta," 204.
20. Gelehrte Gutachten, 7.
21. Curiously, he used the future recitabo rather than recitavi (85 l. 23).
22. Cf. Gelehrte Gutachten, 99, n. 44, where Jean's statement is described as "absichtlich ungenau."
23. On this subject Johannes Fried offered illuminating comments in "Freiwilligkeit und Geständnis um 1300. Zur Beurteilung des letzten Templergrossmeisters Jacques de Molay," Historisches Jahrbuch 105 (1985): 388-425.
24. Barber, Trial, 172, whose summary of the document (ibid., 172-73) is excellent.
25. Le dossier de l'affaire des Templiers, ed. Georges Lizerand, 2nd ed. (Les classiques de l'histoire de France au Moyen Age, 2; Paris: "Les Belles Lettres," 1964), 70-83 (who followed Finke closely and commented of one of his omissions "la fin de ce paragraphe...manque d'intérêt" [83 n. 1]).
26. Particularly welcome is the correction of pene figure to pene future, 149 l. 14. My only comments are the following. On 149 l. 13, the document reads suu' [suum], which is emended to su[as]; on 150 l. 3, miru' [mirum] was written over miraminj, which the corrector had first attempted to alter to mirum by crossing out aminj and adding ru' above, but then, abandoning this strategy, crossed out mir and the ru' he had added above the verb; on 151 l. 3 should begin etiam [&'] rather than et; on 152 l. 10, saltim should replace saltem; on 157 l. 14, in the final section added to the memorandum, obmiti and dimitenda (or, better, dimjtenda) should replace obmitti and dimittenda (for the importance of this orthography, see below); finally, it is not clear to me why the editors sometimes expand s; as sed and sometimes as set.
27. "Freiwilligkeit," 404 ("aus Nogarets Umkreis oder von ihm selbst"); Friede relied on Finke's edition (ibid., 405), and does not appear to have consulted the original document.
28. Note "scheidet meines Erachtens...aus" (69) and "halte ich" (70), but also "unser Dokumente."
29. I am grateful for the counsel of Sebastien Nadiras, who is completing a doctoral thesis on Nogaret, which expands and develops his Guillaume de Nogaret et le pratique du pouvoir; the thesis he submitted to the École nationale des chartes in 2003, which he kindly permitted me to consult; a summary is found in Positions des théses de l'École des chartes (2003): 161-68. I thank as well Ghislain Brunel, who has generously facilitated my consultation of Nogaret's autograph documents. See Gelehrte Gutachten, 60, 67, esp. 60 n. 199, where Nogaret's script, found in AN, J 908, nos. 6 and 13, is said to be "deutlich unterschieden" from that of J 413, no. 32, which does not seem to me to be the case.
30. Gelehrte Gutachten, 60, esp. n. 198.
31. As Malcolm Barber kindly reminded me in communications in early January 2012, it is not impossible that the memorandum was prepared by such a university master as Jean de Pouilly (perhaps on commission), and that Nogaret expanded and corrected it after it came into his hands. The attention paid to emending small details of the text inclines me to believe, however, that Nogaret was correcting and expanding a memorandum he himself had written.
32. See my article "Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France," to appear in Speculum 87 (2012), where I edited two autograph documents of Nogaret, and published photographs of them. See particularly the first document, AN, J 1050, no. 52 (AE II 1713), where Nogaret spelled seven forms of the verb mittere with a single t.
33. See especially the second document I publish in the article mentioned above, AN, J 491, no. 797bis. Note too Nogaret's defense of himself against charges arising from the encounter at Anagni, in AN, J 908, no. 13, which begins "tradunt Sancti patres / crudelem esse qui negligit famam Suam..."