owever, nine Templars attempted to
stage a defence effort. They were quickly arrested by Clement to prevent
them from messing with the agenda. Word got out, though, that the Templars
had prepared to speak out, and the Council got bogged down thinking whether
they should be allowed to speak their piece or not. In all this, Clement
gradually lost control of the Council, which was not good news to Philip.
He, being the man of action he was, parked his army outside Vienne on 20
March 1312 and went on to demand the immediate and complete suppression of
the Order then and there. Clement held a secret consistory of the Council,
and two days after that he asked the General Council to vote on the matter.
he Council decided to suppress the
Order by a 4/5 majority. On 3 April 1312 Clement read out his bull for the
day, titled Vox in Excelso. (He was accompanied by Philip on his side, making
sure the document remained unedited.) The main point in this bull was the
wording of it: the Order was suppressed - not condemned. By this choice of
words Clement indicated that the evidence against the Templars was not sufficient
to warrant condemnation, which would have yielded a much wider palette of
possible punishments for the accused Templars. From this we can judge the
veracity of the accusations: the Church lost no time condemning heretics,
as we saw with the Albigensian Crusade.