in 1305, and in this same year he summoned the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques du Molay, to return to France from the island of Cyprus, where he was assembling fresh forces to avenge the recent reverses of the Christian armies.
Du Molay arrived in France with sixty other Knights Templar and 150,000 gold florins, as well as a large quantity of silver that the Order had amassed in the East.
The Pope now set himself to make enquiries concerning the charges of "unspeakable apostasy against God, detestable idolatry, execrable vice, and many heresies" that had been "secretly intimated" to him. But, to quote his own words:
Because it did not seem likely nor credible that men of such religion who were believed often to shed their blood and frequently expose their persons to the peril of death for Christ's name, and who showed such great and many signs of devotion both in divine offices as well as in fasts, as in other devotional observances, should be so forgetful of their salvation as to do these things, we were unwilling ... to give ear to this kind of insinuation ... (*hujusmodi insinuacioni ac delacioni ipsorum ... aurem noluimus inclinare*).<sup></sup>
The King of France, Philippe le Bel, who had hitherto been the friend of the Templars, now became alarmed and