Preliminary Report

...the new list of Grand Masters Grand Master: the supreme head of a military religious order, such as the Templars cited in the following introduction, and here and there in his almost anxious punctuality in the citation and comparison of a multitude of passages, letters, and papal bulls bull: a formal public decree or charter issued by a pope, named after the lead seal (bulla) appended to it. One can hardly accuse him of having written only in accordance with the spirit of his Order, or of having shown any bias toward religion, rank, and the like. Right at the beginning of the work, there is a twenty-page dissertation on the unfavorable depiction that the Florentine, Giovanni Villani, provides of the character of Pope Clement V in his history. Villani's testimony regarding this Pope, and the intrigues through which he attained possession of the Roman See Clement V (reigned 1305–1314) was the pope who suppressed the Knights Templar; Villani was a contemporary chronicler who was often critical of him, was subsequently accepted as valid and true by the best secular and ecclesiastical writers, such as the Fathers Alexander, Pagi, Daniel, Saint Antoninus, Paul Émile, Nauclerus, Felix Osius, Graveson, Ciaconius, Papire Masson, Rainaldi, Bzovius, Spondanus, Fleury, Dupin, and others This list includes a "who's who" of 16th and 17th-century church historians and theologians across Europe. These were contradicted in recent times by the Jesuit Berthier, *) and he takes it upon himself to justify the manner in which Clement attained the triple crown triple crown: the papal tiara, a headpiece with three layers symbolizing the Pope's authority. Our

*) Discourse on the Pontificate of Clement V original: "Discours sur le Pontificat de Clement V" before the XIIIth volume of the History of the Gallican Church original: "Histoire de l' Eglise Gallicane".