One of the gravest charges brought against the Templars and in the trials (1307-1314) established beyond any question or doubt was that of celebrating a blasphemous mass in which the words of consecration were omitted. It has, indeed, been suggested that the liturgy used by the Templars was not the ordinary Western Rite, but that it was an Eastern Eucharist. According to Catholic teaching the Consecration takes place when the words of institution are recited with intention and appropriate gesture, the actual change of the entire substances of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ being effected in virtue of the words _Hoc est enim Corpus meum; Hic est enim Calix sanguinis mei_.... This has been defined by a decree of the Council of Florence (1439): “Quod ilia uerba diuina Saluatoris omnem uirtutem transsubstantiationis habent.” (These divine words of Our Saviour have full power to effect transubstantiation.) But the Orthodox Church holds that an Epiklesis is necessary to valid consecration, the actual words of Our Lord being repeated “as a narrative” [διηγηματικῶς],[113] which would seem logically to imply that Christ’s words have no part in the form of the Sacrament. In all Orthodox liturgies the words of Consecration are found together with the Epiklesis, and there are in existence some few liturgies, plainly invalid, which omit the words of Consecration altogether. These are all of them forms which have been employed by heretical sects; and it may be that the Templars used one of these. But it is far more probable that the words were purposely omitted; the Templars were corroded with Gnostic doctrines, they held the heresies of the Mandæans or Johannites who were filled with an insane hatred of Christ in much the same way as witches and demonolaters, they followed the tenets of the Ophites who venerated the Serpent and prayed to him for protection against the Creator, they adored and offered sacrifice before an idol, a Head, which, as Professor Prutz holds, represented the lower god whom Gnostic bodies worshipped, that is Satan. At his trial in Tuscany the knight Bernard of Parma confessed that the Order firmly believed this idol had the power to save and to enrich, in fine, flat diabolism. The secret mass of the Templars may have burlesqued an Eastern liturgy rather than the Western rite, but none the less it was the essential cult of the evil principle. In 1336 a priest who had been imprisoned by the Comte de Foix, Gaston III Phébus, on a charge of celebrating a Satanic mass, was sent to Avignon and examined by Benedict XII in person. The next year the same pontiff appointed his trusty Guillaume Lombard to preside at the trial of Pierre du Chesne, a priest from the diocese of Tarbes, accused of defiling the Host.