were to be tortured, and the historian justly remarks that these Papal Bulls were “perhaps the most disgraceful that ever proceeded from a vicegerent of God.”[37] The magnitude of the proceedings against the Templars may be estimated from the fact that when the Papal archives were by order of Napoleon transferred to Paris in 1810 the boxes of documents relating to the trial numbered 3,239; and many further records were, it is said, sold by Papal agents to grocers as waste paper. At the Council of Vienne convened in 1312, mainly to consider the case of the Templars, the Pope did his utmost to get them condemned without a hearing; and, though unsuccessful in this, the Order was formally abolished at his instigation, and the bulk of its property, as in Aragon, transferred to the Hospitallers, who did not relish the duty of supporting their unfortunate rivals. The rest of the booty was divided among the royal and other thieves who had long lusted for it. Many of the principal Templars were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, in the course of which they rotted to death. The two chiefs, De Molay and De Charny, were slowly burned to death in Paris in March, 1314, as relapsed heretics, on the day after their declaration that they had confessed merely to save their lives. It would have been impossible thus to destroy the wealthiest and most powerful Order in Europe without the agency of the Holy Office. _Joan of Arc._ When Joan of Arc was captured by John of Luxemburg in May, 1430, she was sold by him for 10,000 livres to the English, who desired to have her tried before the Inquisition. She was bitterly hated by them, and the University of Paris heartily joined in their ferocious pursuit of the heroic maid. Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, another of her opponents, presided at the trial, which opened in February, 1431; and, as it was assumed that the proceedings would be invalid without the presence of an Inquisitor, though Cauchon himself was nominally one, Jean le Maitre, Vicar for Rouen, acted (reluctantly, be it said to his credit) as representative of the Inquisitor for France. The trial was a monstrously unjust one; evidence in Joan’s favour was suppressed, and a number of skilled lawyers and theologians worked hard to entrap her into confession. It is one of the marvels of history that this untaught peasant girl time after time baffled her persecutors by her simple and truthful answers to their cunningly framed questions. Worn out at last by their tireless persistence, she abjured, and received the customary sentence of perpetual imprisonment. The English were furious, and made desperate efforts to secure her death. It was not easy to find a pretext, but one was discovered in her change of clothing. Joan was tempted by having her usual man’s dress placed within her reach. She donned it; advantage was taken of her imprudence to treat it as a formal relapse into heresy, and two days later the noble and innocent deliverer