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so.
    “Very well, sire Galceran, I trust your abilities to make an important decision that could change the course of my reign. Of course, nothing said here can leave these four walls …. I appeal to your vow of obedience.”
    “Freire Galceran of Born will say nothing, Your Holiness,” confirmed frey Robert.
    The Pope nodded his head several times.
    “So be it. I suppose,” he began, “that you have heard of the unpleasant events that led to my predecessor, Clement, eradicating the dangerous Order of the Temple, have you not?” he inquired, looking into my eyes.
    For a split second, a look of incredulous surprise and distaste crossed my face but as soon as I noticed what I was doing, I quickly took control of the contractions that had begun in my face muscles. “By any chance, does the mission that His Holiness is thinking of entrusting me with have anything to do with the Templars?” By God, if it did, he had just thrown me into the lion’s den.
    I had heard the story so many times and knew the details so terribly well that the accumulation of circumstances hit me as I remained under the cold and inquisitive watch of John XXII.
    Three years before, on the 19th of March 1314, Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the extinguished Templar Order, and Geoffroy of Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, were burnt alive, guilty of perjury and heresy. That was the tragic culmination of seven years of persecution and torture that ended the most powerful military Order of Christendom. For two centuries, the Templars had owned more than half of the European territories and had been in possession of so many riches that no one had ever been able to quantify its wealth. The Temple was, de facto, the main banker for the great lords and the major Christian kingdoms of the West and it held the royal treasury of France from the time of Louis IX the Saint. As was said, and rightly so, this was precisely the reason for its misfortune, as the grandson of St. Louis, Philip IV the Fair, overwhelmed by his constant lack of money and humiliated by his economic vassalage, had given his keeper of the seal and confidant, William of Nogaret, the task of slowly creating favorable conditions for the dismemberment and ultimate extinction of the Templar Order, whose first arrests had been carried out in October 1307.
    The reason given to the surprised kings of Europe by Philip to justify this affront against the all-powerful Order included the overwhelming evidence he had which, it was said, proved that the Templars had committed crimes ranging from heresy to sacrilege, sodomy, and even idolatry, to blasphemy, witchcraft and the terrible repudiation. In total, the Temple freires themselves confessed to fourteen accusations under the iron torture. But while the English, German, Aragonese, Castilian and Portuguese monarchies very much doubted those accusations, His Holiness, Pope Clement V, under terrible pressure from King Philip — who had given him the papacy —, decided to suppress the Order of the Knights Templar by means of the Considerantes Dudum bull, immediately dictating Pastoralis praeementiae and Faciens misericordiam which forced all the Christian kingdoms to place any Templars in their territory under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.
    From that time on, the Frankish monarchy was legally authorized to carry out his vengeance, granting full freedom of action to its royal keeper of the seal, William of Nogaret. Thirty-six freires milites died during the interrogations, fifty-four were burnt at the stake, those who refused to recognize their crimes were sentenced to life imprisonment and only those who publicly accepted their accusations were released in 1312, quickly vanishing from Paris and France over the forthcoming days.
    I was thinking about all of this when the voice of His Holiness, John XXII, brought me back to reality.
    “So you are aware,” continued the Pope, “of the Frankish Templar’s diaspora to kingdoms more benevolent