What Was the Chinon Parchment?
The Chinon Parchment is one of the most important documents in the history of the Knights Templar. Issued by Pope Clement V in August 1308, the parchment is a record of a formal inquiry held at the papal palace in Chinon in central France, in which the Pope personally absolved the leaders of the Order of the charge of heresy and restored them to the sacraments of the Church. The parchment is a major piece of evidence that the papacy itself did not believe the charges of heresy brought against the Order.
This article examines the Chinon Parchment and its significance. It is a companion to The Trial of Jacques de Molay and to The Trial and Suppression of the Knights Templar.
The Discovery of the Parchment
The Chinon Parchment was discovered in 2001 in the Vatican Secret Archives by the historian Barbara Frale, who was conducting research for her book The Chinon Parchment: The Absolution of the Templars. The parchment had been overlooked by previous historians, and its discovery was a major event in the modern study of the Templar trial.
The discovery of the parchment was a major event in the historiographical debate about the Order’s guilt. The parchment confirmed that Pope Clement V had personally absolved the leaders of the Order, and it added significant weight to the argument that the Order was innocent of the specific charges of heresy.
The Content of the Parchment
The Chinon Parchment is a record of a formal inquiry held at the papal palace in Chinon in August 1308. The inquiry was attended by:
- Pope Clement V himself.
- Cardinal Berenguer Fredoli, the papal legate.
- Cardinal Étienne de Suisy, the Chancellor of the Church.
- Raimondo da Pistoia, a canon lawyer.
- Guillaume de Pierre Godin, a Dominican inquisitor.
The inquiry questioned the Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the other senior leaders of the Order who had been brought from the prisons of Philip IV. The result of the inquiry was the formal absolution of the leaders of the Order of the charge of heresy.
The absolution was conditional: the leaders were required to undergo a penance for the lesser charges of suspicion of heresy, but they were restored to the sacraments of the Church. The absolution did not, however, prevent the suppression of the Order, which came four years later in 1312.
The Significance of the Parchment
The Chinon Parchment is a major piece of evidence for the innocence of the Order’s leaders. The papacy’s decision to absolve the leaders of the charge of heresy suggests that the Pope himself did not believe the most serious charges brought against the Order.
The parchment is also important for what it says about the political background of the trial. The absolution was a deliberate act of papal authority, designed to reassert the papacy’s control over the trial and to limit the damage to the Church. The bull Vox in Excelso, which suppressed the Order in 1312, was the final compromise that emerged from this struggle.
The story of the political background is told in The Trial and Suppression of the Knights Templar and in Who Was Philip IV of France?.
The Reappraisal of the Trial
The discovery of the Chinon Parchment has led to a major reappraisal of the Templar trial. The parchment has been used by historians to argue that:
- The papacy did not believe the most serious charges against the Order.
- The Order’s leaders were the victims of a politically motivated prosecution.
- The suppression of the Order was a political compromise, not a legal necessity.
- The trial of the Order was, in the words of one historian, “one of the great miscarriages of justice in medieval history.”
The most important reappraisals include those by Barbara Frale herself, by Alain Demurger, and by Malcolm Barber. The historiographical debate. See Were the Knights Templar Guilty of Heresy?.
The Parchment in Templar Mythology
The Chinon Parchment has also been used by modern neo-Templar organizations to argue that the Order was innocent and that the bull Vox in Excelso was unjust. The argument is that the Chinon Parchment proves that the Order was not heretical, and that the suppression was therefore a legal nullity.
This argument is not supported by most mainstream historians. The bull Vox in Excelso was issued by the Pope in 1312, and the Order was suppressed, regardless of the Chinon Parchment. The bull was a legal act, and it was not undone by the parchment.
The mythology. See Templar Mythology, Symbolism and Hidden Knowledge.
From the primary source
“Nos, attendentes quod absque magno periculo … ipsos adduci nequivimus ad puram et integram confessionem … eosdem Magistrum, Priorem … et alios fratres, omnes et singulos, ab omni vinculo excommunicationis … absoluimus.”
(“We, considering that without great danger we cannot bring them to a pure and entire confession … we absolve the said Master, Preceptor … and the other brethren, all and each, from every bond of excommunication.”)
— Pope Clement V, the Chinon Parchment, 17–20 August 1308, trans. by the editorial team from the printed edition in Barbara Frale, Il papato e il processo ai Templari (Rome: Viella, 2002), pp. 118–119. The parchment itself is in the Vatican Secret Archives, A.A. Arm. D 208.
Sources & Further Reading
- Barbara Frale, “The Chinon Parchment”, in Proceedings of the British Academy 139 (2006), 145–160 — the first modern publication of the document.
- Barbara Frale, Il papato e il processo ai Templari (Viella, 2002) and her English popularisation, The Templars: The Secret History Revealed (Arcade, 2009) — the principal secondary work.
- Malcolm Barber, “The Chinon Parchment and the Trial of the Templars”, in Catholic Historical Review 92 (2006) — a critical review of Frale’s work.
- Alain Demurger, Les Templiers: Une chevalerie chrétienne au Moyen Âge (Seuil, 2005; English 2005) — places the parchment in the wider trial context.
- Georges Lizerand (ed.), Le Dossier de l’affaire des Templiers (Champion, 1923) — the standard printed edition of the trial documents, for the rest of the record.
For the Vatican Secret Archives’ own summary of the parchment and the context of its 2001 rediscovery, see the Vatican press release of 6 October 2001 and the more recent article on the Vatican’s own site.