Archimedes, 287–212 BC. Greek mathematical genius and inventor to whom we owe very many mathematical advances, including the famous hydrostatic principle, which is named after him. He also gave the first precise definition of the number pi, and set himself up to be the advocate of experimentation and demonstration. Archimedes is credited with being the author of several inventions including the catapult, the Archimedes screw, the pulley and the cog.

A palimpsest was recently auctioned at Christie’s for US$2 million. It recounted the progress made by Archimedes in getting to grips with infinity. The document, which had been overwritten with the copy of a religious text, also contained the first crucial steps towards differential calculus, a branch of mathematics that had to be re-invented after the Renaissance. It is rumoured that Bill Gates was the successful bidder for the document, which has been donated to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where it has been subjected to sophisticated analysis.

 

Benoît XI, Pope, Nicolas Boccasini, 1240–1304. Relatively little is known about him. Coming from a very poor background, Boccasini, a Dominican, remained humble throughout his life. One of the few anecdotes about him demonstrates this: when his mother paid him a visit after his election, she made herself look pretty for her son. He gently explained that her outfit was too ostentatious and that he preferred women to be simply dressed. Known for his conciliatory temperament, Boccasini, who had been Bishop of Ostia, tried to mediate in the disagreements between the Church and Philip the Fair, but he showed his disapproval of Guillaume de Nogaret and the Colonna brothers. He died after eight months of the pontificate, on 7 July 1304, poisoned by figs or dates.

Blood that is different. Blood-profiling was unknown in the fourteenth century. The blood from the Shroud of Turin, which was supposedly wrapped around the body of Christ, the blood from the holy Tunic of Argenteuil, which Christ is said to have worn on His way to Calvary and crucifixion, and the blood from the Shroud of Oviedo, the cloth wrapped around Christ’s head after He died, are all from a man with the blood group AB. As only one and a half million of the human population have this blood group, it is hard to believe that the three samples are all from the same group by simple coincidence. In addition, blood group AB developed about two thousand years ago in the Middle East. It apparently emerged in France at the beginning of the second millennium. Group AB is recessive and it is therefore strange that it is still in existence. An AB group couple (which is in itself statistically very unlikely) has only a one in two chance of having children who are also AB. Whereas parents who have O group blood will always have O group children. From a strictly statistical point of view, group AB should have disappeared, particularly as it is more vulnerable to certain types of illness. Yet it persists, although not in many cases.

According to carbon-14 dating methods, the Shroud of Turin dates from 1250 to 1340, the Tunic of Argenteuil from the year 800 and the Shroud of Oviedo from 500. However, the samples authorised by the Church, at least in the case of the Turin Shroud, were taken from the edges of the cloth, which would have been more prone to general decay and less reliable for the purposes of establishing a date. Rumour has it that the Church did not really want the Shroud to be attributed to Christ, as it would have engendered a sort of hysteria among the faithful. Whether this is true or not, it cannot be ruled out. And there is one more point to note: scientists have not been able to solve the enigma of the Tunic of Argenteuil. White blood cells were apparently found intact on the Tunic, whereas normally these cells perish shortly after death (and the Tunic is at least 1,200 years old). The following hypothesis has been formulated to explain the mystery: white blood cells were preserved thanks to the vegetable conserving agents used at the time of Christ. As for the face of the man who appears quite distinctly on the Turin Shroud, several different explanations have been put forward, from a holy miracle, to the cloth having been exposed to sun behind a window.

Boniface VIII, Pope, Benedetto Caetani, c.1235–1303. Cardinal and legate in France, then Pope. He was a passionate defender of pontifical theocracy, which was opposed to the new authority of the State. He was openly hostile to Philip the Fair from 1296 onwards and the affair continued even after his death – France attempted to try him posthumously.

Clairets Abbey, Orne. Situated on the edge of Clairets Forest, in the parish of Masle, the abbey was built by a charter issued in July 1204 by Geoffroy III, Comte du Perche, and his wife Mathilde of Brunswick, sister of Emperor Otto IV. The abbey’s construction took seven years and finished in 1212. Its consecration was co-signed by the commander of the Knights Templar, Guillaume d’Arville, about whom little is known. The abbey is only open to Bernardine nuns of the Cistercian order, who have the right to all forms of seigneurial justice.

Got, Bernard de, c.1270–1314. He is best known as a canon and counsellor to the King of England. He was, however, a skilled diplomat, which enabled him to maintain cordial relations with Philip the Fair even though England was at war with France. He became Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1299 then succeeded Benoît XI as Pope in 1305, taking the name Clément V. He chose to install himself in Avignon, because he was wary of the politics of Rome, which he knew little about. He was good at handling Philip the Fair in their two major differences of opinion: the posthumous trial of Boniface VIII and the suppression of the Knights Templar. He managed to rein in the spite of the sovereign in the first case, and to contain it in the second case.

The Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem were recognised by Pope Paschal II in 1113. Unlike the other soldier orders, the original function of the Hospitallers was charitable. It was only later that they assumed a military function. After the Siege of Acre in 1291, the Hospitallers withdrew to Cyprus, then Rhodes and finally Malta. The order was governed by a Grand-Master, elected by the general chapter made up of dignitaries. The chapter was subdivided into provinces, governed in their turn by priors. Unlike the Templars and in spite of their great wealth, the Hospitallers always enjoyed a very favourable reputation, no doubt because of their charitable works, which they never abandoned, and because of the humility of their members.

Knights Templar. The order was created in 1118 in Jerusalem by the knight Hugues de Payens and other knights from Champagne and Burgundy. It was officially endorsed by the Church at the Council of Troyes in 1128, having been championed by Bernard of Clairvaux. The order was led by a Grand-Master, whose authority was backed up by dignitaries. The order owned considerable assets (3,450 châteaux, fortresses and houses in 1257). With its system of transferring money to the Holy Land, the order acted in the thirteenth century as one of Christianity’s principal bankers. After the Siege of Acre in 1291 – which was in the end fatal to the order – the Templars almost all withdrew to the West. Public opinion turned against them and they were regarded as indolent profiteers. Various expressions of the period bear witness to this. For example, ‘Going to the Temple’ was a euphemism for going to a brothel. When the Grand-Master Jacques de Molay refused to merge the Templars with the Hospitallers, the Templars were arrested on 13 October 1307. An investigation followed, confessions were obtained (in the case of Jacques de Molay, some historians believe, with the use of torture), followed by retractions. Clément V, who feared Philip the Fair for various unrelated reasons, passed a decree suppressing the order on 22 March 1312. Jacques de Molay again stood by the retraction of his confession and on 18 March 1314 was burnt at the stake along with other Templars. It is generally agreed that the seizure of the Templars’ assets and their redistribution to the Hospitallers cost Philip the Fair more money than it gained him.

Medieval Inquisition. It is important to distinguish the Medieval Inquisition from the Spanish Inquisition. The repression and intolerance of the latter were incomparably more violent than anything known in France. Under the leadership of Tomás de Torquemada alone, there were more than two thousand deaths recorded in Spain.

The Medieval Inquisition was at first enforced by the bishops. Pope Innocent III (1160–1216) set out the regulations for the inquisitorial procedure in the papal bull Vergentis in senium of 1199. The aim was not to eliminate individuals – as was proved by the Fourth Council of the Lateran, called by Innocent III a year before his death, which emphasised that it was forbidden to inflict the Ordeal on dissidents. (The Ordeal or ‘judgement of God’ was a trial by fire, water or the sword to test whether an accused person was a heretic or not.) What the Pope was aiming for was the eradication of heresies that threatened the foundation of the Church by promoting, amongst other things, the poverty of Christ as a model way to live – a model that was obviously rarely followed if the vast wealth earned by most of the monasteries from land tax is anything to go by. Later the Inquisition was enforced by the Pope, starting with Gregory IX, who conferred inquisitorial powers on the Dominicans in 1232 and, in a lesser way, on the Franciscans. Gregory’s motives in reinforcing the powers of the Inquisition and placing them under his sole control were entirely political. He was ensuring that on no account would Emperor Frederick II be able to control the Inquisition for reasons that had nothing to do with spirituality. It was Innocent IV who took the ultimate step in authorising recourse to torture in his papal bull Ad extirpanda of 15May 1252. Witches as well as heretics were then hunted down by the Inquisition.

The real impact of the Inquisition has been exaggerated. There were relatively few inquisitors to cover the whole territory of the kingdom of France and they would have had little effect had they not received the help of powerful lay people and benefited from numerous denunciations. But thanks to their ability to excuse each other for their faults, certain inquisitors were guilty of terrifying atrocities that sometimes provoked riots and scandalised many prelates.

In March 2000, roughly eight centuries after the beginnings of the Inquisition, Pope John Paul II asked God’s pardon for the crimes and horrors committed in its name.

Philip the Fair, 1268–1314. The son of Philip III (known as Philip the Bold) and Isabelle of Aragon. With his consort Joan of Navarre, he had three sons who would all become kings of France – Louis X (Louis the Stubborn), Philip V (Philip the Tall) and Charles IV (Charles the Fair). He also had a daughter, Isabelle, whom he married to Edward II of England. Philip was brave and an excellent war leader, but he also had a reputation for being inflexible and harsh. It is now generally agreed, however, that perhaps that reputation has been overstated, since contemporary accounts relate that Philip the Fair was manipulated by his advisers, who flattered him whilst mocking him behind his back.

Philip the Fair is best known for the major role he played in the suppression of the Knights Templar, but he was above all a reforming king whose objective was to free the politics of the French kingdom from papal interference.