Philip’s motives in breaking the Templars with the dual rods of judicial inquiry and personal barbarity had very little to do with the real character or conduct of the members either on the front line of the war against Islam or in France, where their lives for the most part resembled those of monks. Philip’s actions derived from his political preoccupations and his extreme, cruel and callous personal pathology, but he hit the order at a moment when it was more susceptible than usual to attack and slander, and when public interest in crusading was, if not dead, then certainly vastly
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