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of Swabia. The case is that impressive army that Philip III took to Catalonia, not only was
financed with the tithe of the Church of France: Martin IV suspended the Crusade that was
being planned by Edward I of England to Holy Land, to derive against Aragon the tithe of the
English clergy. But he also spent entirely the sums with which Sardinia, Hungary, Sweden,
Denmark, Slavonia and Poland, had contributed to aid the Christians of Palestine.
Waiting in vain the succor of Europe, the oriental regions would not delay to fall in
power of the Saracens: in 1291, Acre, the last Christian bastion, ceded before the Emir of Egypt
Melik-el-Ascraf. Thus, two centuries after the first Crusade, and leaving rivers of Blood behind,
concluded the existence of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Order of the Temple,
without the necessity now of simulating the sustenance of the «army of the East», remained
free to dedicate to their real mission: to affirm them as first financial potency of Europe, to
maintain a militia of Knights as base for the future unique European army and the Synarchy of
the Chosen People.
After the deaths of Martin IV and Philip III, the Pope Honorius IV continued giving
tithes to Philip the Fair with the hope that he would give accomplishment to the Crusade
against Aragon. Same criterion would adopt Nicolas IV, since 1288 until 1292, who was
follower of the Angevins even though he belonged to a Ghibelline family; nonetheless, he
favored to the family Colonna, naming Peter Colonna Cardinal; he founded the University of
Motpellier, where Guillaume de Nogaret would teach laws; and he put the Order of Friars
Minor under the direct jurisdiction of the Throne of Saint Peter; the fall of Acre produced to
him great consternation and he published a Crusade to send succor to the Christians and the
attempt of the re-conquest; he was tracing theses plans when he died in a epidemic that
decimated the city of Rome. When such Pope died, who represented an encouraging promise in
the projects of the King of France, the Cardinals fled on its majority to Rieti, in Perugia, leaving
abandoned the Holy See for more than two years: during that interval the Pontifical Household
would remain vacant. Apparently, the twelve Cardinals, six Romans, four Italians, and two
French, not achieved to agree in the election of a new Pope, but, in reality, the delay obeyed to a
skilled maneuver of Philip IV and the Lords of the Dog.
The Golems had favored the french presence in Italy because they had the House of
France as unconditionally Guelph: they never foresaw that from its bosom would emerge a
Ghibelline King. That confidence was rewarded in principle, by the terrible repression that
Charles de Anjou exerted over the Ghibelline party and the members of the House of Swabia.
And these «services» had the effect of increasing the French influence in the issues of Rome.
Philip IV would know how to take advantage of this situation to prepare in secrecy the
resurrection of the Ghibelline party. His main allies would be the members of family Colonna,
and the cardinal Hugh Aicilin, who communicated with him through Pierri de Paroi, Prior de
Chaise, who was Lord of the Dog and French secret agent: to all them had been offered rich
French Counties in turn of the support of in the College of Cardinals. The support consisted, of
course, in to avoid that a Golem Pope be elected or, in the best of the cases, to name a
Dominican.
The Colonna’s were a family of noble Romans who for many centuries had much weight
in the Rome Government and in the Catholic Church. They had a lot of Seigniories in the
mountainous region that goes from Rome to Naples, in such manner that almost all the paths
towards the South of Italy passed through their lands. In those days, existed two Colonna’s

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