Guillaume de Nogaret (c. 1260 – April 1313)[1][2][3][note 1] was a French statesman, councilor and keeper of the seal to Philip IV of France.

His influence over the king dates from February 1303, when he persuaded Philip to consent to the bold plan of seizing Boniface and bringing him forcibly from Italy to a council in France meant to depose him.

On 12 March a solemn royal assembly was held in the Louvre, at which Guillaume de Nogaret read a long series of accusations against Boniface and demanded the calling of a general council to try him.

Benedict refused to meet Nogaret, excepted him from the general absolution he granted on 12 May 1304, and on 7 June issued against him and his associates at Anagni the bull Flagitiosum scelus.

Nogaret was active in getting the renegade members of the order to give evidence against their fellows, and the proceedings against them bear traces of his unscrupulous and merciless pen.

[4] His talents as an advocatus diaboli were given still further employment in the trial of Guichard, bishop of Troyes, charged with various crimes, including witchcraft and unchastity.

[4] Nogaret is a major character in Les Rois maudits (The Accursed Kings), a series of historical novels by Maurice Druon, as one of the three characters (alongside King Philip IV and Pope Clement V) denounced by Jacques de Molay and called to "the tribunal of heaven" before the end of the year at the latter's execution, in March 1314.

The novels were adapted into a television miniseries in 1972 and again in 2005, in which Nogaret was played by actors Jacques Goasguen and Jérôme Anger [fr], respectively.