October 13, 1307! A date yet for any medievalist, both a symbol and mystery.
This Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France said the Bel stops throughout the kingdom the Knights Templar and Grand Master Jacques de Molay and all the dignitaries of the order.
frightfully questioned, the Templars confessed to crimes unheard for the time: denial of Christ, spitting on the cross, without host mass, adoration of an idol named Baphomet, Anal ... After 7 years of a highly political trial, Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake. The order goes into the legend.
How did we get here?
Historically, the order is created a few years after the success of the first crusade. Around 1114-1115, some knights led by Hugh de Payne, a Champagne, decided to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem. In 1120, they took the name of a poor knight of Christ and establish their headquarters in the ancient temple of Solomon, who also serves as a palace to the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II.
Soon, success is the appointment. Around Europe, the donations flowing. The order is recognized by the papacy in 1129 and responds only to it from 1139. The rule of the monks soldiers becomes a curious interplay between the monastic ideal and the laws of war. A Templar can kill, but he can not take a wife.
In 1291, the situation has changed. Acre has just fallen. The Franc East no longer exists. The Knights Templar were unable to prevent the Muslims to reject the Crusaders to the sea just as they had failed a century ago against Saladin at Hattin.
But meanwhile, the College has become rich, very rich. Using the many command posts, the members act as bank. Subject to a commission, you can deposit your money in Bar-Aube and recover in Anatolia.
This wealth added to the sense of failure in the Holy Land will exacerbate jealousy.
The arrest of the Templars is actually the culmination of a fight between Philip the Fair, thank you and the papacy. In 1302, for example, the envoys of the king, which were abused Nogaret William Pope Boniface VIII at Anagni. It will not recover.
Moreover, the situation of the kingdom is a catastrophic financial point of view. The centralist Philip IV are very expensive to the Treasury. The idea of recovering the immense wealth of the Templars is so very tempting.
During the month of September (14) the various officers of the king received a sealed letter they could not open until a specified day. Any possibility of leakage is therefore rejected. October 13, the mission is finally clarified. We must stop the Templars, the order must be beheaded. For that the king uses the rumor
Soon confessions "spontaneous" and a clever campaign of defamation of the Order returned the population against the Knights. The recent loss of Acre only adds to the resentment. Clement V are attempts to block the procedure but, under pressure from Philippe le Bel, he must renounce.
From 1310, 54 Templars were burnt at Sens. May 12 4 years later, the grand master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, who died in Paris on the orders of the King of France. The order no longer exists and much of its wealth was transferred to hospital.
We wrote a lot about the Temple. Novels such as The Accursed Kings (a literary masterpiece which has also just be an excellent analysis by Colette Beaune and Eric Nabour). Thousands of articles, thousands of pounds. One of the newest is the work of Damien Carraz. Entitled The Knights Templar in the lower Rhone valley, is a masterful synthesis that wants a "biography" of regional order. Damien Carraz also participated in the September issue of Historia spent at the end of the Templars.
Beyond the trial, we find that new issues arise. Thus, Manichaeism is much less formatting. We dare say now that Jacques de Molay was poorly defended, that some crimes charged were not necessarily all from the fertile brain of inquisitors, the College was not necessarily designed to survive in the form of the time and that an alliance with the hospital could have prevented a tragedy. In fact, the Templars appear to have been victims of some of their rites of introduction, somewhat esoteric (the famous kiss on the spine). So we relativize the "guilt" of the Templars. In no way, they were not heretics described the inquisitors. What is certain is that their bad reputation and eventually lost. That this reputation is unwarranted, a priori, has had little importance in 1307. It was necessary that the Templars were guilty.
For 700 years, we wrote everything and anything on the Temple. I have read, for example, that their wealth came from their frequent trips to America where they were mining gold (John Carpenter, the Mystery of the Templars). The mysterious treasure is the object of many fantasies, used the Da Vinci Code or adventure films like the great Treasure and the treasure of the Templars.
was whispered that treasure had been discovered by the priest of Rennes le Chateau, or had been dispersed England.
The order then left for history into legend.
Templars guard the smell of sulfur because they died tragically in what may be regarded as one of the first political trials in history.
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