700th

There is no rest for the wicked.

700 years ago on October 13, 1307 Pope Clement V ordered the arrest in coordinated raids all across Europe of the Poor Knights of Christ (A.K.A. - The Knights Templar).

By 1306 the Templars were happily camped on Cyprus where they could continue to fullfill their promise to protect the pilgrims to Palestine, but far enough away to enjoy the benefits of their wealth.  Pope Clement V, recently elected to the papal throne decided to address rumors of Templar Knights engaging in "unspeakable apostasy against God, detestable idolatry, execrable vice, and many heresies."  He summoned to room the charismatic Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay.

With him, he brought gold and silver  (150,000 gold florins and a substantial amount of silver!  =]) from their treasury as gifts to the newly instated leader of the Catholic Church.  He left several days later with the apologies of Clement, but had left the treasure with him.

Sensing a bribe, King Phillip IV of France grew outraged, whereas appalled by their flagrant behavior, power, and wealth, and covetted the latter two.  Along came a former Templar named Squin de Flexian, imprisoned and facing certain death, he came to learn of Phillip's dislike toward the Templars.  In a typical jail-house snitch, Flexian informed the king of vile, dark secrets pertaining to the Templars that would be most misfortunate to the order if they were to go public.  He babbled on about the knights having secret alliances with the Muslims, initiation rites that involved spitting on the cross, impregnating women, and murdering their newborn babies, and ceremonies involving barious acts of debauchery and blasphemy.

Pope Clement and King Phillip planned an operation to take out the Templar Order and claim the riches between the two.  The pope claimed that God had come to him in a dream and told him of all the heresies of the knights, which was supported by the "proof" from Flexian.

And so on October 13, 1307 the Templars were taken prisoner in the nations all across Europe.  This fell on a Friday, giving rise to the superstition of unfortunate events occurring on Friday the 13.  For years the Templars attempted to defend themselves against the charges undere torture including de Molay until in 1313 Clement ordered for the society to be abolished.

Punishment varied among their rank, but for de Molay and his three closest confederates in the Order, they were to be sentenced to life in prison.  In an inspirational oratory the disgraced Grand Master rose up in front of Notre Dame, a frail man over 70, whose toll of torture had obviously taken its effects on his aged body, and protested his innocence to the world and denounced his confessions under torture. 

"I think it only tigh that at so solemn a moment, when my life has so little time to run, I should reveal the deception which has been practiced and speak up for the truth.  Before Heaven and Earth and all of you here as my witnesses, I admit that I am guilty of the grossest iniquity.  But the iniquity is that I have lied in admitting the disgusting charges laid against the order.  I declare, and I must declare, that the order is innocent.  Its purity and saintliness are beyond  question.  I have indeed confessed that the order is guilty, but I have done so only to save myself from terrible tortures by saying what my enemies wished me to.  Other knights who have retracted their confessions have been led to the stake, yet the thought of dying is not so awful that I shall confess to foul crimes, which have never been committed.  Life is offered to me, but at the price of infany.  At such a price, life is not worth living.  I do not grieve that I must die if life can be bought only by piling one lie upon another."

His adamant refusal to admit wrongdoing through the tribunal into dumbfoundedness where they expected the knights to plead guilty and accept their fate gratefully.

The king, however, was not impressed.  When he learned of the shock he ordered that the valiant knight should be burned that very evening.

Sometimes executioners can be bribed to stoke the flames so that they'd consume the body more quickly, other times green boughs could be added so that the victim would die by inhalation of smoke rather than the slow death by flames, and even others a potion could be administered to render the punished senseless by the time their execution came around.

But for de Molay, Phillip ensured he'd be properly burned... slowly... with a combination of charcoal and dry wood, so that he was roasted, the pain being as much as any one man had ever experienced.

And so it's been 700 years since the original arrest of the Templar Knights, and to this day, we haven't let them rest.  Surrounded by a litany of false accusations, the knights gained wealth through banking with royals and through missions to the Middle East.  In a gross atrocity unworthy of the Vatican's holy name, Clement, who gained the throne in the first place through manipulation by Phillip, was working in concert with the French king to suppress the Templars.  Clement surrendered his honor in full the day he accepted that.  And now, seven centuries later, can we not let them sleep without pathetic conspiracy theories that have no historical basis?

A Templar seal symbolizing brotherhood, but later by some as evidence of homosexuality.

Tags: Life, History, Religion, Conspiracy Theory