A brief history of the Knights Templar - part 3

The Knights Templar had become the most powerful and rich organisation in the known world during the eleventh and twelfth century. More powerful than the Monarchs, who in many cases supported them with lavish gifts of territory and ships and often owed them large sums of money. However, when Philip IV (the Fair) of France asked the Templars for a loan to support his war against England, they refused. The King became angry and tried to get the Pope (Boniface VIII) to excommunicate the Templars but he refused. Instead the Pope excommunicated Philip himself. The King sent a small group to kidnap the Pope from his castle in September 1303, offering some trumped up charges such as heresy and sodomy. The people around the Pope’s castle rose up and rescued their Pope, but sadly he died soon after from shock due to his ill treatment at the hands of his Captors.

The next Pope was Benedict XI who lifted the excommunication of Philip but refused to pardon him from the kidnapping of his predecessor. Benedict died 8 months later, possibly from poisoning. The next Pope was Clement V, a childhood friend of Philip and he agreed to Philip’s demand for an investigation into the Templars. (Incidentally it was this Pope who move the papacy to Avignon in France initiating a period called the Avignon papacy.)

Philip had other reasons to mistrust the Templars, as they had declared a desire to form their own state similar to the way the Teutonic Knights had founded Prussia. The Templars preferred Languedoc in south-eastern France. The Templars were already a “state within a state”, were institutionally wealthy, paid no taxes and had a large standing army which by papal decree could move freely throughout Europe, but they had no presence in the Holy land which left them without a battlefield. These factors plus the fact that Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom from his father, and was already deep in debt to the Templars, probably led to his subsequent actions.

At dawn on Friday 13th October 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured into admitting heresy. Over 100 charges such as denying Christ, spitting and urinating on the cross and devil worship were issued against them by the Inquisitors. This inquisition was not allowed to draw blood, but this did not in any way diminish the torture.. One account tells of one Templar who had fire applied to the soles of his fete until the bones fell out of the skin. Of the 138 Templars arrested, 105 of them “confessed”, 103 confessed to an obscene kiss and 123 said they spat on the cross. The Templars begged the Pope to intercede but he did nothing.

The King whipped up public hatred of the Templars and the Pope issued a bull instructing all Monarchs to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Philip seized their treasury, broke up the Templars banking systems and brought even more false charges against the remaining Templars at the Assembly of Tours in 1308.

In 1312 at the Council of Vienne, Pope Clement issued an edict officially dissolving the order and the remaining Kings and nobles who had been supporting them up to that time, finally acted. Most were not as brutal as the French and in England many were tried and found not guilty of any of the charges.

Most of the Templars property outside France was transferred by the Pope to the Knights Hospitallers. In Portugal the order continued to exist simply changing its name to The Order of Christ. Other Templars fled to places such as Switzerland. There are records of Swiss villagers around that time suddenly becoming very skilled military tacticians. One attack by Leopold I of Austria to try and take control of the St Gotthard Pass with his force of 5,000 knights was completely routed by a force of 1,500 Swiss peasants. Until that time the Swiss has no military experience but after that battle the Swiss became renowned as seasoned fighters.

What became of the majority of the Templar treasure has been a subject of much conjecture for many centuries. One theory concerns an impoverished Priest at a small mountain top village called Rennes le Chateau in the Languedoc region of the French Pyrenees. During some restoration work within his small church he seems to have discovered something of such magnitude that he became as rich as Croesus overnight. Some historians believe that he discovered some of the Templar treasure or possibly the secret of The Holy Grail which, so tradition claims, had been in the care of the Templars from the time of their first appearance in the Holy Land.

Jacques de Molay was the last Grand Master of the Templars and he and his close associate Geoffrey de Charney eventually met their deaths by burning at the stake in 1314.

The Curse of The Templars has now become legend. Reputedly uttered by Jaques de Molay upon the stake as he burned, he shouted “Within one year, God will summon both Philip and Clement to his judgement for their actions” This turned out to be true. They both died a few months later. One version of the curse states that Philip’s entire royal lineage would die out, and indeed it did. His three children were unable to produce a legitimate heir. Each came to the throne in turn, but no further generation was born and the direct Capetian dynasty thus died out leaving the throne open for their Valois cousins.

Tony Rice-Oxley