Original subtitles

a secret Brotherhood born in the throes

of the Middle Ages only to vanish after

two centuries in existence

of these men who left their mark on

History Remains the legends that made

them famous

there are white overcoats bearing the

iconic Red Cross

the riches they amassed

their discipline and ferocity in battle

these were the elite troops the special

forces of the 12th century after 1 000

years

Mysteries still surround the myth of

these Soldiers of Christ are they

priests are they monks are they Knights

what are they

it's an English chronicler called them a

certain new monster

in this episode we discover the cover

the truth behind the tragic end of the

night's Templar it speaks of

considerable preparation and physical

Logistics all the more impressive

because the Templars didn't suspect it

coming thanks to the renowned experts on

the history of the order of the temple

along with an investigation where the

only written evidence of this period is

preserved we reveal how the king of

France plotted to bring down the order

of the Temple

the accusations were so outrageous and

they'd spread around Europe pretty

quickly you can't you know have a

knight's Templar I found to be doing all

of these very strange and very

unchristian things and everybody was in

a State of Shock

they were a part of the past there was

no way for the Templars to skip the

trial and for many of them the death

from the arrest and torture of all the

Knights Templar of France to the

execution of their last Grand Master you

will discover one of the most

Machiavellian plots in history

they would be accused of a heinous crime

sodomy

they are also criticized for worshiping

an idol something that could be

associated with witchcraft with magic

this head could have feet

oozing have two faces it's a crime

against the faith

the Templars are accused of denying

Christ

they deserve the stake

this is the true story of the

assassination of the Templars Knights

who became too rich and too powerful and

whose final members were burned at the

stake before the people of Paris

acre a city on the Eastern Mediterranean

Coast situated north of Jerusalem in the

month of April 1291 the mammalek sultan

al-ashraf Khalil lay Siege to the city

with his army of 220 000 men

side are 30 000 inhabitants including

fourteen thousand soldiers and a few

hundred Knights Templar

these Fighters are members of the order

of the temple A brotherhood born at the

beginning of the 12th century

their mission to defend Christians in

the Holy Land

but nearly 200 years after their

creation and despite eight Crusades

Christian Holdings in the East have

largely disappeared surrounded by

Mongols and Muslims of the mamaluk

dynasty they are under constant attack

acre is one of the last major christian

cities in the east

and it is here that the seat of the

temples has been for a century

on May the 18th 1291 the sultan soldiers

launched the assault

guillem de beauge Grand Master of the

order of the temple dies in battle

ten days later acre falls to the Muslims

all of a sudden the holy land was lost

this was the last Christian stronghold

it was at its greatest extent probably

in the early 1140s maybe ever since then

have been slowly getting more less and

less Christian as they were losing land

and losing cities

the loss of acre was in a disaster

everybody was slaughtered

full of acre in 1291 is very much the

end of the Crusader state

few remaining towns and cities to the

left to the Crusaders on the coast they

are evacuated almost immediately

afterwards

at the end of the summer of 1291 the

Muslims retake all Christian Holdings in

the Holy Land

the surviving Templars Retreat to the

island of Cyprus which becomes their new

headquarters

when the temples are forced to retreat

to Cyprus this was not the end of their

struggle for the holy land almost

immediately they started to lay plans

seeking for options for getting back

when they left acre the night's Templar

had already premeditated their departure

and the order's treasury had been

evacuated the oldest archives had also

been evacuated

and it was in Cyprus that a new Grand

Master was elected in the early spring

of 1292.

23rd Grand Master of the order of the

temple now in his 40s having spent 20

years fighting in the Holy Land

foreign

this is not a man of diplomacy he is not

good at politics he is a soldier he

believes that the temple order can have

only one Mission the war to defend

Jerusalem and the faith

as the night's Temperance suffered a

total route Jacques de mole now faces an

immense task ahead of him the temples

had been founded as a crusading order to

defend the holy land so the loss of the

Holy Land meant that suddenly the order

had no reason to exist effectively

as early as 1293 jacquesnewali traveled

throughout Europe to convince the pope

and the kings that it was possible to

reconquer the Holy Land for 15 years he

worked tirelessly to maintain an armed

presence on the island of Cyprus ready

to go back into battle

in 1306 an event will alter the status

quo

the new Pope Clement V commissions

Jacques de Molly to write a report on

the necessary conditions for possibly

launching a new Crusade

when Clement V wrote to him in 1306 to

ask his opinion on a new Crusade we can

assume that he was very happy with the

circumstances that finally this policy

that he had supported for about 15 years

was going to have a successful outcome

thank you

this report is kept at the National

Archives of France in Paris the words of

the Temple's Grand Master are clear Jack

demoli maintains the belief that

Christians can return to the Holy Land

we must organize a great crusade to

destroy the enemies of the Christian

faith if we could have twelve to fifteen

thousand nights and five thousand

pedestrians with the help of God we will

be able to recover the entire Holy Land

I also recommend that you arm ten ships

as soon as possible I will arrange for

the money to pay the fees

with his field experience he realizes

that sending small Expeditions is not

enough to overcome the situation and

that it will take an army of boats to

retake a minimum of positions

he sends his report to the pope and

leaves Cyprus at the end of 1306

arriving in France at the beginning of

1307.

Jack demole arrives in France ready to

do anything necessary to promote his new

Crusade however he doesn't know it yet

he will never again return to the east

he is the 23rd Grand Master of the order

of the temple and he will be the last

behind molay's back two men have been

plotting in secret over several months

to realize one of the most Machiavellian

plans in history to bring down the order

of the Temple

these two men are Philip IV King of

France

also known as Philip the fair

angieum the nogare his closest advisor

at the time Philip the fair has been

King for more than 20 years

he is known as the Iron King

the personality of Philip the fair was a

mystery perhaps even more impenetrable

than the mystery of the Templars a man

of terrifying intransigence and an

appalling temperament

Philip defer is both authoritarian and a

propagandist he knows very well how to

manipulate public opinion a modern King

alongside Philippe the fair his

Guillaume the nogare

e is a very versatile Royal civil

servant he manages economic Affairs

financial affairs political Affairs

conflicts with local churches with

Bishops so he's kind of an all-around

prime minister who has a global vision

of the Kingdom

thank you

the reasons which drove these two men to

destroy the order of the temple were

multiple

the first a most obvious was money

Philip the fair had a very aggressive

and very Dynamic territorial policy as

much towards the south of France and

Lyon as towards the north towards

Flanders and therefore he's in a

permanent war in the early 1300s with

the cities of Flanders and the Flemish

nobility and these military Expeditions

cost him lots of money

in 1307 the kingdom of France was on the

verge of bankruptcy the king of France

was in debt up to his neck with foreign

bankers

French finances were weak and the

temples were an office source of

immediate wealth if he just came you

know

take the order down he's got access to

their money well that's what he thought

for Philip the fair given the disastrous

finances of his kingdom the money of the

Knights Templar represents a win for

however the main reason which drove him

to attack the order of the temple is

more political

what the king of France is seeking at

the beginning of the 14th century is to

assert his authority at any cost over

his country and to the detriment of one

man

the Pope

the order of the temple is a means for

Philip the fair to obtain Above All Else

what he has sought since the beginning

of his Reign

absolute power

Philipp the fur is trying to create a

new kind of state where the king is

above anyone

which means that a king is the main

power in his land at that he receives

the power directly from God not from the

Pope

there was no need for the middleman the

pope as a middleman between gold and the

king of course the Templars could not

fit in this new modern world New Vision

they were a part of the past

he was looking for a way to erode the

powers of the church

perhaps the Templars who have a

substantial presence in the Kingdom of

France become a viable Target

particularly given the collapse of the

position in the Crusader states only a

few years previously

the temple Affair was devised by the

French monarchy to weaken the papacy it

was aimed against an order dependent on

the pope alone who is the best hope for

the holy land and one of its privileged

creatures

to take down the Templars Philip the

fair and Guillaume dinagary carefully

formulated their plan

several months before Jacques de mole's

returned to Europe they secretly warned

the new Pope Clement V that scandalous

rumors were circulating about the order

of the Temple

according to these rumors the Templars

were actually Heretics

heresy is one of the most terrible

crimes that there was it's a crime

against faith

the Templars were accused of denying

Christ

of maintaining initiation ceremonies

where one would encourage the brothers

to indulge in sodomy with each other

the temples instead of fighting for the

faith would offend it on a daily basis

rumors about the temples had been

circulating for you know most of the

time the order had been going whether

there was any truth to them or not they

were also you know fanatically secretive

but they were in their own bubble

effectively of privilege so once these

accusations started to filter out I

think the kind of the secrecy again

worked against them because people

didn't know what the Templars did in

their initiation rituals

collects testimonies accumulates

evidence false evidence constructs

arguments a list of possible accusations

against the Knights of the Temple

it's in 1306 that all these accusations

these rumors that are circulating will

grow and grow

arriving in France Jacques de Molly

hears of these rumors but is unaware

that they originate from the King

himself he senses that his order of

knights is threatened he decides to

counter-attack

Jacques de Monet asked the pope for an

inquiry led by the pope himself into the

honor of the order and its practices

Dr molay had a warnings that something

was going on but I think because he'd

been a lifelong Templar he thought they

were Untouchable I mean and for 200

years they had been they were answerable

only to the pope so I think Jacques de

molay underestimated Philip the fair

quite badly he thought well we're

Templars I'm the Grand Master nobody can

touch me except the Pope

but what Jack demole doesn't know is

that Philip the fair and Guillaume de

nogare have no intention in waiting for

Pope Clement V to investigate

in the greatest secrecy

they have already drawn up an arrest

order

several original copies of this order

are kept in the National Archives of

France in Paris

written in Latin the words were chosen

with the greatest care and the charges

are extremely serious

in the rest order there are five main

justifications which are Advanced first

something implausible that happens

during the initiation of a new Templar

a brother who is received is Led behind

the altar the master then shows him the

cross the figure of our Lord Jesus

Christ and makes him spit on it three

times

secondly there were some other troubling

practices for the candidate to be a new

Templar the officiency will dub him as a

new Templar kisses him at the base of

the spine just above the buttocks a very

bizarre obscene kiss

thirdly the Templars would be encouraged

at their initiation to have homosexual

practices so as not to unite carnally

with women

then the master tells him that according

to the statutes of the order if a

brother wants to sleep with him carnally

he is obliged to accept

so they were advised to commit an

abominable crime which all Heretics are

charged with sodomy

they are also accused of worshiping an

idol something which is in the realm of

Witchcraft and Magic

and the final justification the brother

chaplains of the order of the temple

would not consecrate the host of the

communion of their members meaning not

an orthodox practice during the course

of a mass

a set of heterodox practices is Swept

Away to justify an accusation of heresy

whereas the truth cannot be fully

discovered otherwise and since a

vehement suspicion has spread to all we

have determined that all the members of

the said order of our kingdom shall be

arrested without exception whatsoever

held prisoner and reserved for the

Judgment of the church and that all

their property movable and immovable

shall be seized put under our hand and

Faithfully preserved

the arrest order indicates that the

operation must remain an absolute Secret

on September the 14th 1307 the Royal

order was sent to all regions of France

and delivered in person to the bailiffs

and centersials the King's

representative officers

at the task of preparing one of the

greatest police operations of the Middle

Ages

one month later throughout the kingdom

of France and at precisely the same time

the king's police arrive at the gates of

each commandery of the order of the

Temple

foreign

s were arrested suddenly on the orders

of Philip the fair on Friday the 13th of

October 1307 and this is thought to be

the origins of Friday the 13th being

unlucky

um it certainly was a bad day for the

Templars in France they were all

arrested at dawn throughout France

it speaks of considerable preparation

and considerable Logistics all the more

impressive because the Templars didn't

suspect it coming

23rd Grand Master of the order is also

arrested

the soldiers appeared at dawn on October

13th that the gates of the Paris Temple

which was a fortified District just

outside the capital of France they

arrested all the Templars present there

were 138 of them

foreign

knew that what they were doing was

outside the law

virus in the Temple's Philip was

technically acting outside his

jurisdiction the Templars were an order

of the church therefore he had no right

to arrest them he however claimed to be

acting in the church's interests by

arresting the order that was how he

justifiable he did

in anticipation of any reaction from the

Pope the King's Men Must obtain quick

and incontestable confessions

to achieve this Philip the fair and

guillem denaugurate have an unmatched

method

torture

the interrogations begin on October the

15th 1307.

they weren't officially supposed to

spill blood

so what they would do they would use the

racks so people would be stretched or

armed should be dislocated

fingers with you know pliers and so on

so although they weren't officially

allowed to cut somebody open with a

knife they could do pretty much

everything else it was pretty nasty

the record of the interrogation of the

Templars arrested in Paris is preserved

in the National Archives of France on a

on a scroll of 44 goat skins sewn

together and on which ought transcribed

the confessions of the prisoners

on the Scrolls the signatures of the

royal notaries in charge of writing the

report are identified

we have a very short summary of a day of

interrogation with three questions that

come up

did they spit on the cross of Christ

during the initiation ceremony did they

kiss the candidate on the top of their

buttocks

did they receive instructions to unite

carnally with their brother Knights

so to be clear we're in the fabrication

of mass confessions in order to be able

to take legal action afterwards

in the middle of the scroll is the

interrogation report of the most

important prisoner of the investigation

in the Name of Christ amen may it be

known to all that in the year of Our

Lord 1307 the 24th day of this month of

October appeared before as brother

Jacques de mole Grand Master of the

order of the Knights of the temple

present in person who swore on the holy

gospels of God to speak the truth pure

simple and in its entirety

even today no one knows to what point

Jack demoli was tortured to make him say

the following words transcribed in the

interrogation report of the king's

notaries

I Jacques de mole was admitted to the

temple at born 42 years ago and the one

who admitted me brought a cross on which

Christ was represented and commanded me

to deny Christ whose image was there and

I reluctantly did so I was commanded to

spit upon the cross but I spat on the

ground only once I was never told to

unite myself carnally with brothers and

I never did

accepted Jacques de mole agrees to say

or rather said under torture that yes he

was asked to deny Christ and that he did

so and spat on the cross it's a sushi

that was enough for Guillaume to no get

ready to take out this text and say

voila the Grand Master of the order of

the temple has confessed

and in fact depending on the level of

resistance to torture of the Templars

they almost all confessed

in Paris of the 138 Templars

interrogated only four refused to

confess to the crimes of which they were

accused

121 confessed to having denied Christ

111 to having spat on the cross

109 to having carried out the obscene

kiss on the top of the buttocks

elsewhere in France some Templars will

also confess to having worshiped an idol

called Baphomet

we don't even know and when you have a

description you have everything

this head could have feet or not have

feet have two feet have four feet

oozing have two faces we're obviously in

perfect confusion which simply shows the

imagination of the inquisitors

in all the regions of France without

exception all Templars will confess to

one or more crimes of heresy

you could say well the sheer number of

confessions indicates that some at least

must have been guilty or you can say

well hang on they're being tortured of

course they're going to confess

the link between torture and the guilty

verdict is very strong the tempers are

basically saying what Philip wanted to

hear effectively

thanks to these large-scale confessions

extracted under torture

Philip the fair and Guillaume

denaugurate achieved their first victory

they announced to all of Europe the

result of their investigation the

Templars are Heretics and must be

eradicated

Pope Clement V is cornered although the

king of France has acted outside of the

law these confessions are far too

serious for the pope to stand by and do

nothing

on November the 22nd 1307 he publishes

the bull pastoralis prevenancia which is

addressed to all the Christian Kings of

Europe

I Pope Clement V demand and exhort that

your nobility prepares to give the order

to seize all the Templars of your

territory as well as their movable and

immovable Goods on the same day

Clement V was confronted with an almost

impossible situation

the Templars had already been arrested

many of them had confessed under torture

and he probably was trying to save at

least a part of the Templars as well

because the Templars of France

they were already condemned

and there was no way for them to skip

the trial and for many of them the death

the rest of Europe's sovereigns are

skeptical of the templar's guilt

and while all the members of the order

are arrested questioned and tried in

different countries

the conclusion nearly everywhere is the

same no one finds anything to reproach

the Knights Templar

when the papacy initiated the Templar

trial across Western Christendom

template put on trial in multiple

countries including the kingdom of

England king of Aragon parts of Germany

Italy and elsewhere the main finding

from all of this is that no Templars

confessed

in Spain the king and the population

defended their own there was a trial but

there was no defamation Venice the trial

was in the hands of the dosh who said

ours are very honorable we are

absolutely sure that they are not

Heretics and there was not even an

arrest

the king of Cyprus defended his own

example the most glaring example is

English the English police were unable

to cross-examine and obtain a confession

or a suspicion of evidence there had

been no use of torture and there had

been no work by the interrogators

but Philip the fair and Guillaume de

nogare had no intention of letting the

investigations carried out in other

countries disrupt their Machiavellian

plan

the machine has been set in motion and

there was no stopping it

the damage was done it didn't really

matter if the English Templars weren't

admitting to spitting on the cross the

ones the guys in France were admitting

to doing that and that was enough to

bring the order down

during the first six months of 1308 the

king of France and his lawyers put

pressure on the pope they insist on the

seriousness of the confessions obtained

and assert again and again that the

Templars are guilty and that the King

has acted in the interest of the church

he suspended the inquisitors of the

kingdom of France we therefore had a

sort of balance of power that was

established in the spring of 1308

between the pope and the King of France

this is the period of great tension this

is where everything is played out

the summer of 1308 Pope Clement V

decides to take back control of the

legal situation he appoints his own

interrogators to interview the Knights

Templar and asks Philip the pharaoh to

let them see the prisoners

the men of the king of France selected

72 prisoners to send to Poitier for

questioning

the highest dignitaries of the order

including Grandmaster Jacques de mole

are interrogated in the Royal Fortress

of Shino

in the vatican's apostolic archives

where all the documents of the history

of the Holy See are preserved the

reports written by the Cardinals in

charge of the investigation of the order

of the temple can still be found

the exchanges between the Pope's

investigators and the prisoners are

Faithfully recorded on these pages

when they asked him seeing that he

regretted his actions why he had agreed

to do such things if they did not

correspond with his faith he replied

that to enter the order it was an

obligation

foreign

s are still some notes indicating

sodomy

initiation right

idol worship

the Pope's man tried to determine

whether or not the crimes Accused by the

king of France a true

however Philip the fair authorized the

Cardinals to question the Templars only

in the presence of his men

threatened the prisoners are incapable

of denying their heresy

all confess

the Templars who speak know that the

Royal police are watching them and that

they will be returning to the Royal

prison so considering the tortures they

may have suffered the torments they have

endured for months and months it's very

likely that they did not try to retract

their confessions and in the end

continued taking the line that was

established confessing the minimum but

confessing to be left in peace

when the Templars were interrogated in

the spring of 1308 in poitiers the pope

realized that all the inappropriate

gestures which formed the basis of the

accusations against the Templars

belonged to a practice

the document says ordiness no streak or

modus or dininostri

a practice a right like in the military

but which had no connection with

theology or heretical doctrines

so the pope was convinced that yes the

Templars may have been guilty of several

faults because they tolerated the

existence of these inappropriate

ceremonies

but that these faults were not of a

heretical nature

the end of these interrogations Pope

Clement V decides to write down his

decision concerning the dignitaries of

the order of the temple seen by his

Cardinals in the prison of Shino

the original of this document entitled

The parchment of shinon remained lost

until the beginning of the 21st century

the statement leaves no room for doubt

Pope Clement V gives Absolution to the

highest members of the order of the

Temple

the wrongs they had allegedly committed

are thus forgiven and expunged by the

pope himself

for Jacques de mole Grand Master of the

order we have decided to grant him the

benefit of absolution according to the

canonical form of the church

we bring him back to the unity of the

church we bring him back to the

communion of the faithful and we allow

him once again to have the

ecclesiastical sacraments

foreign

typical commission in charge of

instructing the trial of the order of

the temple was set up in 1309 its

members heard hundreds of prisoners who

returned to testify but this time not in

front of the king of Francis Police but

before the men of the Holy See

as they can testify freely without being

tortured beforehand without being in the

custody of the royal police most of the

Templars who come to testify retract

their confessions

tell how their initiations take place

and everything seems normal in what they

tell

and like that dozens of Templars testify

before the pontifical commission before

the Cardinals by describing the tortures

they suffered by describing the

deprivations to which they were

subjected locked in a well without

eating without drinking they lost their

flesh they bled they tell all their

tortures which sets in motion a new move

and completely contradictory to the

first interrogations which is that the

Templars admit none of the faults they

are accused of because they say that

these are false accusations

little by little the defense of the

Templars is organized

faced with the increasing number of

members of the order who retract Philip

the fair and Guillen de nogare decide to

strike back hard

his legal experts seized upon this

saying that these Templars who had

confessed had been reconciled and now

that they denied they have thus relapsed

they returned to their heresy and for

returning to their heresy they deserve

to be burnt at the stage

in May 1310 54 Templars who retracted

their confessions were sent to be burned

at the stake at Port Saint Antoine in

Paris

the movement

to defend the order of the temple

launched by the Templars individually

stopped overnight

La Muna is a threat of burning Templars

who would retract their testimonies had

worked no one wants to defend the Order

anymore

no one wants to tell the truth

King Philip the fair had already won

Philip IV's early executions were

intended primarily to bring pressure on

the papacy he was making it clear to the

pope he wasn't going to back down so the

pope was going to have to get used to

the idea the Templars were going to be

found guilty

the Templar Affair becomes far too

embarrassing for Pope Clement V

spite of his conviction that the order

of the temple is not guilty the

Persistence of the king of France

directly threatens the Pope's legitimacy

Pope Clement realized that the damage

had been done that the accusations were

so outrageous and they'd spread around

Europe pretty quickly

everybody was in a State of Shock you

can't you know have the Knights Templar

the great Christian Knights the the

summit of crusading zeal are found to be

doing all of these very strange and very

unchristian things in their initiation

ceremonies and in their other aspects of

their spiritual practice

on October the 16th 1311 the Council of

Vienna convened its 170 members rule on

the culpability of the Knights Templar a

commission reviews all records of the

trials against members of the order

across Europe but Philip the fair aims

to prevent that the Templars be

recognized as innocent he goes in person

to apply pressure on the Pope

six months after the beginning of the

council Clement V capitulates and stops

the trial he is the superior of the

order and therefore he alone decides to

suppress it

there's nothing the pope could do really

to save the order I think he kind of

reluctantly said okay you've just got to

wind the order up Clement really had no

choice but to dissolve the order of

course Philip the fair King of France

was breathing down his neck the whole

time

try to make the old Affair died down

in order to do so he had to sacrifice

the Templars that were already condemned

it was more convenient for the church

that they disbanded somehow

on March the 22nd 1312 the pope signs

the papal bull Vox in excelso officially

dissolving the order of the Temple

considering the grave Scandal that all

this has brought to the surface and the

horrible Deeds perpetrated by a very

large number of Brothers I have decided

to abolish not without bitterness and

pain in the heart the order of the

night's Templar its state its uniform

and its name and I subject it to a

Perpetual ban expressly forbidding

anyone from now on to enter this order

to wear its uniform and to impersonate a

night Templar anyone who contravenes

this prohibition will incur the sentence

of excommunication

less than two months later the bull at

providan stipulates the decision taken

by Pope Clement V regarding the Holdings

of the order

all their belongings whether overseas or

on the continent in any part of the

world their Villages lands barns places

rights of Justice income and all other

movable and immovable possessions that

depend on the Templar houses are to be

turned into the Order of Saint John of

Jerusalem

it is therefore not the king of France

who recovers the possessions of the

order of the temple but another

religious and Military order called The

Order of Saint John of Jerusalem

192 years after its Creation in 1120 in

the holy land and less than five years

after the spectacular arrest of all the

Templars of France by the men of Philip

the fair the order of the temple

disappears

thank you

two years later the fate of the

dignitaries of the order of the temple

must be decided among them UK de pero

representative of the order in France

of the order in Aquitaine and Puerto

jafuadashani Master of the order in

Normandy and the 23rd and last

Grandmaster Jacques de muli

has been waiting since his arrest to see

the Pope in person he's walled himself

up in silence saying I am waiting to see

the pope to talk to him to explain to

him why I acted

foreign

but the pope won't be coming instead he

sends his Cardinals to communicate his

judgment to Jacques de Molly and the

last dignitaries of the order still in

prison

on March the 11th 1314 Jack demole and

the three other dignitaries were

summoned by the Pope's man

the temple Grand Master Jacques de molay

had been imprisoned for seven years and

I think he was clearly an old and

confused man

and eventually he was given the choice

of again confess or we've learned at the

stake

as the four dignitaries have renewed

their confessions they are brought to

the square in front of Notre Dame to

hear their sentence

in front of the population and in the

utmost silence they are officially

sentenced to life imprisonment

faced with Injustice and to General

surprise Jacques de Molly then decides

to change his version of The Facts he

denies the accusations brought against

him

both retract their confessions in the

presence of the pontifical Commission in

front of the King's Men in front of the

population signing their death warrant

Philippe the fair King of France is

immediately informed by the situation

without waiting for the approval of the

Cardinals he has a pyre erected on an

islet at the end of the eel de lassi day

Jacques de muli and jufford charme are

burned at the stake that same evening

refusing to confess again and being

burnt at the stake is in tragic end but

it's also hugely symbolic hugely

powerful in the sense that his

willingness to be burnt to the stake

it's almost like the only thing he can

do to get one over on the French King

really this is one powerful card left to

play is to go to the stake

on that day the course of events is

retold in a poem written by

a chronicler of the royal chancery

the master has unclothed himself without

any fear they took him to bind him to

the stake but he said to them as follows

Lords at least let me join my hands a

little and to God make prayer I see here

my judgment where death suits me freely

God knows who is wrong and who has

sinned Misfortune will soon come to

those who have wrongly condemned us God

will avenge our death know that all

those who are contrary to us by us will

suffer

he says that God at the end of time will

recognize those who have done good and

those who have done evil he speaks

before God in other words he also speaks

for posterity for his own but above all

for that of his order to which he had so

devoted himself

long after Legend would have it that

these words pronounced by Jacques de

mole were at the origin of the curse

that would strike those who caused his

fall and that of the order of the temple

Jack molay was said to have cursed the

French King Philip the fair and the Pope

Clement and indeed the pope did die the

following month and Philip died in a

hunting accident that November

the kingdom appeared to have a bright

future all mapped out

but what happened the king died very

quickly

and his three sons who succeeded him

also died

and then the kingdom of France went into

crisis

France which was a military power was

defeated by England and to make matters

worse the black plague broke out

for many observers of the mid 14th

century the caprician Kings became

cursed Kings

it is almost like an erasing of his

family

almost like a revenge on behalf of the

massacre Templars

the heroic end of Jacques de mole the

sudden death of Philippe the fair and

Pope Clement V

the Mysteries surrounding the birth rain

and fall of the night's Templar are all

elements that for centuries fueled the

wildest conspiracies about the order of

the Temple

here we have an order that is at the

heart of the relationship between

Christianity and Islam for a potential

period of time during the Crusades

here is an order which fights for Christ

which to many people seems a

contradiction in terms

here we have an order was fairly

mysterious in some of its practices

and here is an order that was ultimately

dissolved on accusations of heresy and

there's a lot there that people will

find intriguing

and so it's never surprised me that

people do write fabulous stories about

Templar myths or Templar treasure or

whatever it may be having said that

there's very little evidence to support

those myths

while some still hope to find somewhere

a possible hidden treasure from the

Templars and historians continue their

investigations into the secrets related

to the history of these Soldier monks

one thing is clear the order of the poor

fellow Soldiers of Christ of the Temple

of Solomon which later became the order

of the temple created by a few devoted

knights in 1120 in the heart of the Holy

Land will forever be a legend

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