Knight Templar's Part VIII

 King Philippe IV of France also known as Philippe le Bel or Philippe the Fair was an extremely ambitious King.  He had grand ambitions for his country, and willing to destroy anyone who crossed his path.

  He had kidnapped and murdered Pope Boniface VIII, and is widely believed to have poisoned Pope Benedict XI.  By 1305 he had installed his boyhood friend Pope Clement V on the throne of the church.

  In 1309 he moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon France where it essentially became an arm of the Crown of France, and Pope Clement V a mere governor to the King.

  Over the next seventy years the church was in Turmoil, the Avignon Captivity, and a scheme which produced Popes competing against one another, creating an atmosphere of unrest and divided the church until 1377.  With the Papacy in his pocket Philippe had all he needed to move against the Templar’s.

 He had many motives for doing so, and a personal grudge against the temple.  He had asked to be accepted into the order as Honorary Templar.

  King Richard I had received this treatment from the Knights but King Philippe was rejected by the Temple.  Later in June 1306, Philippe was forced to ask the Temple for protection from a rioting mob and was given refuge in Paris Temple. 

  While there he witnessed the monetary wealth and power of the Temple. This frightened the King to no end! He desperately needed money and the Templar Treasure was vast.  Greed, Humiliation from being rejected as an honorary Knight, and retaliation from the King with low self- esteem were a deadly combination for the Templar’s.

  To Philippe, the Templar’s posed a real threat to the stability of France. 

 The Templar’s were searching for land to call their own.  After the fall of Acre the Knights took up temporary quarters in Cyprus while they searched for a more permanent home.  The area that made the most sense to them was the Languedoc, which then wasn’t part of France, and contained a third of the nine thousand estates that were a part of the Temple’s assets.

   Although the Languedoc was annexed from France, Philippe had claimed it any how and a Templar kingdom on his southern border was too much to bear.

  Philippe was meticulous in his preparations for destroying the Temple.  He had the church in his pocket, he had infiltrated the order with his spies, he had alleged confessions from a renegade Knight and with these allegations he was free to pursue charges against the Order.

  The actions of the King and Pope were sudden swift and deadly.  Sealed orders were issued to his senchaels and sheriffs throughout the country.  They were to be opened simultaneously throughout the country and implemented at once.

  At dawn on Friday the 13th of October 1307, the orders were implemented, all the Knight Templar's in France were to be seized and arrested.  Their preceptories were taken over by the King, their goods seized, all except the incredible treasure of the Temple.

  Very few of the Knights were actually arrested, according to Inquisition records later found in the Vatican Archives only six hundred and twenty fewer than five percent, and the ones that were, went willingly without a fight , as though under instruction.

  The Templars were expecting this event, they destroyed their financial records, most of the knights fled prior to the event, they removed their treasury and treasure, and departed. Some went with the lost Templar Fleet to Scotland and most of the ones in the Mediterranean went to Portugal.