Knight's Templar Part III

  Pope Clement called for hearings run by the papacy to try members of the order, and many withdrew their confessions given under torture.

   It was normal practice at that time to burn at the stake anyone who recanted their confessions of heresy as relapsed heretics, and when the Templar's did so Philippe had many burnt in Paris to force the proceedings along.

   A document found in the papal archives in 2001 known as the Chinon Parchment and records the papal trials showing that Pope Clement absolved the Templar's of all heresies in 1308.

  King Philippe applied pressure to Pope Clement, even threatening military action and Pope Clement finally disbanded the order in 1312 at the Council of Vienne with the papal bull Vox in excelsior and the papal bull Ad Providam which turned over the majority of the Orders assets to the Knight's Hospitallers.

  Jacques de Molay the Grand Master of the Order and Geoffrey de Charney the Preceptor of Normandy both retracted their statements and declared guilty of being relapsed heretics. 

  Both were burnt to death in Paris on 18th March 1314.

  Jacques de Molay is reported to have said that both Pope Clement an king Philippe would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died a month later, and before the end of the year king Philippe died in a hunting accident.

  The remainder of the Templar's were either arrested and tried or absorbed into other military orders such as the Knight's Hospitaller, or allowed to live their lives out peacefully. Some fled to other countries, and in Portugal the Order changed their name to Knights of Christ.

  Many sites today are related to Templar sites such as Temple Bar in London, Cressing Temple in Essex, and Temple combe in Somerset. Some societies today such as some Freemasonry groups use symbols of the Order or claim links to the Order.

  Much controversy has been caused over the allegations of heresy, and links to the Holy Grail. The Turin shroud thought to be a fake made between 1260 and 1390 was first publicly displayed in 1357 by the grandson of Geoffrey de Charney 

  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, 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 the Paris Temple. 

 While there he witnessed the monetary wealth and power of the Temple. And 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 anyhow, and a Templar Kingdom on his southern fringes was too much for him 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.

                          To be continued...