Friday the Thirteenth

Dear Folk,

At sunset October 13, 1307, it was a Friday by the way, the forces of the King of France quickly surrounded and arrested the members of an Order of knights. Seven years later, after long periods of torture, this king had the leaders of the Order burned at the stake. This action remains recalled in popular mythos as the bad luck on Friday the thirteenth. It was bad luck for the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon: the Knights Templar.

Although space does not permit me to go through the entire history of the Templars, I do want to talk about their arrest and trial. Maybe I should give you a cast list of the main players:

Guillaume de Nogaret, (see "Secret Things") Chancellor of the Kingdom of France, had been nominated on this post on September 22, 1307. A lawyer, he was soon called to the Court of Philip the Fair. In 1303 he was one of the main participants in the struggle against the Pope Boniface VIII. Among other actions he organized the assault of Agnani on September 7, 1303, when the Pope was slapped by Sciarra Colonna. He was thought to be closely linked to the Cathari (see "Unto the Pure"). He organized the arrest of the Templars and wrote the accusations against them: heresy, sacrilege, betrayal of the Church. Before that, he had already snidely accused the Templars of the responsibility of the lost of the Holy Land (see "A Short Stroll to Tiberias"). He had even suggested to confiscate their wealth to finance a new expedition. You have to believe that Philip loved him.

Pope Boniface VIII was an upright dude and entered in conflict with the French King Philip the Fair. Some, especially the French, said that Boniface wanted too much temporal power. He died suddenly and mysteriously on October 11, 1303 after being liberated from the French by a popular uprising. He was succeeded by Benoit XI who died soon after on July 7, 1304 the day before he was supposed to excommunicate Nogaret. Popes die all the time. I am sure those bonbons really had marzipan filling. They did smell suspiciously of almonds.

Clement V succeeded Benoit XI as Pope after a conclave of the Cardinals that lasted eleven months. This delay can be explained by the rivalry between the Orsini and the Colonna families. In the end they elected the French Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got (the Goth), on June 5, 1305. With all the prior popes dying mysteriously in Rome, he wisely decided to move to France. What a coincidence! There was Philip the Good-looking to take care of him. Clement V was crowned Pontiff (bridge builder) on November 14, 1305 in Lyon, France. He was the first of the Avignon popes. Not that he and Philip ate ice cream off the same spoon or anything but by the time of Clement's death there were only six Italian cardinals (princes of the Church) out of the twenty-four slots.

Philip the Fair was one of those people who are so good looking that other people think they are stuck up. You know what I mean? Okay, he was stuck up. He was king and all but he was also realizing that war, buying popes, commissioning hits, and other neat things about high living cost money. He was obsessed with getting the d'argent. Remember he tried to annex Flanders? Read "I Got Spurs that Jingle-Jangle-Jingle" about the Battle of the Spurs in Courtrai in 1302. The Flemish weavers beat his troops handily. Next he turned to the Jews. He nationalized (that is politico-speak for "stole") all their goods and kicked them out of France.. He modified the rate of exchange of the French money to suit his needs. One year before he arrested the Templars he went to the Temple to escape a popular riot following another devaluation. He was at war with Boniface VIII for many years.

Jacques de Molay (1243-1314) was the last Master of the Templars. He was born in Molay, Jura, France. He entered the Order in 1265 and fought in Syria. He was elected Grand Master in 1298. He was summoned by the pope to France in 1306 or 1307 to discuss the melding of the Templars and the Hospitallers. He was strongly opposed to any such union, even if he were to head it (which he wasn't). He was arrested with all the Templars in France on October 13, 1307 as ordered by Philip the Fair. Eleven days of torture later, he admitted under "strong interrogation" to have denied the divinity of Christ. He did deny that any Templars he knew were having boy-boy love-ins. No sodomy for him. He urged his Brothers Templar to confess. When Pope Clement's boys came around to witness the apparent reconciliation of this poor confessed heretic at a nice open-air court, Jacques stood up and said that everything thing that he confessed was a lie to get out of being tortured anymore. He also said that Philip did not have the right to try the Master of a religious order; only the pope could do that. Pope Clement V developed a strange case of hearing difficulties and refused to hear his Grand Master. In November 1312 Pope Clement ordered that the Templars be suppressed (disbanded). Jacques de Molay and other leaders of the Order were condemned to perpetual imprisonment by a commission of three cardinals on March 18 or 19, 1314. On hearing the sentence he and Geoffrey de Charnay again retracted their confession. He was burned on the stake in Paris the same day with Geoffrey de Charnay.

Geoffrey de Charnay has been received in the Order by Amaury de la Roche a friend and favorite of Saint Louis, king of France. Geoffroy de Charnay became Commander of Normandy. He was arrested as all the other Templars in France and submitted to heavy torture. Like Jacques de Molay he was finally condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He denied his previous confessions and was burned on the stake with his Grand Master in Paris in March 1314.

How righteous were the charges against the Templars? I suppose we will never know. Some of the worries were that they had become awfully rich and the king needed the money. That is true. The Templars got their initial money from an unknown source. Good speculation has that they found where the Jews had hidden a great deal of treasure in some caves below the Temple of Jerusalem (see "Zealously Remembering Zion"). They eventually became the equivalent of bankers in the Medieval world. For a slight fee, you could give the Templars some cash in Paris and they would give you a chit you could redeem for cash in Jerusalem: a Travelers' Cheques sort of gig. They would also loan money to interested parties. How they got around the prohibition from charging excessive rates of interest has never been explained. Maybe it was at a low rate. Still, Philip was indebted to them.

The bit about heresy is interesting. In the midst of some of their crusades they ran into some deep thinkers especially amongst the Cathari, Moslems, and Jews. Besides the money in that treasure trove, they may have found some scrolls of the early Judeo-Christian church which was heavily Essene. The whereabouts of this treasure, including the scrolls, may be in Scotland in some property held by the Sinclairs. Suggest you research this for yourselves. There are some very strong reasons to believe that many of the phrases Paul of the NT took as straightforward had a completely different meaning to the Essenes. I will not presume to insult my Christian readers to say that they were or this speculation is correct. No matter what one believes on this, the Templars were much like the Cathari in that they were outside the realm of plain-vanilla Christianity. Those who are interested may write to me for references and further study

The Templars were accused of worshipping an idol named "Baphomet." Despite Elias Levi's treatise, the name is too close to Mahomet and probably goes back to the worry that the Templars had "gone native" while in the Holy Land. They were also supposed to have an oracular head which gave them advice. I know, it sounds like the Skull and Bones with the head of Emilio Zapata. Maybe it was.

About the charges of homosexuality, it may have been true. I doubt that we could ever know. We do know kings of every nation seem to have indulged. It does appear in armies of men who shun women. I wasn't there.

Some interesting side-notes and speculations are in order:

Jacques de Molay was crucified onto a door frame as part of his torture. He was taken down alive and a linen sheet was laid over him. That linen sheet absorbed the sweat and blood of this bearded Master. Later an image of that permanently stained the cloth. Some folks in the Catholic Church venerate this cloth today in Turin, Italy. They call it the Shroud of Turin. That is just crazy, right? Still fabric evidence points to... oh, never mind.

Jacques de Molay, before dying in the fire, said that the Pope and the King of France would appear before their Lord the first within 40 days and the King within six months to be judged with Jacques. Pope Clement V died one month after Jacques de Molay in the night of April 19, 1314 in the Roquemaure Castle in the Rhone Valley. King Philip the Fair died of "unknown causes" (apoplexy?) November 29, 1314. Philip was forty-seven years old and had not a mark on him.

The Templars were said to have enormous wealth. Although the Church and King Philip managed to find some, much of it evaded their grasp. Where did it go? All of the Templars were not taken in other countries. Edward II (see "Eddie and the Cruisers") doubted the truth of the charges. Where did the Templars, themselves go? There were reported Templars fighting on the side of Robert the Bruce Scotland in some later battles against the English.

The Freemasons claim Templar heritage and yet they only trace their history to 1717. Is this just a spiritual connection or something else? What does that Mark Mason degree really refer to?

The Templars also had a good size navy. Where did it go? Remember the pictures in your history books of Columbus' three ships with the red forked crosses on their sails? Those crosses are known as the cross partee' and it was the emblem of the Templars. Must be some coincidence.

What have we learned? Torture can make most folk confess to anything? There are a lot of questions still about the Templars? Pope Clement V and King Philip the Fair had a lot to answer for? War takes money? How about it takes a really brave guy to tell the truth? I think Jacques de Molay was one very brave guy. Although there's lots more to talk about, this is getting long. Hope it will stimulate you to read a little.

So if you are out loaning money to kings, "discovering" a New World, or just founding a New World Order and you wish to secretly communicate these missives to some of your brethren or cistern, please do but leave my name and sig. attached.

"Jacque de Molay, thou art again revenged!" (supposedly quoted under the guillotine during the French Revolution)

Knowing nothing worth torturing me for,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats