JACQUES DE MOLAY, KNIGHT TEMPLAR - 18 MARCH

 

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Saints celebrated on the 18th of March

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JACQUES DE MOLAY, KNIGHT TEMPLAR

Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay

King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars, had Jacques de Molay and many other French Templars arrested in 1307 and tortured into making false confessions. When Molay later retracted his confession, Philip had him burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre-Dame de Paris in March, 1314.

Jacques was born in Molay, Burgundy, France, as most Templar knights were, into a noble Catholic Christian family. He probably was made a knight at age 21 in 1265 and was about 70 years of age at the time he was burned at the stake in 1314. 

King Philip IV of France (Philip the Fair), deeply in debt to the Templars, was also at odds with the papacy, trying to tax the clergy, and had been attempting to assert his own authority as higher than that of the Pope. For this, one of Pope Clement's predecessors, Pope Boniface VIII, had attempted to have Philip excommunicated, but Philip then had Boniface VIII abducted and charged with heresy. The elderly Boniface was rescued, but then died of shock shortly thereafter. His successor Pope Benedict XI did not last long, dying in less than a year, possibly poisoned via Philip's councillor Guillaume de Nogaret. The next Pope, the Frenchman Clement V, was also under strong pressure to bend to Philip's will. Clement V moved the Papacy from Italy to Poitiers, France, where Philip continued to assert more dominance over the Papacy and the Templars.

Philip wanted the Templars arrested and their possessions confiscated to incorporate their wealth into the Royal Treasury and to be free of the enormous debt he owed the Templar Order. On September 14, Philip took advantage of the rumours and inquiry to begin his move against the Templars, sending out a secret order to his agents in all parts of France to implement a mass arrest of all Templars at dawn on October 13. Molay was in Paris on October 12, where he was a pallbearer at the funeral of Catherine of Courtenay, wife of Count Charles of Valois, and sister-in-law of King Philip. In a dawn raid on Friday, October 13, 1307, Jacques de Molay and all the Templars of the central house of Paris were arrested. Philip then had the Templars charged with heresy and many other trumped-up charges, most of which were identical to the charges which had previously been leveled by Philip's agents against Pope Boniface VIII.

Any further opposition by the Templars was effectively broken when Philip used the previously forced confessions to sentence 54 Templars to be burnt at the stake between May 10 and May 12, 1310.

It has been claimed that Jacques de Molay cursed King Philip IV of France and his descendants from his execution pyre. However, the story of the shouted curse appears to be a combination of words by a different Templar and those of Jacques de Molay. An eyewitness to the execution stated that Jacques de Molay had shown no sign of fear and had told those present that God would avenge their deaths.

All of them bore their torment with a composure which won for them the reputation of martyrs among the people, who reverently collected their ashes as relics.

Philip died within a year of Jacques de Molay's execution - due to a stroke while hunting. Then followed the rapid succession of the last Direct Capetian kings of France between 1314 and 1328, the three sons and a grandson of Philip IV. Within fourteen years of the death of Molay, the 300-year-old House of Capet collapsed. 

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-de-Molay

https://www.encyclopedia.com/reference/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/molay-jacques-de

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_de_Molay