Molay
When I began my research for Labyrinth I was certain that there was a role for the Templars. How wrong I was. The connections people like to make between the Albigensian Heresy and the Knights Templar are base don nothing more than hosirotical coincidence. But here are the notes I made on the great Jacques de Molay.
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The 1st Crusade preached by Urban II entered Jerusalem on 15 July 1099. Raymond IV of Toulouse tells how the knights' steeds waded knee deep in blood through their slaughter in the Temple of Solomon.
Montségur fell in 1244, 150 years later. It was defeated by siege and treachery, by the awesome, lethal bureaucracy of the Inquisition and a tame army of fratricidal crusaders. In return for forty days combat in Languedoc, the Pope could still promise indulgence for a lifetime of sin.
Jerusalem fell in 1244. For nearly 150 years the Holy City had been in the hands of Christians. Since the Holy Land fell, the Knights Templar had lost their role but not their power. No longer the protectors and bankers of an increasing stream of pilgrims to and from Jerusalem, the Order retreated to its castles and commanderies in Europe. They lived like lords in their headquarters at the Temple in Paris. Their wealth and independence became ever more irksome to the king of France.
At the beginning of the 14th century, Languedoc saw an extraordinary renaissance of the Cathar faith, led by the tireless evangelism of the Authié; family. At the same time in Paris, Philip the Fair, king of France, was refused permission to join the Knights Templar. Denied the opportunity to join them, he decided to beat them.
Assisted by his close counsellors, Nogaret and Marigny, Philip made sure that distrust of the Templars was nurtured and encouraged. They were supposed to be a poor order but they lived in luxury; they had adopted foreign customs, including the Arab language; their initiation ceremony was unnatural, including homosexual acts and spitting on the Cross.
Throughout France, bailiffs and seneschals made inventories of Templar possessions. On 13 October 1307, every Knight who could be found was arrested. Many were tortured – 36 died from their pains – almost all confessed the charges Philip had concocted.
For 5 years a sinister political game is played out between Philip the Fair, Pope Clement V and the imprisoned Knights Templar, led by their grand master Jacques de Molay. In 1311 their possessions were ceded to the Knights Hospitaler. In 1312 the Knights who confessed were freed and those who refused were sentenced to life imprisonment.
On 19 March 1314, Molay too was sentenced to life imprisonment. The ceremony took place in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Molay took advantage of the audience to assert loudly and with dignity that he and his Knights were innocent, that his only crime was to betray the Temple and that he would no longer do so. He was supported by Geoffroy de Charnay, another important Templar. Sensing their opportunity, Philip and his counsellors sentenced them immediately to death.
That very day a pyre was quickly built at the point of the Ile de la Cité. The two men were burned at sunset, but not before Molay laid a curse on the persecutors of the Temple.
Within the year, Philip the Fair, king of France, Nogaret, his lord chancellor and Pope Clement V were dead. Marigny was pursued by his enemies and hanged for witchcraft.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Louis XVI of France was imprisoned in the Temple, condemned to death and guillotined on 21 January 1793. As the blade fell, an unnamed man climbed onto the scaffold and cried out:
'Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!'
