Jacques de Molay
Jacques de Molay
On March 19th, 1314 the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. De Molay is said to have cursed King Philip and Pope Clement as he burned at the stake asking both men to join him within a year. Clement died only one month later and Philip IV seven months after that.
In France thirty-six brethren died, and out of 138 examined 123 confessed to the least nauseating charge, spitting on the crucifix, for medieval man was accustomed to swearing oaths under duress and then obtaining absolution once he was safe. Even Jacques de Molay stooped to this stratagem, humiliated by a charge of homosexuality which he furiously denied.
At Carcassone two brethren agreed they had adored a wooden image called Baphomet while a Florentine Templar named it 'Mahomet' and another brother said it had a long beard but no body. Royal agents hunted frantically for Baphomet and 'discovered' a metal-plated skull suspiciously like a reliquary.
The course of the trials in England, Aragon, Navarre (ruled by Philip the Fair's eldest son, Louis), Majorca, Castile, Portugal, Italy and Germany demonstrates incontestably that only in France or in territories under French influence were there substantial confessions to the alleged crimes. In England and Aragon, whose laws of procedure forbade the use of torture, confessions came only after the papal inquisitors had taken over and introduced torture.
The sole exception was the admission of the English Templars to a belief in the power of absolution exercised by the Grand Master and regional preceptors in chapter, which Barber [The Trial of the Templars] convincingly explains as a consequence of Templar confusion over the changing definition of absolution in the thirteenth century, to which Templar practice did not conform.
The sharp distinction in obtaining confessions between countries that did and did not employ torture makes entirely plausible Barber's conclusion that 'it would now be difficult to argue, as some nineteenth-century historians did, that the Templars were guilty of the accusations made against them by the regime of Philip the Fair.
In England, if the Templars would confess to the sin of a layman granting absolution and swear their own condemnation of the Templar heresies charged in the papal encyclicals, they could perform a minor penance and be free men, back in the bosom of the Church. That was too good a bargain to pass up, and most of the English Templars agreed.
They made their confession in public, then were sent into monasteries to perform their penances. With that done, a few went into the Hospitallers, but most returned to secular lives, with meager pensions based on what the Church felt was the minimum amount required by a monk for food and clothing.
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For several years before the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381, a group of disgruntled priests of the lower clergy had traveled the towns, preaching against the riches and corruption of the church. During the months before the uprising, secret meetings had been held throughout central England by men weaving a network of communication. After the revolt was put down, rebel leaders confessed to being agents of a great Society, said to be based in London.
Another mystery was the concentrated and especially vicious attacks on the religious order of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, now known as the Knights of Malta. Not only did the rebels seek out their properties for vandalism and fire, but their prior was dragged from the Tower of London to have his head struck off [along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Treasurer] and placed on London Bridge, to the delight of the cheering mob. One captured rebel leader, when asked the reasons for the revolt, said, First, and above all the destruction of the Hospitallers.
Pope Clement V had directed that all of the extensive properties of the Templars should be given to the Hospitallers almost seventy years before the Peasant's Revolt.
Walter the Tyler exploded into English history with his mysterious uncontested appointment as the supreme commander of the Peasants' Rebellion on Friday, June 7, 1381, and left it as abruptly when his head was struck off eight days later on Saturday, June 15. Absolutely nothing is known of him before those eight days. That alone suggests that he was not using his real name. In Freemasonry the Tyler, who must be a Master Mason, is the sentry, the sergeant-at-arms.
Archbishop Courtenay, who became the leading churchman in England as successor to the archbishop whose head had been lopped off by Wat Tyler, identified the existence of the Lollard group in the spring of 1382, less than a year after the Peasants' Rebellion. He drove them out of Oxford and attempted to crush the entire movement. Lollardy, however, survived his efforts, and those of other civil and church leaders, for the next two centuries by the expedient of going underground. The Lollards conducted business in 'conventicles', or secret meetings, in a network of cells throughout the country, and they somehow gained the support of certain members of the aristocracy, especially the knightly class.
In the early 1300s John Wycliffe, a professor of Divinity at Oxford University, realized that the major problem with the Church in England was that the Bible could only be read by the educated clergy and nobility because it was written in Latin. Although the common man was generally illiterate, Wycliffe decided that if an English translation of the Bible was available, then general literacy might be stimulated as well.
As Wycliffe translated the Latin text, he organized a group called the Order of Poor Preachers. They began distributing the new Bible through-out England to anyone who could read. For the first time, it was possible for the common man to know what the Bible actually said. Suddenly, peasants flocked to the village greens and country parsonages to hear preachers read aloud from the new English translation.
Opponents of Wycliffe's Order of Poor Preachers called them and their followers 'Lollards', which means 'idle babblers'. The Lollards grew so quickly, not only among the country folk, but even the artisans and noblemen that one opponent wrote: 'Every second man one meets is a Lollard'.
The Lollards made such an impact in Britain that eventually Wycliffe's words were banned and the Pope ordered him to Rome to undergo trial. Although Wycliff died in 1384 of a stroke before he could undertake the journey, Lollardy continued to grow. By 1425, forty-one years after his death, the Roman Church was so infuriated with Wycliffe that they ordered his bones exhumed and buried together with 200 books he had written.
The church at Kilmartin, near Loch Awe in Argyll, contains many examples of Templar graves and tomb carvings showing Templar figures; furthermore, there are many masonic graves in the churchyard.
There was a strong Templar connection with this area of Scotland from the time when Hugues de Payen married Catherine de St Clair. In fact the first Templar perceptory outside the Holy Land was built on St Clair land at a site to the south of Edinburgh now known as Temple. By the beginning of the fourteenth century the Templars had many estates in Scotland and a great deal of affection and respect from the people.
The Templars reportedly provided assistance to William Wallace. There was a battle between the Scots and the English at Roslin in 1303 which was won with the support of Templar knights, led by a St Clair.
Part of the Templar fleet made the decision to head to Argyll and the Firth of Forth, where they knew Robert the Bruce was engaged in a rebellion against England. The fact that Robert the Bruce was excommunicated combined with the long St Clair family links with Rosslyn was the greatest attraction of Scotland as a sanctuary - it was one of the few places on the planet where the Pope could not get at them. Because of the war with the English the Templars also knew that as skilled warriors, they would be received with open arms.
The Scots' greatest triumph was the Battle of Bannockburn on 6 November 1314. The battle is recorded as going strongly against Bruce's army until an intervention by a unknown reserve force quickly turned the tide of the whole battle and ensured victory for the Scots. Stories quickly spread that these mysterious warriors had carried the Beausant (the battle flag of the Templars).
The force was led by the Grand Master of the Scottish Templars, Sir William St Clair.
Scotland was at war with England at the time [1307], and the consequent chaos left little opportunity for implementing legal niceties. Thus the Papal Bulls dissolving the Order were never proclaimed in Scotland - and in Scotland, therefore, the Order was never technically dissolved.
According to legend - and there is evidence to support it - the Order maintained itself as a coherent body in Scotland for another four centuries."
At the bloody Battle of Verneuil in 1424, the Scottish contingents had acquitted themselves with particular bravery and self-sacrifice. Indeed, they were virtually annihilated, along with their commander, John Stewart.
The new French army created by Charles VII in 1445 consisted of fifteen 'compagnies d'ordonnance' of 660 men each - a total of 9000 soldiers. Of these, the Scottish Company - the 'Compagnie des Gendarmes Ecossois'...was explicitly accorded premier rank over all other military units and formations, and would, for example, pass first in all parades. The commanding officer of the Scottish Company was also granted the rank of 'premier Master of Camp of French Cavalry'.
In 1474, the numbers were definitely fixed - seventy-seven men plus their commander in the King's Guard, and twenty-five men plus their commander in the King's Bodyguard. With striking consistency, officers and commanders of the Scots Guard were also made members of the Order of St Michael, a branch of which was later established in Scotland.
The Scots Guard were, in effect, a neo-Templar institution, much more so than such purely chivalric orders as the Garter, the Star and the Golden Fleece.
The nobles comprising the Guard were heirs to original Templar traditions. They were the means by which these traditions were returned to France and planted there, to bear fruit some two centuries later. At the same time, their contact with the houses of Guise and Lorraine exposed them in France to another corpus of 'esoteric' tradition. Some of this corpus had already found its way back to Scotland through Marie de Guis's marriage to James V, but some of it was also to be brought back by the families constituting the Scots Guard. The resulting amalgam was to provide the true nucleus for a later order - the Freemasons [Scottish Rites].
As late as the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than 519 sites in Scotland were listed by the Hospitallers as 'Terrae Templariae' - part, that is, of the self-contained and separately administered Templar patrimony.According to legend - and there is evidence to support it - the Order maintained itself as a coherent body in Scotland for another four centuries.
West to America
Josephus, the historian of the Jews in the first century, observed that the Essenes believed that good souls have their inhabitation beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow nor with intense heat, but refreshed by the gentle breathing of the west wind which perpetually blows from the ocean. This idyllic land across the sea to the west (or sometimes the north), is a belief common to many cultures, from the Jews to the Greeks to the Celts. The Mandeans, however, believe that the inhabitants of this far land are so pure that mortal eyes will not see them and that this place is marked by a star, the name of which is 'Merica'.
When the monk published the information in Introduction to Cosmography it quickly became part of popular folklore.
If you look at a map of the road network of France, which the Templars had built and policed, it is very noticeable that all the great long-distance routes meet at one point - at La Rochelle, on the Atlantic coast. The harbour of La Rochelle lies in a natural bay, is easyto defend, and it was laid out and developed by the Templars very early in their history. Furthermore, the Order owned a huge fleet, and other seaports in the north, for links with England, and in the south, as a starting-point for voyages to the Holy Land and the Mediterranean islands. La Rochelle, however, is far too far north to serve as a viable port of embarkation for Palestine, and the same applies to voyages to England. For this purpose, it was far too far south. There were other ports from which one could cross to Britain far more quickly and simply.
For this reason, La Rochelle must have had some very special significance. The town was not merely the seat of a simple Commanderie, but also the capital of a Templar Province.
Its population grew quickly over the years. In which direction did the Temple's shipping lines lead, if it was neither to the north nor to the south? There can only be one possible explanation for the position of this seaport - the Order's ships set course from it due west, to America.
After Napoleon conquered Rome in 1809, some files were brought back to Paris from the secret archives of the Vatican. Among these were a few documents relating to the Templar trials. In one of these records was the statement of Jean de Chalons, a member of the Order from Nemours in the diocese of Troyes.
The Zeno Narrative tells of a mysterious ocean voyage west one hundred years later by a Templar descendent, Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. Indian legends and a number of clues suggest that the landfall was Nova Scotia.
- Catholic Encyclopedia
Jacques de Molay and his predecessors signed documents over the title Magister Templi, Master of the Temple. And that temple, taking its name from the Temple of Solomon, certainly was left unfinished upon the murder of its masters, who also had been tortured to reveal their secrets by three assassins who ultimately destroyed them. Not Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum, but Philip the Fair of France, Pope Clement V, and the order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. What the secret society needed was men who would affirm their belief in God, with a desire for brotherhood strong enough to accept any man's personal religious persuasion as secondary to their principal goal of survival. - John J. Robinson, Born in Blood
The formation of the Illuminati and the Freemasons, and the instigation of the French Revolution and anti-papacy movements in the eighteen century - have been seen as a fulfilment of Templar revenge. The Templars, or 'Poor Fellow-Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple', intended to be re-built, took as their models, in the Bible, the Warrior-Masons of Zorobabel, who worked, holding the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. Therefore it was that the 'Sword and the Trowel' were the insignia of the Templars, who subsequently, as will be seen, concealed themselves under the name of 'Brethren Masons.' This name, Freres Macons in the French, adopted by way of secret reference to the Builders of the Second Temple, was corrupted in English into Free-Masons. - Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma
The rapid succession of the last direct Capetian kings of France between 1314 and 1328, the three sons of Philip IV the Fair, led many to believe that the dynasty had been cursed thus the name of "cursed Kings" (rois maudits). It is said that Jacques de Molay, the last master of the order, cursed King Philip while lying on his execution pyre.
The Knights Templar later became surrounded by legends concerning secrets and mysteries handed down to the select from ancient times. Perhaps most well known are those concerning the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, and secrets of building.
Some sources say the Holy Grail, or Sangreal, was found by the order and taken to Scotland during the scourging of the order in 1307, and that it remains buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel.
Some say that the order also found the Ark of the Covenant, the chest which contained sacred objects of ancient Israel, including Aaron's rod and the tablets of stone inscribed by God with the Ten Commandments.
These legends are connected with the long occupation by the order of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Some sources record that they discovered secrets of the Master Masons who had built the original and second temples secreted there, along with knowledge that the Ark had been moved to Ethiopia before the destruction of the first temple.
Allusion to this is made in engravings on the Cathedral at Chartres (considered along with the Cathedrals at Amiens and Reims to be one of the best examples of gothic architecture), great influence over the building of which was had by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who was also influential in the formation of the order.
Further links to both the search by the order for the Ark and to its discovery of ancient secrets of building are suggested by the existence of the monolithic Church of St George in Lalibela in Ethiopia, which stands to this day and whose construction is incorrectly attributed to the Knights Templar. There is also an underground church dated to the same period in Aubeterre in France.
During the 14th century, England under King Edward I was at war with Scotland.
In 1314 he engaged the Scots in battle at Bannockburn. The Scots won the battle, largely due to the intervention of the Knights Templar on the side of their King Robert the Bruce, assisted by Sir William Sinclair and his two sons, William and Henry.
Templars are also listed among the crew of Henry Sinclair's (Earl of the Orkneys) legendary voyage from Scotland to North America in 1398.
There is growing speculation surrounding relics that would indicate the possibility that the Knights Templar possessed the charts of pre-Columbian voyages to America.
Christopher Columbus' navigators were members of the extant Portuguese Templar Order, and the Templar cross was featured prominently on the sails of his ships in 1492.
Fringe researchers and aficionados of esotericism have claimed that the order stored secret knowledge, linking them to the Rosicrucians, the Priory of Sion, the Rex Deus, the Cathars, the Hermetics, the Gnostics, the Essenes, and, ultimately, lost relics or teachings of Jesus such as the Shroud of Turin or a "Judas Testament."
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