Jacques de Molay

Jacques de Molay (est. 1244–5/1249–50 – 18 March 1314), a minor Frankish noble, served as the 23rd and officially last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. He is probably the best known Templar besides the order's founder and first grand master, Hugues de Payens. Upon his election before 20 April 1292, he promised to reform the order and adjust it to the situation in the Middle East. With no crusader states remaining to protect and with other problems surfacing, the right of the order to exist was in question. However, he was unable to lead the Templars through the inquisitions made against them and was burned at the stake on the Île de la Cité, an island in the Seine river in Paris on 18 March 1314. The execution was ordered by Philippe le Bel (Philip the Fair) after Jacques retracted all of his previous confessions, which outraged the French king. Nothing is known about two thirds of his life.

Youth

Jacques de Molay's exact date of birth is in some doubt, but when interrogated by the judges in Paris, 24 October 1307, he stated that he entered the order forty-two years earlier, that would mean in 1265. The common imperial age for joining an order was minimum 20 years of age, and thus he most likely would have been born in 1244 or 1245. However, there exists several documents proving that men younger than 20-21 years were accepted into the order, hence the birth year confusion. An interesting fact involves that when questioned about the same thing in August the following year by the Pope's envoys at Chinon, he again told he was received into the order forty-two years earlier, i.e. 1266. Jacques de Molay was born into, most likely, a family of minor nobility, as most of the Templars were, at Molay (Haute-Saône) in the county of Burgundy, a Holy Roman Empire territory.

He was received into the order at Beaune by Humbert de Pairaud, the Visitor of France and England in 1265. Independently of Guillaume de Beaujeu, who was elected grand master in 1273, Jacques de Molay went to the East (Outremer) around 1270. He spent all his career as a Templar in the East, although he is mentioned to be in France in 1285. It is not known if he held any offices in either the West or the East, or if he was present when Acre, the last crusader city and capital of the Latin kingdom fell in May 1291 to the Mamluks.

Grand Master

After the fall of Acre, the Franks who were able retreated to Cyprus, this including Jacques de Molay and Thibaud Gaudin, the 22nd Grand Master of the Temple. During a meeting assembled on the island in the autumn of 1291, J. de Molay spoke and pointed to himself as an alternative and reformer of the order. Before 16 April 1292 Gaudin died, leaving the mastership open for Jacques de Molay, as there were no other serious contenders for the role at the time. The election took place before 20 April, as a document in the archives of the Crown of Aragon attests and recognizes Jacques de Molay as the Knights Templar's new grand master by then.

Once elected, the rapid establishment of the command of the order was meant to deal with the most serious matters first. These were the subjects of Cyprus and Armenia of Cilicia, which both were under the threat of an attack from the Mamluks. In spring 1293 he began a tour to the West which brought him to Provence, Catalonia, Italy, England and France. There he settled several local and internal problems, but mainly the goal was to ask for help from the western rulers and the Church in the reconquest of the Holy Land, strengthening the defence of Cyprus and the rebuilding of Templar forces. Talk of a crusade was even at hand, but a more troubling issue was brought upon de Molay, the merging of the orders of the Temple and the Hospital, an idea he was opposed to and would continue to be against. He held two general meetings of his order at Montpellier in 1293 and at Arles in 1296, where he tried to make reforms. During his journey, Jacques de Molay made a close relationship with Pope Boniface VIII and relationships of trust with Edward I of England, James I of Aragon and Charles II of Naples. Nothing is known of his relationship with Philip IV of France.

In the autumn of 1296 de Molay was back in Cyprus to defend his order against the interests of Henry II of Cyprus, which conflict had its roots back in the days of Guillaume de Beaujeu. From 1299 to 1303 de Molay was pressing forward an alliance with the Mongols against the Mamluks. The plan was to coordinate actions between the Christian military orders, the King of Cyprus, the aristocracy of Cyprus and Little Armenia and the Mongols of the khanate of Ilkhan (Persia). In 1298 or 1299, Jacques de Molay halted a further Mamluk invasion with military force in Armenia possibly because of the loss of Roche-Guillaume, the last Templar stronghold in Cilicia, to the Mamluks. However, when the Mongol khan of Persia, Ghâzân, defeated the Mamluks in the Second battle of Homs in December 1299, the Christian forces were not ready to take an advantage of the situation. In 1300, Jacques de Molay made his order commit raids along the Egyptian and Syrian coasts to weaken the enemy's supply lines as well as to harass them, and in November that year he joined the occupation of the tiny fortress island of Ruad (today called Arwad) which faced the Syrian town of Tortosa. The intent was to establish a bridgehead in accordance with the Mongol alliance, but the Mongols failed to appear in 1300. The same happened in 1301 and 1302. In September 1302 the Templars were driven out of Ruad by the attacking Mamluk forces from Egypt, and many were massacred when trapped on the island. The island of Ruad was lost, and when Ghâzân died in 1304 Jacques de Molay's dream of a rapid reconquest of the Holy Land was destroyed.

The incident on Ruad was wrongly interpreted by contemporaries as a bizarre attempt by Jacques de Molay to permanently stay close to the Holy Land, but it was merely a key in the strategy involving the Mongols in the recapture of the Holy Land. Still, criticism was starting to grow back in Europe about the order's reason of being.

In 1305, the newly elected pope Clement V asked the leaders of the military orders of their opinions on a new crusade and the merging of the orders. Jacques de Molay was asked by the Pope to write two memoranda, one on each of the issues, which he did during the summer of 1306. On 6 June, the leaders were officially asked to come to Poitiers, where the Pope had his seat, to discuss these matters. The meeting at Poitiers was delayed due to the Pope's illness, unbeknownst to de Molay, who had already left Cyprus around 15 October. De Molay arrived in France in late November or early December, but nothing is known of his activities during the first five months of 1307. In the second half of May he was in Poitiers attending the meeting with the Pope. The Grand Master came into conflict with Philippe IV because he rejected the idea of merging the two orders into one with Phillipe as leader (Rex Bellator, or War King). This made more difficult the Pope's problem with the King, who wanted at all costs to condemn the memory of Boniface VIII. Also, it furthermore thwarted the attempts to get a new crusade on its way. These conflicts were weakening the Templar Order along with something that would turn out to be far more serious, something Jacques de Molay had discovered during his journey through France: scandalous and perverse rumours and whispers about the order had begun to surface. The king and his councillors, among them Guillaume de Nogaret, knew to exploit this weakness.

Downfall

Jacques de Molay sentenced to the stake in 1314, from the Chronicle of France or of St Denis (fourteenth century)

Jacques de Molay spoke with the king in Paris on 24 June 1307 about the accusations against his order and was partially reassured. Returning to Poitiers, he asked the pope to set up an inquiry to quickly clear the order of the rumours and accusations surrounding it. When the pope announced that an inquiry would be convened 24 August, the king acted decisively. On 14 September, in the deepest secrecy, he sent out his orders throughout all of France which resulted in the mass arrests of Templars and confiscation of their possessions in the whole country on Friday, 13 October 1307. Jacques de Molay was arrested in Paris, where he intended to be present at the funeral of Catherine of Valois.

During an interrogation by royal agents on October 24, Jacques confessed only to "denying Christ and trampling on the Cross" as a part of the initiation ritual. Jacques de Molay's possible intention was that this couldn't possibly be very harmful to the order, but when he was forced to repeat this statement in the public the next day, the damage was devastating for the Templars. Making things even worse, he was made to write a letter where he expressed that every Templar should admit to these acts. Philippe IV was now in full command of the situation, and in order to regain his authority, Pope Clement V ordered the arrest of all the Templars throughout Christendom.

The Pope still wanted to hear Jacques de Molay and dispatched two cardinals to Paris in December 1307. In front of them, Jacques retracted his confessions made to the agents of Philippe IV. By then, the affair had resulted in a power struggle between the King and the Pope which was finally settled in August 1308. The King and the Pope agreed to split the convictions. Through the Bull Fasciens misericordiam the procedure to prosecute the Templars was set out on a duality where the first commission would judge individuals of the order and the second commission would judge the order as an entity. In practice this meant that a council seated at Vienne was to decide the future of the Temple, while the Temple dignitaries, among them Jacques de Molay, were to be judged by the Pope. In the royal palace at Chinon, Jacques de Molay was again questioned by the cardinals, but this time with royal agents present. He returned to his admissions made on 24 October 1307, after which there was silence for a year. Slowly the commissions and inquisitions were put in place, and finally, in November 1309, the Papal Commission for the Kingdom of France began its hearings. On two instances, on 26 and 28 November, Jacques explicitly stated that he did not acknowledge the accusations brought against his order. By so doing, he thus turned to a strategy of silence before the Commission, counting on the power of the Church to prevail over the will of the King

Marker from the site of his execution in Paris. (translation: At this location, Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was burned on March 18, 1314)

By remaining silent, Jaques de Molay deprived the Templars of leadership; thereafter, the order was able to offer little resistance to the threat it faced. Any further opposition was effectively broken when the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, sentenced 54 Templars to be burnt at the stake on 10-12 May 1310. At the Council of Vienne on 22 March 1312, the order was abolished by papal decree. Almost two years later, on March 18 1314, three cardinals sent by the pope sentenced the Temple dignitaries Jacques de Molay, Hugues de Pairaud, Geoffroy de Charney and Geoffroy de Gonneville to life imprisonment. Realizing that all was lost, Jacques de Molay rose up and recanted. Along with Geoffroy de Charney, he proclaimed his order's innocence, before challenging the king and pope before God. Furious, Philippe IV ordered them both burned at the stake. On the eve of 18 March 1314, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay were taken to Ile de la Cite where they were executed.

In 2002, Dr. Barbara Frale found a copy of the Chinon Parchment in the Vatican Secret Archives, a document which explicitly confirms that Pope Clement V secretly absolved Jacques de Molay and other leaders of the Order in 1308. She published her findings in the Journal of Medieval History in 2004.

De Molay and the Shroud of Turin

Two Masonic historians, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, have written a controversial book called The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud, and the Great Secret of Freemasonry, which claims that the Turin Shroud is actually an image of Jacques de Molay, not of Jesus Christ as is common belief. They claim that when King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V seized and dissolved the Order of the Knights Templar, that one of the French king's inquisitors, Guillame de Nogaret, tortured and crucified de Molay in a parody of the crucifixion of Jesus. He then put a cloth on de Molay's head, and de Molay's face was imprinted on the cloth. The authors claim that one of the reasons the Knights Templar were suppressed was because they knew a secret true history of Jesus which had been distorted by the Roman Catholic Church. According to Knight and Lomas, Jesus considered himself not a God, but a Jewish revolutionary working to establish God's kingdom on Earth, and that the Templars' initiation ceremony involved a denial of Jesus as God.

Apart from Knight and Lomas' suggested scenario, there is a connection in the provenance of the Shroud of Turin and the Templars. Geoffroi de Charny's widow Jeanne de Vergy is the first reliably recorded owner of the Turin shroud; his uncle, Geoffrey de Charney, was Preceptor of Normandy for the Knights Templar. This uncle is the same Geoffrey de Charney who was initially sentenced to lifetime imprisonment with de Molay, and was burned with de Molay in 1314 after both proclaimed their innocence, recanting torture-induced confessions.

Legends

Curse

It is said that Jacques de Molay cursed Philippe le Bel and his descent from his execution pyre. And, indeed, the rapid succession of the last Direct Capetian kings of France between 1314 and 1328, the three sons of Philippe IV, led many to believe that the dynasty had been cursed – thus the name of "The Accursed Kings" (Les Rois Maudits). Also, de Molay apparently challenged the King and the Pope to meet him before the judgment of God before the year was over, although this story is recorded in no contemporaneous accounts of de Molay's execution. Philip and Clement V in fact both died in 1314. The 300 year old House of Capet collapsed during the next 14 years. This series of events forms the basis of Les Rois Maudits (the Accursed Kings), a series of historical novels by Maurice Druon.

Presence in England

Some Internet sources claim that Jacques de Molay was a commander in England and spent much time there. According to the most expansive biography of Jacques released yet, Alain Demurger's The Last Templar, there is no evidence of such. Although Jacques visited England in 1293, it is not likely that he assumed the post of commander while himself being the grand master.

Legacy

There is a masonic youth group named the Order of DeMolay. While they use Jacques as an example of loyalty and fidelity, they claim no direct connection with him nor with the Knights Templar.

Quotes

• "Quar nous navons volu ne volons le Temple mettre en aucune servitute se non tant come il hy affiert." ("For we did not and do not wish the Temple to be placed in any servitude except that which is fitting.") - Jacques de Molay in one of his memoranda to Pope Clement V from the summer of 1306.

See also

• Pope Boniface VIII, Pope with whom J. de Molay had a close relationship.
• Geoffroy de Charney, Commander of Normandy.
• Guillaume de Nogaret, councillor to Philippe IV.
• Ghâzân, Mongol warlord of the Ilkhan khanate.
• Inquisition
• Outremer, the Holy Land.
• Ruad (today called Arwad), tiny island which the Templars used in a plan to attack and retake the Holy Land.
• Acre, the last Frankish city to be lost to the Mamluks on the mainland.
• Cyprus, the kingdom which the Templars had their base in their last years.
• Chinon Parchment

References and further reading

• Alain Demurger, The Last Templar - The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay, Last Grand Master of the Temple (Translated into English by Antonia Nevill), Profile Books LTD, 2004, ISBN 1-86197-529-5 (First publication in France in 2002 as Jacques de Molay by Éditions Payot & Rivages).

• Christopher Knight, Robert Lomas, The Second Messiah - Templars, the Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry, Fair Winds Press , 2001, ISBN 1-931412-76-6.

External links

• The Chinon Parchment, includes a deposition of Jacques de Molay
• The Story of Jacques de Molay
• Templar History's article about Jacques de Molay
• The Catholic Encyclopedia's article about Jacques de Molay
• David M Lownie's Web-Page showing photos of location of GM Jacques de Molay's Burning at the Stake
• More info about Jacques de Molay