Everything about Jacques De Molay totally explained
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For the homonymous Mongol general, see Molay
Jacques de Molay (est.
1244–
5/
1249–
50 –
18 March 1314), a minor
Burgundian 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
Holy Land. 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
Philip IV 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, which 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 exist 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, for example 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, at the time ruled by
Otto III.
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's mentioned to be in
France in 1285. It isn't 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.
Mongol diplomacy
From 1299 to 1303 de Molay promoted
cooperation 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
Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in December 1299, the Christian forces were not ready to take an advantage of the situation.
In 1300, Jacques de Molay and other forces from Cyprus put together a fleet of 16 ships which committed raids along the
Egyptian and
Syrian coasts. The force was commanded by
King Henry II of Jerusalem, the king of Cyprus, accompanied by his brother,
Amalric, Lord of Tyre the heads of the military orders, and the ambassador of the Mongol leader
Ghazan. The ships left
Famagusta on July 20, 1300, to raid the coasts of Egypt and Syria:
Rosette,
Alexandria,
Acre,
Tortosa, and
Maraclea, before returning to Cyprus. The raids along the way were directed by Admiral
Baudoin de Picquigny, and when the raids took place at Alexandria, they were able to free Christian prisoners who had been captive since the Fall of Acre in 1291.
The ships then returned to Cyprus, and prepared for an attack on Tortosa in late 1300. The Cypriots sent a joint force to a staging area on the island of
Ruad, from which raids were launched on Tortosa, while awaiting the arrival of the Mongols. However, Ghazan's forces were delayed, and the Crusader forces ended up returning to Cyprus, leaving a garrison on Ruad. When Ghazan did arrive in February 1301, he was only able to engage in some minor raids before having to withdraw.
Plans for combined operations were again made for the following winter offensive. A letter has been kept from Jacques de Molay to Edward I, and dated April 8, 1301, informing him of the troubles encountered by Ghazan, but announcing that Ghazan was supposed to come in Autumn:
Ruad (today called
Arwad) which faced the Syrian town of
Tortosa. The intent was to establish a bridgehead to await assistance from the Mongols, 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 in the
Siege of Ruad on September 26, 1302, and when Ghâzân died in 1304 Jacques de Molay's dream of a rapid reconquest of the Holy Land was destroyed.
Travel to France
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 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 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 settled in August 1308, when 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 didn't 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
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 the Isle des Juifs, now incorporaed into the
Île de la Cité, where they were executed. Note the fourteenth century print show the execution on a small island separated from the Isle de la Cite'.)
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.
Legends
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's no evidence of such. Although Jacques visited England in 1293, it isn't likely that he assumed the post of commander while himself being the grand master.
Conquest of Jerusalem
In France in the 19th century, false stories circulated that De Molay had captured Jerusalem in 1300, and a painting was even commissioned for the Versailles, entitled "Jacques de Molay Takes Jerusalem, 1299." The exact origin of these rumors isn't certain, although they may be related to the fact that a medieval historian, the
Templar of Tyre, wrote about a Mongol general named "
Mulay" who occupied Syria and Palestine for a few months in early 1300.
There are numerous ancient records of Mongol raids and occupations of Jerusalem (from either Western, Armenian or Arab sources), and the Mongols did achieve a victory in Syria which caused a Muslim retreat, and allowed the Mongols to launch raids into the Levant as far as Gaza for a period of a few months in early 1300. During this time, rumors flew through Europe that the Mongols had recaptured Jerusalem and were going to return the city to the Europeans. However, this may only be an
urban legend, as the only activities that the Mongols had even engaged in were some minor raids through Palestine, which may or may not have even passed through Jerusalem, a city which at the time was considered a minor location of no strategic importance, as it was still in ruins from earlier battles.
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 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's 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.
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. Ironically, King Louis XVI was a descendant of Philippe le Bel by his granddaughter Queen
Joan II of Navarre.
Quoting Templar Historian Malcolm Barber:
A variation on this story was told by the contemporary chronicler Ferretto of Vicenza, who applied the idea to a Neopolitan Templar brought before Clement V, whom he denounced for his injustice. Some time later, as he was about to be executed, he appealed 'from this your heinous judgement to the living and true God, who is in Heaven', warning the pope that, within a year and a day, he and Philip IV would be obliged to answer for their crimes in God's presence. (Ferretto of Vicenza, 'Historia rerum in Italia gestarum ab anno 1250 as annum usque 1318', c. 1328).
"Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!"
Another legend connects the climax of the
French Revolution with the events surrounding de Molay's death, and figures prominently in Templar/
Freemasonic
conspiracy theories. According to
Holy Blood, Holy Grail:
Holy Blood, Holy Grail is credited in nearly all contemporary works that make reference to the story, and the authors don't cite any credible historical source for it. A decade earlier, reference was made several times to this scene in the
Illuminatus! Trilogy. The authors of
Illuminatus! also neglected to source the legend.
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.
This Order was established by Frank Sherman Land, a prominent Scottish Rite Freemason in Kansas City, MO, in early 1919, with nine teenagers, mostly sons of Masons and their friends. Today it has chapters in every state of the United States, and in Canada, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Aruba, Bolivia, Columbia, Germany, Italy and the Republic of the Philippines. Several million young men have become members.
Many prominent alumni (aka "Senior DeMolays") are in the International DeMolay Hall of Fame, and include Walt Disney, John Wayne, Bob Mathias (Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist), Walter "Red" Barber, Mel Blanc, Buddy Ebsen, Paul Harvey, Burl Ives, Harmon Killebrew, Fran Tarkenton, John Steinbeck (Nobel Prize winner), and Lance Sijan (Winner of the Medal of Honor).
More information is available at www.demolay.org, maintained by DeMolay International.
Quotes
- "Quar nous navons volu ne volons le Temple mettre en aucune servitute se non tant come il hy affiert." ("For we didn't and don't 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.
Further Information
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