Jacques De Molney Biography

The fall of Acre in 1291 was one of the defining battles of the medieval world. As the Mamluks smashed down the city’s walls, Christendom’s 195-year experiment with crusading crashed into the sea along with the vast blocks of defensive masonry.

When the overwhelming forces of Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil massed around the city, most dignitaries fled by sea, leaving only the Templars and a crowd of terrified civilians. The Templars’ Grand Master fell fighting, so a senior Templar, Peter de Severy, went to the sultan to surrender on condition the civilians were given safe passage to Cyprus. The sultan agreed, but when the Templars opened the city’s gates, the attackers began committing atrocities against the women and children. The Templars immediately slammed the gates shut and loaded the panic-stricken civilians onto their remaining ships. Then, with their last transports gone, they turned to face the enemy. The sultan called for de Severy to come to his camp again so he could apologise. When de Severy arrived, there was no apology. Instead, the sultan had him beheaded in full sight of the Templars on Acre’s walls.

The Templars defended Acre for as long as they could. But the result was never in question. The city fell, and the Holy Land would not come under Christian rule again until Britain and her imperial allies took it in 1917. The fall of medieval crusader Acre was a seismic moment in European history. As late as 1853, the Royal Navy commemorated it with a ship — the HMS St Jean d’Acre.

There were barely any survivors. But a man named Jacques de Molay was almost certainly one. Before long, the Templars elected him their Grand Master.

To the local Latin Christians, the Templars were heroes. But when the knights returned to Europe, they suffered the fate of many of history’s soldiers.

Two millennia earlier, when Odysseus finally reached Ithaca after a decade fighting at Troy and another battling his way home, he barely recognised the society he found. And, more tragically, few recognised him through his beggar’s clothes (save for his faithful Argos, who only had the strength to wag his tail before dying).

American soldiers returning from Vietnam faced a similarly disconnected homecoming. And so did Jacques de Molay and the last crusaders. Europe had moved on, and the battles they had bled for no longer seemed valued by most of the people or rulers in whose name they had fought.

Today's 700-year anniversary of the burning of Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, marks one of history's most vivid and poignant stories of the discarded soldier.

For two centuries, the Templars waged the bloody wars for Christian Jerusalem that Europe's people demanded. But when the defeated crusaders came home, early 1300s Europe was preparing for Dante, Giotto, Marco Polo, Petrarch, Boccaccio, de Machaut, Chaucer, and a world of new discoveries. There was no room for knights bent on recapturing an oriental desert 3,000 miles away.

On Thursday 12 October 1307, de Molay was an honoured pall bearer in Paris at the royal funeral of the titular Empress of Constantinople, sister-in-law of King Philip IV of France. But the following dawn – Friday  13 of October — King Philip’s men kicked in the doors of the Templars’ commanderies all over France, and arrested all but a handful who evaded capture. (It is still popularly believed that these arrests are why Friday the 13th is unlucky.)

Philip charged the Templars with offences designed to scandalise and horrify the public: denying Christ, spitting on the crucifix, idol worship, blasphemy, and obscenity. He struggled to believe it himself, he said, but his priority was to protect the fabric of Christendom. It was:

A bitter thing, a lamentable thing, a thing which is horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of, a detestable crime, an execrable evil, an abominable work, a detestable disgrace, a thing almost inhuman, an offence to the divine majesty, a universal scandal. (Philip IV, arrest orders)

Naturally, Philip had invented most of the charges, along with his phony remorse, as he needed to get people heated up in order to drown out the papacy’s inevitable outrage at such a blatant and unprovoked attack on the Church.

Nevertheless, Philip was feeling confident. He had played the game well. Pope Clement V could huff and puff, but Philip had wangled the papal throne for the untalented Clement two years earlier, so the rules of cronyism applied. None of this was lost on Dante, who railed against Clement’s toadying to Philip, his lust for power, nepotism, and simony. He accused Clement of being a lawless shepherd, of turning his office into a cloaca del sangue e de la puzza (sewer of blood and stink), and he specifically saved a place for him in Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell.

When Clement heard of the arrests, he was furious at the full-frontal attack on his sovereignty. But he had no room for manoeuvre. So, rather than confront Philip (as Gregory VII or Boniface VIII would have), he opted to salve his wounded pride by trying to take charge of the matter.

As October ran into November, the French Templars were tortured mercilessly. Virtually all (including de Molay) confessed to Philip’s charges. Vindicated and flushed with self-righteousness, Philip wrote to the kings of Europe, inviting them to follow his most pious example.

Over in England, King Edward II was in no mood to play Philip’s cynical game. He knew and liked Jacques de Molay, and the Templars had served England and its kings with distinction. Instead, Edward went onto the attack, writing to Europe’s kings to rubbish Philip’s claims.

Meanwhile, in his attempt to steer events, Clement issued the bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae ordering Europe’s kings to arrest all Templars in the name of the pope.

In England, Edward felt he ought to comply, but had no real appetite for it. He gave the Order two weeks’ notice of the arrests, before rounding up a few Templars and relocating them to comfortable lodgings, while leaving the remainder in their commanderies.

Back in France, Clement dispatched cardinals to interview de Molay and a key lieutenant. To King Philip’s horror, now the two knights were talking to the pope’s men and not royal goons, they promptly withdrew their confessions and confirmed the Order was innocent of Philip’s charges.

Emboldened, Clement suspended the enquiries. Incensed, Philip threated Clement with violence, and insisted he reopen the enquiries. Clement eventually acquiesced, and announced that final judgement would be given in October 1310 at Vienne.

However, Philip was too experienced to attack on a single front alone. To keep the pressure on, Philip forced Clement to move the whole papal court to Avignon. This was the infamous "Babylonian Captivity" (1309–1377), in which seven French popes ruled from Avignon in an environment so luridly described by Petrarch.

To leave Clement in no doubt who was boss, Philip also forced him to open a posthumous trial into Pope Boniface VIII, who had died from shock a few years earlier after Philip’s men had violently kidnapped him. Philip’s lawyers even drafted the usual trumped-up charges: heresy, idolatry, homicide, simony, fornication, and sodomy.