00:00:00.000The Doom of the Templars. Arguably the most famous of the Crusader Orders, the Templars were also accused of heresy.
00:00:09.000Unlike the Teutonic Order, the Templar Order would not survive these accusations.
00:00:15.000Perhaps the Templars were in fact guilty of the various accusations leveled against them,
00:00:20.000although a more likely scenario is that their demise was the result of political developments.
00:00:26.000The Order was rich and the French King, Philip the Fair, sought to centralize power as well as to increase the wealth of the state.
00:00:34.000After all, the Teutonic Knights were expelled from Transylvania for similar reasons.
00:00:40.000The actions of the French King were supported by Pope Clement V who issued a papal bull
00:00:46.000which ordered Christian monarchs to arrest all Knights Templars and seize their properties.
00:00:52.000On the fateful Friday the 13th in October of 1307, the Templar headquarters in Paris was subject to a dawn raid.
00:01:01.000Their last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was arrested and a few years later, in 1314, burned at the stake.
00:01:09.000According to legend, de Molay cursed the French King and his descendants from his pyre.
00:01:14.000Another legend tells of a Neapolitan Templar who, before his execution, warned that both Philip and Clement would be dead within a year and a day as punishment for their transgressions.
00:01:27.000As fate would have it, both King and Pope died within a year of Molay's burning at the stake.