Arguably the most famous of the Crusader Orders, the Knights Templar were also accused of heresy. Unlike the Teutonic Order, the Templar Order would not survive these accusations. On the fateful Friday the 13th of October of 1307, their headquarters in Paris was subject to a dawn raid. Their last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was arrested and burned at the stake.
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.