Jacques de Molay
gigatos | January 22, 2022
Summary
Jacques de Molay, also Jacob de Molay and Jacobus of Molay (* between 1240 and 1250 in Molay, today”s department of Haute-Saône in the Free County of Burgundy († March 11 or 18, 1314 in Paris) was the twenty-third and last Grand Master of the Order of the Temple. His time as Grand Master saw the suppression of the Knights Templar by King Philip IV of France and the official dissolution of the Order by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne (1312). Two years later, Jacques de Molay was executed at the stake together with Geoffroy de Charnay.
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Origin
Little is known about the life of Jacques de Molay before his time as Grand Master of the Order of the Temple. Even the year of birth cannot be determined with certainty. However, it can be assumed that de Molay was born around 1244. This is based on 1265 (entry into the Order of the Knights Templar), because the rules of the Order provided for the admission of adults, i.e. admission after the knighthood, which usually took place at the age of 20. However, since there are also documented cases in which admission to the order took place earlier, this is also possible for de Molay and a birth year a few years later cannot be ruled out.
As for the origin, it is certain that he came from the Free County of Burgundy, today”s Franche-Comté. Since de Molay had to be noble to become a Knight Templar, the origin can be narrowed down to two communes: Jacques de Molay came either from the village of Molay in the district of Chemin, which at that time belonged to the fief of Rahon, or from Molay in the Haute-Saône in the district of Vitrey, which at that time was part of the deanery of Traves in the diocese of Besançon. Based on some circumstantial evidence, it can be assumed that de Molay originated from the village of Molay in Vitrey. A de Molay family from the rural, lower nobility is documented there since the year 1138. Jacques is possibly a son of Gérard de Molay, who is documented as a vassal of the Seigneur of La Rochelle in 1233.
The Free County of Burgundy belonged to the Holy Roman Empire at that time, so the de Molays were subjects of the Roman-German Emperor. Jacques de Molay grew up during the time of the Crusades of King Louis IX of France. Nothing else is known about his childhood and youth. One can assume that the reports and tales of the returning crusaders from neighboring France also influenced the youthful de Molay.
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De Molay as Templar
In 1265, Jacques was admitted to the Order of the Temple (according to his own account) by Humbert de Pairud, Visitor General of the Order in France and England, and by Amaury de la Roche, Master of the Order of the Province of France, in the Order”s chapel in the Commandery of Beaune. Nothing is known about the motives of his entry. In accordance with the usual practice of the time, one can assume that social or economic pressure led the young nobleman into the ranks of the crusaders or that he had been predestined by his father for an ecclesiastical career (the Order of the Temple was considered a spiritual order). But it would also be possible that the feudal lord joined the crusade and all vassals had to follow him.
De Molay later stated that he had been to the Orient as a young knight under the Grand Master Guillaume de Beaujeu. Beaujeu was elected Grand Master in 1273. From this we can conclude that de Molay came to the Holy Land sometime between 1270 and 1282. By this time, the rule of the Crusaders in the region was already nearing its end. According to the Grandes Chroniques de France, the battle-hungry young knight seems to have rebelled against the Grand Master because he did not initially want to support his line of seeking a peaceful settlement during the time of the truce with the Sultan of the Mamelukes.
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Grand Master of the Order
In September 1291 – after the fall of Acre and thus the end of the Crusader states – de Molay attended the General Chapter of the Order in Cyprus and was elected Marshal of the Order, succeeding Pierre de Sevry, who had fallen at Acre. In 1292, probably in February, the Grand Master Thibaud Gaudin died. Jacques de Molay was then elected Grand Master of the Order. This must have been before April 20, 1292: a letter to the Master of the Province of Aragón with this date, signed by de Molay as Grand Master, is in the Archivo General de la Corona de Aragón in Barcelona.
In 1293, he set out on an extended journey to the Occident, which took him first to Provence. In August 1293 he took part in the General Chapter of the Order in Montpellier. In 1294 he traveled to England and to Italy on the occasion of the election of Pope Boniface VIII. At the beginning of 1296 he came to Arles for another general chapter of the Order. In the autumn he returned to Cyprus. The first purpose of this trip was to reach agreements with the European rulers in order to prevent the intended withdrawal of the Templars” privileges (the Templars were exempt from all dues, taxes and feudal obligations). There were also intense negotiations between the Templars and the Royal House of Aragon concerning the exchange of lands. In England, he obtained the reduction of a penalty imposed on the local Master of the Order. With King Charles II of Naples he negotiated the lifting of special controls on Templar ships. Above all, however, it was a matter of obtaining support for the Holy Land. After the fall of Acre in 1291, this meant defending the remaining Christian states on Cyprus (where the Templars had also retreated) and in Armenia. In addition, the Order”s greatly diminished reserves of fighters and material had to be replenished. Thus, in his negotiations with the individual rulers, de Molay advocated that all exports from the individual Templar estates to Cyprus be exempted from all customs duties. Ultimately, the ground should be prepared for the desired reconquest of the Holy Land, because this remained the main concern of the knightly orders.
Limassol in Cyprus was the headquarters of the Templars. De Molay sought a settlement with King Henry II of Cyprus. The latter wanted to limit the income of the orders – this concerned not only the Templars, but also the Knights of St. John and the Cistercians – and to prohibit them from acquiring further land. In the negotiations, de Molay also asked Pope Boniface VIII to mediate.
From 1299 on, de Molay massively campaigned to reconquer the Holy Land together with other Christian forces and in alliance with the Mongols. A first attack by the Persian Khan Ghazan in late 1299 was carried out with the participation of Armenian troops as well as Armenian Templar and Knights of St. John contingents. Ghazan addressed two letters to the knightly orders in Cyprus requesting support. However, he did not send these letters until he had been in the field for weeks. The contingents based in Cyprus could no longer intervene. Ghazan first captured Aleppo in December. On December 24, 1299, the Khan and his Armenian allies won a glorious victory over the Mamelukes at Homs; however, because of the poor supply situation of the Mongol cavalry, they soon had to stop pursuing the fleeing enemies and thus missed the chance for a lasting success. Nevertheless, they succeeded in conquering Syria almost completely in the first months of 1300. At the same time, the khan intensified his diplomatic efforts. He announced a new campaign for November 1300.
In the spring of 1300, a small fleet consisting of delegations from the Knights Templar, the Knights of St. John, the King of Cyprus, and the Khan attacked Egypt; Rosetta and Alexandria were sacked. They then turned north against Acre and Tartus; however, an attempt to capture the port city of Maraclea failed. Molay operated from Cyprus to coordinate with the allies and direct Templar involvement in the venture. At the end of September, Ghazan set out from Tabriz, while Templars and Knights of St. John and the king of Cyprus positioned their forces on the island of Ruad off Tartus. But an unusually severe winter brought the Mongol advance to a halt, and Ghazan had to postpone the attack on the Mamelukes until a later date. In the meantime, the Templars held the island and made repeated forays from there to the mainland. In 1302 they were driven from the island and suffered heavy losses (see Siege of Aruad). The Mongol attacks finally failed in 1303 and Ghazan died the following year. This marked the end of Christian efforts to achieve success through alliances with the Mongols.
De Molay remained in Cyprus in the following years. In 1306, there was a revolt in Cyprus in which the king”s brother, Amalrich of Tyre, took power on the island. In the revolt, which was supported by parts of the local nobility, de Molay and Foulques de Villaret, the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, had not interfered, but in the following they tried to achieve a balance between the opposing brothers.
In October 1306, de Molay left for France. Pope Clement V was residing in Poitiers at the time. He had invited the leaders of the knightly orders to discuss two matters with them: the unification of the knightly orders and the preparation of a new crusade. Both masters of the orders had submitted memoranda for this purpose, which were now to be discussed (de Molay”s are preserved). However, due to an illness of the pope, the date of the meeting was postponed from November 1306 to the following year.
It is said that there were disagreements between the French King Philip IV and de Molay. One reason was that the treasurer of the Order (see also Templar Treasury) was also the king”s treasurer, since the Templars managed the state finances in France. The treasurer of the order had lent an enormous sum of money to Philip IV, but this would have required the approval of the Grand Master. In addition, de Molay was strongly opposed to a union of the Crusader orders, from which Philip IV would have profited in any case, because he thought he had a good chance of becoming Grand Master of a united order.
In France, England, and Spain, all sorts of rumors circulated about alleged Templar misconduct. The accusations concerned heretical practices such as idolatry, denial of Christ in the initiation ceremony and lay absolution, as well as lack of charity, avarice and presumption. Guillaume de Nogaret, a confidant of the French king, had already initiated investigations against the Templars in 1305 in order to gather incriminating material. This was primarily intended to blackmail the Pope, to whom the Templar Order was subject. During a parley with the king, de Molay tried to excuse some practices of the Templar Order, such as lay absolution. De Molay asked the pope himself to investigate the accusations. The pope agreed and reserved the right to direct the investigation. He announced that these investigations would begin in the second half of October 1307.
On June 24, 1307, de Molay attended the General Chapter of the Order, which he had convened in Paris. He then went back to Poitiers. On August 24, Pope Clement V informed the king of the initiation of investigations against the Knights Templar. Ostensibly because of the seriousness of the accusations, Philip decided to take charge of the investigations illegally and first summoned the Inquisitor of France, Guillaume de Paris. In September, Gilles I Aycelin de Montaigut, the archbishop of Narbonne, then resigned from his position as chancellor to the king in protest of the violation of canon law. He was succeeded by Guillaume de Nogaret. In early October, de Molay returned to Paris. On October 12, he attended the funeral services there for Catherine de Courtenay as a member of the honorary cortege.
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Arrest, trial and death
The next day, Friday, October 13, 1307, the Templars were arrested by order of the king. Among those arrested in the Templar castle in Paris (the “Temple”) was the Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Only a few Templars managed to escape.
On October 24, de Molay was questioned for the first time by the inquisitors. He admitted that he had been asked to deny Christ and spit on the cross when he was admitted to the order. He had reluctantly obeyed this and had also only spat next to the cross. He strongly denied that the knights would be asked at initiation to resort to homosexual acts in case of sexual desires. Confessions of other Templars in the first interrogations in October and November also provided the desired confirmation of the suspected heresy. Nogaret immediately used the confessions in a propaganda attack designed to discredit not only the Templars but also the pope. Philip IV called on the rulers of Europe to take action against the Templars, but his appeal was initially inconsequential. It was not until the Pope ordered the arrest of the Templars in the bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae of November 22, 1307 that the Templars were also arrested in England, Cyprus, Italy or Aragon. However, nowhere did the persecution of the Templars take on such proportions as in France. The Pope attempted to have the arrested Templars transferred to the custody of the Church, but Nogaret did everything in his power to prevent this.
The king urged the pope to decree the abolition of the Order of the Temple, but the pope wanted to see for himself. He sent two cardinals to de Molay. Only when the pope threatened the king with excommunication were they allowed to see de Molay. De Molay recanted his confession and complained about the bad treatment. He had probably been tortured. He subsequently relied on the support of the pope, convinced that the order was not guilty of any heretical misconduct. Carefully selected prisoners were handed over to the pope to continue the investigations in Poitiers. However, according to the royal investigating authorities, the dignitaries of the Order, among them de Molay, were too weak to travel to Poitiers. Allegedly because of their exhaustion, they were taken in by the king at Chinon Castle. There de Molay was interrogated again in August 1308, also in the presence of cardinals. He repeated there his first confession.
The pope finally had to agree to a two-track procedure. The investigations against individual knights remained in the hands of the royal French administration, only the proceedings against the Order were to remain under the jurisdiction of the Curia. The pope personally reserved the right to pass judgment on the leadership of the order. On November 26, 1309, de Molay was brought before the papal commission of inquiry in Paris. He refused to make any further statements and demanded to defend himself and the order before the pope in person. Even at his last interrogation in March 1310, he insisted on his position. However, there was no further meeting between the pope and de Molay.
The papal commission of inquiry soon arrived at partly different results than the king”s commissions. Thus, the matter threatened to slip away from the king once again. Nogaret and Philip then used the Archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, as their tool. Marigny was a brother of Enguerrand de Marigny, one of the king”s closest confidants. He now presided over the College of Judges of Paris, which was responsible for trying the Templars in that diocese (the bishopric of Paris was then under the Archbishop of Sens). The Templars who testified before the papal commission in defense of the Order were retried by Marigny as recidivist heretics and immediately sent to the stake: On May 12, 1310, 54 Templars were burned in Paris. This finally broke the Templars” slowly burgeoning resistance in the proceedings.
On March 22, 1312, at the Council of Vienne, the Pope declared the Templar Order dissolved. A handwritten document from that time found by historian Barbara Frale in the Vatican”s secret archives proves that Pope Clement was not convinced of the Order”s guilt. When he decreed the abolition of the Order, he did so not because of proven misconduct on the part of the Order, but because the reputation of the Order had been so badly damaged that a re-establishment was out of the question.
When the pope finally appointed a commission to condemn the remaining superiors of the order, they had been imprisoned in Gisors Castle for about four years: In addition to Jacques de Molay, these were the Master of Normandy Geoffroy de Charnay, as well as Hugues de Pairaud and Geoffroy de Gonneville. The three cardinals appointed by the Pope, Nicolas Caignet de Fréauville, Arnaud d”Auch and Arnaud Novelli, met in Paris in March 1314. On March 18, 1314, the sentence was publicly pronounced in the square in front of the church of Notre Dame, which was for life imprisonment. When de Molay and de Charnay heard the verdict, they felt betrayed by the Pope. They protested vehemently and recanted all their earlier confessions. The other two remained silent. While the papal judicial commission withdrew for further deliberation, Philip, who was not present when the verdict was pronounced, decided to execute Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay immediately: a new breach of law by the king, since he acted without waiting for the verdict of the Church, which was also noted by the Inquisitor Bernard Gui, who was present. In the evening of the same day, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay were burned at the stake.
Today, the place of execution is indicated by a small plaque on the west side of the Pont Neuf on the Île de la Cité in Paris. The plaque is located at the foot of the bridge, on the wall opposite the entrance to the park on the western tip of the island.
Since 1258, the situation of the Crusader states in the Holy Land was marked by the Mongol invasions and the conflicts with the Egyptian Sultanate of the Mamluks. Bohemund VI, the count of Tripoli and prince of Antioch, and Hethum I, the king of Lesser Armenia, came to terms with the Mongols and paid tribute from 1247. They relied on the Mongols as supporters against the Mamelukes. The Kingdom of Jerusalem vacillated between leaning toward the Mamelukes or the Mongols. Although the Kingdom of Jerusalem was initially neutral and allowed the Mamelukes to pass through its territory, it could not prevent the attacks of Sultan Baibar I from being directed against the Crusader states as well. In 1268, Antioch fell along with other fortresses. When Louis IX, who wanted to attack the Sultanate from the west, died in Tunis in 1270, Baibars invaded the county of Tripoli and captured numerous fortresses of the Templars, Knights of St. John and the Teutonic Order. In April 1272, Edward, the heir to the English throne, was able to conclude a truce with the Mamelukes. The Mamelukes, however, broke the truces at will.
Mameluke attacks led to the fall of Tripoli in 1289 and the fall of Acre in 1291. After that, the crusader states finally collapsed. The pope and the crusader barons, who had been pushed back to Cyprus, as well as the knightly orders, now increasingly sought cooperation with the Persian Mongol Khanate, with the aim of dividing among themselves the territories to be reconquered by the Mamelukes. Khan Ghazan was able to conquer most of Syria in 1300. However, he was eventually defeated by the Mamelukes. When he died in 1304, his successor sought a solution at the negotiating table. The Western tactic of allying with the Mongols had thus failed.
After the fall of the Crusader states, the two major Crusader orders, the Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John, as well as the smaller orders, took up quarters on the island of Cyprus, where they already owned estates. The independent orders, with their battle-hardened troops and extensive possessions, de facto limited the King of Cyprus” power of disposal over the island. On the other hand, however, the king needed the knights for protection against possible attacks by the Islamic fighters. De Molay thus had to dissuade the King of Cyprus from taxing the Templars and prohibiting their further acquisition of property. This problem also faced the other orders on the island.
De Molay was also concerned with reforming the order. When the Templars were no longer constantly at war after the retreat to Cyprus, he wanted to tighten the rules of the order in some points. The reputation of the knightly orders had declined, as they were held responsible for the loss of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Templars, for example, were accused of preferring to conclude truces instead of fighting their enemies. The fact that the individual orders were often at odds with each other had also done lasting damage to the reputation of the knightly orders.
De Molay strove to ensure that his order had the economic conditions to be able to fulfill its obligation to charity. Already at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, the Templars had to defend themselves against the accusation of lack of charity. Already at that time the demand had been voiced to unite the knightly orders. This demand became louder after the loss of the Crusader states. It was expected that a merger of the orders would be more efficient in further crusades to regain the Holy Land. De Molay, on the other hand, wanted to ensure the continued existence and independence of his order.
A major factor from 1305 onwards was the ambitions of the French King Philip IV. A proposal had been made from various quarters that there should be a king at the head of a united Order of the Crusaders. The king of Sicily proposed the French king, while the Aragonese, for example, opposed the proposals. Philip IV was not interested in a crusade, if only because of the financial cost, but the power of disposal over the best-trained and battle-experienced crusader troops and access to their assets seemed tempting to him. Philip did not intend to break up the Order of the Knights Templar from the outset; rather, he wanted to inherit it. The ecclesiastical orders of knighthood were under the exclusive control of the Pope and were exempt from all secular and ecclesiastical taxes. Their estates, which they owned in large numbers in all European kingdoms, were de facto exterritorial territories. The knightly orders were said to have enormous riches. Their strong fighting units were seen by some rulers as a threat to their power.
Philip IV constantly tried to put pressure on the popes. He came into conflict with Boniface VIII because he claimed the tax revenues of the French church for himself. After an assassination attempt was carried out by his confidant Guillaume de Nogaret and two cardinals from the Roman noble family of the Colonna, as a result of which the pope died, he demanded that his successor Clement V condemn Boniface.
The spectacular destruction of the Order of the Temple and the execution of the Grand Master, together with the numerous mysteries that seemed to surround the Order of Knights, gave rise to a myriad of legends. In the contemporary reports and chronicles of that time, however, the person of de Molay is hardly mentioned. Only De casibus virorum illustrium by the Italian Giovanni Boccaccio, which is widely distributed in numerous copies, dedicates a great deal of space to the Grand Master, without, however, offering any clues to a legendary embellishment. Boccaccio”s father, a Florentine merchant, had been an eyewitness to the events in Paris. In the chronicles of the 14th and 15th centuries, other events surrounding the Templars receive more attention than the death of the Grand Master: above all, the burnings of the Templars in 1310, the trial as a whole, and the allocation of the Order”s assets to the Knights of St. John. Only three chroniclers of the 15th century mention the execution of de Molay, and in a chronicle from Flanders de Molay is confused with Guillaume de Beaujeu, and in the Chronographia Regum Francorum the execution of 1314 is also confused with the Templar burning of 1310.
A special place in the legends is occupied by the curse of Jacques de Molay, which he is said to have pronounced against the king and the pope. If we follow the contemporary reports – that is, the continuation of the Chronicle of Nangis written by an anonymous – and the chronicler Geoffroy de Paris, as well as the report of Giovanni Villani, Molay took the floor only when he stood before the cardinals, where he affirmed the purity of the order, and then on the funeral pyre. Before the latter was set on fire, he described himself as a good Christian and called upon God for his assistance. In all these accounts, there is no mention of a curse, nor of detailed speeches. Nevertheless, the historiography of the Templars has always been accompanied by the rumor that de Molay made a well-written speech at the stake, summoning King Philip IV and Pope Clement V to the judgment seat of God within a year, and that he announced the imminent extinction of the Capetians. Pope Clement V actually died on April 20, 1314, probably of cancer. Philip”s death on November 29, 1314, after a hunting accident, was regarded by his subjects as a liberation from tyranny.
As historian Colette Beaune investigated, the Capetians were considered a cursed dynasty independently of de Molay. A curse at that time was considered a cry for help for heavenly justice, and the cry for help was considered answered if a violent death befell the one on whom it rested. The sins of royalty cited by Philip IV”s contemporaries as grounds for a curse were: Adultery among the king”s daughters-in-law, high tax burdens and an economic crisis caused by coin deterioration that had brought misery to many people, plus the persecution of Pope Boniface VIII and the Anagni attack. In Villani it is a bishop who pronounces the curse after the assassination of the Pope. Other chroniclers even attribute the curse to Boniface himself.
The curse was finally extended to Clement V, at the time of the Templar trials. In 1330, a chronicler from Vicenza, Ferreto de Ferretis, following his account of the Council of Vienne, tells of an unknown Templar who appeared before the pope and protested unsuccessfully against his death sentence. This Templar is said to have cursed the pope and the king at the stake, announcing death to both within a year.
It was not until the 16th century that de Molay”s story was embellished more and more, and finally his admission before the cardinals was condensed into a single speech. Paolo Emili, in his chronicle De rebus gestis Francorum, commissioned by King Francis I, puts the famous curse into Jacques de Molay”s mouth – here even before he mounts the funeral pyre. All subsequent historians have adopted the curse, which is now proclaimed by them from the stake.
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