PHOTO RATING «EXECUTION OF THE TEMPLARS».
According to Oleg Loginov.
The seal of the Templars with two horsemen on one horse and the image of the Temple of Solomon.
During the First Crusade, the French nobleman Hugo de Payens gathered eight of his relatives-knights and organized a militia of the poor Knights of Christ in the service of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This militia was transformed into a new Order, called the Order of the Knights Templar.
Pilgrims accompanied by Knights Templar in front of Jerusalem in the XII century.
Initially, the purpose of the order was to protect pilgrims on their pilgrimage to holy places in the Middle East. They called their order the «Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon». They were so poor that they had only one horse for two people; in memory of this, their seal for a long time represented an image of a horse on which two riders were sitting. To remedy the situation, by decree of Baldwin II and Patriarch Warmund of Jerusalem, the order was granted the right to receive taxes from the surrounding villages.
Initiation into the Templars
In addition, the ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, in 1120 allocated a place for the knights in the south-eastern wing of the Jerusalem temple, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, for headquarters. Having no permanent place of residence, these knights lived in the part of the Temple of Solomon assigned to them. They wore white clothes with a red cross attached to them. In addition to their large standard, which also depicted these colors, they carried in battle a banner with black and white stripes, which was supposed to mean mercy and kindness to their friends and the destruction of their enemies.
Francois Marius Granet. «Pope Honorius II, granting official recognition to the Templar
Order,» Few people knew about the activities of the order, as well as about the order in general, until the Council in Troyes (1128), at which the order was officially recognized, and the priest of St. Bernard of Clairvaux was instructed to develop its Charter, which would bring together the basic laws of the order.
Charles-Philippe Lariviere. «The Battle of Montgizard»
The Templars were brave. It is not for nothing that when they joined the Orders, they gave, in addition to the vow of obedience to the Grand Master, also an oath never to retreat from less than four opponents. But there were not so many of them, so they made their contribution to the cause of the Crusaders, but they did not decide the outcome of the wars. For example, it is known that in the famous battle of the Crusaders at Monjizar with the Sultan of Egypt Salah ad-Din, held on November 25, 1177, 84 Templars came with King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and 40-50 Templars numbered the Gaza Convention that joined. That battle ended with the victory of the Christian army. But 10 years later, in 1187, the Templars distinguished themselves with a minus sign. By that time, King Baldwin had died and was succeeded on the throne of Jerusalem by Guy de Lusignan. At the meeting of the council of barons, he, under the pressure of the grandmaster of the Templar Order Gerard de Ridfort, decided to go to the aid of the besieged Arab city of Tiberias. It was a mistake.
Saladin and Guy de Lusignan after the battle
On July 4, 1187, «the clouds of death opened and the light faded on this day of sorrow, suffering, grief and destruction.» In the battle, which lasted seven hours, about 17,000 Crusaders died, and King Guy Lusignan, his brother Amaury (constable of the kingdom), Master of the Templars Gerard de Ridfort, Renaud de Chatillon, Onfroy of Toron and many others were captured. The Holy Life-giving Cross of the Lord was also lost in this battle.
Those of the Templars who survived the battle were captured and executed. Only Gerard de Ridfort was spared his life.
Being held hostage, de Ridfort ordered the Templars of Gaza and other major fortresses to surrender them without a fight. After the templars fulfilled the order — they had no right to disobey the master — Gerard de Ridfort was released. His reputation among his own knights was tarnished: the very fact that he surrendered to the enemy and remained alive was a violation of the order’s charter. Moreover, rumors began to circulate among the Templars that the grand master had converted to Islam to save his own life.
After his release from captivity, Gerard de Ridfort tried to restore his good name by taking part in military operations against Muslims, but in the Battle of Acre on October 4, 1189, he was captured again and beheaded.
Francois Marius Granet. «Chapter of the Templar Order, held in Paris on April 22, 1147»
However, with the ambiguous reputation of the Order, the Templars got rich. Although the rules of the Templars prescribed them humility and poverty, they soon became wealthy, and their Order was the richest among other knightly orders. And the King of France, Philip IV the Handsome, who was in dire need of money, «laid eyes» on their wealth.
THE DEFEAT OF THE TEMPLAR ORDER
Jacques de Molay — the last Master of the Templars
Using as a pretext the denunciation of Skin de Florian and Noffo Dei, two former Templars accused of the troubles, Philip IV the Handsome ordered a secret investigation against the Order.
Arrest of the Templars.
On September 22, 1307, the Royal Council decided to arrest all Templars in France. Royal officials, commanders of military detachments, as well as local inquisitors, did not know until the last moment what they had to do: the orders were sealed in double envelopes, which were allowed to be opened only on Friday, October 13. The Templars were taken by surprise.
The Templar Baphomet depicted on a stone casket found in Essarua (Burgundy)
Serious crimes against religion were attributed to the arrested Templars. Members of the order were accused of the gravest heresy — of renouncing Jesus Christ, spitting on the crucifixion, worshipping the idol of Baphomet at their secret meetings, cremation of deceased brothers and mixing ashes into a common meal, personal visits by Satan to their meetings, etc. Many prisoners were subjected to severe torture, several hundred Templars were tortured to death in the first days after the arrests.
Painting by Francois Richard Fleury. «Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Templars Jacques de Molay, detained since 1307, is being held in custody at the Royal Palace of Chinon, where he is being interrogated by papal and royal representatives.»
The interrogation was conducted jointly by inquisitors and royal servants, while cruel tortures were used, and as a result, the investigation sought the necessary confessions. Even the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, admitted that during a reception in Beaune in 1265, he renounced Christ, against his will, and was forced to spit on the cross.
Templars are burned at the stake in Spain.
On November 22, 1307, Pope Clement V issued the bull «Pastoralis praeeminentiae», in which he ordered all Christian monarchs to arrest the Templars and confiscate their lands and property. This bull marked the beginning of lawsuits in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and Cyprus.
EXECUTIONS OF THE TEMPLARS
On April 12, 1310, fifty-four Templars were sentenced to be burned at the stake and executed on the outskirts of Paris.
Many Templars were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, sometimes for life. Those who did not admit their guilt were imprisoned in monasteries, where they dragged out a miserable existence for the rest of their lives.
Daniel Urrabieta Vierge. «The Burning of the Templars»
On March 11, 1314, in Paris, on the square in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, a string of prisoners were brought to the high tribune, where cardinals and prelates who acted as judges were placed. These were the leaders of the Templar Order, Jacques de Molay, the general visitor of the Order, Hugo de Peyrot, Prior of Aquitaine Geoffrey de Gonneville, Prior of Normandy Geoffrey de Charnay and others. During the seven years of imprisonment, the once illustrious persons have lost not only their gloss, but also just their human appearance. Now they were dirty, overgrown, skinny shadows of people.
The Archbishop of Sansk slowly listed all their crimes, after which he said that the church had shown the greatest leniency and sentenced them to life imprisonment. And it was a really lenient sentence.
But then something amazing happened. Two of the group of convicts came out – the master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, and the preceptor of Normandy, Geoffrey de Charnay. They said they were not seeking leniency, but were challenging the legality of the sentence. And declare their previous testimony invalid, given under torture.
The Florentine chronicler Villani wrote: «The Master of the Temple got up and loudly demanded that you listen to him. When the people quieted down, he abandoned his previous speeches and declared that the sins and heresy attributed to them were pure inventions and that the Templar Order had always been holy, righteous and pious, but he himself deserved death, which he would like to calmly endure, because out of fear of torture and yielding to the persuasions of the king and the pope, he made a confession by succumbing to their deception.»
A deathly silence reigned over the square. With such a bold statement, these two condemned themselves to the stake, since now they could already be considered to have fallen into heresy for the second time. But, sacrificing themselves, they sought to leave in the memory of the descendants of the eagle of the martyrs who fell in the name of their order. The High Court was confused. But the «Iron King» Philip IV did not lose his head, ordering the transfer of both Templars into the hands of the executioner.
At sunset, they died on a bonfire on the island of Sita on the Seine River. But already overcome by fire, Jacques de Molay loudly cursed the family of French kings. And his curse came true, taking them to the grave one by one. What Maurice Druon described in his cycle of novels «The Cursed Kings».
For more information, see the article «Generic curse».
*Texts from Wikipedia and other Internet resources were used.
*Translated using an electronic dictionary. The original text in Russian and much more on the criminal topic can be selected on the main page of the site — http://crimerecords.info/
