Lives and legends

Jacques de Molay

About 1244 to 1314

Who was Jacques de Molay, and what is truly known of them?

What is known

Last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Born in Burgundy about 1244, he was received into the order at Beaune in 1265 and elected its head about 1292, after the fall of Acre. On 13 October 1307 King Philip IV of France, deep in debt to the order, had him and the Templars of France arrested on charges of denying Christ, spitting on the cross and worshipping an idol. Under questioning he confessed to some of the charges, withdrew the confession, and confessed again; a record found in the Vatican archives shows that cardinals absolved him at Chinon in 1308. Pope Clement V dissolved the order in 1312. In March 1314, sentenced to prison for life, he declared the order innocent and was burned that evening on an island in the Seine.

The teaching

Taught from the Rule he kept, his two memoranda to Pope Clement V and the record of his trial.

The Rule he kept

Jacques de Molay was no teacher. He was a knight of the Temple and at the last its Master, and what he stood for was its Rule, which is taught in full on the page of Templars and Illuminati, under Orders and mystery schools: the hours of prayer, silence at table, a habit of one colour, obedience to the Master as to God, no property of one's own, and the promise to help win the Holy Land. The Master too was under it, and the great matters of the house were decided in chapter, with the counsel of the brothers.

How the Holy Land should be won

In his memorandum on the crusade he gives a soldier's counsel. A small expedition, he warns, would do no good and could do harm: it would lose men and stir up the enemy without winning anything that could be held. Only a general passage, a great army of all Christendom sent together, could recover the Holy Land, and it should gather first in Cyprus. He advises against landing in Armenia, whose air was unhealthy for men from the West and whose people, he judged, could not be relied on. Until the army came, galleys should keep the sea and stop the Christian merchants who traded with Egypt, so that the enemy was weakened before the war began.

Against joining the orders

In the second memorandum he argues against merging the Temple with the Hospital. Men who had vowed themselves to one rule could not rightly be made to live under another. The two orders had always vied with each other in good works, and the rivalry served Christendom: whenever one did some deed of arms or charity, the other strove to equal it. Joined, that spur would be lost, and the brothers of two traditions would quarrel within one house. He granted that a single order might be stronger against the enemy, but judged the loss greater than the gain.

The last declaration

Brought before the people at Paris to hear himself sentenced to prison for life, he spoke for the order instead. With Geoffroi de Charney, the commander of Normandy, he declared that the order was holy and pure and the charges false, and he said that he deserved death not for the crimes alleged but for having confessed to them under torture to save his life. A chronicler writing in verse soon after has him ask at the stake to face the church of Our Lady and to have his hands free to pray, and say that God knew who was in the wrong and would avenge their death. The summons of the king and the pope within the year is the later telling.

Orders and memberships

The Order of the Temple, a military order of the Church, from 1265 to his death. In Portugal its houses and brothers passed in 1319 to the new Order of Christ. No Masonic or modern Templar body descends from it by any document: the Masonic degree of Knight Templar dates from the eighteenth century, and the youth order named for him was founded at Kansas City in 1919.

The legend

That from the fire he summoned the king and the pope to meet him before God within the year. Both did die in 1314, and the story of the curse grew afterwards. That he secretly named a successor, that the Templars hid a treasure or the Grail, and that the image on the Shroud of Turin is his, are later inventions.

What was forged, or is false

The Charter of Larmenius, which lists Grand Masters in unbroken line from him to 1804, appeared in Paris in the early nineteenth century and is a forgery of about that time. The confessions were made under torture or the threat of it, and the idol they name has never been found.

Their works

Memoranda to Clement VLetters, 1306 to 1307
Two memoranda he wrote for the pope, one on how a new crusade should be fought and one against joining the Templars to the Hospitallers. They are the only writings of his own to survive, and show a soldier concerned with the Holy Land months before his arrest.
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Chinon ParchmentRecord, 1308
The record of the cardinals sent by Clement V who questioned him and other leaders of the order at Chinon and absolved them. It was found again in the Vatican archives in 2001, and changed how historians read the pope’s part in the trial.
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Trial of the TemplarsRecord, 1307 to 1311
The records of the trial of the order in France, with his confessions and withdrawals and the depositions of hundreds of brothers. They were printed in the nineteenth century and are the main source for the case.
The confessions were made under torture or the threat of it.
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Charter of LarmeniusRecord, early 19th century
A document that appeared in Paris and lists Grand Masters of the Temple in unbroken line from him to 1804. It was used by a neo Templar order of the time to claim his succession.
It is a forgery of about that time.
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The Iron KingNovel, 1955
Maurice Druon’s novel, the first of The Accursed Kings, which opens with his burning and his curse on the king and the pope and follows the fall of the Capetian kings. It made the legend of the curse known to a wide public.
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How the house tells a life

This life is told from the record, with what is documented, what is legend and what was forged kept apart. A membership in an order is stated only where documents show it. A person’s chart explains none of their deeds.

The arts it feeds

Orders and mystery schools Conspiracies, examined

Lives near it in time