THE END OF THE TEMPLE KNIGHTS

To begin, we need to know who were these knights who served the church for decades
and were willing to fight in the name of God to defend their religion with a sword and
shield. The Templars were, perhaps the most famous order in history and the
most powerful and important of the middle age, even more than other European kings of
the time, but under the only superior command of the pope. The order was created in
1118 AD. by nine veteran knights with the purpose of defending Jerusalem from Muslim
armies, it passed to the Pope, who would launch crusades (clashes or military expeditions
against Muslims). There were 9 crusades, of which, only the first was successful. The
Templar order was structured as a pyramid, first, by the knights, who were peasants who
would be forgiven of all their sins if they went to war and gave their lives for God; but first
of all a process was required to be a Templar, they had to become monks, train, vote and
leave their previous lives to serve the church. Above them the masters are positioned, in
this case leaders of each temple of templars that was distributed throughout
Europe. Then there is the great teacher, who is above the masters, and finally the pope,
who would be the chief superior of the order, and who would be the only one able to call
the Templars to a new crusade. But after two centuries of operation, King Philip of France
began asking for economic loans in order to pay his campaigns in a war against the
English, money that the king would not want to pay to the great master Jacques de Molay,
so he devised a plan to end the Templars and get rid of debts. The king tried to defame
the order with false accusations such as practicing dark arts, practicing sodomy , denying
Jesus and even accusing them of being homosexual; thanks to the influence of the king
with the pope, on Friday 13, 1307 the pope make all European kings to persecute,
capture, torture and burn at the stake the Knights Templar without having any
evidence. Finally, King Philip got Pope Clement to decret the end of the order of the
Templars in 1312. Over the next 2 years, the last great master (Jacques de Molay) would
be tortured to make him confess crimes that he had never committed, even so they
decided on March 17, 1312, in front of the Notre Dame cathedral, to burn him at the
stake. De Molay, who, in the act, cursed the pope and the king for being betrayers of the
church, giving them less than 1 year of life and swearing that God would avenge him for
such injustice. chance or fate, the curious thing came when the two ones died that same
year from natural causes, the pope after one month and the king on November. Perhaps
God really did justice.