The fall of the Order of the Temple is also the subject of controversy. It would be the fact of the king of France Philippe IV le Bel who would have acted with the sole aim of appropriating the treasure of the Templars.
However, the reasons why the order was decimated are much more complex and those exposed below are probably only a small part of it.
The reasons:The fall of Saint-Jean d'Acre (May 28, 1291)
One of the first reasons was the loss of the city of Saint-Jean d'Acre, which led to that of the Holy Land.
Indeed, on May 28, 1291, the Crusaders lost Acre to the from a bloody battle. Christians were then forced to leave the Holy Land and religious orders such as the Templars and the Hospitallers did not escape this exodus.
However, once in the West, the question of the usefulness of the order of the Temple arose because it had originally been created to defend the pilgrims going to Jerusalem to the tomb of Christ.
The Temple, armed arm of the pope
The most famous quarrel between a pope and a king is undoubtedly that which opposed Philip IV the Fair to Boniface VIII, the latter having affirmed the superiority of papal power over the temporal power of kings, by publishing a bull in 1302:Unam Sanctam.
The response from the king of France came in the form of a request for a council to depose the pope, who in turn excommunicated Philip the Fair and his entire family with the bull Super Patri Solio.
Boniface VIII died on October 11, 1303. His successor, Benedict XI, had a very short pontificate since he in turn died on July 7, 1304. Clement V was elected to succeed him on June 5, 1305.
However, following the fall of Acre, the Templars withdrew to Cyprus and then returned to France to occupy their commanderies.
The Templars possessed immense wealth, increased by the goods resulting from the work of their commanderies (livestock, agriculture...) but (above all?) they possessed a military power equivalent to fifteen thousand men, including one thousand five hundred knights trained in combat, force entirely devoted to the pope. Therefore, such a force could only prove to be embarrassing for the power in place. It should be added that the royal lawyers, trained in Roman law, sought to exalt the power of royal sovereignty. However, the presence of the Temple as a papal jurisdiction greatly limited the power of the king on his own territory. The Anagni attack is one of the reflections of this fight by the lawyers to ensure as little limited power as possible for the king. The position of the lawyers as advisers to the king must have had an influence on Philippe le Bel.
The merger of the Temple and the Hospital
Some historians attribute some responsibility for the loss of the order to Jacques de Molay, Master of the Temple elected in 1293 in Cyprus after the loss of Saint-Jean d'Acre.
Indeed, following the loss of Acre, a crusade project germinated again in the minds of certain Christian kings but also and above all in that of Pope Clement V. The pope also wanted a merger of the two most powerful military orders of the Holy Land and made it known in a letter he sent to Jacques de Molay in 1306.
The master replied with another letter in which he opposed this idea, without being categorical . However, the arguments he put forward to support his own ideas were very thin...
The arrest of the Templars:A well-prepared action
The idea of destroying the Order of the Temple was already present in the mind of King Philip IV the Fair, but the latter lacked evidence and confessions to initiate proceedings.
This was done thanks to a major asset unearthed by Guillaume de Nogaret in the person of a former Templar:Esquieu de Floyran.
In 1305, he confessed to the King of France the obscene practices of the rites of entry into the order and Philippe le Bel, a very pious character, was shocked by such acts. He therefore wrote to the Pope to inform him of the content of these confessions.
At the same time, Jacques de Molay, aware of these rumors, requested a papal inquiry from the pope. The latter granted it to him on August 24, 1307.
However, Philip the Fair was in a hurry. He did not wait for the results of the investigation and dispatched messengers on September 14, 1307[63] to all his seneschals and bailiffs, giving them directives in order to carry out the massive arrest of the Templars in France during a same day, Friday, October 13, 1307[64]. The purpose of this action carried out over a day was to take advantage of the fact that the Templars were scattered throughout the territory and thus to prevent them, alarmed by the arrest of some of their brothers, from regrouping and then becoming difficult to stop.
Friday, October 13, 1307
On the morning of October 13, 1307, Guillaume de Nogaret and men-at-arms entered the precincts of the Temple of Paris where the master of the order Jacques de Molay resided. At the sight of the royal ordinance which justified this roundup, the Templars allowed themselves to be taken away without any resistance. In Paris, 138 prisoners will be taken, in addition to the Master of the Order.
An identical scenario unfolded at the same time throughout France. Most of the Templars present in the commanderies were arrested. They showed no resistance. A few managed to escape before or during the arrests.
The prisoners were mostly locked up in Paris, Caen, Rouen and at the Château de Gisors. All their belongings were inventoried and entrusted to the custody of the Royal Treasury.
Those who in 1306 had taken in Philip IV the Fair during the riots in Paris now found themselves locked up awaiting their trial.