The Council of Vienne, which had been scheduled to meet in October 1310 in order to suppress the Templars, had to be postponed as there was still no sign of the Papal hearings coming to an end. Finally, on 5 June 1311, they did. The Council of Vienne finally began its sessions on 16 October 1311. The turn-out was low, partially due to bad weather and also due to the lack of decent accommodation in the town. After dealing with two other pressing matters – a new crusade and Church reform – the council turned its attention to dissolving the Templars. Rumour was rife that the Temple would mount a last-minute defence, and, much to everyone’s surprise, seven fully armed knights who had evaded arrest four years earlier appeared to defend the Order. Clement asked the council if they should be allowed to do so, and the majority agreed that the knights should be allowed to speak.
Needless to say, Philip was enraged, and even Clement himself seems to have been surprised by the decision to let the Templars have their say. The Pope wanted to end the whole matter once and for all. Disease was by now rampant in Vienne, with several Church fathers having succumbed, and the thought of Philip putting in another appearance did nothing for the Pope’s confidence. On 20 March, Philip and a small armed force did indeed arrive in Vienne, and the Pope knew that he had to act quickly. Two days later, in a secret consistory, Clement issued the bull
Jacques de Molay and three other senior Templars remained in prison, awaiting the Pope’s decision. In late December 1313, Clement finally set up a council to decide the fate of the four men. The cardinals appointed by the Pope called for a meeting of doctors of theology and canon law to decide the matter, and the council finally met in Paris on Monday, 18 March 1314. Facing the doctors alongside Jacques de Molay were Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, Hugh de Pairaud, the Order’s Visitor [ambassador] in France and Geoffroi de Gonneville, Preceptor of Aquitaine and Poitou. All were old men: de Molay was at least 70; de Pairaud and de Charney were in their 60s; while de Gonneville was probably still in his 50s. They were led out to a platform in front of Notre-Dame, where the sentences were read out. As all four men stood guilty of heresy, they were condemned to ‘harsh and perpetual imprisonment’.32 Hugh de Pairaud and Geoffroi de Gonneville accepted the sentence, and were led away to die miserably in jail.
At this moment, perhaps dreading the thought of being reimprisoned (he had spent the last four years in solitary confinement), Jacques de Molay began shouting that he and his Order were innocent of all crimes, and he publicly retracted his confession. This astounded the cardinals and doctors, and they suddenly did not know what to do. After seven years of captivity, during which time he had consistently failed to defend his Order, Jacques de Molay’s finest hour was suddenly at hand. He adamantly refused to confess his guilt. Geoffroi de Charney rallied to his Master, and likewise insisted on the Order’s innocence. The two men were taken back to their cells while news of the unexpected turn of events was rushed to Philip. The King now had a legal and ecclesiastical emergency on his hands. He summoned the lay members of his Council and the matter was resolved. As the two Templars were insisting upon their innocence, they were guilty of being relapsed heretics, and there was only one punishment for that – death by fire.
At around the hour of Vespers, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were led out on to the Ile-des- Javiaux in the Seine. In front of a crowd who had gathered to watch the two Templars in their last moments, the Grand Master and the Preceptor were stripped to their shirts. Witnesses reported that both seemed very calm, almost glad that their torment was now over. As he was fastened to the stake, de Molay asked to be turned towards the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and that his hands be freed so that he could die in prayer. His request was granted. As the flames grew about him, de Molay is said to have once more protested his innocence and that of the Order, and he called both Clement and Philip to meet him before God within the year. (Philip may in fact have been watching from an upstairs window in the nearby palace.) Geoffroi de Charney likewise protested from the stake:
‘I shall follow the way of my master
As a martyr you have killed him
This you have done and know not
God willing on this day
I shall die in the Order like him.’33
After nightfall, when the two men were dust and ash and the crowd had dispersed, a number of friars from the nearby Augustinian house and certain other people – who have never been identified – went to the place of execution and collected the bones of the two Templars, intent on preserving them as relics.
Templar Mysteries
The fact that the Templars fell from grace so spectacularly suggests that some of the wilder accusations against them may have had some basis in reality. While most commentators at the time and subsequently have seen Philip’s avarice as the motivating factor behind his attack on the Order, there are those, such as the eminent mediaeval historian Sir Steven Runciman, who believe that there was some truth to the charges: ‘It would be unwise to dismiss these rumours [of heresy] as the unfounded invention of enemies. There was probably just enough substance to them to suggest the line along which the Order could be most convincingly attacked.’34
If the end of the Order remains controversial, then its beginnings are equally shrouded in mystery and silence.
The traditional picture that Hugues de Payen and Godfroi de St Omer presented themselves to King Baldwin II around the year 1119 with the suggestion that they form an order of nine knights who would protect pilgrims visiting the Holy Land derives from Guillame of Tyre (died c.1186), the first chronicler to mention the Order. Yet Guillame, like most mediaeval historians, is unreliable. He notes that the Council of Troyes was held in the ninth year of the Order’s existence, which would mean that the Templars were possibly launched at the Council of Nablus in 1120, yet he also notes that they accepted no new members for the first nine years as well. As Fulk, Count of Anjou, is known to have joined the Order on his pilgrimage of 1120, this would push the foundation date of the Temple back to 1111. As Runciman notes, Guillame’s dating is ‘confused and at times demonstrably wrong’.35
If Guillame is confused, then he is not the only one. The other two chronicles dating from the late twelfth century – those of Michael the Syrian and Walter Map – disagree not only with Guillame, but also with each other. According to Michael the Syrian (d.1199), it was the King of Jerusalem who suggested to Hugues de Payen that he form a military order, and puts the initial membership at 30. Walter Map (d.c.1210) believed that the Order was founded by a knight from Burgundy called Paganus who defended pilgrims he saw frequently attacked at a horsepool near Jerusalem. Despite his best efforts, the number of infidels grew and he was forced to seek extra recruits, with the knights subsequently being given lodgings near the Temple of the Lord, which could very well be the al-Aqsa mosque, sitting as it does at the southern end of the Temple platform.
There is a further hint that the Templars were in existence before their official founding date of around 1119. Five years previously, the Bishop of Chartres had written to Hugh, Count of Champagne – himself either a
