De Molay, born between 1244-1249, was put to death in Paris by the King of France. He was the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar although at the time he was simply indicated as the "Master from Outremer". He lead the Order from April 20, 1292 until it was dissolved by order of Pope Clement V in 1312. What is known of his last moments?
Though little is known of his actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, he is the best known Templar, along with the Order's founder and first (Grand) Master, Hugues de Payens (1070–1136). Jacques de Molay's goal as Grand Master was to reform the Order, and adjust it to the situation in the (lost) Holy Land during the waning days of the Crusades.
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As European support for the Crusades had dwindled, other forces were at work which sought to disband the Order and claim the wealth of the Templars as their own. King Philip IV of France, deeply religious and deeply in debt to the Templars, had De Molay and many other French Templars arrested in 1307 and tortured.
Under torture many confessed to the allegations. For those who recanted their confessions the common penalty was being burned alive as heretics. Thjs was the case with 54 Templars who ended up being burned at the stake on 12 May 1310 in a field outside Paris. This execution was carried out by order of the King, and not the Pope, as had been their trial.
In the meantime Pope Clement V had undertaken his own investigation. From 28 June to 1 July 1308 72 Templer were heard at Poitiers by a special commission of cardinals and by the Pope himself. On 2 July Clement granted absolutions to the Templars who had confessed and had asked for the forgiveness of the Church. Had the Templars been found guilty, the Pope would never have forgiven them. Now trhey were granted absolution not from herecy, but from improper practises following the initiation of new Templars, well documented in the accusations by the King. A similar investigation took place at Chinon from 14 to 20 August 1308, when Jacques de Molay and three other high ranking Templars were questioned by a group of cardinals sent bij the Pope. As documented by the Chinon Parchment these investigations reached the same conclusions as had the Poitiers hearing. Again the Pope decided that the Templars involved were absolved by the Church and were allowed to receive again the Christian sacrements.
The power struggle between Pope and King was not over yet. The Pope intended to end this in 1310 at a Church Council at Vienne which was susponed until the end of 1311. Under fysical pressure of the King himself and a royal army, the council, ordered so by the Pope, decided to suppress the Order. The Pope confirmed this by means of the bull Vox in Excello, dated 22 March 1312.
The Church had now washed its hands of the Templars. In accordance with Church practise, once it had decided on a defendant's fate he was handed over to the secular authorities for punishment. (...) The treatment meted out by the royal authorities to individual Templars varied. Those who had confessed were subjected to penances, and these were sometimes heavy, including lengthy imprisonment. Others who had confessed to nothing or were otherwise of little account were sent to monasteries for the rest of their lives.
Also De Molay, well in his late sixties now, had confessed to investigators of the King in 1307, most probably under torture, but had been absolved by the Pope at Chinon in 1308. He and the other leading Templars had to wait until 18 March 1314 before their cases were disposed of by the royal tribunal. They might well have expected that their cases had been disposed of long before at Chinon when they received Papal absolution, and almost certainly they would now have been expecting to be treated accordingly. But the hearings at Chinon still remained secret, and instead Hugh of Pairaud, Geoffrey of Gonneville, Geoffrey of Charney and James of Molay were brought for final judgement before a small commission of French cardinals and ecclesiastics at Paris, supporters of the crown, among them that same archbishop of Sens who had so happily for the King burned fifty-four Templars in May 1310.
The sentence was handed down. On the basis of their earlier confessions, as twisted by the crown, all four men were condemned to harsh and perpetual punishment in effect to starve and rot in prison until they were released by a lingering death. Hugh of Pairaud and Geoffrey of Gonneville accepted their fate in silence. 'But lo', wrote a chronicler of the time, 'when the cardinals believed that they had imposed an end to the affair, immediately and unexpectedly two of them, namely the Grand Master and the master of Normandy, defending themselves obstinately against the cardinal who had preached the sermon and against the archbishop of Sens, returned to the denial both of the confession as well as everything which they had confessed.'
At once King Philip ordered that they be condemned as relapsed heretics. On that same evening, at Vespers, they were taken to the Ile des Javiaux, a small island in the Seine east of Notre Dame, and bound to the stake.
According to Aubert de Vertot (1655-1735), following tradition which means more myths than facts, the last words of De Molay were as follows:
"It is only just, that on such a terrible day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of the lie, and make the truth triumph.
I declare, therefore, in the face of heaven and earth, and I confess, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest of all crimes; but it was only by agreeing to those which are so blackly imputed to an order which the truth now obliges me to acknowledge as innocent. I only made the declaration required of me in order to suspend the excessive pain of torture and to bend those who made me suffer it. I know what torments were inflicted on all those who had the courage to revoke such a confession. But the dreadful spectacle presented to me is not capable of making me confirm a first lie by a second, on such an infamous condition: I willingly renounce life, which is already only too hateful to me. And what would be the use of prolonging sad days that I owe only to calumny?"
The chronicler described their last moments: 'They were seen to be so prepared to sustain the fire with easy mind and will that they brought from all those who saw them much admiration and surprise for the constance of their death and final denial. The last of the Templars went to their deaths with courage, in the tradition of their order.'
Source text mainly wikipedia.org, the details on the investigations by te Pope and the final trial are quotes from The Templars - history and myth by Michael Haag (2011, pp 234-237); the quote from De Molay is a translation by TN from French source; Illustration top: Jacques de Molay Grand Master of the Templars, section of a painting by Fleury-François Richard, 1806, Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon, 2014; picture Xavier Caré / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA; bottom: the Death-site plaque of Jacques de Molay on Isle des Juifs, Paris Wikitree
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