October 13th 1307

Friday the 13th of October, 1307

A day that King Philip IV "The Fair" of France arrested all of the Templar Knights.

The date on which the Templars were rounded up in France has gone down in infamy.

Some even believe this is the reason Friday the 13th is considered unlucky.

King Philip, deeply in debt to the Templars, was in favor of merging the Orders under his own command, thereby making himself a War King but Molay, however, rejected the idea. Philip IV, who was intent on crushing the order and seizing its wealth. Philip wanted the Templars arrested and their possessions confiscated to incorporate their wealth into the Royal Treasury and to be free of the enormous debt he owed the Templar Order. They were far more than just soldiers by this point, owning vast swathes of property and acting as bankers throughout Europe. It’s speculated that he wanted to bring down the Templars to save himself from having to pay up, and to get his hands on their treasures.

This made them a target for the French King Philip IV, who, running low on funds, accused them of heresy on Friday, October 13, 1307. It’s important to note that it was King Philip IV, not Pope Clement V, who accused the Templars of heresy. The Pope eventually disbanded the order, not because he believed in their guilt, but because the accusations had tarnished the order’s reputation beyond repair. It's telling that many Templars later retracted their confessions when they were questioned by Catholic investigators acting for the Pope

On Thursday the 12th of October 1307, Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay had the honor of being the pallbearer at the funeral of the king’s sister-in-law. The very next morning, he was arrested on the orders of that same king, along with droves of other Templars throughout France. Perhaps they assumed it was all a misunderstanding. After all these years of power and prestige, they couldn’t possibly have fathomed the immensity of the contempt and violence about to be unleashed upon them.

Following their arrests, the Templars underwent interrogation and torture, with the intention of extracting confessions and evidence against them.

The Knights coerced “confessions,” however, forced The Pope's hand. Philip, who had anticipated Clement’s reaction, made sure the allegations against the Templars included detailed descriptions of their supposed heresy, counting on the gossipy, salacious accounts to carry much weight with the Church. Clement issued a papal bull ordering the Western kings to arrest Templars living in their lands. Few followed the papal request, but the fate of the French Templars had already been sealed. Their lands and money were confiscated and officially dispersed to another religious order, the Hospitallers.

Within weeks of their confessions, many of the Templars recanted, and Clement shut down the inquisition trials in early 1308. The Templars lingered in their cells for two years before Philip had more than 50 of them burned at the stake in 1310. Two years later, Clement formally dissolved the Order (though he did so without saying they’d been guilty as charged). In the wake of that dissolution, some Templars again confessed to gain their freedom, while others died in captivity. In the spring of 1314, Grand Master Molay and several other Templars were burned at the stake in Paris.

After the Templars were disbanded, some legends suggested they became the Freemasons, a rumor that was actually started by some Freemasons themselves. This false connection was promoted by early Masonic groups in the 18th century, but many of the more sensational conspiracies only gained traction in the late 20th century, particularly after the publication of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the 1980s. This book sparked widespread interest in Templar myths, further popularized by the Internet in the 1990s and The Da Vinci Code.

The sudden downfall of this influential group, coupled with the events occurring on a Friday the 13th, led some to associate the date with ill fortune. Over time, this association became ingrained in popular culture, and superstition spread.

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭

In September 2001, a document known as the Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement 𝒂𝒃𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒆𝒔 in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were "restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church". This other Chinon Parchment has been well known to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.

​The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒆𝒗𝒂𝒍 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒄𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑲𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 𝑻𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒖𝒏𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕, that nothing was inherently wrong with the Order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement's relative.

Today there are many Templar Orders worldwide and we are one of them, 𝐎𝐌𝐒𝐃𝐓 (𝑶𝒓𝒅𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒓𝒆̂𝒎𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒔 𝑻𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒔). We honor those that came before us, we respect the history for what they accomplished and we strive to serve God while holding to the warrior spirit. OMSDT. Com

A 2:50 min video about October 13th 1307