On the evening of March 18th 1314, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was cruelly burned to death on a small island in the Seine, in Paris. Sharing his pain and death was the Templar Preceptor of Normandy, Geoffroy de Charney. It was the last brutal act in an enigmatic drama.
    The dramatic events had begun seven years earlier when, at dawn on 13th October 1307, the king of France ordered all the Templars in his domains to be arrested on a series of charges drawn up by the Inquisition. The knights were taken, locked up, charged and for the most part, tortured. A number died as a result of this ill treatment and, over the next seven years, a hundred or so Templars were burned alive.
    This sudden move against the wealthiest and most powerful military Order in the world had been carefully planned. During the summer of 1307 the king of France, Philippe le Bel, had sent a letter to his regional seneschals ordering them to secretly investigate all holdings of the Knights Templar and prepare to move against them when the command should come.
    A month or two passed. The Grand Master, accompanied by a large entourage and much of his treasure, came to France from his headquarters in Cyprus and was resident in Paris. The Templars’ fame was at prodigious heights and its treasure vast – just the holdings in Normandy had a greater income than that of the King of England. Suddenly, the French king’s men struck. They wished to destroy the Order and confiscate their treasure and lands which could then be passed to a jealous and greedy French Crown.
    Or so was the theory. In fact it was not quite like that. A quick look at the Inquisition records reveal that no treasure was ever found. Where it went and who ultimately benefited from it, remains a mystery to this day. One arrested Templar spoke mysteriously of a Brother leaving the Paris Temple, some days before the arrests, taking with him all the treasure held there. Certainly no money was found in any of the preceptories or castles seized. The lists of goods taken by the Inquisition are noteworthy for their tedium and lack of value.
    The records reveal too that it was mostly the old and the young who were arrested. Indeed, a survey of the manpower of the Templars before the arrests, and the numbers arrested, shows a shortfall of just over a thousand militarily active members. The suspicion arises that the Templar leadership had advance warning of the cataclysm which was to befall them. The military and financial strength of the Templars seemed to have simply melted away.

The Fate of The Templars

Much has been written on the fate of the Templars and the Treasure. English records reveal that at least some English Templars fled to Scotland undoubtedly to join Robert Bruce. Others may have joined these few for there was a sea route, safe from English ships, leading from France via the west of Ireland. In France itself, Templars may have hidden in the hills – one document claims over a thousand in the south. Others may have fled north to Germany or south to Spain, Portugal or Italy, or even over to Hungary where the Order held some castles. No documents shed any light on this mysterious disappearance.
    All those who were arrested – in France, a total of 620 knights, sergeants, priests and clerks – were imprisoned. But they were nominally under the "protection" of the Pope and seemed to have believed, initially, that they were pawns in some political shake-up which they would have to ride through before being released. However, disillusionment soon set in, especially once Templars began to be tortured; and began to die from those tortures. Suddenly it seemed as though the Order had been abandoned by the very man they thought would save them, the Pope.
    In prison the pressure began to tell: Templars confessed, then withdrew those confessions. Moves were made to seek some redress from the infamy of their incarceration. In 1308 the Pope, a weak and ill man, dominated by the French king, found some personal courage and agreed to meet with a group of the Templar commanders who would present the case for their innocence. In February, he suspended the Inquisition.
    In June, seventy-two Templars were transported to Poitiers by the king to testify before the Pope; between 29 June and 2 July they did so. But under pressure they all confessed to the charges, horrifying the Pope. But none of the Templar leaders were amongst these men.

The Interrogations at Chinon

In August 1308 some sixty high Templar officials – all mature men and leaders - each of whom had spent a minimum of twenty-eight years in the Order, were taken from various prisons in France and brought to the castle of Chinon, on the Loire, not far from Poitiers. They included the Grand Master himself, Jaques de Molay, the financial head of the Order, Hugues de Pairaud, and the preceptors of Cyprus, Normandy and Poitou and Aquitaine.
    Finally, between 17 – 20 August 1308, they were interrogated by three Cardinals specially sent there by the Pope who was staying some miles away near Poitiers. Unusually, these interrogations apparently were not recorded; there is no official transcript of the proceedings - a curiosity at a time when all was meticulously noted down by scribes. All we know about the hearings comes from a letter written by the Cardinals to the King of France. Collectively the Templar leaders all pleaded guilty to the charges. A misguided action which reveals a pathetic confidence in the power of the Pope to save them and the Order. But at Chinon, having accepted the charges and the guilt, having abjured their heresy, they were reconciled with the Church. They must have hoped that this would be the end of their imprisonment and ill-treatment. But they were tragically mistaken. They were later to regret their confessions and to proclaim their innocence.
    All these Templar leaders were locked up in the prison tower in the castle of Chinon. It is no surprise then to find that they covered some of the walls of the tower with graffiti, scratched into the stone by whatever hard implements they could obtain. But this graffiti is enigmatic. No one has provided an explanation of it. Neither do most of the images find a correspondence in the official symbolism of the Church of the time. We can see such images as geometrical grids, a heart crucified on a calvary cross, a flower growing out of a heart,the Hermetic sixpointed star of two triangles (now the Star of David) and others. Due to the confined space, they can only be photographed with great difficulty.
    In the end the Pope refused to exonerate the Templars or keep them out of the control of the French king. They were returned to their prisons, some disillusioned, some still defiant. In 1310 over five hundred Templars joined together to proclaim their innocence. For a while they sensed that success could come. But on 12 May 1310, fifty-four were quickly taken and burned alive outside Paris. All died denying the charges made against them. More were soon burned; resistance finally crumbled.
    The end was inevitable, the Order of the Temple had been abandoned by history. It remained only to be destroyed. It was dissolved by the Pope in 1312; the Grand Master and his Preceptor of Normandy were burned in 1314 over a slow fire on an island in the Seine; Pont Neuf now stands there, a plaque commemorating their deaths.
    But the legends and mysteries of the Templars have never faded. For there seems to have been real fire beneath the great cloud of smoke which continued to billow down through the centuries however much some historians would like to wish it away.

The castle of Chinon is near to that of Tours where the masonic exhibition is being held this summer. Brethren travelling to France are recommended to visit both.