The story of the Knights Templars has always fascinated me. Briefly told these are the highlights:
Around 1119, a French nobleman from the Champagne region founded the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, which was eventually shortened to “Knights Templars”. Jacques de Molay, the last of the Order’s Grand Masters, took office around 1292.
King Philip IV (the Fair) of France mistrusted the Templars, as the organization had declared its desire to form its own state in the Languedoc of south eastern France, similar to how the Teutonic Knights had founded Prussia. Philip had inherited an impoverished kingdom from his father and was already deeply in debt to the Templars.
At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon (the profile on my blog…
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As I See It 