The fall of Acre and the consequent effect on the Templar Order is also well documented. Philip of France did attempt to join the Order and was repulsed. There is evidence that he tried to stir up Edward’s agitation against the Templars, but was prevented from carrying his designs through. In 1307, however, after Edward I had died, Philip launched his notorious attack on the Templars, accusing them of witchcraft, sodomy and of worshipping a severed head. The English Crown was one of the few institutions to raise a voice in defence of the Order and, for a while, Edward II tried to resist his father-in-law’s demand for the destruction of the Templar Order in England. Philip, however, had his way: the Templars were destroyed and, in 1313, Jacques de Molay was burnt alive before Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Before he died, the Templar grand master protested his innocence. He summoned Philip of France to meet him ‘before the tribunal of God within a year’. He also cursed the French monarchy ‘until its thirteenth generation’. De Molay’s curse was prophetic: Philip IV was dead within the year. His three sons died childless; his grandson Edward III of England claimed the throne of France and plunged Western Europe into the Hundred Years War. Louis XVI, ‘the thirteenth generation’, died on the guillotine, his family’s last prison being the Temple in Paris.
The Templars undoubtedly held the Mandylion, the cloth which covered Christ’s face. This not only gave source to the legends about worshipping a severed head but figures prominently in Templar art, as recent excavations at Templecombe in Dorset prove.
© Paul C. Doherty 14 September 1994
Satan's Fire (A Medieval Mystery Featuring Hugh Corbett) Page 25
