THE TEMPLAR MARTYRS were killed for the greed of a King and the indifference of  a "Diplomatic" Pope. 
Died on the fires and during the tortures guilty only of not having had anything to confess.

 

 

Introduction 
This monograph aims to guide all those who wish to approach the history of the glorious Order of the Knights Templar, without the commitment of a voluminous treaty. 
These historical notes have the privilege of directing the reader into a serious objective reflection on the historical process of the Order (1307 - 1312), on the sovereignty of the Order of the Temple of Jerusalem and on the legitimate historical continuity to date. 
Expect the latter that few historians face. In fact rivers of ink have been consumed to speak and to speak of the Templars from the origins 1118 up to their suppression, due to the Papal Bull of Clement V 1312, and the condemnation to the stake of the XXII Grand Master Jacques de Molay, on March 18, 1314, but nothing more.
When the Order subsequently, instead, contributed to the conquest of the new world, together with the great Portuguese and Spanish navigators. 
There will always be a Templar who will carry on the Order with justice, faith and Christian charity, as in its origins guided by our motto which is: 
"Non Nobis Domine, Non Nobis, Sed Nomini Tuo Da Gloriam".

HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE ORDER OF TEMPLAR KNIGHTS FROM THE ORIGINS TO TODAY 
Medieval society was divided into orders: 
- Churchmen, those who prayed; 
- The nobles or knights, those who fought; 
- Workers, those who produced wealth; 
- The serfs who, being slaves, did not count. 
This subdivision was very rigid. These groups could not mix and everyone had to respect the obligations inherent in his category. 
As far as the subject we are dealing with is concerned, we will focus on the second category: nobility.
The high infant mortality forced families to have many children, in the hope that at least one could survive to perpetuate the lineage and inherit the assets. In the nucleuses where survival was greater, the law of the "majorca" assigned everything to the first-born male: title, lands, money, honors and offices. The females were used to create alliances or were parked, like it or not, in the convent; the second-born or cadet, was on the use of weapons, to be ready to succeed his older brother in the event of premature death; the third son was destined for the church to give, in that field, his contribution to the prestige of the house. The other children, if there were any, divided themselves between the practice of arms and the convent.
But what happened when the cadet, having become a knight, had to take his place in society? His situation was rather tragic: he had no title, no land or feudal concessions that allowed him to live. 
In their veins flowed the blood of the barbarian conquerors who had destroyed the Roman Empire: Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks and Normans. By merging with the Latins they became civilized and converted to Christianity. 
No one could keep them in check, they were haughty and arrogant, aware, though poor, of belonging to an exclusive caste.
The Cavalry presents itself as a supernational caste, whose members had no homeland, nor did they owe allegiance to people, but to a moral ethic whose fundamental values ​​were honor, courage, the search for supreme political and spiritual truths. 
Most of those who became Templars came from this category of cadets. 
The Order of the Temple, in fact, responded to the needs of these young people and they, grateful, dedicated all their energy and what they could do better: fight and produce. Everyone, young and not-so-young, found an answer to their expectations: 
- an ideal to dedicate to; 
- the adventure, represented by the knowledge of distant places and the war in the Holy Land or against the Moors in Spain and Portugal;
- an undisputed leader to obey; 
- an Ordo, that is, an Order to belong to, in the precise medieval sense of "place in society"; 
- a family, which replaced the one who had driven them away; 
- the Rule, a form of disciplined life; 
- a prestige that increased, in the Knights, the nobility of the house and ennobled the others, who were deprived of it; 
- Economic security.

Not only the Knights entered the Temple, but also free men who came from the bourgeois, mercantile and artisan class. 
The Temple made them the backbone of the Order. 
After the 1st Crusade - 1099, Jerusalem was the new world, fleets of pilgrims, merchants, businessmen went to the Holy Land, having no such protection during the journey from Jaffa where they disembarked with ships, until arriving in the city of Jerusalem they came almost always robbed by marauders that raged in the area.
We felt the need to set up an armed militia to defend the pilgrims. To this end, nine Knights at the helm of: Ugo di Payns, (name translated by some authors as "Ugo dei Pagani", married to the Scottish Caterina St. Clair or Sinclair, one of the most prominent families in Europe), Geoffrey de Saint-Omer, Goffredo Bisiol, Andrea of ​​Montbard, Pagano di Montdidier, Arcibaldo of St. Amand, Gondemaro, Rossal and Rolando, reunited and gave life to the largest and most glorious Order of Chivalry that history has ever written, with the initial title of "Poor Knights of Christ".
After years of this service rendered in silence and with great love and courage King Baldwin I, first King of Jerusalem, granted to these Knights, who in the meantime had become numerous, in gratitude, his old residence that stood in the place of the old Temple of Solomon. From this palace, those that were originally known as - Poor Knights of Christ - were called "Knights of the Temple - or simply - Templars".
At the beginning, this new Order was regarded with suspicion by many European ecclesiastics, since it contrasted a millenary Christian tradition that opposed the war. But already the crusade sanctioned by the Pope had created a compromise between licit and illicit war justifying in the eyes of all a type of war considered "Holy", because fought against the "Infidels" enemies of Christ. Machiavelli had not yet been born but, even then, the end justified the means. 
The crusades began and were publicized, shouting "I want it". 
What was most disconcerting was the union, in the figure of the Templar, of two distinct and separate realities of medieval society: monasticism and chivalry. The devil and the Holy water. The Templar was both at the same time.
Breaking the rigid tradition that wanted the two categories isolated from each other, the Templars gave birth to a unique Order of its kind. They were friars because they pronounced the monastic vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, but they were not priests, therefore they could not say mass, nor administer the Sacraments. At the same time they were warriors because they pronounced a fourth vow that committed them to defend the Holy Land with arms, roads, pilgrims and to fight the enemies of the Christian faith. 
The initial distrust was soon abandoned, because they were indispensable for keeping the Crusader kingdom standing and the King of Jerusalem Baldwin I did nothing but repeat it to the Christian West.
In a modern key we could say that the Templars were for about two hundred years, the blue helmets in the Holy Land. 
In 1128, Baldwin I sent Ugo, first Grand Master of the Knights of the Temple, to Europe to recruit crusaders and bring letters to the Pope and to the Sovereigns, in which he praised the work of the Templars. The Pope called a council in Troyes, where the Order was officially recognized. 
This event produced three effects: 
- Donations (all from the largest to the smallest social strata wanted to donate something to this new Order); 
- The assignment of assets by pilgrims during their absence for the pilgrimage;
- The need to create structures in Europe that administered the heritage so rapidly acquired and able to meet the needs of those who turned to them.

The Templars became a real street police, their preceptories, commenderries, or houses or domus templars, punctuated at regular distances the most used routes (about a day's march taking into account the pace of the weakest, old, children and women) were considered privileged stopping points and safe and inviolable shelters. The Templar patrols were constantly shuttling between a Templar house and the other and very often the pilgrims and wayfarers preferred to lengthen the path, in order to reach the tracts that they knew patrolled by the Templars.
Traveling in the Middle Ages was extremely dangerous, there was no protection on the roads, the fords were difficult, the few bridges in poor condition and above all streets and countryside were infested by bandits and soldiers of fortune who robbed and killed those they met. 
Few had geographical knowledge, the most, in their lives, had moved to the nearest town or had left the native village to go to some fair or market in the immediate vicinity. 
But courage and faith led them to cross, in many cases, the whole of Europe.
The Templars arrived providentially and made up for all these shortcomings: guiding the lost, supplying supplies and shelters to those passing by, checking the fords, reactivating and consolidating the old Roman bridges or building new ones and defending pilgrims and wayfarers from the criminals. 
In 1147 Pope Eugene III granted the Templars to wear the symbol of the red cross on the upper left corner of the mantle. It was the cross of the armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the "crusade": carrying it always meant being "crusaders forever". 
The Templar sign - soon repeated also on the shields -.
The Templars wore shaved hair, a long beard (which, in the 12th century, was not at all customary for Westerners, except for penitents and pilgrims) and they were forbidden both to take baths for oriental use, and to hunt, excluding the lion, which apparently still existed in Syria-Palestine.
The Order obtained ample privileges with the bull << Omne Datum Optimum >>, of Pope Innocent II, of March 1139, which established that it depended directly on the Holy See, that the election of the Master would be the exclusive right of the monks (without no external interference), that the Templars would have had their own priests, who could have enjoyed the fiscal rights associated with the goods they were given, which would also have the right to collect and collect alms, and the "priests", ie the monks-Templars, they did not obey the Bishops, but only the Grand Master, and / or the Pope.
Other bubbles extended the rights and the prerogatives of the Temple, generally to the detriment of the local Churches and therefore with little joy of the Bishops: in this way the Order became a formidable instrument in the hands of the monocratic aspirations of the Pope on the Latin Church.The Order's government was based in Jerusalem until 1187, when the city was reconquered by the Muslims; then in Acre, until 1291, when he had to move for the same reason; finally in Cyprus, an island donated to the Templars, by King Richard the Lionheart, for aid received by the Templars.
The ramifications of the houses of the Order in the East and in the West, the privileges that made it practically immune to juridical pretensions both ecclesial and local, the form of courage and righteousness of the monk-knights brought an extraordinary real estate wealth. The exploitation of the resources connected to it and the careful use of capital entrusted to the Temple allowed the start of a real banking activity, which was the first of its kind in Europe. 
Thanks to the houses of the "Domus Templare" Order, it was possible to transfer money without actually moving the liquid money, but simply relying on exchange letters that the Templars agreed to manage and honor.
Undoubtedly, in this, it was important that the Order lived in the Holy Land in close contact with the merchants of the Italian maritime cities, who continually had problems and needs of the kind. 
The Order was very rich. The donations came from those who entered the Temple, from those who were also temporarily associated there, but also from clerics and lay people for various reasons. No less varied are the types and sizes of these donations: entire complete properties of the annexed rights, castles, rustic dwellings, collection rights of various taxes, more or less consistent bequests in money, even objects, especially weapons and of course animals, not only war horses.
In addition to donations, there were bequests - usually against the granting of the right to be buried in the cemeteries of the Order - and alms. The pro-soul donations could also be substantial, and involved the obligation of the members of the Order to pray for the donor: a sort of insurance on eternal life. In Spain, Syria and Palestine the donations were particular, castles, above all, but also territories to be conquered, which constituted an incentive to war.
The wealth of the Order was strictly aimed at a purpose: the defense of the Holy Land. From Europe, which, for the time, was overseas, warriors equipped with horses, weapons, weapons, regularly departed towards the Levant; fortresses and garrisons were maintained with a fixed quota, the responsio, equal to one third of the production of the goods of the Order. Agricultural products were carefully marketed; to the proceeds of this activity must be added the amount of the fees paid by the farmers.
Alongside this dense activity in the field of land, the Order had developed one from a financial point of view: not unlike the other military orders, but perhaps more systematically. The very clear tendency in the Order was to convert every kind of canon and law into liquid money. Furthermore, the security of the Templar houses - with a double title: as militarily guarded fortresses and as houses defended by special forms of spiritual privilege, which made the profanation particularly serious - was known to the point that clerics, laity and even sovereigns used them to guard the their most prized possessions.
The Temple acted as a real banker, at the end of the thirteenth century the Paris office managed about sixty accounts corresponding to the same number of deposits of illustrious French figures, including the King. Money was also made fruitful and, in short, it could be to speak for all purposes of correct credit activity. 
The historian Matthew Paris said that the Templars were "proud and stingy". What was this pride coming from? He came above all from the fact that he was no longer the displaced, second-class citizens, forced to beg for an engagement in the war, a second-class job or to be harassed and humiliated by those who were perhaps less capable and valiant than them, but had had just the luck of being born firstborn.
The Temple was their family and their home. He gave all those who served him, in any capacity, security and prosperity until his death. Their pride was legitimate, because they knew they were part of an elite, an exclusive group that everyone envied and feared and whose wealth allowed his men to look down on everyone else. 
What for some was considered the avarice of the Templars, was on the contrary parsimony. In a society devoted to waste, to the carousing and which went as far as the neck to banish punctual banquets and lavish parties on every occasion, the prudent Templar administration, the enemy of every waste, was mistaken for avarice. 
But it was precisely not wasting anything that favored the enrichment of the Order.
Those who entered the Temple, after 1140, abandoned the old feudal mentality, learned that obtaining lands and leaving them uncultivated was not productive, that owning empty houses was not useful, that commerce and craft activities were profitable. And wealth was power. They looked around and judged each other, every man in the Temple had special gifts that could be exploited to the fullest, thus applying a philosophy, the right man in the right place. 
Each Templar was employed in the role most congenial to his innate abilities and where he could give the best of himself. 
Moving from one task to another or from one Domus to another served to increase the experience of individuals, enabling them to perform more tasks competently.
Even the Normans, masters of Sicily and southern Italy, infected by the Normandy cousins, immediately conceded to the Templars to erect houses in their island and continental domains. According to historians, the first Italian headquarters of the Order of the Temple, was that of Messina, founded in 1131. A few years later there were those of Rome, Milan, Treviso and gradually all the others.
Unlike England, France, Spain, in Italy the Templars had no headquarters in fortresses, but large city centers with churches open to the people, strong houses in strategic points, complexes of buildings structured on a square plan in the villages and countries and small houses with prominent agricultural characteristics. All ports, especially those frequented by crusaders and pilgrims, had their Templar settlement, Messina was the last one deployed before arriving in the Holy Land, almost all the armies that went there to fight, passed by the port of Messina, like the King Richard the Lionheart, as well as the major dignitaries of the Order.
From the second half of the twelfth century, the Order also had ships on which it circulated goods and pilgrims: in ports like Marseilles and Brindisi their nautical activity was remarkable. 
Daily life, in any Templar commenda, according to the statutes of the Order, was very simple. The privations were limited, as is logical for an Order that housed fighters, they wore clothing suitable to defend themselves from both the cold and the heat, they had two complete meals a day except during the periods of fasting, they ate meat three times a day. week. Prayer took up most of the day of a Templar.
The history of the Order of the Templars in the Holy Land is all an epic of heroism and sacrifice; the reconquest of Ascalonia (1153) the defense of Gaza (1171), the battle of Tiberias (1187), the heroic sacrifice of Damiotta 
(1219) the battles of Aleppo and al – Manoshan (1221) and the martyrdom of Sephet (1262 ) and of S. Giovanni d'Acri (1291), were the gems of the glorious crown of this consecrated militia in defense of the faith. 
Also in Europe, there were acts of heroism of the Order of the Temple, in Portugal, during the XIIth century to reconquer the Lusitanian land from the Islamic domain; for these enterprises the Order was rewarded with the granting of vast territories donated by Queen Teresa (1114 - 1128) by her son Alfonso I (1128 - 1185) and by her successor Sancho I (1187 - 1211).
In less than two centuries the Templar Order expanded enormously and became a real State, very rich and very powerful. 
Numerous Bubbles of Popes, filled the Order with benefits and granted them privileges. The Kings and Princes appointed the Order as their banker, receiving taxes and entrusting them with their wealth when they left for the war. He was called by all the Sovereigns for the defense of his own territories, and in return they received rich donations and numerous goods. At a certain moment in its history, the Order possessed 150,000 adepts with about 15,000 Knights, 900 Domus Templars scattered throughout the world, while its treasure exceeded 150,000,000 gold florins ...
They dominated Paris, with the famous Castle of the Temple, a real stronghold in the heart of France. The best Castles of Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, England, France, Italy, etc. they belonged to him. 
He was the master of over 10,000 houses and castles and countless treasures of art and silver and gold objects. From King Richard the Lionheart, they had the island of Cyprus as a gift, with sovereign power. They founded cities and castles, beginning, however, to arouse the envy of the powerful. 
After the retreat of the Crusaders from Acre, the Templars moved their Grand Mastership to the island of Cyprus.
In 1305, Pope Clement V, ordered the Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John, today Knights of Malta, to both of them to move their headquarters to Paris, only the Templars obedient to the papacy have accatted, with hindsight, can to affirm that the King of France and Papacy plot had begun.
The immense riches accumulated, stimulated the hatred and the greed of Philip IV called "the Beautiful", king of France. Having had them raise the Archbishop of Bordeaux (France), Bertrand de Goth, "Pope Clement V" to the maximum Papal throne, who moved the Holy See for the first time in the history of the papacy, from Rome to Avignon (France), headquarters papal that lasted about eighty years, then returned to Rome. The king of France, hoping for papal support, began a smear campaign against the Templars and applied massive taxes on their property in France, thus violating the immunities granted to the Templars by the popes in the past. 
FILIPPO IV DETTO "IL BELLO"
He is the King who excommunicated, in turn excommunicated Flanders through the Archbishop of Senlis. He is the king who had bent the French clergy to his wishes, imprisoning their representatives, ordering their expulsion from the kingdom and the confiscation of property. He is the one who, disparaging the formidable spiritual weapons of which only the Church had previously disposed, used it in his turn to attack ecclesiastics and laity. It is the King who had made sure all ports, passes and access routes to his kingdom were kept vigilant, to prevent the Bull of excommunication from reaching him.
Philip excluded the priests from the administration of justice, reserving the right to punish his officers; in this way he took from the Church one of his most important instruments of power which was used to strike heresy. It limited the increase in property by ecclesiastics. His innovations inflicted a mortal blow on feudalism, the Cavalry, the Pontificate, measuring himself now with the ecclesiastics now with the nobles, to whom he subtracted the lands and reduced the rights: he faced Catholics and Jews, replacing the tyranny of a new lord with religious , the king, deriving his power directly from God.
It is significant to note that the first rumors against the Order began to circulate in France at the end of 1305, after Filippo il Bello, finding himself in serious financial distress, urgently requested all royal administrators to immediately send taxes and tributes to the Crown; such requests carried the dates of September 20 and October 4, 1305. 
Unfortunately, after two centuries of growing life, in the moment of greatest need, the strong point of the Templar philosophy was lacking in the Order: the right man in the right place .
The design by Filippo il Bello was favored by two decisive factors: the presence, at the head of the Order, of Jacques de Molay, a man of capacity and quality clearly inferior to those who had preceded him; the loss of a large number of veterans of the Order, who fell in the last battles in the Holy Land, and were replaced by young people, who found themselves occupying positions of high responsibility, without the need to refer to living examples. 
On 13 October 1307, Philip IV had all the French Templars arrested simultaneously, without the Pope's knowledge, immediately subjecting them to inhuman torture, segregation and interrogation in order to extract confessions that would allow the Pope to demand the condemnation and suppression of the Order.
The tortures suffered by the Knights Templars were frightening throughout France, dozens died during the torture, guilty only of having nothing to confess, others said everything that the king's torturers wanted them to say. 
The trials held by the pontifical commissions outside France, in all European countries, showed that the Knights were innocent of monstrous accusations; the worship that they - according to Philip the Fair - would have turned to the idol Baphomet turned out to be an invention: no Knight was condemned.
Pope Clement V, had done nothing but go on repeating to his contemporaries that <> (King Philip IV) did not persecute the Templars for greed, so everything was perfectly in order, the documents carefully attached to the records, that even posterity could to know of the right verdict that had struck the Templars.
Clement V, in a last attempt to save his image as Pope, called a council of the highest European ecclesiastical authorities, in Vienne in the Dauphiné, entrusting them with responsibility for the verdict: here the absolute majority, except for the French cardinals, pronounced himself for the innocence and the acquittal of the Order. Philip the Fair, informed in time of what was about to happen, presented himself to the Council with his army. And the Cardinals gave up condemning the Order. It was March 22, 1312. Flanked by the King, Clement V pronounced the sentence that dissolved the Order of the Temple by administrative means, without however any condemnation, "not without bitterness and sadness of heart, not by way of judgment, but by apostolic decision ".
To suffer the greatest damage for the suppression of the Order, beyond the Templars, was undoubtedly the church, especially the papacy. The members of the council, returning to their respective seats, spread the bitter news that the Pope was under the thumb of the King of France. 
People learned the harsh reality: a weak pope had sacrificed an entire order to a king's greed. 
When, on March 18, 1314, in front of the Cardinals and the highest French authorities, Jacques de Molay loudly proclaimed the Order's innocence by accusing the king of extorting false testimonies by torture, Philip the Fair bypassing papal authority he sent him the same evening to the stake.
Tradition has it that Jacques de Molay, tied to the pole and already wrapped in flames, shouted: "Clement V, unjust judge and cruel executioner, I order you to present yourself, within forty days, before the court of God, and you Philip, ungrateful and ambitious within a year! ". 
Thirty-seven days later, the Pope died. 
On December 29, 1314, nine months and ten days later King Philip, who had disgraced the Knights of the Temple, met the most ignoble death for a knight: he was killed for a fall from a horse.
Many nobles refrained from assuming the defenses of the Order because they hoped that, once it was extinguished, it was possible for them to recover the donations made by their ancestors and, despite the intransigence of the Pope, the treasure of the Templars constituted a source to which they drew all: who drew directly from you, who through the Order of St. John (today Knights of Malta). 
The Roman Catholic Apostolic Church knows that a wrong has been done to the Templar Order, it also knows that, under the pretext of the Holy Inquisition, they sent hundreds of innocents to the stake. 
Just a black period to be erased from the history of the Catholic Church, a victim of obscurantism.

From: "ENCYCLOPEDIA CATHOLIC" VOL. XI - VATICAN CITY - YEAR 1949 
... on the other hand we know with certainty that the prisoners suffered terrible torture. Friar Ponsard de Gisi " confessed that he had been placed in a pit, his hands tied behind his back so tightly that he blew blood from his fingernails ... protesting that if he were still subjected to torture, he would deny everything he had said and said everything they wanted >>

The royal sergeants did not find a single specimen of the alleged secret rule that proclaimed heresy and infamous customs nor any specimen of idols, to which their accusers claimed that the Templars made an idolatrous cult. Undoubtedly, Filippo il Bello wanted the loss of the Templars, because always short of money, he craved their riches. However, he exerted such pressure on Clement V, that he suppressed the Order without condemning it. 
Guglielmo Mollat 
During the "Farsa" trials against the Order of the Knights Templar:
In Germany at the Council of Mainz 1310, the Archbishop having received strict instructions from Pope Clement V, summoned the fathers to issue a sentence, when suddenly Ugo Waltgraff or Count of Sylvester burst into the council together with 20 other Templar Brothers dressed in their white crusader cloaks and weapons under cloaks. 
The Count dealt with the President of the Council with a firm voice, protesting against the persecutions of which he and his men were unjustly objected: "O Presule of Mainz - his words were - I see that today you have gathered to vote for harsh torments and for to get rid of all kinds of suffering with me and the Brothers who are with me, all soldiers of the Holy Temple, bathed in our blood and long defended and preserved for Christianity.
However, know and report it to your clergy present here, who too unfairly proceeds against a Holy Order that is so useful to Christianity and that, in my name and of my undeservedly persecuted Brothers, we appeal to the Pontiff who will soon be elected successor to the ruthless and iniquitous tyrant Clement, and to him and to the whole Christian world we will prove our innocence ". 
Pity and fear led to the acquittal of the Templars. 
(from: Templar dossier - M. Lo Mastro)
The Order enjoyed a completely autonomous jurisdiction having been freed from all temporal and spiritual powers that made it subject to another sovereign. In fact, the Council of Troyes, held under the pontificate of Honorius in 1128, recognized the Order, the Bull <> of Pope Alexander III, dated 18 June 1163, decreed the release of the Order from subjection to any temporal Sovereign, while the Bull <> of the Pope Clement IV, of 8 June 1265 raised the Temple also from all ecclesiastical sovereignty, forbidding to every ecclesiastic <>. 
The Grand Master was recognized as the Prince of the Order. The Knights' institutional subjects of the Order.
The aims of the Order were not only spiritual, but also temporal, that is, political, military, civil, etc., and to this end the Templar Order was based on an absolute Sovereignty, and had the tools necessary for self-determination in the more absolute independence. From the French Rule one learns how he had the power to declare war and make peace (RF art.85), and from the Latin Rule how it sovereignly held its domains (RL Cap. II).
Moreover, the origin of the Order did not depend at all on the will of the Holy See. 
The nine Knights led by Ugo de Payns, motu proprio, to congregate, and the King of Jerusalem Baldwin I recognized him, and assigned them the Temple of Solomon.
Indeed, the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem did not at all feel injured in their Sovereignty by the Bull of Clement V, it is certain, but only seriously damaged, by an act of political hostility which involved, in addition to the martyrdom of the burned Knights on the fires, or deaths during torture, the loss of almost all the material goods. 
-ILLEGAL was that the investigation against the Order was conducted by officials of the King and the Inquisition of France. The proceeding had already been initiated by the Pope. 
The great inquisitor had no right to interfere in an official act of the Pope. 
-ILLEGALE was the detention of the Templars. The great inquisitor of France had no mandate to impeach entire provinces of the Order and imprison its members.
The Grand Master and the highest authorities of the Temple were not subjects of the King, they were dignitaries of a sovereign institution. 
The King's conduct was a violation of the law of unprecedented proportions. 
-ILLEGAL was that the Pontiff tolerated the conduct of Nogaret Minister of the King. Banned by three Popes, he was an excommunicated, ousted from the Church. Why was he allowed, in the Church's own name, to arrest the Grand Master of an order and, full of the highest, on charges of heresy? Compared to this inquisitor of the Inquisition, Clement V did not even have a word of protest.
Clement V behaved illegally, never proceeding personally to the interrogation of the Grand Master Molay. The Pope always returned to insist that it was the Grand Master himself who recognized the guilt of the Order. Why, however, did he give up questioning a witness of such importance personally, although he attached so much weight to his statements? 
-ILLEGAL was the violation of the right of the accused to be granted impartial judges. Clement V in his commission appointed declared enemies of the Order. 
It was certainly not in the interests of compromised judges like Aycelin of Narbonne or the Archbishop of Bourges that the truth was objectively ascertained.
-ILEGAL was the same pontifical tribunal in Paris, because it limited its inquiry to France alone, although the guilt of the whole Order, spread throughout the Christian world, had to be established. 
-ILLEGAL was the interference of the King's officials in the papal investigation. What were Nogaret and Plaisians, two ministers of the King, doing in the bishop's palace?
-ILLEGAL was the repression of any attempt at defense in the context of the Council of Vienne, as well as the arrest of the seven Templars who presented themselves in the cathedral to sponsor the Order. Although Clemente had long ago decided to suppress the Order by administrative means, he would have to give the Templars some form of defense, especially since he himself had invited them to the Council. The Church understood as a community of the faithful, had the right to hear both bells, that of the accusers and that of the accused. "Audiatur et altera pars!" 
-ILLEGALE was the way in which we proceeded with regard to the Templars' possessions.
The very high demand of one million tornesi surely surpasses the value of the transferred properties. The donation of one hundred thousand tornesi tornesi that the King made to the Pontiff to each other concluded for the inconvenience sustained is equivalent, in practice, to corruption.The same applies to the sum that the Pope received from the Knights of Malta, after having given them some of the Templars' possessions.
Finally the condemnation of the Grand Master by the royal crown council was also ILLEGAL. How could a state court execute the greatest exponent of a sovereign order? On this occasion, too, the King arrogated to himself ecclesiastical rights, bypassing the head of the Church, the supreme judge of Christianity, in a crescendo of lack of respect, of contempt. A sentence of the Church issued in a field so devoid of legal validity cannot continue to exist. The twenty thousand Knights would be enough that the order lost in the crusades to demand that the honor of this institution be protected: but of course it is above all the victims of this unjust trial to have the right to a rehabilitation.
The representatives of the clergy, especially Pope Clement V and his French cardinals, bishops and inquisitors, were guilty of great injustices in the Templar trial. 
The greatest judicial murder of the Middle Ages calls for justice; a similar crime, perpetrated against thousands of innocents, cannot be prescribed.
Above all, the Holy Office, as heir to the Inquisition, would have the duty to repeal the ancient injustice. 
AN AGUZZINO AT THE SERVICE OF THE KING:
William of Nogaret led the entire "affair" of the Templars. Born around 1260 in Saint-Felix-de-Caraman in the Languedoc, he taught law at the University of Montpellier. Having entered the administration of the kingdom as a judge, he played the main part of his career in Paris, where he soon became a valid and faithful advisor for the religious affairs of King Philip IV the Fair. 
It was he who prepared the indictment against Pope Boniface VIII, and again Nogaret slapped Boniface VIII, Nogaret was sent to Anagni, in the summer of 1303, to summon the Pope to appear before a council.
Excommunicated, Nogaret continued his efforts to obtain the removal of the ecclesiastical sanctions that struck him and above all to arrive at the "damnatio memoriae" of the pope. Of course he was also charged with preparing the dossier against the Order of the Temple, based on the accusations of Esquieu de Floyran. Expecting the delay of the new Pope Clement V, he convinced the king to proceed with the arrest of the Templars. Often present at interrogations, particularly those of Grand Master Giacomo de Molay, Nogaret inspired terror. He put so much fury in this process, as he considered the Order an instrument at the service of the Pope that could create obstacles to real power.
Nogaret, replaced as adviser to the king by Enguerrand de Marigny, remained guardasigilli however until his death, probably occurred in 1313, before the execution of Giacomo de Molay.

La Charta Larménius

 

Detail of the Charta Larménius

HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE 
At the National Archives of Paris, with location << AB XIX, correspondence from 125 to 158 >>, the "Decree of transmission of powers" is preserved, along with the Cartulary of the Order, the sword and other relics of Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order itself. Said decree of transmission of powers is granted by Jacques de Molay to such Jean Marc Larmenius, Commander of Jerusalem and primate of the Order. 
Jean Marc Larmenius, has escaped capture along with four Lieutenants General bringing with him the "Cartulario", as well as having convened, later, the Templar Chapter and having been Grand Master.
It is good to remember that the Knights belonging to the Order had bonds of consanguinity with the best families of Europe. 
The Templar tradition is Chivalrous and Military, and if the people remember the Order and tie every legend to it, the various noble houses proudly boast some of their relatives, near or far, who in defense of the pilgrims in the Holy Land honored their name for altruism and courage, the voice began to leak out, kept <> better to say reserved that the Order had not died out.
Here then is the reformation of a force alongside the survivors; they do not wear the white cloak, they do not wave their banner which they keep in secret, but they lavish themselves with value and courage like the lions of the past. Historians, or rather the chroniclers of that time, too caught up in major events, forgot about Templar events, and the Templars appreciated and appreciated the wall of silence that surrounded them. 
The Grand Master Jean Marc Larmenius (or de Larmény) in ten years time, performed the task entrusted to him by his predecessor de Molay. 
He joined the ranks of the Knights along kilometers and kilometers in search of the Brothers, and after ten years, having come to feel his strength failing, he gathered the Council which elevated the Commendatore Francesco Tommaso Teobald of Alessandria (1324-1340) to the rank of Grand Master.
The new Grand Master, during his tenure, made contact with Philip VI of Valois, who had risen to the throne of France in 1328. 
In 1340 he was elected Grand Master Arnauld de Braque (1340-1349) who in 1346 also appointed the famous Bertrand du Guesclin as Knight, entrusting him with the command of a group of Templars. But if we know a great deal about the de Braque who once again fixed the headquarters of the Order in Paris, as well as the du Guesclin, little is known about the Grand Master Jean de Clermont, those few archival reports do not present him as a soldier, but, as a philanthropist and God knows how necessary was the presence of aid to the people and also to the clergy bled by fiscal policy.
The Knights Templar, without trumpets or fanfare, silently and deeply operated like the old brothers with great loyalty and courage to greater glory of God. It has been written by many that the Grand Master Bertrand du Guesclin (1357-1381) was an illiterate person, he could neither read nor write nor sign his name. 
But the God and the military archives present the Grand Master of the Templars in his splendid figure of Cavaliere, he reformed the French army on the English model, both in order to a more rational organization, than to a more modern weaponry. He won Charles II King of Navarre, withdrew some strategic bases from the English and defeated them in La Rochelle.
He was a fighter and a loyal knight, on the death of Charles V <>, the English who paid homage to him were reduced to Cais. During the siege of Chateauneuf-Randon, on 13 July 1381, just as the city was surrendering, the Grand Master of the Templars and Grand Constable of France, seized by illness, died. The English who defended the city, with a gesture worthy of the ancient Cavalry, left the city to deposit the keys of the city on the Knight of their valiant and heroic enemy. 
In 1894 a conference held in Brussels decided the establishment of an International Secretariat of the Templars, after which precise information was not available until 1934, when the secretariat transmitted powers to a Council of Regency, still based in Brussels.
At the outbreak of World War II, the Brussels Archive was sent to Portugal to the Grand Prior of the Lusitanian Province, Antonio Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes. He was appointed, in 1942, Regent and Guardian of the Order, who assumed the name of Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem. 
The new Templars, emphasizing the traditional aristocratic spirit of the Order, promoted heraldic and genealogical studies, declared absolute fidelity to the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, siding politically on strongly conservative positions in the name of <> and <>. Since the new Statutes admitted the hereditary transmission of titles and honors, in 1960 the Maestranza was assumed by Don Fernando de Sousa Fontes, son of Don Antonio.
The International Order of Knights Templar has been governed from its origins on strict rules and general statutes, the current Statutes (1990), issued by the Great Portuguese Maestranza, are a modern revision of the precedents of 1705. 
The Statutes are based on the following essential points: 
1 ° The institution of the Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ in society; Strengthening of the Christian religion; the defense of the social order; the practice of works of mercy, charity and charity. 
2 ° The propagation of the noble Cavalry traditions. 
3 ° The protection of historical, heraldic and genealogical studies. 
From the foundation of the Order 1118 to today 2019, there have been n. 51 Grand Masters, over 10 Regents.
The Order is Independent and International Sovereign, the seat of the Order is established by the nationality of the Grand Master. 
Today there are over two hundred thousand Templars in the world. 
The Templars are Knights of faith, charity, justice; only with social actions do these qualities emerge and can be appreciated, keeping them in their hearts only serves the spirit of those who possess them, giving them is love for others. 
We have told this story as it has been handed down to us and we like to believe it is true.
Between so much chaos and so much wandering through the more or less stormy times; between so much injustice and arrogance; one thing makes us happy and still keeps us united under the sacred symbol of the red patriarchal cross which is the glorious insignia of the Temple, the Templar brotherhood that reaches us through the centuries, clear and unchanged, the awareness of being Templars, not to show off a cross or a decoration, but because this feeling comes from the depths of our heart and tells us to move forward, ever further in search of that truth that is the basis of our motto which is: 
"Non Nobis Domine, Non Nobis, Sed Nominate Your Da Gloriam ". 
"Not to Us Lord, Not to Us, But Only to You Go Glory".
Pain and love are the axis of the world we propose charity and piety in the first place, and immediately after justice, where injustice will be committed, the Templars will act.