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Jacques de Molay Quotes

Jacques de Molay , also spelled "Molai", was the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, leading the Order from 20 April 1292 until it was dissolved by order of Pope Clement V in 1312. Though little is known of his actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, he is one of the best known Templars.

Jacques de Molay's goal as Grand Master was to reform the Order, and adjust it to the situation in the Holy Land during the waning days of the Crusades. As European support for the Crusades had dwindled, other forces were at work which sought to disband the Order and claim the wealth of the Templars as their own. King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars, had Molay and many other French Templars arrested in 1307 and tortured into making false confessions. When Molay later retracted his confession, Philip had him burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre-Dame de Paris in March, 1314. Both the sudden end of the centuries-old order of Templars and the dramatic execution of its last leader turned Molay into a legendary figure. Wikipedia  

✵ 1243 – 18. March 1314
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Jacques de Molay: 3   quotes 2   likes

Famous Jacques de Molay Quotes

“For we did not and do not wish the Temple to be placed in any servitude except that which is fitting.”

Jacques de Molay

Quar nous navons volu ne volons le Temple mettre en aucune servitute se non tant come il hy affiert.
In one of his memoranda to Pope Clement V from the summer of 1306.

“Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us.”

Jacques de Molay

Before he died it is said that he cursed both King Phillip and Pope Clement V, summoning them before God, the Supreme Judge, before the year was over.

“It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret.”

Jacques de Molay

One of the foremost Templar scholars records of Jacques DeMolay's dying words.

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