 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Geoffroi de Charney, [lower-alpha 1] also known as Guy d'Auvergne, (died 11 or 18 March 1314) was preceptor of Normandy for the Knights Templar. In 1307 de Charny was arrested, along with the entire Order of Knights Templar in France, and in 1314 was burned at the stake.
Not much is known about de Charney's early life. He was accepted into the Order of Knights Templar at a young age by Amaury de la Roche, Preceptor of France. Present at the ceremony was Jean le Franceys, the preceptor of Pédenac.
The Order of the Templars was originally created to protect pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. The Templars' mission was then expanded to fight in the Crusades.
The persecution of the Templars began in France as a plan by King Philip IV, with the complicity of Pope Clement V. On 13 October 1307, the King ordered an arrest of all Templars in France. On 22 November 1307 Clement V, under pressure from the King, issued the papal decree Pastoralis praceminentiae that ordered all Christian monarchs to arrest any Templars and confiscate their lands in the name of the Pope and the Church. Though the order went out to England, Iberia, Germany, Italy and Cyprus, Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay, Geoffrey de Charney and many other Templars were in France, and under the orders of the French king, were arrested and tortured until they confessed to the crimes of which they were accused. [2]
In 1307, the Pope sent two cardinals to interview Jacques de Molay and Hugues de Pairaud, who recanted their confessions and told the other Templars to do the same. [3] Two other Templars, Pierre de Bologna and Renaud de Provins, also tried to convince other Templars to recant their confessions and by early May 1310, close to six hundred did so. Pierre de Bologna was never seen again and Renaud de Provins was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
Geoffroi de Charney and the other Templars in France were arrested on 13 October 1307. Many charges were leveled against them; they were notably similar to those directed at other enemies of Philip, such as heresy, sodomy and blasphemy. [4]
There were initially five charges lodged against the Templars:
Many of these charges were also made against Pope Boniface VIII before his capture, escape and eventual death shortly in 1308. Philip's agents pursued these charges as they had been successful against other enemies of the King. [5] On 12 August 1308, the charges were increased, with one specifically stating that the Templars worshipped an idol made of a cat and a head with three faces. The lists of articles 86 to 127 would add many other charges. [6] [7]
Eventually King Philip's Inquisitors succeeded in making Jacques de Molay confess to the charges. [8] On 18 March 1314, de Molay and de Charney recanted their confessions, stating they were innocent of the charges and they were only guilty of betraying their Order by confessing under duress to something they did not do. They were immediately found guilty of being relapsed heretics, for which the punishment was death. This effectively silenced the other Templars. Philip continued to pressure and threaten the Pope to officially disband the Order, which culminated in 1314 with the public execution by burning of leader Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney. [3]
His exact day of death is disputed by scholars. One source records his death as follows: The cardinals dallied with their duty until 19 March 1314, when, on a scaffold in front of Notre Dame, de Molay, Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy, Hugues de Peraud, referred to as a visitor of France, and Godefroi de Gonneville, Master of Aquitaine, were brought forth from the jail in which for nearly seven years they had lain, to receive the sentence agreed upon by the cardinals, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and some other prelates whom they had called in. Considering the offences which the culprits had confessed and confirmed, the penalty imposed was in accordance with the rule—that of perpetual imprisonment. The affair was supposed to be concluded when, to the dismay of the prelates and wonderment of the assembled crowd, de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney arose. They had been guilty, they said, not of the crimes imputed to them, but of basely betraying their Order to save their own lives. It was pure and holy; the charges were fictitious and the confessions false. Hastily the cardinals delivered them to the Prevot of Paris, and retired to deliberate on this unexpected contingency, but they were saved all trouble. When the news was carried to Philippe he was furious. The King was furious and they were both pronounced relapsed heretics to be burned without a further hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for. That same day, by sunset, a pile was erected on a small island in the Seine, the Ile des Juifs, near the palace garden. There de Molay and de Charney were slowly burned to death, refusing all offers of pardon for retraction, and bearing their torment with a composure which won for them the reputation of martyrs among the people, who reverently collected their ashes as relics. [9] [10]
Little more than a month later, Clement V died from a disease thought to have been lupus, and eight months later Philip IV was killed at the age of forty-six in a hunting accident. Their deaths gave rise to the legend that de Molay had cited them before the tribunal of God. Such stories became legend. Even in distant Germany, Philippe's death was spoken of as retribution for his destruction of the Templars, and Clement was described as shedding tears of remorse on his death-bed for three great crimes, the poisoning of Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor and the ruin of the Templars and the Beguines. [11]
Author Malcolm Barber has researched this legend and concluded that it originates from La Chronique métrique attribuée à Geffroi de Paris (ed. A. Divèrres, Strasbourg, 1956, pages 5711-5742). Geoffrey of Paris was "apparently an eye-witness, who describes Molay as showing no sign of fear and, significantly, as telling those present that God would avenge their deaths". [12] [13]
This series of events forms the basis of Les Rois maudits (The Accursed Kings), a series of historical novels written by Maurice Druon between 1955 and 1977, in which Charney is a supporting character. The novels were also adapted into two French television miniseries in 1972 and 2005.
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars, was a Catholic military order, one of the most wealthy and popular of the Western Christian military orders. They were founded in 1119, headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.
Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 5 June 1305 to his death in April 1314. He is remembered for suppressing the order of the Knights Templar and allowing the execution of many of its members. Pope Clement V was the pope who moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, ushering in the period known as the Avignon Papacy.
The 1310s was a decade of the Julian Calendar which began on January 1, 1310, and ended on December 31, 1319.
1314 (MCCCXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1314th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 314th year of the 2nd millennium, the 14th year of the 14th century, and the 5th year of the 1310s decade. As of the start of 1314, the Gregorian calendar was 8 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which was the dominant calendar of the time.
Philip IV, called Philip the Fair, was King of France from 1285 to 1314. By virtue of his marriage with Joan I of Navarre, he was also King of Navarre as Philip I from 1284 to 1305, as well as Count of Champagne. Although Philip was known to be handsome, hence the epithet le Bel, his rigid, autocratic, imposing, and inflexible personality gained him other nicknames, such as the Iron King. His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, said of him: "He is neither man nor beast. He is a statue."
Louis X, called the Quarrelsome, the Headstrong, or the Stubborn, was King of France from 1314 and King of Navarre as Louis I from 1305 until his death. He abolished slavery, emancipated serfs who could buy their freedom, and readmitted Jews into the kingdom.
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.
The Council of Vienne was the fifteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church that met between 1311 and 1312 in Vienne, France. Doctrinally, it defined the human soul as being essentially and by itself the form of the human body - in line with Aristotelian metaphysics, which had risen to prominence in 13th century Catholic Europe with the commentaries of Dominican friars such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. One of its other principal acts was to withdraw papal support for the Knights Templar on the instigation of Philip IV of France, after the French monarch attacked Rome and killed Pope Boniface VIII.
The House of Capet or the Direct Capetians, also called the House of France, or simply the Capets, ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328. It was the most senior line of the Capetian dynasty – itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians. Historians in the 19th century came to apply the name "Capetian" to both the ruling house of France and to the wider-spread male-line descendants of Hugh Capet. Contemporaries did not use the name "Capetian". The Capets were sometimes called "the third race of kings". The name "Capet" derives from the nickname given to Hugh, the first Capetian king.
Rothley Temple, or more correctly Rothley Preceptory, was a preceptory in the village of Rothley, Leicestershire, England, associated with both the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller.
Knights of the Cross is the eighth studio album by German heavy metal band Grave Digger, released in 1998. It is the second album of the Middle Ages Trilogy.
The Chinon Parchment is a historical document discovered in September 2001 by Barbara Frale, an Italian paleographer at the Vatican Secret Archives. On the basis of this document she has claimed that, in 1308, Pope Clement V absolved the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and the rest of the leadership of the Knights Templar from charges brought against them by the Medieval Inquisition.
The original historic Knights Templar were a Christian military order, the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, that existed from the 12th to 14th centuries to provide warriors in the Crusades. These men were famous in the high and late Middle Ages, but the Order was disbanded very suddenly by King Philip IV of France, who took action against the Templars in order to avoid repaying his own financial debts. He accused them of heresy, ordered the arrest of all Templars within his realm, put the Order under trial and many of them burned at the stake. The dramatic and rapid end of the Order led to many stories and legends developing about them over the following centuries. The Order and its members increasingly appear in modern fiction, though most of these references portray the medieval organization inaccurately.
Hugues de Pairaud was one of the leaders of the Knights Templar. He and Geoffroi de Gonneville were sentenced to life imprisonment on March 18, 1314. They were spared the fate of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney, who were both burned at the stake, because they accepted their sentence in silence.
The Knights Templar trace their beginnings to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in c. 1120 when nine Christian knights, under the auspices of King Baldwin II and the Patriarch Warmund, were given the task of protecting pilgrims on the roads to Jerusalem, which they did for nine years until elevated to a military order at the Council of Troyes in 1129. They became an elite fighting force in the Crusades known for their propensity not to retreat or surrender.
The fall of Ruad in 1302 was one of the culminating events of the Crusades in the Eastern Mediterranean. When the garrison on the tiny Isle of Ruad fell, it marked the loss of the last Crusader outpost on the coast of the Levant. In 1291, the Crusaders had lost their main power base at the coastal city of Acre, and the Muslim Mamluks had been systematically destroying any remaining Crusader ports and fortresses since then, forcing the Crusaders to relocate their dwindling Kingdom of Jerusalem to the island of Cyprus. In 1299–1300, the Cypriots sought to retake the Syrian port city of Tortosa, by setting up a staging area on Ruad, two miles (3 km) off the coast of Tortosa. The plans were to coordinate an offensive between the forces of the Crusaders, and those of the Ilkhanate. However, though the Crusaders successfully established a bridgehead on the island, the Mongols did not arrive, and the Crusaders were forced to withdraw the bulk of their forces to Cyprus. The Knights Templar set up a permanent garrison on the island in 1300, but the Mamluks besieged and captured Ruad in 1302. With the loss of the island, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land. Attempts at other Crusades continued for centuries, but the Europeans were never again able to occupy any territory in the Holy Land until the 20th century, during the events of World War I.
Requiem is a novel by Robyn Young set during the end of the ninth and final crusade. It was first published by E.P. Dutton in 2008.
The Larmenius Charter or Carta Transmissionis is a coded Latin manuscript purportedly created by Johannes Marcus Larmenius in February 1324, detailing the transfer of leadership of the Knights Templar to Larmenius after the death of Jacques de Molay. It also has appended to it a list of 22 successive Grand Masters of the Knights Templar after de Molay, ending in 1804, the name of Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat appearing last on the list. The document is written in a supposed devised ancient Knights Templar Codex. Actually in Freemason custody, the document is kept at the Mark Masons Hall in London. Some researchers have concluded that it is a forgery, while others assert its authenticity.
The history of the Knights Templar in England began when the French nobleman Hughes de Payens, the founder and Grand Master of the order of the Knights Templar, visited the country in 1128 to raise men and money for the Crusades.
