The Templar Knights Order was one of the most important and powerful that emerged during the Crusades. Founded in 1118 with the purpose of defending the holy places of Muslim forces tried to reclaim them. The Templar Knights came to be in possession of almost all the political and financial infrastructure of the Holy Places and of the Crusades and was the most powerful military order of the Middle Ages. At the end of the thirteenth century, the Templar Knights were a superpower that controlled thousands of castles and parcels throughout Europe.
Among the revelations from the Vatican Secret Archives, it has been known that the Templar Knights did not commit heresy, that they were unjustly accused, since the process was manipulated by the then king of France. The original documents of the trial of the Templars, found in the Vatican Secret Archives, show that there were unfounded accusations of heresy, but the Order experienced a degradation of its original spirit.
Initially, the Templars were a group of noble knights who voluntarily lived in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, offering their attributes as warriors and men of faith to defend pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Thanks to the mediation of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Pope Honorius II approved the foundation of the Order Templar at the Council of Troyes in 1129.
The King of France, Philip the Fair, to the brink of bankruptcy sought to appropriate the goods of the Order and to achieve this goal, in 1307, was supported by the Inquisition in France presenting the false accusation of heresy. Many of the alleged confessions were obtained under tremendous torture. According to the records preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives is known that the primitive discipline of the Temple and its authentic spirit had been corrupted over time, making way for the bad habits, but in no way had become heretics and the process was a means to seize their assets.
The arrest and prosecution of the Templars by Philip the Fair was totally illegal, as only the Pope had the authority to investigate a religious order of the Church of Rome, as it was precisely that of the Templars.
Pope Clement V was subjected to blackmail by the king who threatened to open a schism in case he do not eliminate the Order. The Pope suppressed the Order without pronouncing a judgment on April 3, 1312 published the Bull “Vox in Exalted” where the Templar Knights were banned forever. At the Council of Vienne in 1312 asked to be declared in the records that the process had not provided evidence of heresy against them.
Since the abolition of the Temple, Philip II obtained with this injustice the double advantage of not paying the huge debt he had contracted with the Templars and at the same time, confiscate the wealth of the rich and powerful Order.
Thus, the Temple was dissolved in 1312 and its last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, burned two years later. Nearly seven centuries later, in September 2001, Barbara Frale found a document in the Vatican Secret Archives showing that the pope knew the innocence of the Templars, but not had the courage to go public.
TEMPLAR SWORDS
