Friday the 13th-the Dooms Day for the Knights Templar

Why are Fridays the 13th so horrifying?

Some associate the origin to the Code of Hammurabi, one of the world’s oldest authoritative archives, which might have ommited the 13th rule form the document.Other beliefs are  that the old Sumerians, who considered the number 12 an “immaculate” number, believed that the one that follows is simply not perfect.

One of the most mainstream hypotheses, is the one that  connects Friday the thirteenth to the fall of a fearsome group of incredible warriors—the Knights Templar.

Established around 1118 as a religious military order, the group were dedicated to the protection of pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land following the Christian capture of Jerusalem amid the First Crusade. The Knights Templar rapidly turned up to be one of the wealthiest and most compelling groups of the Middle Ages. Their wealth was based on the donations from the delegated heads of Europe who were  anxious to integrate in the group of savage Knights. By the turn of the fourteenth century, the Templars had built up  palaces, castles, churches and banks all through Western Europe. Also, it was this extreme wealth that would prompt their destruction.

For the Templars, that end started in the early morning hours of Friday, October 13, 1307.

A month sooner, mystery archives had been sent by couriers all through France. The papers included some details and rumours of black magic and shameful sexual rituals. They were sent by King Philip IV of France, a greedy ruler who had previously attacked  the Lombards (a successfull banking group) and France’s Jews (who he had removed so he could confiscate their property for his exhausted coffers).

In the days and weeks after that pivotal Friday, more than 600 Templars were arrested, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay, and the Order’s treasurer. Among the highest-ranking members were hundreds of non-warriors, middle-aged men who dealt with the management and accounting that kept the association murmuring. The men were accused of a wide cluster of offenses including sin, devil worship and spitting on the cross, homosexuality, fraud and financial corruption.

The Templars were kept isolated and given  small portions of food that were often  reduced to simply bread and water. Almost all were severely tormented. One regular practice utilized by medieval inquisitors was the “strappdo,” in which the hands of the blamed are tied behind their backs, and afterward tied with a rope around their wrists, planned to disengage the shoulders. As Dan Jones notes in his book, The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of the Knights Templar, one of the cases was when an accused  was so firmly tied that blood pooled in his fingertips, and he was kept in a pit no more bigger than a footstep. A large number of the men were likely extended on the notorious rack, or had their feet dunked in oil and held over a fire to burn. In these outrageous conditions, several Templars admitted to false charges, including Jacques de Molay.

Pope Clement V was frightened. Regardless of the way that he’d been chosen exclusively as a result of Philip’s impact, he dreaded crossing the prominent Templars. The Knight’s constrained “confessions,” nonetheless, constrained his hands. Philip, who had expected Clement’s response, ensured the assertions against the Templars included detailed portrayals of their heresy, based on the gossipy, lecherous records to carry much weight with the Church. Clement ordered the Western rulers to arrest the  Templars living in their territories.Some followed this order, however the destiny of the French Templars had just been fixed. Their territories and cash were reallocated and authoritatively scattered to another religious order, the Hospitallers .

After their admissions, huge numbers of Templars abjured, and Clement close down the probe trials in mid 1308. The Templars waited in their cells for a long time, before Philip had more than 50 of the them burned at the stake in 1310. After two years, Clement formally disintegrated the Order (however he did as such without saying they’d been guilty as charged). In the wake of that disintegration, a few Templars again admitted their guilt to get their freedom whereas others died in the prison.In the spring of 1314, Grand Master Molay and a few different Templars were burned at the stake in Paris, putting an end to their era, and denoting hypothesis about the outcomes of Friday the thirteenth.

Source: www.history.com