Jacques de Molay
(est.
1244–5/1249–50 – 18 March 1314) was the 23rd and officially
last Grand Master of
the Knights Templar,
leading the Order from
approximately 1292 until the Order was dissolved by order of the Pope Clement V
in 1312.
He is probably the
best
known Templar, along with the
Order's founder and first Grand Master,
Hugues de Payens (1070-1136).
His 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. With no crusader states remaining to
protect, and with other
problems surfacing, the right of the Order to
exist had come into question. King
Philip IV of France, deeply in
debt to
the organization, had De Molay and many other French Templars
arrested in 1307 and tortured into making what is
generally believed
to have been mainly false confessions. When De Molay
later retracted his confession, Philip had him
burned at the stake on the next to the Ile de la
cite an island in the Seine river in Paris, on 18 March 1314.