By Dr. Margaret Hollis, Lead Editor Last reviewed 13 June 2026 First published 13 June 2026 Fact-checked by Dr. Niamh O'Donnell, Maynooth University

The Trial and Suppression of the Knights Templar

The trial and suppression of the Knights Templar is one of the most dramatic political events of the Middle Ages. In a coordinated dawn raid on Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France arrested the entire French membership of the Order, including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay. What followed was a long, complex, and deeply controversial trial that ended in the suppression of the entire Order by Pope Clement V in 1312, and in the burning of de Molay himself in 1314.

Key takeaways

The destruction of the Templars was the work of two men: King Philip IV of France (deeply in debt to the Order) and Pope Clement V (politically dependent on Philip). A handful of disgruntled former brothers supplied the initial charges of heresy.
The arrests on Friday 13 October 1307 were the work of royal officers acting on sealed letters. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was seized in Paris, and hundreds of other brothers were imprisoned across France.
The principal charges — denial of Christ, spitting on the cross, the Baphomet, obscene kisses at initiation — were extracted by torture, and most brothers retracted their confessions when the torture stopped.
In August 1308, Pope Clement held the Chinon hearing, in which he personally absolved the leaders of the Order of the charge of heresy — a fact that the Vatican only confirmed in 2001, with the rediscovery of the Chinon Parchment in the Vatican Secret Archives.
The Order was finally suppressed by the bull Vox in Excelso (22 March 1312), not by a heresy conviction but by a special apostolic decree. Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burned at the stake on 18 March 1314.

This pillar page tells the story of that trial in detail. It is a companion to the complete history of the Templars and to the cluster pages on the trial of Jacques de Molay, Friday the 13th, and the bull Vox in Excelso.

The Political Background

The destruction of the Templars was the work of two men: Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V. To understand why they moved against the Order, we need to understand the political and financial pressures they faced in the first decade of the fourteenth century.

Philip IV of France

Philip IV of France (1268–1314) was one of the most powerful, and the most financially strapped, kings of his century. He had inherited from his father Philip III a kingdom deeply in debt, with expensive wars behind it and expensive ambitions ahead of it. To raise money, Philip had taxed the Church, debased the coinage, and expelled the Jews and the Italian Lombard bankers from his kingdom. By 1307, he was deeply in debt to the Templars themselves, who had lent him enormous sums in the previous decade.

For a biography of Philip, see Who Was Philip IV of France?.

Clement V

Pope Clement V (c. 1260–1314), the former Raymond Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was elected pope in 1305 in a highly controversial conclave that began in Perugia and dragged on for eleven months. Almost from the start of his papacy, he was under intense pressure from Philip, who wanted the new pope to reside in France rather than in Rome. Clement eventually settled in Avignon in 1309, beginning the long period of French influence over the papacy known as the Avignon Papacy.

Clement was personally not a hostile figure to the Templars. He had supported the Order in the past and had been educated by the Bishopric of Bordeaux, which had close ties to the Templars. But he was politically dependent on Philip, and he was deeply reluctant to confront the French king.

The Templars’ Position

By 1307, the Templars were in a difficult position. The Order had lost its military purpose with the fall of Acre in 1291. It still possessed vast estates and enormous financial resources, but it was no longer performing the function for which it had been founded. This political vacuum made the Order vulnerable.

The Order also had powerful enemies. The Hospitallers were rivals for donations and royal favor. The secular clergy resented the Templars’ exemption from local ecclesiastical jurisdiction. And the moneylenders of France, especially the Lombard bankers, had their own reasons to want the Order destroyed. To read about the specific rivalries and grievances, see The Enemies of the Templars.

The Long Fuse: 1303 to 1307

The story of the trial usually begins with the morning of Friday, October 13, 1307, but the planning behind the arrests had been going on for years. The key events were:

1303: Philip, by now deep in debt, demanded an accounting from the Templars. The Order refused.
1304: Around this year, a former Templar named Esquieu de Floyran (variously spelled Squin de Floyran or Squin de Flexian) approached Philip with accusations of heresy against the Order. Philip’s confessor, the Dominican Imbert de Beauvoir (sometimes Humbert de Beauvoir), later brought similar charges.
1305: Clement V became pope. He met Philip at Lyon in 1305 and again in 1306, but no formal charges were brought.
1306: Philip expelled the Jews from France and seized their property. He was looking for new sources of revenue.
August 1307: Philip held secret meetings with his ministers, including Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerrand de Marigny, to plan the arrests. Sealed letters were sent out to royal officials throughout France, ordering them to be opened simultaneously.
September 1307: Clement, by now aware that something was being planned, sent a letter to Philip urging caution. The letter was ignored.

The Arrests of October 13, 1307

On the morning of Friday, October 13, 1307, royal officers acting on the sealed letters moved simultaneously against every Templar house in France. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was seized at the Temple in Paris, the Order’s great fortress and treasury in the heart of the city. Several hundred other brothers were arrested, including the Preceptor of France, the Preceptor of Normandy, and most of the senior officials of the Order in France. The papal bull Pastoralis praeminentiae, ordering all Christian rulers to arrest the Templars on charges of heresy, would follow a few days later.

The story of that day has been told in countless books, and is examined in detail in Friday the 13th: The Templar Connection.

The Confessions Under Torture

The arrests were followed by a campaign of systematic interrogation under torture. The Templars were accused of a long list of heretical and obscene practices:

Spitting on the cross at the ceremony of initiation.
Denying Christ.
Worshipping a head called Baphomet, sometimes described as a skull, sometimes as a demon, sometimes as a figure with three faces.
Obscene kisses on the mouth, navel, and buttocks at the ceremony of initiation.
Homosexual practices.
Secret initiation rituals involving the renunciation of the Catholic faith.

The first round of interrogations produced a wave of confessions. The most dramatic was the confession of de Molay himself, made on October 24, 1307, who admitted to the charges of denying Christ and spitting on the cross. The confession was later partially retracted. The charges are discussed in detail in the cluster page on Templar Initiation and Secret Rites, and the famous “Baphomet” head is examined in What Was Baphomet?.

The Papal Response

The arrests caught Pope Clement off guard. He had been informed of the planned action only shortly before, and he had not authorized it. Almost immediately, he took steps to reassert papal authority over the trial.

His first major intervention was the bull Pastoralis praeminentiae, issued in November 1307, which suspended the inquisitorial process in France and transferred the trial to the papacy. Philip, however, was reluctant to surrender his prisoners, and the French clergy were equally divided. To understand the struggle, see the biography of Clement V and the article on the Chinon Parchment.

The Chinon Parchment (1308)

The most important papal intervention in the trial came in August 1308, when Clement held a formal inquiry at his palace at Chinon in central France. The Grand Master and the other senior leaders of the Order were brought before the pope and questioned. The result was the famous Chinon Parchment, in which Clement absolved the leaders of the Order of the charge of heresy and restored them to the sacraments of the Church.

The Chinon Parchment was, in effect, the papacy’s judgment that the leaders of the Templars were not heretics. It did not, however, prevent the suppression of the Order on other grounds. The parchment is examined in detail in The Chinon Parchment.

The Council of Vienne (1311–1312)

The final stage of the trial was the Council of Vienne, convened by Clement in October 1311. The Council was charged with examining the fate of the Order. The French crown, the papacy, and the Order’s defenders all presented their cases.

After several months of deliberation, the Council arrived at a compromise. The Order would be suppressed, not by a heresy conviction, but by a special apostolic decree. On March 22, 1312, Clement issued the bull Vox in Excelso, formally suppressing the Order of the Temple. The bull and its meaning are examined in The Papal Suppression: Vox in Excelso and the council’s decisions are summarized here.

The bull Ad providam, issued the same day, transferred the Order’s assets to the Knights Hospitaller. In practice, however, much of the Templars’ wealth was simply seized by the various secular rulers, especially in France and England.

The Burning of Jacques de Molay (1314)

The trial of the Order itself ended with the Council of Vienne. The trial of the individual leaders, however, continued. In March 1314, the Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Preceptor of Normandy Geoffroi de Charney were brought before a commission of cardinals and bishops at the Notre-Dame de Paris to hear their final sentence. Having been found guilty of relapsing into heresy, they were sentenced to be burned at the stake.

On March 18, 1314, they were executed on a small islet in the Seine just downstream of the royal palace, near the present Square du Vert-Galant — sometimes called the île aux Juifs in contemporary chronicles, and now absorbed into the riverbank. According to a well-known legend, de Molay, while the flames were rising, summoned both Philip and Clement to appear before the judgment of God within the year. Clement died on April 20, 1314, barely a month later. Philip died on November 29, 1314, seven months after de Molay.

The story of the last Grand Master is told in The Trial of Jacques de Molay.

The Aftermath

The suppression of the Templars was followed by a wave of arrests and trials throughout Europe. In England, the Templars were arrested in January 1308, and the trial dragged on for several years before the Order was suppressed in 1312. The English Templars were treated relatively leniently; many were simply pensioned off. In Cyprus, the Templars held out against the Cypriot authorities until 1313, when the last Templar preceptor on the island was murdered by his own men. In Iberia, the Templars were absorbed into other orders, including the new Order of Christ in Portugal.

The question of what happened to the Order’s wealth has been debated ever since. The bull Ad providam transferred the assets to the Hospitallers, but most secular rulers simply kept the wealth. In France, the crown took most of the Templar lands. The legend of hidden treasure is examined in What Happened to Templar Treasure?.

Was the Order Guilty?

The question of whether the Templars were actually guilty of the charges is one of the most debated in medieval history. Most modern historians believe that the charges were largely fabricated, possibly by Philip’s government, possibly by former Templars who had been expelled from the Order and bore grudges. The confessions under torture were, of course, extracted by extreme physical pain, and most brothers retracted their confessions when the torture stopped.

The historiographical debate is examined in Were the Knights Templar Guilty of Heresy?.

The Long Shadow

The destruction of the Templars was, in its own time, an event of enormous political and religious significance. It set a precedent for the use of heresy charges to destroy an institution that had become politically inconvenient. It marked a significant moment in the long struggle between the French monarchy and the papacy. And it created the conditions for the Avignon Papacy and, eventually, for the Western Schism of 1378.

The destruction of the Order also had a profound effect on the economy of Europe. The Templars’ banking system, which had served kings, nobles, and pilgrims, was destroyed, and the international banking infrastructure they had developed was not replicated for several decades — a gap filled in the 14th century by the great Italian houses of Bardi, Peruzzi, and later the Medici.

Sites to Visit Today

Many of the places associated with the trial and suppression of the Templars are still standing or marked. Some of the most important include:

Temple, Paris: the site of the Templars’ principal fortress, on the Right Bank of the Seine. Most of the buildings were destroyed during the Revolution, but the Tour Jean sans Peur is a surviving fragment of the Templar complex.
Square du Vert-Galant, Paris: the western tip of the Île de la Cité, near where de Molay and Charney were executed in 1314. The exact site is the subject of historical debate, but the Square du Vert-Galant is the most commonly accepted location.
Chinon, France: the site of the famous Chinon Parchment hearing, in the castle of Chinon.
Temple Church, London: the principal Templar church in England, where some of the London Templars were tried.
Acre, Israel: the site of the last Levantine Templar headquarters, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

From the primary sources

“Cognoscentes igitur quod dilecti filii … Magister et fratres predicti … non possunt absque difficultate maxima … confiteri veritatem … Nos, considerantes … de ipsorum pura confessione … eosdem Magistrum et fratres a vinculo excommunicationis … absoluimus.”

(“We, considering … that the said Master and brethren cannot, without the greatest difficulty, confess the truth … We, having considered their pure confession, absolve the said Master and brethren from the bond of excommunication …”)

— Pope Clement V, the Chinon Parchment, 17–20 August 1308, trans. by the editorial team from the printed edition in Barbara Frale, Il papato e il processo ai Templari (Viella, 2002), pp. 118–119.

“Suppressimus … non per modum definitive sententie, sed per viam provisionis apostolice, ordinem predictum, nomenque ordinis et habitum … bonaque et possessiones eiusdem ordinis … transferimus ad ordinem Hospitalis Sancti Iohannis Ierosolimitani.”

(“We suppress … not by way of definitive sentence, but by way of apostolic provision, the said Order, its name and its habit … and we transfer its goods and possessions to the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.”)

— Pope Clement V, the bull Vox in Excelso, 22 March 1312, trans. by the editorial team from the printed edition in J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. XXV, cols. 369–371.

Sources & Further Reading

The standard modern works on the trial and suppression are:

Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 1978; 2nd ed. 2006) — the standard English-language account, based on extensive archival research.
Alain Demurger, Les Templiers: Une chevalerie chrétienne au Moyen Âge (Seuil, 2005; English 2005) and Jacques de Molay: Le dernier templier (Payot, 2002; English 2004) — the principal modern French works.
Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar: A New History (Sutton, 2001) and Templar Families (Sutton, 2019) — accessible single-volume treatments.
Barbara Frale, “The Chinon Parchment”, in Proceedings of the British Academy 139 (2006), and her book-length treatment, Il papato e il processo ai Templari (Viella, 2002) — the post-2001 work on the Chinon Parchment.
Georges Lizerand (ed.), Le Dossier de l’affaire des Templiers (Champion, 1923) — the standard printed edition of the trial documents.
Anne Gilmour-Bryson, The Trial of the Templars in the Papal State and the Abruzzi (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982) — the standard treatment of the trials outside France.
Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and Their Myth (Oxford, 1981) — the standard critical account, with strong coverage of the historiographical debate.
Juliet Barker, The Aims and Effects of Clement V’s Policy towards the Templars and Hospitallers (PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1973) — a study of Clement’s strategic position.

For the papal registers, see the entries under Clement V in the Regestum Clementis papae V (Vatican, 1885–1892, 9 vols), and the relevant volumes of Augustin Coulon and S. Clemencet (eds), Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Clément V (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1903–1971).

For an online overview of the Chinon Parchment, see Barbara Frale’s summary on the Vatican website (see our editorial standards page for the citation).