Jacques de Molay's 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.

As European support for the Crusades diminished, the French monarchy sought to disband the order and claim the wealth of the Templars as its own.

When Molay later retracted his confession, Philip had him burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre-Dame de Paris in March, 1314.

[6] Both the sudden end of the centuries-old order of Templars and the dramatic execution of its last leader turned Molay into a legendary figure.

[1] In 1265, as a young man, he was received into the Order of the Templars in a chapel at the Beaune House, by Humbert de Pairaud, the Visitor of France and England.

[7] After the Fall of Acre to the Egyptian Mamluks in 1291, the Franks (a name used in the Levant for Catholic Europeans) who were able to do so retreated to the island of Cyprus.

During a meeting assembled on the island in the autumn of 1291, Molay spoke of reforming the Order and put himself forward as an alternative to the current grand master.

Developing relationships with European leaders such as Pope Boniface VIII, Edward I of England, James I of Aragon and Charles II of Naples, Molay's immediate goals were to strengthen the defence of Cyprus and rebuild the Templar forces.

In 1300, Molay and other forces from Cyprus put together a small fleet of sixteen ships which committed raids along the Egyptian and Syrian coasts.

The ships left Famagusta on 20 July 1300, and under the leadership of Admiral Baudouin de Picquigny, raided the coasts of Egypt and Syria: Rosetta,[11] Alexandria, Acre, Tortosa and Maraclea, before returning to Cyprus.

[12] The Cypriots then prepared for an attack on Tortosa in late 1300, sending a joint force to a staging area on the island of Ruad, from which raids were launched on the mainland.

Following the loss of Ruad, Molay abandoned the tactic of small advance forces, and instead put his energies into trying to raise support for a new major Crusade, as well as strengthening Templar authority in Cyprus.

[13][15] On 6 June 1306, the leaders of both the Templars and the Hospitallers were officially asked to come to the Papal offices in Poitiers to discuss these matters, with the date of the meeting scheduled as All Saints Day (1 November) in 1306, though it later had to be postponed due to the Pope's illness with gastro-enteritis.

His successor Pope Benedict XI did not last long, dying in less than a year,[16] possibly poisoned via Philip's councillor Guillaume de Nogaret.

Molay was in Paris on 12 October, where he was a pallbearer at the funeral of Catherine of Courtenay, wife of Count Charles of Valois, and sister-in-law of King Philip.

During forced interrogation by royal agents at the University of Paris on 24,[19] and 25 October,[5] Molay confessed that the Templar initiation ritual included "denying Christ and trampling on the Cross".

In November 1309, the Papal Commission for the Kingdom of France began its own hearings, during which Molay again recanted, stating that he did not acknowledge the accusations brought against his order.

Molay was sentenced to death together with Geoffroi de Charney[21] in 1314 as a direct result of cardinal legates' decisions and actions rather than being ordered by King Philip the Fair.

The canons pronounced that a relapsed heretic was to be burned without a hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for.

[26] Another Chinon parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, well known to historians,[27][28][29] stated that absolution had been granted to all those Templars that had confessed to heresy "and restored them to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church".

These rumors are probably related to the fact that the medieval historian the Templar of Tyre wrote about a Mongol general named "Mulay" who occupied Syria and Palestine for a few months in early 1300.

[36] Another variation on this story was told by the contemporary chronicler Ferreto of Vicenza, who applied the idea to a Neapolitan Templar brought before Clement V, whom he denounced for his injustice.

The American historian Henry Charles Lea wrote: "Even in distant Germany Philippe's death was spoken of as a 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 Beguines".

[38] Some 400 years after the death of de Molay and the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the fraternal order of Freemasonry began to emerge in northern Europe.

The Masons developed an elaborate mythos about their Order, and some claimed heritage from entities in history,[39] ranging from the mystique of the Templars to the builders of Solomon's Temple.

The stories of the Templars' secret initiation ceremonies also proved a tempting source for Masonic writers who were creating new works of pseudohistory.

As described by modern historian Malcolm Barber in The New Knighthood: "It was during the 1760s that German masons introduced a specific Templar connection, claiming that the Order, through its occupation of the Temple of Solomon, had been the repository of secret wisdom and magical powers, which Jacques DeMolay had handed down to his successor before his execution and of which the eighteenth-century Freemasons were the direct heirs.

"[40] The modern Masonic Knights Templar is an international philanthropic and chivalric order affiliated with Freemasonry, and begun in Ireland perhaps as long ago as 1780.

The drama concludes with the commission condemning the four to life imprisonment; however, according to the ritual, "so incensed was the king at the noble defiance and defense of DeMolay and Geoffroi de Charney that he overrode the Commission’s verdict and hurried DeMolay and de Charney to the stake on an island near the Cathedral, where they were barbarously burned.