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 On March 18, 1314, the last thirty-nine Knights Templar were burned at the stake in Paris. This effectively ended the Order.
The Poor Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, called the Knights Templar for short, were formed sometime after the First Crusade of 1096 to protect European pilgrims visiting Jerusalem.
Large areas of the Holy Land were not under control of the Crusaders, and bandits often attacked, robbed, and killed pilgrims. In 1118, King Baldwin of Jerusalem gave the French knight Hughes de Payens and his nine monks a headquarters in Jerusalem at the site of Solomon’s Temple.
A few years later, St. Bernard of Clairvaux endorsed the Order, and the Council of Troyes in 1128 officially recognized and sanctioned the organization. Donations began to pour in from all over Europe.
As the Order grew in power and influence, they developed an elaborate international system for processing gifts. Many of their financial innovations became the foundation of modern banking.
Although the fortunes of the Knights Templar grew throughout Europe, the tide began to turn against the Crusades in Palestine. The Muslim world became more united and more successful militarily. In 1291, the Templars' last stronghold at Acre fell. With the Holy Land lost, the European leaders began to turn on the Templars. Many nobles owed large sums of money to the Templars, and they resented the power the Templars had over them. Rumors spread that the initiation rites of the Templars might be unorthodox or even heretical.
King Philip IV of France was deeply in debt to the Templars, and he decided to use the rumors for his own benefit. He pressured the pope to ban the Order, and on Friday, October 13, 1307, he had many Templars arrested, tortured, and burned at the stake.
In 1312, Pope Clement V officially banned the Order. Two years later, Philip burned the remaining French Knights, including the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay. The few remaining knights in other European nations gradually disbanded, and the greatest fighting army of the Middle Ages came to an end after two centuries.
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