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2014 SESSION


HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 119
Commemorating the life and legacy of Jacques de Molay.

 

Agreed to by the House of Delegates, February 21, 2014

 

WHEREAS, the ill fate associated with “Friday the 13th” derives most probably from the arrest on that date, in October 1307, of large numbers of the Knights Templar by troops of Philip IV, king of France; and

WHEREAS, the imprisonment of the Knights Templar was precipitated by the desire of the king of France to take possession for himself of the lands and financial resources entrusted to the Knights by several of the royal realms of Christendom; and

WHEREAS, in pursuit of his purposes, the king of France subjected the Knights Templar to torture and also to defamation through the dissemination of rumors of foul behavior; and

WHEREAS, even a weakened Church, distracted from its spiritual obligations and hapless before the increasing cunning of the temporal powers, initially complied with the king’s designs and, in 1310, abolished the centuries-old Order of the Knights Templar; and

WHEREAS, after seven years of imprisonment, and following confessions of wrongdoing extracted from him through continuous maltreatment, Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and last grand master of the Knights Templar, together with his predecessor Geoffroi de Charney, was—despite exoneration by the papacy—burned alive, upon order of the king, at a hastily erected pyre on an island in the River Seine at Paris; and

WHEREAS, this confrontation between the temporal and spiritual powers within the France of the 14th century, and the final effectiveness of the crown’s designs, altered forever the equilibrium of State and Church in the Western world, with ramifications that have rippled down the centuries—and ripple still—into our own time; and

WHEREAS, the execution of Jacques de Molay occurred on March 18, 1314—exactly 700 years ago; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, That the members of the body ponder the oft-forgotten connections that bind present and past, determining, for both good and ill, the context of our lives and actions—and therefore indicating, too, that our own lives and decisions may shape, for either good or ill, generations to arise in the far future—as illustrated by the life and death of Jacques de Molay seven centuries ago; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to the Southside Chapter of the Society for the Remembrance of Ancient Ways, which on March 18, 2014, will recollect the execution, and the permanent effects of the execution, on that date in 1314, of Jacques de Molay.