Jacques de Molay

Jacques de Molay led the Knights Templar from sometime before April 1292, inheriting an order facing collapse as European enthusiasm for the Crusades faded. He tried to reform the Templars and adapt them to the shrinking Christian foothold in the Holy Land, but the order's vast wealth made it a target. King Philip IV of France, deeply indebted to the Templars, had Molay and other French members arrested in 1307 and tortured until they confessed to false charges. When Molay later retracted his confession, Philip ordered him burned on a scaffold on an island in the Seine in March 1314. Pope Clement V had already dissolved the order two years earlier. The abrupt end of the centuries-old Templars and the public execution of their leader made Molay a legend, though little is known of his life before those final years.