Jacques demolay biography

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.

Jacques de molay assassin's creed

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. King Philip IV of France , deeply in debt to the Templars, had Molay and many other French Templars arrested in and tortured into making false confessions. 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, He was born, as most Templar knights were, into a family of minor or middle-ranking nobility.

Around , de Molay went to the East Outremer , although little is recorded of his activities for the next twenty years. After the Fall of Acre to the Egyptian Mamluks in , the Franks a name used in the Levant for Catholic Europeans who were able to do so retreated to the island of Cyprus. It became the headquarters of the dwindling Kingdom of Jerusalem , and the base of operations for any future military attempts by the Crusaders against the Egyptian Mamluks , who for their part were systematically conquering any last Crusader strongholds on the mainland.

During a meeting assembled on the island in the autumn of , Molay spoke of reforming the Order and put himself forward as an alternative to the current grand master. Gaudin died around and, as there were no other serious contenders for the role at the time, Molay was soon elected. In spring , he began a tour of the West to try to muster more support for a reconquest of the Holy Land.