Jacques de Molay fascinates. Of the twenty-three Grand Masters who succeeded each other at the head of the Order of the Temple between 1120 and 1312, he is without doubt the only one whose memory has been preserved by the public. Maurice Druon's Les Rois maudits immortalized him, and recent media, from The Da Vinci Code to Assassin's Creed, have spread his name around the world. Yet, while he is firmly anchored in myth, Jacques de Molay has hardly captivated historians. He is a "famous unknown", usually deprecated, about whom many uncertainties persist, even as regards his essential dates - his birth, his election and even his death. The traces of his actions, however, are far from sparse. It is these sources, systematically studied and compared with existing memoirs, that shed new light on the Grand Master: free of stereotypes, Jacques de Molay can finally emerge from the shadows.
Three parts structure the book. The first deals with images of the dignitary, revealing how, from the beginning of the XIXᵗʰ century, an archetype of the tragic hero came into being. The second, looking beyond the figure, focuses on the man, analyzing his career to establish how he rose to the pinnacle of the Temple with whose fate, from the Holy Land to the jails of Philip the Fair, he became identified. Finally, Jacques de Molay's commitments are at the heart of the third part. Support for the Latin East and the defense of his order, which he endeavored to adapt as best he could to a situation fraught with peril, were the priorities of a firm, enterprising man, far removed from the feckless man too many authors portray. Thus, even in the turmoil of the Temple trial, he sought to avert the risk, to safeguard his institution and, once its loss had been resolved and halted, to preserve its memory in the face of judges and death: this he did on March 11, 1314, by recanting confessions extracted six and a half years earlier under torture, ready to face the stake and make the ultimate sacrifice of his life, for which posterity has avenged him, finding in it, over the centuries, the growing assurance of martyrdom.
Release date: September 20, 2019
► Buy the book (link paid by Amazon)