The Pope, Clement V., and Phillippe-le-bel, King of France, fearing the power of the Templars and coveting their immense wealth, resolved to destroy the Order. When, in 1308, Jacques de Molay, then Grand Master of the Order, was preparing an expedition to avenge the wrongs and disasters suffered by the Christians in the East, the Pope, who was the only power to which, in the spiritual, the Templars owed allegiance, enticed him to France.
On his arrival he was received with every mark of friendship: but, soon after, the King caused him to be arrested together with some of the other dignitaries, accusing them of the most heinous crimes, imputing to them the secret rites of their initiation. By order of the Archbishop of Sens and his provincial council, Jacques de Molay, Guy of Auvergne and several other officers of the Order were burned alive on March 18, 1314.
The Pope, by a bull dated on the 2d of April, and published on the 2d of May, 1312, that he issued on his own responsibility, the Council of Vienne, in Dauphiné, being adverse to hasty measures, declared the Order abolished throughout the world. The execution of the Grand Master and his companions gave the _coup de grace_ to the Order. Some of the Knights who had escaped to Portugal continued the Order. They assumed the title of Knights of Christ, which it bears to this day; but it never recovered its former prestige and power.
Jacques de Molay, before dying had appointed Johan Marcus Larmenio as his successor to the office of Grand Master. The Knights who, fleeing from the persecution, had taken refuge in Scotland at the Court of King Robert Bruce, refused to recognize his authority; and pretending to reëstablish the Order of the Temple, under the allegory and title of Architects, protected by the King, laid the foundation of the Order of Free and Accepted Masons of the Scottish Rite in 1314.
This new society soon forgot the meaning of the execratory oath that the members were obliged to take at their initiation; the death of Clement V., of Phillippe-le-bel, of the accusers and enemies of Jacques de Molay and the other Knights who had been executed, having removed the object of their vengeance. Still they continued to decorate their lodges with tokens commemorative of the death of the Grand Master, to impose on all new members the obligation of avenging it, which they signified by striking with an unsheathed dagger at unseen beings, his supposed murderers, although all their efforts were now directed to the restoration of the honor of their association. This allegory is well-known to the Knights of Kadosh. A century had scarcely elapsed when this idea also was abandoned, the founders and their disciples having passed away. Their successors saw only allegories in the symbols of the Order, and the extensive use of words and texts from the Bible was then introduced. Of their work but little is positively known until the reign of Charles I. of England, when their mysterious initiations began to attract attention.