Before dawn on Friday 13 October 1307, royal officers across France moved on hundreds of Knights Templar at once, arresting the warrior monks in their own preceptories under sealed orders opened simultaneously nationwide. King Philip the Fair, deeply in debt to the order he had once sworn to protect, accused its knights of heresy and secret blasphemous rites.
Under torture, many confessed to charges historians now regard as fabricated to justify seizing the order’s vast wealth. The arrests marked the beginning of the end for the Templars, who were suppressed within a few years and their leaders burned at the stake, and contributed to the enduring misfortune of the date of Friday the 13th.
