To commemorate 700 years have passed this year.
"On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars (knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren) in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges were ever proven, even in France and the Order was found innocent elsewhere but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."
Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books: 1995)
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