Wednesday, August 12, 2026

It is the 12th of August 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

We stay in the Middle Ages today for some high intrigue with the classic battle of Kings vs. Popes, but with an added twist: the future of the famous and infamous Knights Templar.

 

Let’s set the scene: the Knights Templar were a religious order- like the Franciscans or Dominicans… they were officially the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. They were a Crusades-era creation of military religious orders for the protection of Christian pilgrims in the Holy Lands. But as they grew in popularity and wealth, other orders and leaders, both secular and religious, became suspicious of them.

 

[How did they get so popular and rich? They were “Warrior Monks,” which sounds cool; they fought “the infidels,” and they were at the center of one of the most sophisticated financial systems of their age- essentially working like banks for traveling pilgrims. They were also given special jurisdiction- answering only to the Pope.

 

Enter Philip IV, the king of France, and one of the most powerful men of his age. He is also known as Philip the Fair- but fair as in attractive, not just. He is also called the “Iron King”. He had successfully confronted the Pope, Boniface VIII, over the clergy tax. It was under Philip that the papacy would move from Rome to Avignon, France- where it remained for the rest of the 1300s- as the official Papacy and then as part of the Western Schism (when we get 2, and then 3 popes and anti-popes at the same time).

 

Because of wars with the English and internal dissent, Philip had led France into considerable debt. A good bit of it was held by, you guessed it, the Knights Templar. This is the simple version- but this is a short podcast…. Essentially, if the powerful but indebted Philip could have the Knights dissolved, a major rival and debtor would disappear. It was in 1307 that we see Philip on the offensive against the Knights- famously calling for mass arrests on Friday the 13th of October… I’m pretty sure the Da Vinci Code makes note of this… which is one way to know that it is probably not true.

 

But what was true was that a king, even a powerful king, couldn’t suppress a religious order. That had to be done by a Pope.

 

Enter Pope Clement V- a Frenchman, the Pope who took the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, France, and a friend of King Philip of France. You can see that things are getting spicy.

 

If Pope Boniface VIII had expanded the power of the papacy- claiming superiority over the other church heads and secular leaders- Pope Clement V has the reputation of being a puppet for the French King. Clement rescinded some of Boniface’s proclamations and took on Philip’s cause of shutting down the powerful Knights Templar.

 

And so it was on this, the 12th of August in 1308, that Pope Clement V summoned the Council of Vienne (Not Vienna- but Vienne- this was in Burgundy, just a skip outside of France and Philip’s jurisdiction). The council was called by Clement but with the concerns of King Philip, especially the Knights Templar. By the time the council convened almost 3 years later, there were still no leads as to the supposed heresy of the Knights. Rumors turned out to be just that… Clement and the church came up empty trying to disband the order based on charges of heresy. And so they did the next best thing- at least for King Philip- Clement pointed to the public suspicion and reputation (much of it drummed up by Philip) and used that as the excuse to disband the Knights Templar and divide their spoils amongst other orders and Philip. Clement did not establish that they were heretics, but used the controversies to officially declare that they could no longer exist.

 

It would mark the end of the Knight’s Templar- a short existence but as the first of their kind- the warrior monk, the international bankers and mysterious figure smeared on account of a king in debt and his Pope… an almost perfect template for later conspiracies.

 

But the Knights' real end would come with the council, summoned on this day by Pope Clement V in 1308.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and a brief reading from Matthew 8:

23 Then [Jesus] got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”

26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 12th of August 2026 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows at least 3 of the Knights survived… he saw them in that part of the 3rd Indiana Jones movie… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who can’t see the scene with the knights and cups without thinking of a Pepsi commercial from that era… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.