I probably wrote about the date here before. So you know it’s a bad-luck day because on Friday October 13, 1307, the Knights Templar —that militant order who protected pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land and also developed a banking system for them—were arrested en masse by King Phillip the Fair of France in collaboration with the French Pope, Clement IV.
WHY didn’t they resist—they were soldiers, after all! WHY did they, mostly, under torture, confess to the same blasphemies and sexual perversions and religious desecrations?
People have been trying to figure that out for 7 centuries now.
When Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master, was burned at the stake at the tip of Isle de la Cité in Paris, he turned to the viewing stand where King Philip, the Pope, and the king’s chief minister were ensconced, called out their names and said, “Within the year I will see you all before the throne of God!”
And they all died within a year.
People swam out in the Seine to collect relics of de Molay, and paddled back carrying fragments of his ashes in their mouths.
And in 1793, when Louis XVI’s head tumbled into the basket below the guillotine, a French Freemason stepped up to the scaffold, dipped his hand in the king’s blood and flicked the gory droplets out over the crowd, crying, “Jacques de Molay, you are avenged!
Souvenez-vous!
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
As well, Hyp, on the Via Crucis, in Jerusalem,(preserved by the Crusaders) the 13th “Station” was/is Christ’s death on the Cross – on a Friday that Christians call “Good”. Possibly 2 intertwined reasons for the malign nature of the confluence of this day and date?
But, it’s also a much-loved niece of mine’s birthday today, so it’s robbed of its sting in my house.
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The ending is perfect.
“Souvenez-vous!” indeed krap
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P.S. I knew maybe 3% of this. Enlightening and wonderful OP.
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Really, Simon, you didn’t know? And you a Templar!
I think I was a Knight Templar in another life. I have a costume I wear for Halloween, complete with a red-cross shield (just cardboard) bearing the motto Dieu Le Veult! It feels SOOOOOO good to wear it!
In some novel I read ages ago, a character says, “Sooner or later, every lunatic brings up the Templars.” C’est moi!
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I got “tagged” with Templar. It was never my thing but I am finding them interesting as I discover more about them.
I suppose I spent too much time with my jarheads on the rifle range instead of reading history. Just sayen’
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Of course! I was jes’ joshin’!
(But remind me to tell you how some of the knights escaped from Paris in a haywain, fled to Scotland where at the time, the Papal writ did not run cuz Bruce was under excommunication….and how was probably a force ofTemplars who relieved Bruce’s troops at Bannockburn……see? I am a lunatic!)
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Hypatia, I just wanted an excuse to tell the story of how the Templar came to be added to the Simon one evening in Iquitos, Peru.
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If dear Hypatia doesn’t, consider yours truly 🐼 as having said: “Please and thank you, do tell, ST.
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I have already.
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I know, I remember the story (je me souviens)
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“People have been trying to figure that out for 7 centuries now.”
Is there a consensus?
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Not that I know of, but it’s like global warming: people on both sides consider the matter settled and anyone who has an opposing viewpoint is a heretic 🔥!
—They were a buncha saintly militant aescetics and the King and Pope wanted to be rid of ‘em because they were so powerful and so successful at banking!
—They were sorcerers and sodomites who worshipped a bearded head (the Baphomet) and they routinely defaced and trampled a crucifix because they were gnostic holdouts!
…but then I made up my mind years ago, so I don’t really keep up with the scholarship.
About your ‘nym, lemme see if I remember it right: “Simon” was your nom de guerre, and some gorgeous and obviously literate Peruvian, (a fan, like me, of Leslie Charteris’ “The Saint” character) , suggested you add “Templar”. Amirite?
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She started calling me Mr. Templar and it (somehow!) stuck. She was not the type to suggest. One might even say, without fear of being corrected, that she was a full action figure.
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