All contemporaries agree in describing Philip as a man with a beautiful and noble appearance and graceful manners, but when describing his style of government, assessments differ. Some testify that the king was a single-minded man of iron will and rare energy. Others describe him as a meek and pious person, kind, condescending and trusting, often falling under the influence of others. The political line under him was carried out by ordinary people-upstarts: Chancellor Pierre Flotte, guardian of the royal seal Guillaume Nogaret and coadjutor Angerrand Marigny, to whom all the troubles and abuses that occurred during the reign of Philip are attributed.

After becoming king, Philip immediately ended the Aragonese war and recognized the Aragonese dynasty. In 1295, Philip was called to trial as his vassal, and when he refused, he began a war against him. On the side were the German king, counts, and, king. Philip was supported by the counts and, the duke, the king. While fighting the Scots, Philip attacked. Lille, Douai, Bruges and Ghent were captured practically without resistance. However, the strict rules introduced by the French ruler Jacques of Chatillon did not suit the Flemings. In 1301 and 1302, uprisings broke out in Bruges. The second of them soon spread to the entire province. In just one day, more than 3 thousand French knights and soldiers were killed in Bruges. An army led by Robert II of Artois was thrown against the rebels, but it was defeated at the Battle of Courtras. Thousands of spurs taken from the slain knights were piled up in the Maastricht church as trophies. In 1304, the king himself led an army of 60,000. The Flemish army was besieged in Lille, and after several unsuccessful assaults, peace was made. was returned to the Count, who was in French captivity. For his release, he had to pay a solid indemnity. As a pledge, Philip retained the land on the right bank of the Fox, but, having received the money, violated the contract and did not return the land.

At the same time, Philip's relations with Rome began to deteriorate sharply. The Pope, while still a cardinal, was on friendly terms with Philip. However, in 1296 the Pope issued a bull forbidding lay people to demand and receive subsidies from the clergy. Philip responded by banning the export of gold and silver from France. The Pope stopped receiving his income from France. The position of the pope on the throne was rather precarious, and he backed down, but the relationship between the king and the pope began to deteriorate sharply. Soon the Archbishop of Narbonne wrote to the Pope a complaint about the arbitrariness of the royal dignitaries in his domain. To settle the issue, he sent to Paris the Bishop of Pamier, Bernard Sesse, an arrogant and hot-tempered man. Bernard began to threaten the king with an interdict. An angry Philip took him into custody and demanded that the Pope depose the rebellious bishop. Pope sent a bull in which he demanded the release of Bernard. Philippe burned it on the porch of Notre Dame Cathedral. In 1302, he convened the first States General in the history of France. To the deputies, the king read a specially made forged bull and enlisted their support in the issue of protecting the French state and church from violation of their rights.

In April 1303 he excommunicated Philip from the church. In response, the king declared an antipope, a heretic and a warlock and demanded to convene an ecumenical council to hear the accusations against him. In the summer, the faithful Guillaume Nogaret was sent to Rome with a large sum of money. Teaming up with the Pope's enemies, he formed a vast conspiracy. The rebels broke into the palace in Anagni, began to shower the Pope with insults, threatened with arrest and demanded his abdication. Unable to withstand these attacks, he lost his mind and died in October of the same year. The new pope excommunicated Nogare, but did not touch Philip. A year later, he also died. Archbishop Bertrand de Gault of Bordeaux became the new pope under the name. He did not go to Rome, but was ordained in Lyons. In 1309 he settled in Avion, making this city a papal residence instead of Rome, and until his death was an obedient executor of the royal will. In particular, in 1307, Clement agreed with the charges against the Knights Templar, to which Philip owed a huge sum. 140 knights were arrested and the property of the order was confiscated. In March 1314, the head of the order, Jacques de Molay, was burned, but before his death, he cursed Philip and his entire family, predicting the imminent end of the Capetian dynasty. Philip himself was not yet old and in good health, moreover, he had three adult sons, and therefore did not take the prophecy seriously. However, shortly thereafter, he fell down from a strange debilitating disease, which no doctor could recognize, and on November 29, 1314, he died.

The era of Philip the Fair marked a turning point in French history. Philip further expanded the royal possessions, subjugated the church and the feudal lords, introduced royal courts and Roman law. State life took on a completely different character than under his predecessors. However, the curse of Jacques de Molay hung over the Capetian ...

Philip IV the Handsome

Philip IV.
Reproduction from the site http://monarchy.nm.ru/

Philippe IV le Bel (1268-1314), king France from the Capetian dynasty, was born in 1268 in Fontainebleau, in 1285 succeeded his father Philip III on the throne. The king steadily expanded his power at the expense of the rights of the feudal nobility. The royal sources of replenishment of the treasury ousted the feudal ones, and the jurisdiction of the royal court was noticeably strengthened. A standing army, supported by the king's money, replaced the former feudal militia. Philip's attempt to occupy Gascony led to a war with King Edward I of England, which lasted until 1298. Then the French king drew attention to the county of Flanders, where on July 11, 1302, his troops were defeated by the Flemish burghers at Courtraus. Meanwhile, beginning in 1296, Philip came into conflict with Pope Boniface VIII over the taxation of the clergy. Boniface claimed supreme power in the secular area as well and forbade secular rulers to tax the clergy without their consent. In 1303, Philip's envoys arrested the pope in his palace in Anagni, but two days later the locals released him, so it was not possible to send the pope to France for trial. A month later, Boniface died, it is believed, from the humiliation he suffered. Success came to Philip two years later, when the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected Pope, under the name of Clement V, who agreed to transfer the papal curia to Avignon, which was in close proximity to the French king's domain. From this time began a long period of French control over the papacy. In 1307, Philip fell upon the Knights Templar, many of the members of the order were executed, and the property of the order in France passed to Philip after Clement, to please the king, dissolved the order at the Vienna Cathedral in 1313. In March 1314, Jacques de Molay, the great master of the order. Another important event during the reign of Philip was the convening in April 1302 of the first States General, designed to provide the king with broad support in the fight against Boniface VIII. Philip died at Fontainebleau on November 29, 1314.

The materials of the encyclopedia "The World Around Us" were used.

Philip IV, King of France
Philip I, king of Navarre
Philip IV the Handsome
Philippe IV le Bel
Lived: 1268 - November 29, 1314
Reign: France: October 5, 1285 - November 29, 1314
Navarra: October 5, 1285 - April 2, 1305
Father: Philip III
Mother: Isabella of Aragon
Wife: Jeanne of Navarre
Sons: Louis, Philip , Karl, Robert
Daughters: Margarita, Blanca, Isabella

All contemporaries agree in describing Philip as a man with a beautiful and noble appearance and graceful manners, but when describing his style of government, assessments differ. Some testify that the king was a single-minded man of iron will and rare energy. Others describe him as a meek and pious person, kind, condescending and trusting, often falling under the influence of others. The political line under him was carried out by ordinary upstart people: Chancellor Pierre Flotte, the keeper of the royal seal Guillaume Nogaret and the coadjutor Angerrand Marigny, to whom all the troubles and abuses that occurred during the reign of Philip are attributed.
After becoming king, Philip immediately ended the Aragonese war and recognized Sicily as the Aragonese dynasty. In 1295, Philip called Edward I of England to trial as his vassal, and when he refused, he began a war against him. Emperor Adolf, the counts of Holland, Geldern, Brabant and Savoy, the king of Castile took the side of Edward. Philip was supported by the Counts of Burgundy and Lorraine, Duke of Lorraine, King of Scotland. While Edward was at war with the Scots, Philip attacked Flanders. Lille, Douai, Bruges and Ghent were captured practically without resistance. However, the tough rules introduced by the French ruler Jacques of Chatillon did not suit the Flemings. In 1301 and 1302. uprisings broke out in Bruges. The second of them soon spread to the entire province. In just one day, more than 3 thousand French knights and soldiers were killed in Bruges. An army led by Robert Artois was thrown against the rebels, but it was defeated at the Battle of Courtras. Thousands of spurs taken from the slain knights were piled up in the Maastricht church as trophies. In 1304, the king himself led an army of 60,000. The Flemish army was besieged in Lille, and after several unsuccessful shots, peace was made. Flanders was returned to Count Robert of Bethune, who was in French captivity. For his release, he had to pay a substantial indemnity. As a pledge, Philip retained the land on the right bank of the Fox, but, having received the money, violated the contract and did not return the land.
At the same time, Philip's relations with Rome began to deteriorate sharply. The Pope, while still a cardinal, was on friendly terms with Philip. However, in 1296 the Pope issued a bull forbidding the laity to demand and receive subsidies from the clergy. Philip responded by banning the export of gold and silver from France. The Pope stopped receiving his income from France. The position of the pope on the throne was rather precarious, and he backed down, but the relationship between the king and the pope began to deteriorate sharply. Soon the Archbishop of Narbonne wrote to the Pope a complaint about the arbitrariness of the royal dignitaries in his domain. To settle the issue, Boniface sent to Paris the Bishop of Pamier, Bernard Sesse, an arrogant and hot-tempered man. Bernard began to threaten the king with an interdict. An angry Philip took him into custody and demanded that the Pope depose the rebellious bishop. Pope sent a bull in which he demanded the release of Bernard. Philippe burned it on the porch of Notre Dame. In 1302 he convened the first States General in the history of France. He read out a specially prepared forged bull to the deputies and enlisted their support in the issue of protecting the French state and church from violation of their rights.
In April 1303 Boniface excommunicated Philip from the church. In response, the king declared Boniface an antipope, a heretic and a warlock, and demanded that an ecumenical council be convened to hear the accusations against him. In the summer, the faithful Guillaume Nogaret was sent to Rome with a large sum of money. Teaming up with the Pope's enemies, he formed a vast conspiracy. The rebels broke into Boniface's palace in Anagni, began to shower the Pope with insults, threatened with arrest and demanded his abdication. Unable to withstand these attacks, Boniface lost his mind and died in October of the same year. The new Pope Benedict XI excommunicated Nogare, but did not touch Philip. A year later, he also died. Archbishop Bertrand de Gault of Bordeaux became the new pope under the name of Clement V. He did not go to Rome, but was ordained in Lyon. In 1309 he settled in Avion, making this city a papal residence instead of Rome, and until his death was an obedient executor of the royal will. In particular, in 1307, Clement agreed with the charges against the Knights Templar, to which Philip owed a huge sum. 140 knights were arrested and the property of the order was confiscated. In March 1313, the head of the order, Jacques Molay, was burned, but before his death, he cursed Philip and his entire family, predicting the imminent end of the Capetian dynasty. Philip himself was not yet old and in good health, moreover, he had three adult sons, and therefore did not take the prophecy seriously. However, shortly thereafter, he fell ill from a strange debilitating illness that no doctor could recognize, and on November 29, 1314, he died.
The era of Philip the Fair marked a turning point in French history. Philip further expanded the royal possessions, subjugated the church and the feudal lords, introduced royal courts and Roman law. State life took on a completely different character than under his predecessors. However, the curse of Jacques Molet hung over the Capetian ...

Used materials from the site http://monarchy.nm.ru/

Philip IV the Handsome (1268-1314) was a Capetian king of France who ruled from 1285-1314. Son of Philip III and Isabella of Aragon.

Wife: Juanna I, Queen of Navarre, daughter of King Enrico I of Navarre (born 1271 + 1304).

Philip IV remains a somewhat mysterious figure for historians. On the one hand, his entire policy makes one think that he was a man of iron will and rare energy, accustomed to pursuing his goal with unshakable persistence. Meanwhile, the testimonies of people who personally knew the king are in a strange contradiction with this opinion. The chronicler William of Scots wrote about Philip that the king had a beautiful and noble appearance, graceful manners and behaved very impressively. With all this, he was distinguished by extraordinary meekness and modesty, with disgust he avoided obscene conversations, carefully attended the divine services, faithfully performed the posts and wore a hair shirt. He was kind, condescending, and willingly put complete trust in people who did not deserve it. It was they, according to Wilhelm, who were responsible for all the troubles and abuses that marked his reign: the imposition of oppressive taxes, extraordinary extortions and systematic damage to the coin. Another chronicler, Giovanni Vilani, wrote that Philip was very handsome, gifted with a serious mind, but he did a lot of hunting and liked to entrust others with the affairs of management. Geoffroy also reports that the king easily obeyed bad advice. Thus, we have to admit that a large role in Philip's politics was played by his associates: Chancellor Pierre Flotte, guardian of the seal Guillaume Nogaret and coadjutor of the kingdom of Angerrand Marigny. All these were ordinary people, ascended to the heights of power by the king himself.

Philip ascended the throne at the age of seventeen and first of all took up the solution of the Sicilian and Aragonese issues, inherited from his father. He immediately ceased hostilities and did nothing to support the claims of his brother Charles of Valois, who dreamed of becoming the Aragonese (or, at worst, Sicilian) king. The negotiations, however, dragged on for another ten years and ended with the fact that Sicily remained with the Aragonese dynasty. In relations with the English king Edward 1, Philip's policy was more energetic. Clashes often occurred between the subjects of the two states. Taking advantage of one of them, Philip in 1295 called the king of England, as his vassal, to the court of the Parisian parliament. Edward refused to obey, and war was declared on him. Both opponents were looking for allies. Edward's supporters were the Emperor Adolf, the Counts of Holland, Geldern, Brabant and Savoy, as well as the King of Castile. Philip's allies were the Earl of Burgundy, the Duke of Lorraine, the Earl of Luxembourg and the Scots. However, of these, only the Scots and Count of Flanders Guy Dampierre had a real impact on events. Edward himself, busy with a difficult war in Scotland, concluded a truce with Philip in 1297, and in 1303 - a peace, according to which Guyenne was left to the English king. The entire burden of the war fell on the shoulders of the Flemings. In 1297 the French army invaded Flanders. Philippe himself laid siege to Lille, and Count Robert Artois won a victory at Fourne (largely due to the betrayal of the nobility, among which there were many adherents of the French party). After that, Lille gave up. In 1299 Karl Valois captured Douai, passed through Bruges and in May 1300 entered Ghent. He met no resistance anywhere. Count Guy surrendered together with his two sons and 51 knights. The king stripped him of his possessions as a rebel and annexed Flanders to his kingdom. In 1301, Philip traveled around his new domains and was greeted everywhere with expressions of obedience. But he immediately tried to make the most of his new acquisition and imposed heavy taxes on the country. This caused discontent, and the harsh management of Jacques Chatillon further increased the hatred of the French. When riots broke out in Bruges in 1301, Jacques sentenced the perpetrators to huge fines, ordered the city wall to be broken down and a citadel built in the city. Then in May 1302 a second, much more powerful uprising broke out. In one day, the people killed 1200 French knights and 2000 soldiers in the city. After that, all Flanders took up arms. In June, a French army approached, led by Robert Artois. But in a stubborn battle at Courtras, she was utterly defeated. Up to 6,000 French knights perished with their commander. Thousands of spurs taken from the slain were piled up in the Mastricht church as trophies of victory. Philip could not leave such a shame not to avenged. In 1304, at the head of an army of 60,000, the king approached the borders of Flanders. In August, in a stubborn battle at Mons-en-Nylle, the Flemings were defeated, but retreated in good order to Lille. After several attacks, Philip made peace with the son of Guy Dampier, Robert Bethune, who was in his captivity. Philip agreed to return the country to him, while the Flemings retained all their rights and privileges. However, the cities had to pay a large indemnity for the release of their count and other prisoners. As a pledge of the payment of the ransom, the king took the lands on the right bank of the Lis with the cities of Lille, Douai, Bethune and Orsha. He was supposed to return them after receiving the money, but treacherously violated the agreement and left them forever with France.

These events unfolded against the background of the contradictions with the pope that intensified every year. At first, nothing seemed to foreshadow this conflict. None of the European kings was so loved by Pope Boniface VIII as Philip the Handsome. As early as 1290, when the Pope was only Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani and came to France as a papal legate, he admired the piety of the young king. Having ascended the throne in 1294, Boniface zealously supported the policy of the French king in Spain and Italy. The first signs of mutual distrust were revealed in 1296. In August, the Pope issued a bull, in which he forbade the laity to demand and receive subsidies from the clergy. By a strange coincidence, and perhaps in response to the bull, Philip at the same time forbade the export of gold and silver from France: by this he destroyed one of the main sources of papal income, because the French Church could no longer send any money to Rome. Even then, a quarrel could arise, but Boniface's position on the papal throne was still fragile, the cardinals begged him to stop the scandals caused by the bull, and he yielded to them. In 1297, the bull was promulgated, effectively canceling the previous one. As you can see, the pope expected the king to make concessions too. Philip allowed the pope's income, which he received from the French clergy, to be taken to Rome, but he continued to oppress the church, and soon there were new clashes with the pope. The Archbishop of Narbonne complained to Boniface that the royal dignitaries had taken away his fiefdom, over some of the vassals of his cathedra, and generally inflicted various insults on him. The Pope sent Bishop Bernard Sesse to Paris as legate on this matter. At the same time, he was instructed to demand the release from captivity of the Count of Flanders and the fulfillment of the previously given promise to participate in the crusade. Bernard, known for his arrogance and irascibility, was absolutely not the kind of person who could be entrusted with such a delicate assignment. Not having achieved concessions, he began to threaten Philip with an interdict and generally spoke so harshly that he pissed off the usually cold-blooded Philip from himself. The king sent two members of his council to Pamier and to the County of Toulouse to gather evidence to accuse Bernard of disobedience. During the investigation, it turned out that the bishop during his sermons often used inappropriate expressions and turned his flock against the royal power. Philip ordered the legate to be arrested and taken into custody at Sanli. He also demanded from the pope that he deposed Bernard and allowed him to be brought to the secular court. The pope answered the king with an angry letter, demanded the immediate release of his legate, threatened Philip with excommunication and ordered him to appear in his court in order to justify himself from charges of tyranny, mismanagement and minting of corrupted coins. Philip ordered to solemnly burn this bull on the porch of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris. In April 1302, he convened the first States General in history in Paris. They were attended by representatives of the clergy, barons and prosecutors of the main northern and southern cities. To arouse the indignation of the deputies, they read out a forged papal bull, in which the pope's claims were strengthened and sharpened. After that, Chancellor Flott turned to them with a question: can the king count on the support of the estates if he takes measures to protect the honor and independence of the state, as well as to save the French church from violating its rights? The nobles and city deputies replied that they were ready to support the king. The clergy, after a short hesitation, also joined the opinion of the other two estates.

After that, for a year, the opponents hesitated to take decisive measures, but the hostility between them was growing. Finally, in April 1303, Boniface excommunicated the king and freed seven ecclesiastical provinces in the Rhone basin from vassalage and from the oath of allegiance to the king. This measure, however, had no effect. Philip declared Boniface a false pope (indeed, there were some doubts about the legality of his election), a heretic and even a warlock. He demanded to convene an ecumenical council to hear these accusations, but at the same time he said that the pope should be at this council as a prisoner and accused. From words he turned to deeds. In the summer, Nogare, faithful to him, went to Italy with a large amount of money. Soon he entered into relations with the enemies of Boniface and conspired against him on a large scale. At that time, the Pope was in Anagni, where on September 8 he wanted to bring Philip to a public curse. On the eve of this day, the conspirators broke into the papal palace, surrounded Boniface, showered him with all sorts of insults and demanded his abdication. Nogare threatened to put him in chains and take him to the cathedral in Lyons as a criminal to be sentenced over him. The Pope withstood these attacks with dignity. For three days he was in the hands of his enemies. Finally, the people of Ananya freed him. But from the humiliation he had endured, Boniface fell into such frustration that he went mad and died on October 11. His humiliation and death had dire consequences for the papacy. The new Pope Benedict XI excommunicated Nogare, but ended the persecution of Philip himself. In the summer of 1304 he died. In his place was elected Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand du Gotha, who took the name Clement V. He did not go to Italy, but was ordained in Lyon. In 1309 he settled in Avignon and turned this city into a papal residence. Until his death, he remained an obedient executor of the will of the French king. In addition to many other concessions to Philip, Clement agreed in 1307 with the charges against the Knights Templar. In October, 140 French knights of this order were arrested, and a trial began against them on charges of heresy. In 1312 the Pope declared the order destroyed. Philip, who owed the Templars huge sums, took possession of all their wealth. In March 1313, the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques Molay, was burned. Before his death, he cursed the entire Capetian family and predicted its imminent degeneration. Indeed, shortly after the execution, Philip began to suffer from a debilitating disease that doctors could not recognize, and died of it in Fonteblo on November 29, 1314. at the 46th year of life. His reign constituted a turning point in the history of medieval France: he expanded the kingdom by the annexation of new lands (shortly before his death, he annexed Lyon and its district to France), forced the church and feudal rulers to obey the orders of the king, and suppressed any power independent of himself in his state. Under him, the royal administration embraced all aspects of society: cities, feudal nobility, clergy - all fell under her control. His reign seemed to his contemporaries a time of brutal oppression and despotism. But behind all this, a new era was already visible. With the help of a large corporation of lawyers, the king took every opportunity to establish royal courts everywhere and to introduce Roman law. By the end of his life, all judicial power in the country passed exclusively to the crown, and state life acquired a completely different character than under his predecessors.

All the monarchs of the world. Western Europe. Konstantin Ryzhov. Moscow, 1999

Read on:

Jeanne I(1273-1305), Queen of Navarre, Countess of Champagne and Brie, wife of Philip.

(chronological table).

(chronological table).

A. VENEDIKTOV - And indeed, everything is "not so", as always, with Natalya Basovskaya, the historian, we find out that everything was not written that way, at least by writers. Good day!

N. BASOVSKAYA - Good afternoon!

A. VENEDIKTOV - There are people slandered in fiction, there are people ... undeservedly, there are people undeservedly exalted in the same "heroic" books, right? And today we chose a story with Natalia Basovskaya, now, a strange story associated with Philip IV the Handsome, the French king, and as part of this topic - this is his story, his personal, personal story with the Order of the Templars, whom he dispersed. There, he did something else with them - he burned them, hung them up, dispersed them - it turns out that there are only 150 knights, not so many, according to the current scale.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Then it was a lot.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes. Philip the Handsome. How do we know about him? We know about him, of course, from the books of Druon "The Iron King" - he was called that, the Iron King. And the first acquaintance with the Templars - among normal people, among normal people - happened in Walter Scott's book "Ivanhoe": Templars are, in fact, the Templars. Burando Boualgiver. All are bad: Philip the Iron is bad, the Templars are bad. What kind of people were these, what kind of conflict was, where did such an iron king come from in France, and why did he do this to the order?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Historical science can clarify something here, but in the light of our transmission, with an atypical result: so, something like that. At one time, studying very carefully the events of this era - around the Hundred Years War, before it, during the Hundred Years War - I read a lot of sources from the XIV, XV, XII centuries. Well, in particular, today we are worried about XIV. And I was convinced that Maurice Druon is surprisingly accurate, documentary. We had such an amusing situation in Soviet times - the so-called, here, a waste campaign was announced ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes! ..

N. BASOVSKAYA - My modern students do not understand what it is. With what amazement they listen that it was possible to hand over a mountain of waste paper - first of all, they handed over any party press.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - To which we were forcibly subscribed, to receive a coupon and buy a book by Maurice Druon, from the series "Damned Kings". There was a very funny effect: the then spontaneously anti-monarchical Soviet people called this series, reading it with enthusiasm, "Damned Kings", putting some kind of class content into this completely different story, the history of damnation. And I gradually became convinced how accurate Druon was. We with him, I will say modestly - I later met him in life, I have great respect for him - we read the same sources - chronicles, first of all, in which this story is spelled out in detail, documents, for example, between the pope and the king correspondence, threatening correspondence, irritated, stories of different chroniclers - they compared them. It is said that Druon was assisted by a group of young historians, probably.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, that's good. Who is against that?

N. BASOVSKAYA - But in my Soviet tradition, a lonely Soviet woman turns sleepers on the railway, and with these hundreds, if not thousands of documents, I was alone.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Is it really Philip, he had two nicknames - the French usually called their kings accurately enough. If Lazy, so Lazy, if Bald, so certainly Bald. So he really was Handsome and Iron?

N. BASOVSKAYA - It is believed that yes. In fact, beauty, the concept of beauty had its own ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, yes ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - It necessarily assumed physical strength, power, according to those standards. He had to be strong. But the Lazy of those times, a little earlier, the early Capetian - is not necessarily lazy, not even always. This is the one who rules weakly, the one who does not succeed. From the time of the early Merovingians, the predecessors of the Capetian. Well, Philip IV, who ruled from 1285 to 1314, is remembered. It was bright. And in the literature it is reflected like this, but science, of course, can explain more in it. From the point of view of science, the main thing in it was not just, behold, a violent character, cruelty, energetic politics. In it, the politician of the New Time stood out.

A. VENEDIKTOV - And you know, Natalya Ivanovna, in my personal life - when I was reading, preparing for the broadcast, I also read something there - it turns out that he is an absolutely outstanding king in the sense that he was an exemplary family man.

N. BASOVSKAYA - I loved.

A. VENEDIKTOV - They walked left and right, and he ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - He loved his children, loved his wife, and could not imagine the terrible fate that awaits his children, first of all, in connection with this future curse. So that's what came through. He is the grandson of Louis IX the Saint, the classic medieval king. Well…

A. VENEDIKTOV - "All to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem."

N. BASOVSKAYA - Of course! He lived only on the idea of ​​the Crusades, apparently, his grandfather was sincerely religious. And in France there was an idea - the good laws of the times of Louis IX. This is the peak of the Middle Ages, this is the XIII century. And here is the grandson, he is just trampling on the classical Middle Ages. He is in an eternal quarrel with the papacy, and in an irreconcilable, unacceptable quarrel ...

A.VENEDIKTOV - Political?

N. BASOVSKAYA - ... desperate. This is a battle for money.

A. VENEDIKTOV - For money? Those. not political?

N. BASOVSKAYA - No. It looks political: they talk about whose power is higher. But in fact, the most important thing for Pope Boniface VIII is that Philip IV suddenly banned the export of gold and silver from France. And what will flow into the papal treasury?

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, yes, money was minted from metal.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Well, what about the times of natural precious metal. And now, behind the words, whose power is higher, who is closer to God, who is more on behalf of God, there are real living financial interests. The quarrel deepens. And Philip does behave like a non-classical medieval king. It is no coincidence that he - at the same time, there is something classic - seizes new lands, makes a campaign in Flanders - it seems that now he will really conquer it, but suffers a terrible defeat in 1302, at the Battle of Courtraus, where the townspeople defeated on foot knights. Here is the age of transition, the dying of chivalry and the classical Middle Ages and the birth of something new. He surrounded himself with the so-called legists.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Let's stop. What is it, who are these people, what is it?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Lawyers.

A. VENEDIKTOV - That is ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - Lawyers.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Lawyers. That is…

N. BASOVSKAYA - That time. Lawyers.

A. VENEDIKTOV - But not nobles, not knights?

N. BASOVSKAYA - From different ... basically, no. Mostly not.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Raznochintsy? Commoners?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Of course.

A.VENEDIKTOV - Bourgeois? Bourgeois?

N. BASOVSKAYA - New time is coming. New time is coming.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Ie. he picks up ... he's like Peter, right? He ... so that our listeners understand ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - Of course, of course.

A. VENEDIKTOV - He raises ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - Not as purposefully as Peter ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Not catching up with anyone, but naturally following those state interests that he clearly sees. The royal treasury should be richer, it should be more independent from anyone else. And then, they say, he will bring complete order in France. Moreover, a strict order. These legists compose laws, orders, orders for him, which clash, in particular, with the interests of the papacy.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Ie. after all, these are people of low origin, as a rule? Well, in terms of the Middle Ages. Yes?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, of course.

A. VENEDIKTOV - He surrounded himself with rabble.

N. BASOVSKAYA - With no blue blood. With not blue blood.

A. VENEDIKTOV - I see.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Ie. these are the symptoms of the approaching ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - I see. Important.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Once Huizinga, a remarkable Austrian culturologist, called this era the autumn of the Middle Ages. I don’t know the best name. After all, autumn can be beautiful in appearance - golden, bright, beautiful, the sky is still blue - but all the same, the main parameters of summer go away. And here the main parameters of the Middle Ages disappear. And he commits a terrible act at that time. He goes so far in his conflict with the pope - and that imperious, Boniface VIII, elderly and convinced of the absolute priority of papal power, and not wanting to lose money - that Philip sends a delegation to him led by a certain Nogare - a brazen temporary worker, a mighty type.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Menshikov? I am looking for types.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Well, he, yes, not from the lower classes. And this Nogare, according to various stories - there are already legends, myths, sources, the chroniclers themselves were not there, but they write - did something terrible in the papal chambers. In the town of Anagni. Either he entered the papal chambers, opening the door, figuratively speaking, with his foot, or he simply spoke rudely, or - the highest point of this assumption - gave the Pope a slap in the face.

A.VENEDIKTOV - Can you imagine it at that time?

N. BASOVSKAYA - You can.

A. VENEDIKTOV - You can, yes?

N. BASOVSKAYA - The horror is that, understanding how people were religious, I am amazed at a number of facts. Well, for example, when, by order of Henry II Plantagenet in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury was killed at the altar.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - At the request of the king. Well, how did the fear of God's judgment not stop them? So it is here. We admit - something like a slap in the face. And as it was written in one very touching pre-revolutionary book, "unable to bear the insults, the proud old man died a few days later." He really died.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, maybe they just stabbed and that's it?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Nobody hints at this. An insult. And for him this insult, the man sitting on the throne of St. Peter, was worse than a knife. Apparently, the impact was exactly the same. He was stabbed, only like that, morally. And the collision with the church became simply irreversible for Philip IV. He had nowhere to retreat further. Over time, he waited out another shortly reigned Pope Boniface IX and then, in fact, put the popes in his service in Avignon - this is the so-called Avignon captivity of the popes. Here he won. And feeling that his hands were untied ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Wait, and these arrogant barons of him, how did they look at all this? Major feudal lords ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - Because they understood that this would increase the money of the king, and the king is handouts ... Even in Ancient Egypt, it is written on the wall of the pyramid "the king is food." And this formula has never been canceled or canceled. The king is food. Philip will have more money - and it will not be so bad for them. And their religious feelings somehow become silent. They somehow become silent. And so, in the course of this already irreversible process of collision with the church, he swung at the famous Order of the Templars. Famous, but in literature he, of course, is presented one-sided - here is "not so". The Templars should not be regarded only as some kind of collection of villains. They ... firstly, the Order was created in 1119, after the First Crusade, very soon, and received the name of the Templars from the word "temple" - "temple". Not far from the Temple of Solomon was this place, from the legendary site of the Temple of Solomon. And at first they really pursued, first of all, spiritual goals - to protect the conquests of the crusaders in the East, to resist the Crescent, to resist another religion, the infidels, as they called them - this was the main thing. But time went on. They got rich. They turned out to be surprisingly business-like. Here, the crusading movement was defeated. At the end of the 13th century, well, 1291, the crusaders leave the Holy Land. And the Templars settled in France. First, what is there to defend from there? It's all already lost. It is all lost. Yes, they are participating in the preparation of new Crusades, already, in general, hopeless, but in parallel - the time has also changed since the XII century - and they are becoming so business-like. They became at that moment - in the XIII century - the first usurers of Western Europe. Probably the most ruthless, most cruel bankers who squeeze money out of their debtors, and had the imprudence among their debtors to have the Iron King himself. Philip IV owed them a lot. In essence, of course, a mistake. Such a person will not take care of the strict repayment of the debt, he will look for some other way to get away from this debt. And here you are ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Did you owe money?

N. BASOVSKAYA - A lot of money. I took, I took from them, I took, I took out loans, they gave. And here is the simplest thought, which also never died in any era: how one does not want to give! How good it was in his time Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky in his works, when he raised the topic of debt, “I really don’t want to give,” his characters say. "Or maybe it will somehow manage." But when you don't want to give to the king, and to a king with a very tough, ferocious character and a powerful apparatus that he has created around him ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Did he create the apparatus? He didn’t just collect, there ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - These same jurists, quite a strong army - although it was defeated in Flanders, he again strengthened it. He is not a weak ruler. And I really don't want to give! This is one of the motives, of course, of the process against the Templars that he started.

A. VENEDIKTOV - I just want to tell our listeners a very interesting story: when I was preparing for the broadcast, I discovered a very interesting site. Fans of the Templars, the current Templars in Russia, have created a website where the history of the Order, the history of all the masters, the history of armor ... I'll just tell you the address now, for those who are interested. But these are not professional historians. Those. there is clearly, there ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - These are enthusiasts.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Enthusiasts, yes. www.tampliers.info. Come in and take a look. I learned a lot of interesting things there.

N. BASOVSKAYA - I think. This is really interesting to many, because the Templars were a striking phenomenon. They wore a white cloak with a red cross, they were good warriors, no one ever reproached them for cowardice, although they suffered a major defeat in the East in a decisive battle. But in general they were warriors. But the rebirth by the XIV century went in the direction of this entrepreneurship. New century, new era, new times are coming. Money comes first compared to their spiritual slogans and priorities.

A. VENEDIKTOV - It always seemed that the Italians, here, at this time, sort of ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - In parallel. Undoubtedly. In northern Italy, in Lombardy ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - In parallel, right? In Lombardy, yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - They are also very strong banking houses, and France also deals with them. But in France ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Ie. The Templars were, in practice, still competitors of the Lombard houses.

N. BASOVSKAYA - In general, yes. And Philip also addressed there. And he, too, will warm up the Jews, bankers and financiers in France, in order to oppose, for example, the Templars, then suddenly mass expulsions from there in order to confiscate money. His policy was, of course, cruel, frankly rude, but he explained all this by the interests of a strong France. In general, no one has yet formulated the ideas of absolutism, far away even before the Sun King, but the movements of the Iron King were in this direction. And with the trial of the Templars judicial, which he started, he, apparently, still made a big human error. Well, science is in the know, what a curse is, what mysticism is, how many works of art are involved in this. Nobody will ever give a hard scientific answer. Now we are getting closer to this famous curse. General of the Order of the Knights Templar under Philippe, a certain Jacques de Molay, originally from Burgundy, Grand Master - he was called either General or Grand Master. Born in his time in Burgundy, the personality is strong, significant, independent. He was preparing in 1306 in Cyprus for another war with the infidels, and at this time the "pocket" Pope of Philip IV the Beautiful Clement V ordered the entire leadership of the Order and Jacques de Molay himself to urgently arrive in France. He complied. Apparently, he did not have good intelligence, he didn’t have ... either these plans did not work out yet, or he was not told about them, he in good faith, together with the entire leadership of the Order, arrived in France.

A. VENEDIKTOV - To him, to dad?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Pope in Avignon ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - The Pope was in Avignon.

N. BASOVSKAYA - ... he arrived in Paris.

A. VENEDIKTOV - To Paris, yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - He was ordered to Paris. At the call of the king. In one night, everyone, the entire top of the Order, was arrested by order of the king.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, such a large special operation!

N. BASOVSKAYA - Terrible.

A. VENEDIKTOV - They were sitting in castles, not only in Paris, they were sitting ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - They were taken by surprise. They were not completely prepared for this - that was no intelligence. And at first it seemed to them that it was even just some kind of misunderstanding. And the process began. It was quite lengthy. Well, in any case, it dragged on for several years. Probably one of the most striking falsified processes in history.

A. VENEDIKTOV - What do you mean falsified?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Numerous witnesses were gathered against them, who began to tell such things, well, that they had personally seen. As for the divine service in the Order of the Templars, in their temples, Satan personally flies. He was described in all the details, in those in which he was presented on the frescoes in the church, starting from the early Middle Ages - with horns, and with hooves, and with the smell of sulfur, and a tail, and in wool - with all sorts of these heartbreaking details. , which in the iconography of the Middle Ages were gradually formed, polished ... And Satan was already a man ... he saw him, because he really saw him many times, endlessly, during some church events, divine services. And so, in his mind he already really is, and there is just such. And these witnesses tell how they saw him, exactly this, each in detail, how he soared around their church, stayed at their service. Why do we still assume, well, gross falsification, because further heartbreaking details that have become the standard of the Inquisition. The process is inquisitorial. They saw, they say, that the Templars personally bow to him and even perform all sorts of indecent actions that we will not retell, emphasizing their devotion to Satan. They were accused of all the perversions that can be imagined, and this is too much, above all, speaks about the nature of the process. In addition, they were subjected, and this was not hidden, the most terrible torture.

A. VENEDIKTOV - What did you want?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Money.

A. VENEDIKTOV - And, "where is the money?"

N. BASOVSKAYA - Where is the money. Firstly, where, and secondly, the legal right to confiscate them. If the Order, as it turned out, serves Satan, then any of their treasures and riches can be confiscated on a completely legal basis.

A. VENEDIKTOV - We will interrupt for a few minutes of news. I remind you that Natalia Basovskaya is in our studio. We are talking about the Templar case and about Philip IV the Handsome, the French king, aka the Iron King.

NEWS

A. VENEDIKTOV - By the way, there are also "heroic" books - by the way, let me remind you that in our studio Natalya Basovskaya - "Everyday Life", here is a wonderful series that I always recommend in every way, just there is one good book about the Templars, writes Helena. And Nikolai writes: “You called this period the autumn of the Middle Ages, and you won’t tell me when it ended, in the sense of a century”.

N. BASOVSKAYA - In the middle of the 15th century, according to the majority. Of course, this is not some kind of rigid border, but basically the Middle Ages in these classical countries of Western Europe ends in the middle of the 15th century. Many of its attributes remain, but in essence, the New Time continues to come with the same imperious steps. England will be a little late, there the War of the Roses will last until the 80s of the 15th century, but in general ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Nothing, then everything will be fine.

N. BASOVSKAYA -… this is the dawn of the New Time. Cruel dawn.

A. VENEDIKTOV - You said, and I return to the pager, we will now talk ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - To the process.

A. VENEDIKTOV - To the process, yes, and to the pager. Well, the pager is in progress. Alla writes: "Was the accusation of sodomy of the Templars a political accusation in the trial against them, or was it justified?"

N. BASOVSKAYA - How is it called today, "dirty technologies"?

A. VENEDIKTOV - Black PR.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Black PR. Well, no ... it won't be a gross modernization, to say that it's basically the same thing. Those. no one had previously been interested in their moral character, figuratively speaking, and suddenly, by the decree of the king - and here it doesn't matter, really, not real - our time has some kind of special, temporary, I hope, interest in this a business. It was a way to tarnish. All methods were good. And since it was somehow a priori believed that they were dealing, as it turned out suddenly, with the servants of the devil, they could be tortured as desired and even good: the most brutal torture, as it were, at the same time ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Skillfully.

N. BASOVSKAYA - ... maybe, yes, they will drive out the devil too. And the most brutal torture was applied to them. And only this made the Grand Master Jacques de Molay slander, confirm all these wild accusations. Everything. And come to this terrible moral defeat. In response, he received a sentence - life imprisonment-imprisonment. But as soon as ... apparently, physical and spiritual strength returned to him to some extent, he denied his testimony, declared that he despised himself for this, that God would never forgive him - he was afraid of God's punishment in the next world more than execution on the ground.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Philip was not scared, but he was scared?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Philip was not afraid, that's nothing. And who knows how their fates developed further there.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - He recanted these testimonies, and then the verdict was revised. He was sentenced to execution, at the stake, naturally, as he was executed for heresy. And so I recently found one detail. It turns out that here one could have shown greater - well, in general, this is known - greater cruelty, less. It is known that when there was less cruelty, the executioner killed his victim in advance and the already dead body burned.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Strangled, yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, I did. For some money, often. And here Philip ordered his execution, Jacques de Molay, but burn him over low fire. Over low heat. This detail, it speaks of some, here, that level of atrocity, which, in the words of my favorite writers, the Strugatsky brothers, surpasses the normal level of medieval atrocity. And he came to see it himself. And since on a low fire, there was time for the dying Jacques de Molay to do what he did. From the flame of this slowly flaring fire, he cursed, first of all, himself, once again, before God, he repeated that he cursed himself for temporary weakness, but repented. And he cursed, right in the face of Philip said: "Cursed be you and your family." But, of course, rumor quotes differently ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Is this not a myth?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Maybe. But there is always something behind any such myth. What is behind this? If he did not say these words, then he experienced these feelings, and could not help but experience them. And feelings are also quite material. And an unprecedented thing happened. The curse, of course, just amazingly comes true in fact. I do not want to instill any mystical moods, but it turned out that way. The Capetian family, which was represented by Philip IV the Beautiful, has been on the French throne since 987. Hugo Capet is the first ruler of the Counts of Paris. And for a long time - with some difficulties, with some problems - but there was continuity, and they were all in power, the Capetian. Philip could not have had any concern about this.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Why?

N. BASOVSKAYA - And he had three sons. Three sons! With a small age interval. What is there to worry about?

A.VENEDIKTOV - Adults?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Adults, mature people. First of all, Philip dies. There is no such external mystery in his death. And there is an essential mystery. Because this completely iron man - it was not for nothing that he got his nickname - began to fall ill. Attributed to falling from a horse.

A. VENEDIKTOV - And this is the same year, in my opinion.

N. BASOVSKAYA - In a few months.

A. VENEDIKTOV - In a few months. That's important.

N. BASOVSKAYA - In a few months. Less than a year has passed. He began to be ill, to be ill, to languish, as did his sons later. And he died, without any pronounced, visible reason. He was succeeded by his eldest son Louis X, who entered history with that naive nickname - you mentioned naive nicknames here already, there are fewer of them than before, but there were - Grumpy. Now, not very flattering for the king. Fate gave him two years on the throne.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Was he years old?

N. BASOVSKAYA - He was ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, was he aged?

N. BASOVSKAYA - He died at 29, in my opinion.

A. VENEDIKTOV - A, i.e. he was of the normal age for the Middle Ages.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Absolutely, died at the age of 29. They all died at 29-30, like that. All his sons. Continuous failures. Two years of failure. 1314 - 1316. Here, sheer failures. A trip to Flanders is a defeat, but what a defeat. Even more shameful. They called it Gryazevy campaign. They all drowned there in the mud, in the rains - worse than under Courtraus, where they were slaughtered by the townspeople in their time, by the French knights. Wherever he rushes, nothing works, he will not collect money in any way, the treasury is devastated, he does not rule very dexterously. There are firm rumors about his wife that she is cheating on him. He quickly imprisons her in the castle, orders her to be killed. This does not decorate him, there is a very bad mood around him. John's daughter remains.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Wait, and these legists, who, here ... where is the king's guard?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Partly destroyed, the brothers continued. Those who were so close to my dad were suspicious if they would serve me. And new ones have not yet grown, they are just as powerful. Those. what is your fault? Very curious, here is such a helpless, nickname Grumpy, his character is not good. And so, he rushed, basically, for money, for funds. But amid these rushes, he does a very curious act: he actively encourages the abolition of the personal dependence of the peasants. Serfdom. In his domains, and these are large royal lands, he simply resolutely abolished. And he advised his subjects.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, maybe not he, maybe, what advisors?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Get the money.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Oh, money! Get the money!

N. BASOVSKAYA - Money. Liberation for money.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Exemption for money. A! Well, there ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - In her throwing, where is the money ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes, here, yes ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - After all, the sad humor is that, as the rumor of that time firmly believes, up to this day, the huge treasures of the Templars, on which his father, Philip IV the Handsome, had counted, were not discovered. There was something, of course. But there were legends about the fabulous, the incredible. People were looking for them, including the twentieth century. In France, a whole group of such people, slightly moved on this topic, acquired locks several times, finding some old maps - just like in "Treasure Island" - which, supposedly, is indicated by a cross, where the Templars' treasures are buried - they managed to, how to hide. So, people acquired the castle in order to dismantle it for many years, completely go broke, dismantle it, going to this place where the treasures lie, and they never found the treasures. And so the sons were left without great material assistance. So Louis X the Grumpy dies.

A. VENEDIKTOV - He has a daughter. He has a daughter.

N. BASOVSKAYA - He still has a daughter, whose origin is doubtful due to the alleged infidelity of her mother, which allegedly took place. Dies, again in the same way, for no apparent reason.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Maybe they were poisoned?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Anything can happen. But the curse begins to come true.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - The next son. Philip V, nicknamed Long. Well, probably, this is also a tradition of translation. He can also be called High. After all, there are shades.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Long, yes, le long, yes, high.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, of course. This is the tradition of Russian translation. 1316 - 1322. Fate ordered him ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - 6 years - a lot.

N. BASOVSKAYA -… 6 years old. Compared to the reign of their predecessor, their ancestor Louis IX - there almost 50 years - Philip IV himself ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - 30 there, yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Well, by the age of 40. This is all the perfect moment. Philip was clearly the most intelligent person of them all. He tried to follow his father's policy, but all the time he wanted to do something constructive. And what is the result? In the same 30 years, he dies, it is completely incomprehensible, there are no clear reasons. They suppose ... well, you won't know anything about diseases at all. But this is what is expressive: he decided to do one concrete thing, in the spirit of the times. Very correct. Firmly consolidate the monopoly of the kings on the printing of the coin and ensure its quality.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Again New time is knocking at the door! And to settle the system of measures and weights. A thing that is necessary at birth in a high ... with a high rise in commodity-money relations, with the "specter of capitalism." Nothing succeeded.

A. VENEDIKTOV - It didn't work out.

N. BASOVSKAYA - It didn't work out. Wild disappointment, chagrin that everything is not so. All forever in upset feelings, too, as they recall that he looks like his grumpy brother, an untimely death. One left.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Wait, children? Does Philip V have children?

N. BASOVSKAYA - No.

A. VENEDIKTOV - There are no children.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Charles IV the Handsome. It is sometimes called Beautiful, then the French have such a shade, I think, very important - "handsome".

A. VENEDIKTOV - Ah!

N. BASOVSKAYA - He is not like his father. That handsome in the medieval sense - a knight, fighter, hero. This cute, as they say now, handsome. Three wives, changing one after another - not a single son. One concern is to give birth to a son. In addition to that Ioanna suspicious, there is no one, no one to transfer the throne. Oh, I'm convinced how many times people of that era recalled the curse of the tormented Templar. Still, in atrocities one must know some measure. No son. 34 years old - deceased. Well, not a secret? A mystery, of course. And a talented French writer ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - I will just remind you - I beg your pardon - I will also remind you that from the same fire - well, according to legend - Jacques de Molay also cursed dad.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, yes, yes.

A. VENEDIKTOV - And Guillaume Nogaret, and they died in the same year.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, in the same year.

A. VENEDIKTOV - In the same year.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, that's right. I just stopped at two opposite objects.

A. VENEDIKTOV - I understand, I just, that here ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - All, he named them all.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Well, like some kind of curses of the pharaohs - in history these mystical ideas always arise on the basis of certain facts. And so, we will not evaluate mystical ideas, but the facts are in front of us. The dynasty was cut short. It seemed impossible. There is no male heir. 1328 year. And in this situation - here is the source of the dynastic cause of the future war with England, the so-called Hundred Years War. Who will ascend the throne? The woman must be refused, very John is suspicious. Declares his rights, clearly real, the grandson of Philip IV the Handsome Edward III of England. He is the son of Philip IV's daughter Isabella. Well clearly legal. The future great commander, the most significant English king. But he must be refused, why? Again New time is almost in the yard. The French are already French. They are still ... we are not quite ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - They are already French, right? Is that all already?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Already the French. Since the 10th century, this has been France, but by this time the coming events of the Hundred Years War will prove that they feel themselves French, and they do not need an Englishman to the throne. Because he is the son of King Edward II of England.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Even if he is a grandson ... Even if he is the grandson of their Iron King?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Even the grandson of the great ... yes. Well, here, firstly, there is a national feeling that is being born - the war will strengthen it, and secondly, there is a direct, simple reason for the nobility. Well, as they say today: the boss comes with the team. The king will come with entourage. He will come from England with an English environment.

A.VENEDIKTOV - Distribute lands.

N. BASOVSKAYA - How many times has it happened. And the distribution of land is obligatory, and the distribution of posts is obligatory ... And why do they need this? This makes them very restless. And a meeting of the French nobility is discussing who to give the throne. Edward III of England - well, he is young, he is a boy, it seems, he can be controlled; then it turned out that nothing would have worked for them, a boy with character, or Philippe Valois, a cousin of the last French king. He will go down in history as a side branch of the Capetian house. They are relatives, he is a cousin, Philip VI of Valois. They decide in favor of Philip VI of Valois. Funny, of course, incredible. Thus, the legists, hardened in legal battles, are given the task. It is roughly formulated in the same way today: find legal evidence ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Document. Document.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes, find the document.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Who will prove that it is impossible - not because he is from England - Edward III is not allowed - not because we are afraid of a new environment - but why it is impossible legally.

A. VENEDIKTOV - At least for some reason.

N. BASOVSKAYA - They dug in good faith. These were great excavations. Because they got to the bottom of the document of the year 500, approximately - the turn of the 5th - 6th centuries ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Ie. 800 years ago.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, the guys worked in good faith, the legists have experience. This is "Salic truth", the first record of customary German law, which was made on the territory of France after the resettlement of the Franks there, during the great migration of peoples. Those. they have turned, in fact, in a sense, to primitive times. There was an article "de allodis", "about the allods", where it is written ... allod is the arable allotment of a simple farmer-franc. It is not inherited through the female line, only through the male. The conclusion of the legists: if we consider France as one big allod, a large arable allotment of the king, then this large, figuratively speaking, arable allotment cannot be inherited through the female line. Quite so ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - What a phrase - "it is not good for lilies to spin", here.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Very well, Druon has good titles. And this conclusion, this legal conclusion, it is so contradictory ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well done.

N. BASOVSKAYA - In him, naivety is still expressed, almost to primitive times, and the coming New Time. Still, we will not just say no, but we will find a certain incident, a reason that will prove that we are making an informed decision. Thus, the dynasty changed ... not changed, but transformed. First side branch. The fate of Valois, after all, will also be very bad. And this genus will fade away, also in the presence of ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - With three sons, by the way.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Yes, with three sons. The Bourbons will come to power, the Bourbons will have their terrible difficulties on the French throne. Those. in short, the question of the personality, the nature of the personality of the ruler, his family situation always matters. But in the Middle Ages, this has a meaning that is frankly politically formulated, expressed, legally formalized. And the Iron King Philip IV the Handsome, who was convinced that he was busy with only one thing - beloved, strong France - put a kind of moral face on the very idea of ​​a strong, unshakable royal power. Surely he didn't think about it ... although, who knows. So, restoring the thinking of a person of the past is the most attractive, most important task formulated by the great French historian Marc Bloch, historian of the twentieth century. If we want to understand something about the past, Mark Blok said, to really understand what happened in the past, we need to penetrate into the thoughts, thoughts of the people of the Middle Ages, whom he dealt with. The hardest part is here. All our assumptions are hypothetical, it would be interesting to know what our radio listeners think about this ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, our radio listeners ... there are such versions ... “How do you feel about the version,” asks Dmitry, “that part of this cherished Templar money ended up in Russia? Were there any contacts between the knights and ancient Russian statesmen? "

N. BASOVSKAYA - I will say frankly that I do not know this - this does not mean that it was not. But…

A. VENEDIKTOV - But somehow I also did not meet the Templars in Russia.

N. BASOVSKAYA - But I know that yes, especially recently, such near-historical thinkers are carried away by an attempt to prove that Russia, in general, was in contact with the whole world and even, as you know, with Fomenko, with the Egyptian pharaohs. Therefore, I am to such ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Can you imagine if this is true?

N. BASOVSKAYA - I can't imagine. I can’t absolutely believe it, relying on a scientific approach to history. But this enthusiasm, at the heart of which may be somehow dubiously understood patriotic idea that we are everywhere, we are always, we are from the very depths. This is not needed by anyone, no nation is belittled by the course of its history and the pace of its development, and is not elevated. Each has its own life, both for each person and for each nation.

A. VENEDIKTOV - I think Dmitry wants to look for this money somewhere ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - I think this is speculation.

A. VENEDIKTOV - In the Baltics.

N. BASOVSKAYA - And I am sure that they continue to look for them. This is such a powerful myth. So many popular books have been written about this, there have been such half-funny, half-sad stories, films are being made. It's just a very juicy, colorful story. Druon reflected it best of all ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - But even he did not exhaust this topic.

A. VENEDIKTOV - I did not draw a map. Olga asks: "Please ask Basovskaya, was there really this story with the daughters-in-law of the King of France?"

N. BASOVSKAYA - Of course, Druon wrote it in such a way that there is no doubt that it was. And I still have doubts. Because the sources I read ...

A.VENEDIKTOV - Doubts about what?

N. BASOVSKAYA - That there was treason.

A. VENEDIKTOV - And, that there was treason ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - The fact that there was treason ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - What was the conclusion, was ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - That there was a real betrayal.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Yes.

N. BASOVSKAYA - I have huge doubts about this. The fact is that, well, look for who benefits. And in fact, here it was, surrounded by kings, there were too many people interested, including this very Isabella, to pave the way for her son to the French throne. Of course, there was no evidence of this betrayal. Druon invented some purses that these lovers are naive, like children ...

A. VENEDIKTOV - They put them on under the king and walked around.

N. BASOVSKAYA - ... hung on the belt. It's cute, naive, but there is nothing scientific behind it. And the accusation of infidelity is so traditional in the Middle Ages, whether it was real or not, that we just have to take it as a cliché.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Well, that is. this is ... that is in this case it doesn't matter ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - It was necessary to remove this ... yes. This queen should have been removed.

A. VENEDIKTOV - This queen, to find a new one for him, for example, right?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Unlike, say, the Russian tsars - well, the same Peter, who to Evdokia Lopukhin ... well, just, "go out, go to the monastery" and that's it, there is no need to formalize anything - they somehow preferred to give this , well, some semblance of validity.

A.VENEDIKTOV - Reasonableness. Thank you very much, I remind you that our guest is Natalya Basovskaya, a historian, one of the leaders ... what is your position at the Russian State Humanitarian University called now?

N. BASOVSKAYA - Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs.

A.VENEDIKTOV - Still? Are we going to grow?

N. BASOVSKAYA - We are growing ...

A.VENEDIKTOV - Administratively?

N. BASOVSKAYA - ... the whole university together.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Oh, you are together with the university. I would like to end this program as pleasant for you and for, of course, but for me especially, with a message from our listener Lily, who sent us the following review of your performance on a pager, I would say: “What a high mind and clear spirit. When are we going to talk about modernity in this way? "

N. BASOVSKAYA - Thank you very much!

A. VENEDIKTOV - And about the present - well, it will take 700-800 years, as we are talking now ...

N. BASOVSKAYA - Serious historians believe that history begins no closer than half a century away from events.

A. VENEDIKTOV - Not closer.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Before that, it was politics and political science. Thanks!

A.VENEDIKTOV - Thank you very much! Natalia Basovskaya, Russian State University for the Humanities.

N. BASOVSKAYA - Goodbye!

A. VENEDIKTOV - Goodbye!

R.A. Zakharov (Moscow)

Rice. 1. Turnoza, 1305, silver (4.1 grams, 958 standart, diameter 25 mm). On the obverse there is a symbol of the city of Tours (a chapel or city gate) with the inscription turonis civis and twelve lilies around, on the reverse there is a cross with an internal circular inscription - the name of the ruler PHILIPPVS REX + and an external circular inscription Benedictum sit nomen domini nostri Jesu Christi.

In 1266, the French king Louis IX, the grandfather of Charles IV the Handsome, began to mint in Tours much larger than denarii silver coins grossi Turonenses (pennies of Tours), they are also pennies of the tournois. In the numismatic literature, the name of the thornose stuck to them. The weight of the coin averaged about 4.20 g at the 958th test. The turnoza was equal to 12 denarii, which is why 12 lilies are depicted on the coin. This denomination was widely developed in Western and Central Europe in connection with the strong growth of trade and economy that began in the 13-14 centuries, which in turn required the introduction of a larger denomination into the money circulation than the denarius that reigned in Europe before this period.

Philip IV the Handsome was born in Fontainebleau in 1268 to Philip III and Isabella of Aragon. He came to the throne very young, at the age of 17. He ruled for a long time and he succeeded a lot. It was the king-politician, the king, who managed to create his own team, with the help of which he was able to solve the most difficult problems. It would be fair to list Philip's closest associates: Chancellor Pierre Flotte, Seal Guardian Guillaume Nogaret and Coadjutor of the Kingdom of Angerrand Marigny. All these were ordinary people, ascended to the heights of power by the king himself.

The beginning of the reign of Philip the Handsome unfolded against the backdrop of aggravated contradictions with the Pope every year. At first, nothing foreshadowed this conflict. None of the European kings was loved by Pope Boniface VIII as much as Philip the Fair. As early as 1290, when the Pope was only Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani and came to France as a papal legate, he admired the piety of the young king. Having ascended the throne in 1294, Boniface zealously supported the policy of the French king in Spain and Italy.

Boniface VIII was the first pope to start the tradition of celebrating so-called “anniversaries” (from 1300) or “holy years”, which were originally established as the centenary of the church. The pilgrims who visited Rome during the Jubilee years were granted complete absolution. The income from the influx of pilgrims was so great that the successors of Boniface VIII repeatedly reduced the time between the Jubilee years to replenish the papal treasury and to popularize the ideas of Catholicism. For example, since 1475, the period between anniversary years has been reduced to 25 years. In the church itself, the pope pursued a balanced policy towards mendicant orders, limiting their freedom. In addition, this pope is the author of the well-known aphorism "Silence is a sign of consent."

The first signs of mutual distrust between the Pope and Philip the Fair were discovered in 1296. In August, the Pope promulgated a bull in which he forbade the laity to demand and receive subsidies from the clergy. By "strange coincidence" Philip at the same time banned the export of gold and silver from France. By doing so, he cut off one of the main sources of papal income, because the French Church could no longer send any money to Rome. Even then, a quarrel could have arisen, but the position of Boniface VIII on the papal throne was still fragile, and he yielded to the king.

After that, for several years, the opponents hesitated to take decisive measures, but the hostility between them was growing. Finally, in response to the demarche of Philip IV in April 1303, Boniface excommunicated the king, and in turn Philip declared Boniface a false pope (indeed, there were some doubts about the legality of his election), a heretic and even a warlock. He demanded to convene an ecumenical council to hear these accusations, but at the same time he said that the pope should be at this council as a prisoner and accused.

From words he turned to deeds. Nogare, with a large sum of money, went to Italy, where he entered into relations with the enemies of Boniface and conspired against him. The Pope was at that time in Anagni, where he wanted to bring Philip to a public curse. Then the conspirators from the Colonna family, led by Nogare, broke into the papal palace, surrounded Boniface, showered him with all sorts of insults and demanded his abdication. Nogare threatened that he would put him in chains and, like a criminal, would take him to the cathedral in Lyon to pass judgment on him, and then he took and gave the Holy Pope a couple of slaps in the face in public. When, three days later, the inhabitants of Anagni freed the pope, from the humiliation he had endured, he fell into such a nervous breakdown that he went mad and died. As it was written in one very touching pre-revolutionary book, "unable to bear the insults, the proud old man died a few days later." The new Pope Benedict XI excommunicated Nogare, but ended the persecution of Philip himself. In the summer of 1304 he also died. In his place was elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand du Gotte, who took the name Clement V. He did not go to Italy, but was ordained in Lyon. In 1309 he settled in Avignon and turned this city into a papal residence. Until his death, he remained an obedient executor of the will of the French king. The period of the so-called "Avignon captivity of the popes" began.

Contemporaries did not like Philip the Handsome, people close to him were afraid of the rational cruelty of this unusually beautiful and surprisingly dispassionate person. The violence against the pope caused outrage throughout the Christian world. Large feudal lords were dissatisfied with the infringement of their rights and the strengthening of the central administration, which consisted of rootless people. The taxation class was outraged by the increase in taxes, the so-called "spoilage" of the coin, that is, the decrease in its gold content with the forced preservation of its denomination, which led to inflation. Meanwhile, France under Philip IV the Handsome reaches the pinnacle of its power. It is the largest state in terms of population in the Western Christian world (13-15 million, or a third of the entire Catholic world). The kingdom's economy is thriving, with more arable land or trade at the Champagne fair.

The presented coin from French catalogs dates back to 1305. It was in this year that Clement V, obedient to the will of Philip IV, became pope. Philip the Handsome was in dire need of money and owed HALF MILLION LIVROWS to the Templars. How not to repay the debt and get some more money?

There were only two ways for this: to lead the order of the Templars and make it royal, or to destroy it. In addition, the Templars were also the most powerful political force of the time. And if Philip wanted, and he wanted and rigidly built the vertical of power, autocracy in France, then a clash with the Templars was inevitable. We must pay tribute to the courage of Philip the Handsome and his organizational skills. Not every king could decide to defeat such a richest order with a huge number of experienced warriors, moreover, very popular in European public opinion at that time. He went all-in, prepared for a long time and carefully ... It turned out to be easier to deal with the Pope, at the right time he simply took advantage of the old Guelph-Ghibelline struggle between the oldest Roman patrician families Orsini and Colonna, financed the Ghibellinian Colonna and sent his resident Nogare to correct the situation on the spot in Italy.

With the Templars, he first tried to "negotiate in a good way," especially since most of the members of the order were French. It was in the same 1305 that Philip the Fair wanted to join the Order of the Temple himself. However, the Chapter of the Order answered him that there could be no crowned lords among the brothers. Then Philip made a new proposal. Since the war in Palestine has come to an end and the knightly orders were outside the Holy Land, it is necessary to unite two of them - the Order of the Temple and the Order of John of Jerusalem. At the head of the united Order, so as not to belittle the honor of either the Templars or the Hospitallers, should be the son of the most Christian king of France, a descendant of the famous crusader Louis Saint, that is, he himself. However, this plan also failed.

And then Philip the Fair chose the second path - the path of destroying the order, which for the last 150 years has absorbed the main passionary part of European chivalry. The King's confessor and Grand Inquisitor of France, Doctor of Theology Guillaume of Paris, began to collect witnesses from among the exiled from the Order of the Knights. There were very few such exiles, but they had to start somewhere. By 1307, the charges were prepared, and throughout France, royal messengers carried secret letters with instructions to the royal officials. On September 14, 1307, the royal troops at the same time at the "X" hour, without resistance, captured the castles of the Templars throughout France. Philip IV first entered the Temple of the Temple, towering in the center of Paris, not as a guest and debtor of the order, but as the lord of the conquered enemy fortress. The Templars did not put up resistance - the charter of the order did not allow the knights to take up arms against Christians. Although the charter is a charter, but the leadership of the order, who knew in advance about Philip's intentions, simply hid all their relics, documents and gold and ... went like lambs to the slaughter. Why? This question has long worried most historians, but there is still no obvious explanation for everyone. One thing is clear, the Templars knew about this through their perfectly oiled spy network, but decided not to resist, although if they wanted they could have done it then, who knows - Philip the Handsome would have saved then his crown and life itself.

Shortly before the start of the arrests, Jacques de Molay managed to burn many documents and send a special letter to all order houses, in which he ordered not to provide even minimal information about the customs and rituals of the Templars. According to one of the nights, on the eve of the start of the campaign against the Order, the Templars' treasures were taken out of Paris on carts under the guise of hay (who carries hay from the city to the village with a whole caravan of carts with an armed escort, and even at night ???). This cargo was delivered to the largest naval base of the Templars, the port of La Rochelle, where it was loaded onto 18 order galleys that departed in an unknown direction. There is a hypothesis that then the flotilla split into two parts and went to Portugal and Scotland. Where were the relics and gold of the Order taken? Where exactly have these 18 galleys with crews and cargo gone? The Templars' treasures were never found, just as afterwards no one found either the gold of the Third Reich or the gold of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The arrested Templars were brought to trial, many were tortured. The process was long and bloody. In dungeons, not just the accused, but the knights, hitherto without fear, went on the attack on the infidels, perished or slandered themselves. By the way, according to the charter of the order, the Templar could retreat before the infidels only with their threefold advantage! But let's not forget that, for example, in 1937, in the dungeons of the NKVD, many courageous people also signed monstrous, absurdly incredible confessions .... Under torture, the prosecutors obtained terrible confessions over the course of several years! The Templars were accused of not recognizing Christ, the Holy Virgin and the saints, spitting on the cross and trampling on it with their feet. They blamed those, thanks to whose courage Christian states existed in the Holy Land for more than 170 years! They declared that they worship in a dark cave an idol depicting a human figure covered with human skin and with shiny carbuncles instead of eyes, while they smeared it with the fat of fried little children and looked at him as their god. They were accused of worshiping the devil in the form of a cat, burning the bodies of the dead Templars and giving the ashes to their younger brothers, mixing them with their food. They were accused of various crimes, of terrible debauchery and superstitious abominations, of which only madmen can be guilty. Just medieval 1937!

The boredom of the dragging false court was revived from time to time by the execution of the knights, who did not want to confess to the crimes of which they were not guilty. 59 knights were once taken out into the field behind the monastery of St. Anthony. They were offered forgiveness if they confessed, but they refused and were burned over a slow fire. In the city of Sanli, nine knights were burned and many more throughout France. Since the order was founded by an ecclesiastical council, a council also had to be convened for the trial of the Templars. However, the Vienna Council of 1312, convened for this purpose, did not want to bring any charges against the Order. Then the pocket pope Clement V dissolved the order on the basis of his bull "Vox clamantis", in which all the property of the order was transferred to the knightly order of the Johannites. However, in fact, the property was divided between the French king and dukes.

Church commissions were created for the trial of the Templars. They included the bishop of the city and mendicant monks: 2 Carmelites, 2 Franciscans and 2 Dominicans. The Benedictines and Zintercians, who participated in the creation of the Order of the Temple, were removed from the investigation. Clement V demanded that the highest dignitaries of the order be transferred to the papal court, but the leaders were not brought to the Pope, it was announced that they had caught a contagious disease on the way and therefore would be temporarily held in France. The Pope swallowed this, too, but the papal commissions were nevertheless admitted to the arrested and interrogated. During these interrogations, the Templars flatly denied most of the charges.

The knights unanimously denied the accusation of Sodomous sin - homosexuality encouraged by the authorities. However, they did not deny that at the initiation ceremony, the newly adopted was kissed on the navel, tailbone and lips. Moreover, no one could explain the meaning of these kisses: those of them that were admitted to secret knowledge were in no hurry to tell, and those who simply copied the ritual did not understand its meaning. Just imagine some illiterate seventh son of an impoverished count who, from his youth, having fallen into the order, served in remote border castles somewhere in Syria. Prayer and fighting exercises interspersed with clashes with Muslims. Every day carry metal armor and weapons on yourself under 40 kg of weight at 30-40 degrees of heat there ... What kind of homosexuality is there ??? Those of the readers who served in the army in combat units will understand the absurdity of all these accusations.

The charter of the order required the knights to sleep half-dressed so that in the event of a sudden attack by the Muslims, they could quickly prepare for battle.

On March 18, 1314, already at the farce-trial of 4 leaders of the Knights Templar held in Paris, two of them - the Grand Master of the Order of Jacques-de Molay himself and the commander of Normandy Geoffroy-de Charnet SUDDENLY retracted their testimonies, which were knocked out of them under torture in exchange for the promise of life imprisonment. “We are guilty before the Lord, but we do not plead guilty to the crimes named by the judges. We are guilty that our spirit was weaker than the flesh and under torture we slandered the Order of the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. " At the trials of 1937, none of the defendants dared to make such a demarche, but these two knights could ... After a short consultation, he and his closest associates were quickly sentenced to be burned at the stake. It is known that often before being burned at the stake, the executioner killed his victim in advance, and the already dead body burned. And here, enraged by the failed court with "frank confessions" of the Templars, Philippe ordered to burn Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnet alive over a slow fire. This detail speaks of some special level of the king's hatred for the executed, which, in the words of the Strugatsky brothers, exceeds the normal level of medieval atrocities.

The Grand Master, who went to the fire, cursed Pope Clement, King Philip and Chancellor Nogare, stating that they would all be called to the judgment of God within a year and, in addition, cursed the entire royal French family. The crowd, which had come to see the execution of the proud Templars as an amusing spectacle, fell silent after hearing the curse of Jacques de Molay. The show fell through ...

The king did not attach much importance to this curse, attributing this curse to the anger and despair of the dying de Molay. Philip could not have any worries about the succession of power to the Capetian dynasty, which had been on the French throne since 987, in principle, because he had three sons. Three already grown sons! With a small age interval. What is there to worry about?

BUT!!! The predictions of Jacques de Molay, who was dying at the stake, came true exactly. On April 20, in agony, Pope Clement departed to God. He had a stomach ache and doctors prescribed to drink crushed emeralds, which tore the high priest's intestines. In November, King Philip IV of France fell from his horse while hunting. The paralyzed man was picked up and brought to the palace by the courtiers. There Philip the Handsome died, stiff and unable to move. A year later, Angerrand de Marigny, who was preparing a trial against the Templars, ended his life on the gallows. Guillaume de Nogaret, who was in charge of the investigation, died in agony. The sons of Philip the Fair could not pass on the throne to their children; they all died prematurely, leaving no male heirs.

Their nephew Edward III of England went to war against France, claiming his rights to the French throne as his legal inheritance. Like, the heir is the closest male relative. Remember the book by Maurice Druon "It Is Worthless for Lilies to Spin"? This war went down in history as the Hundred Years War. France, the country that robbed and killed the Order of the Temple, was itself plundered and humiliated.

When in 1793 the blade of the guillotine fell on the neck of Louis XVI, a man jumped onto the scaffold, dipped his hand in the blood of the dead monarch and shouted loudly: - Jacques de Molay, you are avenged! The unfortunate Louis was the thirteenth descendant of King Philip the Fair.

Before the execution, Louis XVI was kept in the former residence of the Templars, the Temple, which was turned into a prison in those years, and then during the revolution, the Temple was destroyed to the ground so that it would not become a place of worship for the royalists.

The whole world perished with the Templars: chivalry, crusades ended with them.

But not everywhere the Templars were persecuted brutally. Scotland has provided them with asylum. They were acquitted in Lorraine. In Germany, the process fell apart altogether when the Templars summoned for trial in Frankfurt appeared in full military attire and with spears in hand. The court did not sit for long, and all charges were dropped. Many Germanic Knights of the Temple joined the Teutonic Order, strengthening and strengthening it. In Castile and Aragon, the knights of the Order of the Temple entered the order of Calatrava in full force and with all their property and continued their struggle against the Muslims, but already in the Pyrenees. In Portugal, the Templars were acquitted by the court and changed their name in 1318 to become Knights of Christ. The Order existed under this name until the 16th century. Vasco da Gama was a knight of the Order of Christ, and Prince Heinrich the Navigator was its Grand Master. At the expense of the Order, the prince founded an observatory and a nautical school, and contributed to the development of shipbuilding in Portugal. He equipped ocean expeditions, discovering new lands and ships sailed under the eight-pointed Templar crosses. Under the same symbols, the caravels of Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic. The great discoverer of America himself was married to the daughter of an associate, Enrique the Navigator, a knight of the Order of Christ, who gave him his nautical and pilotage charts. This is a hypothesis. I looked for the original source of this information on Columbus, but did not find it. Was his father-in-law really a member of the order of Christ or not? Maybe he was looking badly?

The Templars ...

So who were they really? For hundreds of years people have been occupied with the question: are these servants of the Lord or malicious heretics who have received what they deserve?

My first acquaintance with the Templars happened in school, when I read "Ivanhoe" by Walter Scott. There, the templars are the personification of evil, the templars are actually the Templars. Briand de Boileguillebert, for example, is a dishonorable villain. After reading a lot of literature about the Crusades and about the Templars, in particular, I realized that everything was not so simple in black and white and I want to give some facts that will allow the reader to draw their own conclusions on this issue. The brothers chose the Holy Mother of God as the patroness of the Order. Saint Bernard, who created the Charter of the Templars, emphasized that the vow of poverty is the main one for the Templars. The second paragraph of the Rite, for example, even ordered two brothers - the templars to eat from the same bowl. Any social entertainment was forbidden - visiting shows, falconry, dice and other joys of life. Laughter, singing, and quibbling rose up. The list of prohibitions consisted of more than 40 items. The free time of these "monks in spirit and fighters in arms" was to be filled with prayers, the singing of sacred psalms and military exercises.

A white cloak, worn over the rest of the clothes of the same color, became a kind of symbol of the templars. The knight is a monk who took three obligatory vows: poverty, chastity and obedience, with white robes symbolized the pure holy life, which he led, devoting his soul to the Lord.

Simple brothers - novices, wore black cloaks and camisoles, and therefore, when the Templar warriors rushed into the attack, their first line was made up of horsemen in white, and the second - horsemen in black. The order also adopted a banner made of striped linen, white and black, called "Bosean" and this word became the battle cry of the knights. On the banner was a cross with an inscription addressed to the Lord in Latin: "Not to us, not to us, but to your name." In this regard, the ruble of our Emperor Paul immediately comes to mind with exactly the same motto.

The Templars never ran and always proved themselves worthy of their reputation - proud to the point of arrogance, brave to the point of recklessness, and at the same time surprisingly disciplined, unmatched among all the armies of the Mediterranean of that era. The charter demanded from the knights complete and unconditional heroism. Not one Crusade, starting from the Second, did not do without their active participation. More than 20,000 knights of the order died in the Holy Land, including 6 of the 23 Grand Masters. They were always in the most difficult areas, something like a crusader special forces. So in the famous battle in the mountains near Laodicea in 1148 during the Second Crusade, 200 knights (mostly Templars), who made up the retinue of King Louis VII, managed to hold back the violent attacks of about 20,000 Muslims. It is known that the Muslims were especially afraid of the Templars and Hospitallers. The famous Sultan Saladin hated knights - monks so much for their fearlessness that he said "I will cleanse the land of these filthy orders." Indeed, together with the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, the Templars formed a standing army of the Christian states of the East. Without these orders, all the crusader states would have been destroyed within a few decades, and they held out for about two centuries. During the battle, the Templar had no right to retreat, even when fighting against three opponents. Anyone who was captured by the Saracens had no right either to offer a ransom for himself, or to renounce his faith in order to save his life. The Muslims who were captured by the Templars, as later in our days in Afghanistan or in Chechnya, offered our soldiers to renounce Christ, otherwise death. For 170 years of fighting with Muslims, only a few Templars agreed, the rest chose to be martyred. Somehow it does not fit at all with the accusation of their deviation from Christianity. Who would go to death for something that he himself did not believe in? But there were also negative aspects. Excessive pride in belonging to the Order of the Temple. Aloofness. For example, meeting a caravan of pilgrims, whom they were supposed to accompany, the Templars did not utter a single superfluous word, as well as their vow never to touch a woman, which is not characteristic of the spirit of medieval chivalry with its cult of worshiping a beautiful lady - all this gradually served to isolate them and gossip about homosexuality.

From the very beginning, the Order of the Temple was dual: on the one hand, knightly, and on the other, monastic. In the Order, there were monastic brothers, knight brothers (they did not take monastic vows), sergeants (just soldiers in the service of the Temple) and monastic and artisan brothers (people under the auspices of the Temple). Most of the knight brothers were in Palestine and fought with the infidels. They said about the knight brothers: "he drinks like a Templar" and "swears like a Templar." They were proud and arrogant. So there was something to be proud of! Today, sailors, paratroopers, border guards, Afghans are proud of their service; they have actually proved their devotion to Christianity in the Holy Land. In contrast, the monastic brothers organized a network of commanderships throughout Europe, in which the riches of the Order were kept. Once, during a poor harvest, 10,000 people were fed by the Commandership alone in a week.

The Templars also minted their own coin, or rather, it was not a coin, but rather one of the first European tokens, made not even from bilon, but from bronze. The rarest thing, I saw this denarius only in the book about the minting of the Crusaders and in the auction catalog eight years ago. It depicts a cross with a legend, and on the obverse - the Cross of the Lord on Calvary. This coin was used for calculation among the pilgrims, when they were transported to the Holy Land on the Templar galleys and they were guarded already in the Holy Land by the same Templars.

In 1291, the crusaders were finally expelled from Palestine and the Templars moved first to Cyprus and then to Europe, where they created a powerful organization for which there were no national borders. The Grand Masters of the order spoke with the kings as equals. In those years, the Templars numbered more than 30,000 people. They owned hundreds of castles and a huge amount of land throughout Europe. The order, created as a symbol of poverty and simplicity, has become the richest organization. They "reinvented" the promissory note and became the largest usurers of their era, and the House of Paris became the center of European finance.

Because of their constant contact with Muslim and Jewish cultures, the Templars possessed the most advanced techniques of their time. The order was generous, allocated funds for the development of geodesy, cartography and navigation. It had its own ports, shipyards, as well as its own fleet, the ships of which were equipped with a curiosity unprecedented in those days - a magnetic compass.

Such interesting events are associated with this turnose, which found a turning point in the history of medieval Europe - the end of the era of the Crusades and the omnipotence of the popes.

A resounding slap in the face to Pope Boniface VIII, preliminarily weighed down by Guyom Nogaret, the curse of Jacques de Molay on a fire under a cloudy Parisian sky, Philip the Handsome, paralyzed on a hunt, carried to the castle by his frightened servants ... Here it is - the scent of medieval history!

Used sources.

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2. J. Duby. Europe in the Middle Ages. Smolensk, 1994.

3. Ch. Heckerthorn. Secret societies of all ages and all countries. M, 1993

4. L. Charpentier. Templars. M, 2003.

5.R.Yu Wipper. History of the Middle Ages. Kiev, 1996.

6. N.A. Osokin. The history of the Albigensians and their time. M, 2003.

7. K. Ryzhov. All the monarchs of the world. M, 1999.

8.R. Ernest, T. Dupuis. World history of wars. M, 1997.

9. Magazine "Clio"

10.P.P. Reed. Templars. M, 2005.

11. Gergely E. History of the papacy. M, 1996.

Philip IV (1268-1314) - King of France since 1285. Continuing the work of his ancestors, especially his grandfather, King Louis IX the Saint, but in new conditions and by other means, he sought to strengthen royal power by weakening the political power of large feudal lords and eliminating the control of the papacy over the Church in France. These new conditions were the growth of cities, the strengthening of the third estate, that is, formally the entire urban population of the country, but in fact - the urban elite; development of the national consciousness of the French. The new means of achieving the goals of centralization of the monarchy were the apparatus of government, subordinate only to the monarch, of people of the ignorant and obliged to all of him, and the legal strengthening of royal power under the noticeable influence of Roman law (for example, the following statement was often used: "Whatever the sovereign wants has the force of law") ... It was under Philippe that the central authorities - the Paris Parliament (supreme court) and the Audit Chamber (treasury) - gradually turned from more or less regular meetings of the highest nobility into permanent institutions, in which mainly legists served - experts in law, who came from the midst of small knights or townspeople.

Standing guard over the interests of his country, the king tried to expand it. So, in 1294-1299. he fought against King Edward I of England for the Duchy of Aquitaine (Guienne) in southwestern France, which the English kings ruled as vassals of the French kings. Because of the clashes between English and French sailors in Aquitaine, Philip IV summoned Edward I to court, and he offered the French king the Duchy of Aquitaine as a bail for forty days, during which an investigation was to be carried out. However, after taking Guyenne, Philip refused to return it. Then Edward resorted to the help of the Count of Flanders, a vassal of the French crown, but an ally of England.

The war between France and Flanders began as early as 1297, when Philip defeated the Count of Flanders at the Battle of Furne. In 1299, the French king occupied almost all of Flanders, relying on the townspeople who were dissatisfied with their count, and in 1301 he captured him. But soon the Flemings, disenchanted with French rule, rebelled against Philip. May 18, 1302 went down in history under the name "Bruges Matins" - on this day there was an uprising of the inhabitants of the city of Bruges, accompanied by the extermination of the French garrison and the French in Bruges. In response, Philip moved his army to Flanders. On July 11, 1302, at the Battle of Courtras, for the first time in history, the foot militia of the Flemish cities utterly defeated the cavalry army of knights. The spurs taken from the slain knights were dumped in the town square of Courtray; this battle was called "the battle of the golden spurs". As a result of this defeat in 1303, peace was signed in Paris with England: the Duchy of Aquitaine was returned to Edward. On August 18, 1304, at the battle of Mont-en-Pevel, the French army took revenge for the defeat at Courtras. The following year, the Flemings officially submitted to the French king.

During the war with England and Flanders, the conflict between France and the papacy intensified. The contradictions between them became apparent even under Louis Saint, who resolutely rejected any interference of Rome in the affairs of the French state and the French Church. However, the deep piety of Louis did not allow these contradictions to turn into a sharp conflict. Relations between Philip and Pope Boniface VIII were initially friendly. But in 1296 the Pope issued a bull, categorically forbidding the clergy to pay taxes to the secular authorities, and those - to demand such without the special permission of the Roman curia. This decree was only one of a number of similar ones adopted by the popes during the XI-XIII centuries. and aimed at freeing the Church from state power, giving it a special supranational and supranational status. Philip, firstly, who needed money to wage war with England and Flanders and, secondly, who believed that all estates, including the clergy, should help their country, banned the export of gold and silver from the country in 1297 than deprived the Pope of all church fees and taxes received from France. Then Boniface immediately canceled the bull and even, as a sign of his special affection for France, canonized Louis IX. However, the peace did not last long. Philip IV demanded that all French subjects be subject to a single royal court. Pope Boniface insisted on the special jurisdiction of the Church and was preparing to excommunicate the French king from her.

Philip, in the fight against such a powerful force as the papacy, decided to rely on the estates of France and convened in April 1302 the first States General in French history - a legislative meeting of representatives of the three estates of the country: clergy, nobility and representatives of cities. At this meeting, Pierre Flotte, the first lay keeper of the seal in the history of France, read out a sharp reply to the Pope. The Estates-General was asked to condemn the Pope as a heretic. Only a part of the nobles and townspeople expressed their full support for King Philip. The clergy, nobles and townspeople of the southern regions of France behaved more cautiously. The clergy only sent a petition to Boniface VIII to allow French clergy not to participate in the council convened by the Pope to condemn Philip. Boniface did not agree, but the French clergy was still not represented at the cathedral in Rome, which opened in the fall of 1302. There the Pope announced the "One Holy" bull (the papal bulls were named after the first words), in which he announced that complete submission to the Pope in all matters, both spiritual and secular, is a condition for the salvation of the soul. In 1303 Boniface VIII excommunicated Philip from the Church and freed his subjects from the oath to the king. In response, Philip called a meeting of the high nobility and clergy, at which the new chancellor and guardian of the seal of the French kingdom, Guillaume de Nogaret, accused Pope Boniface of heresy and all kinds of atrocities. Philip, with the consent of the said meeting, sent a small military detachment to Italy led by Nogare and the Pope's enemy Chyara Colonna. The Pope, learning about this, fled from Rome to the city of Anagni. On September 7, 1303, Nogare and Colonna entered Anagny under the French royal banner and, with the support of the inhabitants of the city, arrested the Pope. Boniface showed considerable courage in refusing to renounce his dignity, despite all the threats. Some chroniclers asserted that Chyara Colonna struck the Pope in the face with his hand wearing an iron gauntlet. A few days later, the townspeople drove out the Nogare detachment and freed the Pope. However, returning to Rome, Boniface died from the shocks he had endured, according to some versions, of hunger, since he refused to eat, fearing poisoning. Ten months later, he died after eating fresh figs, and his successor Benedict XI. In this death, rumor blamed Philip, who allegedly ordered the poisoning of the new Pope.

In 1305, after several months of struggle, the Frenchman Bertrand de Gault was elevated to the papal throne, who took the name Clement V. This Pope was obedient to Philip in everything. He fully justified his position in the conflict with Boniface and canceled the "One Saint" bull, but refused to fulfill Philip's demand to condemn the deceased for heresy and unnatural vices, and then to execute posthumously - to dig the corpse and burn it. In 1309, Clement V transferred his residence from Rome, which was not subject to the new Pope, to Avignon, which was then on the territory not directly subject to the French king, but being in his sphere of influence. This is how the "Avignon Captivity of the Popes" began (see article "Papacy"), when the Roman high priests were in the power of the French kings. With the help of the Pope, the king organized the trial of the Order of the Knights Templar (see article "Orders of Knighthood"). They were accused of heresy, unnatural vices, money-grubbing and alliance with Muslims, and the testimony was obtained by means of cruel torture, and the testimonies obtained by the same investigator from different and unfamiliar persons sometimes coincided literally.

In 1308, Philip again convened the States General, which approved the king's actions against the Templars. A wave of processes swept across France. Pope Clement V timidly tried to protest, but in the end he confirmed all the charges against the Templars, recognized their executions as legal and in 1312 abolished the order.

Having dealt with the Templars, Philip again turned his gaze towards Flanders, where the anti-French forces again intensified. The king decided on a new campaign and due to lack of funds for the third time convened the States General on August 1, 1314, this time to approve an emergency tax that would provide funds for the war with Flanders. It was from this time that the States General began to influence the financial affairs of the country. However, the campaign did not take place - on November 29, 1314, Philip died, most likely of a stroke. But, since Pope Clement V and Chancellor Nogare, who condemned the Templars to a martyr's death, died shortly before the king, rumor attributed the death of Philip to their curse or poisoning committed by the Templars who avenged their brothers.

King Philip the Handsome was not loved by his contemporaries, and the violence against Pope Boniface caused outrage throughout the Christian world. People close to the king were afraid of the cold, rational cruelty of this unusually beautiful and surprisingly dispassionate person. Large feudal lords could not forgive the king for strengthening the central administration, restricting their rights, including the right to mint their own coins, the preferences given by the king to rootless officials. The taxation class was outraged by the financial policy of the king. In an effort to fill the treasury, Philip sold and rented various positions, made forced loans from cities, reduced the amount of gold in the coin while maintaining its denomination, which led to inflation and increased cost; and coinage became the exclusive privilege of the sovereign. The population responded to the king's policy with uprisings.

The family life of Philip the Fair was happy. In 1284 he married Jeanne of Navarre (1270-1305), who brought her husband the kingdom of Navarre and the County of Champagne as a dowry. They had four children: Louis, King of Navarre (1289-1316), aka Louis X the Grumpy, King of France since 1314; Philip, Count of Poitiers (1291-1322), aka Philip V the Long, King of France from 1317; Isabella (1292-1358), married in 1308 to Edward II (1281-1327), King of England from 1307; Charles, Comte de la Marsh (1294-1328), aka Charles IV, King of France since 1322. After Jeanne's death, Philip did not remarry, despite the most advantageous offers. Rumor has it that he loved the queen so much that after her death he did not know women at all.

The married life of the children of Philip and Jeanne was not so happy. Isabella, who hated her husband, who paid much less attention to his wife than to her favorites, took part in the rebellion that broke out in 1327 and cost Edward II the crown and his life. Shortly before the death of Philip, in 1314, a scandal broke out in which the wives of his sons were involved. Two of them were convicted of adultery, and the third - in complicity with them. The former were sentenced to life imprisonment, the latter to repentance in a monastery. The sentencing of the adulterous princesses and the execution of their lovers were carried out in public. Contemporaries and descendants wondered: why did the king not try to hide the shame of his family? There is no answer to this day, because the thoughts and feelings of Philip the Handsome, this extremely closed and always imperturbable person, were not known even to his closest associates. Perhaps, as a devoted husband, he hated adultery; perhaps with a highly developed sense of royal dignity, he believed that princesses had no right to human weakness; Perhaps, considering the royal power to be responsible for the inviolability of the rule of law in the country, he strictly demanded the observance of the laws (and adultery was considered a crime in the Middle Ages) from everyone without exception, regardless of the situation. In any case, it is highly likely that this event hastened the demise of Philip IV.