At dawn on Friday the 13th, in October of 1307 — a date that lent weight to triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13 — King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume” — “God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom.”
These “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon,” most commonly known as the Knights Templar, figure heavily in the literature of Grand Conspiracies, and in the lore of heresy and the occult.