(This is mostly reproduced from an older answer of mine)
On the 12th October 1307, Jacques de Molay, the last grandmaster of the Templars, was in Paris, participating in the funeral of Philip IV of France's sister-in-law, Catherine de Courtenay. At the end of the following day, Molay was lying in a royal dungeon. At dawn the 13th October 1307, the Templars across France were arrested. They were accused of heresy, including denying Christ, defacing the cross, worshipped idols, and engaged in sodomy. Under torture, the Templars soon confessed. Of the 138 brethren arrested in October 1307 and then tried at Paris, only four denied every charge. The pope, Clement V, initially opposed the arrests, angered that Philip IV of France had targeted a religious order under papal protection. However, he could not reverse the arrests, the charges of heresy had to be proven true or false, so the pope took over the proceedings instead. In response, many Templars withdrew their confessions, leading to the case against them collapsing. Under pressure from Philip, the pope reopened the case. By this time, the Templars in England and elsewhere had also been arrested. There was opposition to the trials though. Edward II of England was slow to respond and no torture seems to have been used at all in the English-run trials in Ireland and Scotland. There were no trials in Poland, seemingly due to the Order having only a small presence there, and the brethren in Cyprus were not even arrested until May 1308.
This second round of the trial was no under papal control and was led by bishops. The Templars were still resisting, managing to state convincing cases against their accusers. Peter of Bologna and Reginald of Provins were two Templars with legal training who put forward a strong defence. Philip responded by intimidating the brethren, having his supporters amongst the French bishops burning 54 of them in May 1310. As these Templars had confessed and then recanted, they were lapsed heretics, and so were liable to be executed by burning. After this, opposition within the Order began to melt away. According to his captors, Peter of Bologna escaped but was probably murdered in prison and Reginald of Provins disappeared from the record. The trial went on, ending in May 1311.
A church council was called at Vienne in France for October 1311. Here the Order's fate would be decided. The council rolled on for months until Philip brought an army with him to Vienne in March 1312. Two days later, Pope Clement V ruled that the Order's reputation had been too badly damaged for it to continue, and he had them suppressed. The Order as a whole was not found guilty. Those Templars who had been found innocent or confessed and did penance were to receive pensions and live in other religious houses. Those who had been found guilty or recanted their confession would be tried again, this is what happened to Jacques de Molay. Molay restated his innocence and protested the sentence of life imprisonment he received at his retrail. In response, the judgement was changed to death by burning. The Pope also ruled that the Order's property was to be transferred to the Hospitallers (a patchwork process that wasn't always adhered to).
Philip IV had quite a few reasons to oppose the Templars. It was not because he feared them militarily. The Temple could not start its own state in France. It simply wouldn't have been possible for the Templars to do so, legally or militarily. They had no legal right to do so and by 1307 the only military order that had founded its own state was the Teutonic Knights (the Hospitallers had landed on Rhodes, but did not fully conquer the island until 1310). These lands were frontier territories that the orders had conquered themselves, rather than the centre of a centuries-old kingdom like France. In addition to that, over 40% of the Templars tried in France were over fifty, and mostly worked as administrators for the Order's estates there. The Templars were in no way a military threat to France.
Philip was in great need of funds by 1307, his wars having put a great strain on his finances. The Templars were very wealthy, the wealthiest of the military orders at that time and so gaining control of their property and income would provide Philip some much needed finance. Also, by suppressing the Order, he could wipe clean his debts to them. The king may have also borne a personal grudge against the Order, as some of their brethren had fought in a rebellion against him in Flanders in 1302-3. Another reason for his opposition to the Temple, one that applied to most other rulers, was the independence and special privileges given to them by the Church (and some kings): the Order was exempted from a lot of secular and ecclesiastical taxes and they answered only to the Pope, rather than a bishop. In short, Philip needed money and targeted a rich order that he owed money to, one that was not fully under his control yet had a large presence in his country and that had fought against him in the past.
In addition to this, the Templars were vulnerable to criticism. Alongside the Knights Hospitaller they had been scapegoated for the loss of the Holy Land in 1291. There had been both ecclesiastical and secular suggestions that the Templars even be dissolved or combined with the Hospitallers and refounded as a new order. Couple with this, there had always been some opposition to the Templars in Europe. To some ecclesiastics their mixture of military and religious life was incompatible, whilst to people they were sometimes seen as 'tainted' by foreign customs during their time in the East. For Philip, they were an easy target to spin against and charges of heresy were a favoured tool for him and his councillors, having used them in his dispute with Boniface VIII.
You might wonder why the Pope went along with this. Even if Clement V had sympathies with the Temple and dissolved them only reluctantly, fear would have overcome his opposition. In 1303 Philip had sent his chief advisor, Guillaume de Nogaret, with a force of mercenaries to try and depose one of Clement's predecessors as pope, Boniface VIII. Boniface was imprisoned, starved, and reportedly beaten. He was released but died a couple of months later, probably of the stress and mistreatment he suffered. Clement won't have forgotten this, he was vulnerable to facing the same treatment and Philip reminded him of this when he brought his army to Vienne. Even if he had sympathy for the Templars, his own self-preservation could have overcome it.
Sources:
Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge, 1994).
Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, Helen Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307-1314) (Abingdon, 2010).
Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar (Sutton, 2001).
(This is mostly reproduced from an older answer of mine)
On the 12th October 1307, Jacques de Molay, the last grandmaster of the Templars, was in Paris, participating in the funeral of Philip IV of France's sister-in-law, Catherine de Courtenay. At the end of the following day, Molay was lying in a royal dungeon. At dawn the 13th October 1307, the Templars across France were arrested. They were accused of heresy, including denying Christ, defacing the cross, worshipped idols, and engaged in sodomy. Under torture, the Templars soon confessed. Of the 138 brethren arrested in October 1307 and then tried at Paris, only four denied every charge. The pope, Clement V, initially opposed the arrests, angered that Philip IV of France had targeted a religious order under papal protection. However, he could not reverse the arrests, the charges of heresy had to be proven true or false, so the pope took over the proceedings instead. In response, many Templars withdrew their confessions, leading to the case against them collapsing. Under pressure from Philip, the pope reopened the case. By this time, the Templars in England and elsewhere had also been arrested. There was opposition to the trials though. Edward II of England was slow to respond and no torture seems to have been used at all in the English-run trials in Ireland and Scotland. There were no trials in Poland, seemingly due to the Order having only a small presence there, and the brethren in Cyprus were not even arrested until May 1308.
This second round of the trial was no under papal control and was led by bishops. The Templars were still resisting, managing to state convincing cases against their accusers. Peter of Bologna and Reginald of Provins were two Templars with legal training who put forward a strong defence. Philip responded by intimidating the brethren, having his supporters amongst the French bishops burning 54 of them in May 1310. As these Templars had confessed and then recanted, they were lapsed heretics, and so were liable to be executed by burning. After this, opposition within the Order began to melt away. According to his captors, Peter of Bologna escaped but was probably murdered in prison and Reginald of Provins disappeared from the record. The trial went on, ending in May 1311.
A church council was called at Vienne in France for October 1311. Here the Order's fate would be decided. The council rolled on for months until Philip brought an army with him to Vienne in March 1312. Two days later, Pope Clement V ruled that the Order's reputation had been too badly damaged for it to continue, and he had them suppressed. The Order as a whole was not found guilty. Those Templars who had been found innocent or confessed and did penance were to receive pensions and live in other religious houses. Those who had been found guilty or recanted their confession would be tried again, this is what happened to Jacques de Molay. Molay restated his innocence and protested the sentence of life imprisonment he received at his retrail. In response, the judgement was changed to death by burning. The Pope also ruled that the Order's property was to be transferred to the Hospitallers (a patchwork process that wasn't always adhered to).
Philip IV had quite a few reasons to oppose the Templars. It was not because he feared them militarily. The Temple could not start its own state in France. It simply wouldn't have been possible for the Templars to do so, legally or militarily. They had no legal right to do so and by 1307 the only military order that had founded its own state was the Teutonic Knights (the Hospitallers had landed on Rhodes, but did not fully conquer the island until 1310). These lands were frontier territories that the orders had conquered themselves, rather than the centre of a centuries-old kingdom like France. In addition to that, over 40% of the Templars tried in France were over fifty, and mostly worked as administrators for the Order's estates there. The Templars were in no way a military threat to France.
Philip was in great need of funds by 1307, his wars having put a great strain on his finances. The Templars were very wealthy, the wealthiest of the military orders at that time and so gaining control of their property and income would provide Philip some much needed finance. Also, by suppressing the Order, he could wipe clean his debts to them. The king may have also borne a personal grudge against the Order, as some of their brethren had fought in a rebellion against him in Flanders in 1302-3. Another reason for his opposition to the Temple, one that applied to most other rulers, was the independence and special privileges given to them by the Church (and some kings): the Order was exempted from a lot of secular and ecclesiastical taxes and they answered only to the Pope, rather than a bishop. In short, Philip needed money and targeted a rich order that he owed money to, one that was not fully under his control yet had a large presence in his country and that had fought against him in the past.
In addition to this, the Templars were vulnerable to criticism. Alongside the Knights Hospitaller they had been scapegoated for the loss of the Holy Land in 1291. There had been both ecclesiastical and secular suggestions that the Templars even be dissolved or combined with the Hospitallers and refounded as a new order. Couple with this, there had always been some opposition to the Templars in Europe. To some ecclesiastics their mixture of military and religious life was incompatible, whilst to people they were sometimes seen as 'tainted' by foreign customs during their time in the East. For Philip, they were an easy target to spin against and charges of heresy were a favoured tool for him and his councillors, having used them in his dispute with Boniface VIII.
You might wonder why the Pope went along with this. Even if Clement V had sympathies with the Temple and dissolved them only reluctantly, fear would have overcome his opposition. In 1303 Philip had sent his chief advisor, Guillaume de Nogaret, with a force of mercenaries to try and depose one of Clement's predecessors as pope, Boniface VIII. Boniface was imprisoned, starved, and reportedly beaten. He was released but died a couple of months later, probably of the stress and mistreatment he suffered. Clement won't have forgotten this, he was vulnerable to facing the same treatment and Philip reminded him of this when he brought his army to Vienne. Even if he had sympathy for the Templars, his own self-preservation could have overcome it.
Sources:
Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge, 1994).
Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, Helen Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307-1314) (Abingdon, 2010).
Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar (Sutton, 2001).
In 1302 or 1303 the Knights Templar lost their last stronghold in the Eastern World, the island of Arwad and as such, they faced an existential crisis, because the reason why they came into being was, originally, to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. As such, the support for the Knights Templar began to lessen – mostly so in circles of nobility. Now, since the organization existed for circa 200 years and during that time, the Knights Templar (KT) build an enormous network, dotted throughout Europe and the Near East. They had vineyards, farms and businesses all around, not to mention their chapels, convents and strongholds. Next to that, very important, they acted as a bank: they had kings and high nobility indebted to them. In medieval times equally important, the order was never a subject to local government, which made them almost untouchable. And, although they weren’t as powerful as before, they still had a standing army at the ready, so anyone going against them would face enormous difficulties. It is said that the tensions only really rose when the KT wanted to found a monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights (in Prussia) and the Knights Hospitalier (in Rhodos) had.
Enter Pope Clement V: he had the idea to merge both the KT and the Knights Hospitalier in one, big order, although both Grand Masters (Jacques de Molay for the KT and Fulk de Villaret for the Knights Hospitalier) didn’t like the idea. Nevertheless, they agreed to come to France in 1307. Now, because de Villaret was delayed, Clement and de Molay discussed a case that had the attention of Philip IV of France, where a Knight Templar had accused the order of several malpractices. Clemens didn’t believe that, but he did ask Philip IV for help and, here it gets blurry, some historians believe that Philip simply saw a chance and jumped at it in an attempt to not only nullify his debt towards the KT, but also to break their power. He began pushing Pope Clement, who, since he lived in Avignon, had in the end no other choice then give Philip what he wanted.
On Friday 13 October 1307 Philip issued an arrest for de Molay and the KT – an arrest that began with the words “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume”. Philip IV claimed that, during ceremonies of the KT, they committed blasphemy of all sorts (desecrating the cross, homosexuality, and others). They also got charged with fraud and corruption. Many Knights Templar were tortured and confessed to what they were accused of. On 22 November 1307, Pope Clement issued a papal bull, Pastoralis Praeeminentiae that forced all Christian kings to arrest the Templars and seize their assets. The Pope did try to lessen the blow and called for papal hearings (without torture), so once released from that, almost all Templars immediately recanted. Philip raged and threatened with military action, so at the Council of Vienne in 1312, the Pope issued two more bulls, Vox in excelso (which dissolved the KT officially) and Ad Providam (which gave their assets to the Knights Hospitaliers)
Now, once Jacques de Molay and a few high ranking members of the order were executed (by burning), most of the Templars were arrested and acquitted, absorbed into other military orders or simply returned to their families. Templar organizations mostly went to the Knights Hospitalier and/or changed their names.
Sources (in Dutch, sorry)
In 1302 or 1303 the Knights Templar lost their last stronghold in the Eastern World, the island of Arwad and as such, they faced an existential crisis, because the reason why they came into being was, originally, to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. As such, the support for the Knights Templar began to lessen – mostly so in circles of nobility. Now, since the organization existed for circa 200 years and during that time, the Knights Templar (KT) build an enormous network, dotted throughout Europe and the Near East. They had vineyards, farms and businesses all around, not to mention their chapels, convents and strongholds. Next to that, very important, they acted as a bank: they had kings and high nobility indebted to them. In medieval times equally important, the order was never a subject to local government, which made them almost untouchable. And, although they weren’t as powerful as before, they still had a standing army at the ready, so anyone going against them would face enormous difficulties. It is said that the tensions only really rose when the KT wanted to found a monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights (in Prussia) and the Knights Hospitalier (in Rhodos) had.
Enter Pope Clement V: he had the idea to merge both the KT and the Knights Hospitalier in one, big order, although both Grand Masters (Jacques de Molay for the KT and Fulk de Villaret for the Knights Hospitalier) didn’t like the idea. Nevertheless, they agreed to come to France in 1307. Now, because de Villaret was delayed, Clement and de Molay discussed a case that had the attention of Philip IV of France, where a Knight Templar had accused the order of several malpractices. Clemens didn’t believe that, but he did ask Philip IV for help and, here it gets blurry, some historians believe that Philip simply saw a chance and jumped at it in an attempt to not only nullify his debt towards the KT, but also to break their power. He began pushing Pope Clement, who, since he lived in Avignon, had in the end no other choice then give Philip what he wanted.
On Friday 13 October 1307 Philip issued an arrest for de Molay and the KT – an arrest that began with the words “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume”. Philip IV claimed that, during ceremonies of the KT, they committed blasphemy of all sorts (desecrating the cross, homosexuality, and others). They also got charged with fraud and corruption. Many Knights Templar were tortured and confessed to what they were accused of. On 22 November 1307, Pope Clement issued a papal bull, Pastoralis Praeeminentiae that forced all Christian kings to arrest the Templars and seize their assets. The Pope did try to lessen the blow and called for papal hearings (without torture), so once released from that, almost all Templars immediately recanted. Philip raged and threatened with military action, so at the Council of Vienne in 1312, the Pope issued two more bulls, Vox in excelso (which dissolved the KT officially) and Ad Providam (which gave their assets to the Knights Hospitaliers)
Now, once Jacques de Molay and a few high ranking members of the order were executed (by burning), most of the Templars were arrested and acquitted, absorbed into other military orders or simply returned to their families. Templar organizations mostly went to the Knights Hospitalier and/or changed their names.
Sources (in Dutch, sorry)