At the OSMTH Management Meeting October 2007, Priorij Corsendonk, Oud-Turnhout,
 Belgium, on the evening of Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at the Gala Knights Templar Dinner

Commander Leo Thys: May I please ask you to stand up in remembrance of the arrest of the French Knights Templar on Friday 13 October 1307.

Commander:
Today 700 hundred years ago, on Friday the 13^th of October 1307, and at command of King Philippe the Fair all Templars present in the whole kingdom of France were unexpectedly taken prisoner by daybreak, including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay who was in Paris at that time. 
It seems that, except in a few places, the Templars didn’t offer resistance against their imprisonment. 
All the Templar Houses in France were put into royal care. 
All the possessions of the Order were seized.

Afterwards the French king has asked to send copies of his arrest warrant to Edward II, King of England, to Albert, King of the Holy Roman Empire [Germany and Italy], to Jaime II, King of Aragon [Spain], and to other nobles like Jan II, Duke of Brabant [Belgium and The Netherlands, the region where we are on this very moment] and to Thibaut de Bar, Prince-Bishop of Liège [Belgium].

The next seven months and without authorization from the Pope, who had the Order of the Temple under his immediate jurisdiction, King Philippe installed a basically illegal royal commission to investigate the accusations. 

At the request of the French ecclesiastical inquisitors, but without their co-operation, this royal commission has submitted the Templars to a most rigorous examination, with repeated use of torture. 
Most of the accused Templars declared themselves guilty.
After being subjected to such ferocious torture many of them succumbed to one or more of the 87 different accusations. 
Some Knights have done similar confessions without the use of torture, but through fear of it.
This all lead on five years later, on 22 March 1312, to the papal bull of Pope Clement V 

“Vox in excelso” for approval to the commission of cardinals, by which the Pope decreed the dissolution, not the condemnation of the Order. 
This suppression was not by penal sentence, but by an Apostolic Decree.

Let us commemorate all these innocent victims of this biggest scandal of justice in the history of the Christian Church.
May I please ask you for three minutes of silence.  

… After a few seconds the music “Non nobis Domine, non nobis” starts to play …