Geoffroi de Charney
Geoffroi de Charney, also known as Guy d'Auvergne, (died 11 or 18 March 1314) was preceptor of Normandy for the Knights Templar. De Charney was accepted into the Order of Knights Templar at a young age by Amaury de la Roche, Preceptor of France. Present at the ceremony was brother Jean le Franceys, preceptor of Pédenac. In 1307 de Charny was arrested, along with the entire Order of Knights Templar in France, and in 1314 was burned at the stake. Persecution of the Templars. The Order of the Templars was originally created to protect pilgrims on the  road to Jerusalem. The Templars' mission was then expanded to the Crusades. The persecution of the Templars began in France as a plan by King Philip IV, with the complicity of Pope Clement V. On 13 October 1307, the King ordered a dramatic arrest of all Templars in France. Clement V, on 22 November 1307, under pressure from the King, also issued a papal decree, called "Pastoralis praceminentiae", ordering all Christian monarchs to arrest all Templars and confiscate their lands in the name of the Pope and the Church. Though the order went out to England, Iberia, Germany, Italy and  Cyprus, Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay, Geoffrey de Charney and many other Templars were in France, and, under the orders of the French king, were arrested and tortured until they confessed to the series of horrible crimes of which they were accused. In 1307, the Pope sent two Cardinals to interview Jacques de Molay and Hugues de Pairaud, a Templar who is referred to as "the visitor of France", at which time they recanted their confessions and told the other Templars to do the same. Two other Templars, Pierre de Bologna and Renaud de Provins, also tried to convince  other Templars to recant their confessions and by early May 1310, close to six hundred did so. After that Pierre de Bologna was never seen again and Renaud de Provins was sentenced to life imprisonment. Initial charges. Geoffroi de Charney and the other Templars in France were arrested on 13 October 1307. Scores of charges were leveled against them; many were notably similar to those directed at other enemies of Philip, such as heresy, sodomy and blasphemy. There were initially five charges lodged against the Templars. Recantation and death of Templar leaders in France. Eventually King Philip's Inquisitors succeeded  in making Jacques de Molay confess to the charges. On 18 March 1314, de Molay and de Charney recanted their confessions, stating they were innocent of the charges and they were only guilty of betraying their Order by confessing under duress to something they did not do. They were immediately found guilty of being relapsed heretics, for which the punishment was death. This effectively silenced the other Templars. Philip continued to pressure and threaten the Pope to officially disband the Order, and things came to a dramatic end in 1314 with the public execution by burning of leader Jacques de  Molay and Geoffroi de Charney. Death. His exact day of death is disputed by scholars. This source records his death as follows: (Note: The day varies by one day, not unusual for the chronicles of the Middle Ages): The cardinals dallied with their duty until 19 March 1314, when, on a scaffold in front of Notre Dame, de Molay, Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy, Hugues de Peraud, referred to as "a visitor of France", and Godefroi de Gonneville, Master of Aquitaine, were brought forth from the jail in which for nearly seven years they had lain, to receive the  sentence agreed upon by the cardinals, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and some other prelates whom they had called in. Considering the offences which the culprits had confessed and confirmed, the penalty imposed was in accordance with the rule—that of perpetual imprisonment. The affair was supposed to be concluded when, to the dismay of the prelates and wonderment of the assembled crowd, de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney arose. They had been guilty, they said, not of the crimes imputed to them, but of basely betraying their Order to save their own lives. It was pure and  holy; the charges were fictitious and the confessions false. Hastily the cardinals delivered them to the Prevot of Paris, and retired to deliberate on this unexpected contingency, but they were saved all trouble. When the news was carried to Philippe he was furious. The King was furious and they were both pronounced relapsed heretics to be burned without a further hearing; the facts were notorious and no formal judgment by the papal commission need be waited for. That same day, by sunset, a pile was erected on a small island in the Seine, the Ile des Juifs, near the palace  garden. There de Molay and de Charney were slowly burned to death, refusing all offers of pardon for retraction, and bearing their torment with a composure which won for them the reputation of martyrs among the people, who reverently collected their ashes as relics. Legacy and the "curse". Little more than a month later, Clement V died in torment of a loathsome disease thought to have been lupus, and eight months later Philip IV was killed at the age of forty-six in a hunting accident. Their deaths gave rise to the legend that de Molay had cited them before  the tribunal of God. Such stories became legend among the people, whose sense of justice had been scandalized by the affair. Even in distant Germany, Philippe's death was spoken of as retribution for his destruction of the Templars, and Clement was described as shedding tears of remorse on his death-bed for three great crimes, the poisoning of Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor and the ruin of the Templars and the Beguines. Author Malcolm Barber has researched this legend and concluded that it originates from "La Chronique métrique attribuée à Geffroi de Paris" (ed. A. Divèrres, Strasbourg, 1956, pages  5711-5742). Geoffrey of Paris was "apparently an eye-witness, who describes Molay as showing no sign of fear and, significantly, as telling those present that God would avenge their deaths". This series of events forms the basis of "Les Rois maudits" ("The Accursed Kings"), a series of historical novels written by Maurice Druon between 1955 and 1977, in which Charney is a supporting character. The novels were also adapted into two French television miniseries in 1972 and 2005.