Knights Templar

"No downfall was to be so complete and spectacular as that of this arrogant order of monastic knighthood. Formed during the crusades to be the sword arm of the church in defense of the holy land, the Templars had moved from ideals of asceticism and poverty to immense resources and an international web of power outside the regular channels of allegiance. They were not known for charity and unlike the knights of st. john, supported no hospitals. With 2,000 members in france and the largest treasury in northern europe, they maintained a headquarters in the "Temple", their formidable fortress in Paris.

Not only their money but their existence as a virtually autonomous enclave invited destruction. Their sinister reputation, grown from the secrecy of their rituals , supplied the means. In a pounce like a tiger's leap, Philip seized the Temple in Paris and had every Templar in France arrested on the same night.
To justify confiscation of the Order's property, the main charge was heresy, in proof of which the King's prescecutors dragged into the light every dark superstition and fearful imagining of sorcery and Devil-worship that lay along the roots of the medieval mind. The Templars were accused by suborned witnessses of bestiality, idol-worship, denial of the sacraments; of selling their souls to the Devil and adoring him in the form of a huge cat; of sodomy with each other and intercourse with demons and succubi; of requiring initiates to Deny God, Christ and the Virgin, to spit three times, urinate, and trample on the cross, and give the "kiss of shame" to the prior of the Order on the mouth, penis and buttocks.
To strengthen resolution for these various practices, they were said to drink a powder made from the ashes of dead members and their own illegitimate children."

- excerpt from "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century"
by Barbara W. Tuchman Pages 42-43. (Amazon)

A complete history of the Knights Templar (link)