Why is Friday the 13th considered so unlucky? The present writer assumed it dated to the arrests of Jacques De Molay and the Knights Templar on Oct. 13, 1307. A closer look at folklore leaves doubt to its origins in article by David Emery, “Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky”.
In an excerpt from “Tales of the Knights Templar,” Katherine Kurtz recaps arrests of the Knights Templar: “On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices.
None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force “confessions,” and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.” The arrest led to seven years imprisonment for DeMolay,