Friday the Thirteenth

Most people consider any Friday that falls on the 13th day of a month to be "unlucky."  Why?  Well, it goes back to Friday, the 13th day of October in 1307 - in the country of France.  On that day, King Phillip IV and Pope Clement V essentially declared war on the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon which is in Jerusalem.  The Order soon became known as the Kinghts Templar. The Order was created in 1118 to protect Christian pilgrims as they traveled to sacred places in the Middle East, or Outremer, by a group of ex-Crusaders, with the blessing of King Baldwin of Jerusalem. In 1129, the group was approved by the Council of Troyes; and then it won the patronage of Bernard of Clairveaux, who became a Saint.  In 1139, Pope Innocent II declared that a member of the Knights Templar could pass through any border unmolested, owed taxes to no one, and had only the Pope, himself, to answer to.
   First an order of Poor Monks, the Papal approval made the Knights a charity throughout Europe, and wherever the Church was established.  Taking oaths of poverty, the Knights gave the Temple great amounts of land, coins and jewelry.  Soon the Order was not only protecting the pilgrims to the Middle East, they were also protecting the pilgrims' valuables at home, and issuing letters of credit.  The Knights Templar became the foremost bankers of Europe, lending money to Kings, Princes, Popes and churches.  The person who owed the greatest amounts of money to the Knights Templar was King Phillip IV of France.  In 1306, he had all Jews removed from his kingdom, and had his minions gather the monies due the Jewish bankers for the crown.  Owing the Lombard bankers money, he outlawed them, and declared his debts to them abolished.  On 13 October 1307, King Phillip IV had all assets and members of the Knights Templar seized.  The men were tortured and killed; the assets were swept into his own pockets.

-  But - What is "luck?"  The dictionary states that luck is success or failure apparently brought through chance, rather than through one's own actions.  However, the definition of luck (or chance) varies by the philosophical, religious, mystical, or emotional context of the one interpreting it; according to the classic Noah Webster's dictionary, luck is "a purposeless, unpredictable and uncontrollable force that shapes events favourably or unfavourably for an individual, group or cause". Yet the author Max Gunther defines it as "events that influence one's life and are seemingly beyond one's control".  When thought of as a factor beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result, there are at least two senses that people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense. In the prescriptive sense, luck is a supernatural and deterministic concept that there are forces (e.g. gods or spirits) that prescribe that certain events occur very much the way laws of physics will prescribe that certain events occur. It is the prescriptive sense that people mean when they say they "do not believe in luck". In the descriptive sense, people speak of luck after events that they find to be fortunate or unfortunate, and maybe improbable.  Therefore, cultural views of luck vary from perceiving luck as a matter of random chance to attributing to such explanations of faith or superstition. For example, the Romans believed in the embodiment of luck as the goddess Fortuna, whereas the philosopher Daniel Dennett believes that "luck is mere luck" rather than a property of a person or thing. Carl Jung viewed luck as synchonicity, which he described as "a meaningful coincidence".

  I'd have to say that the day of 13 October 1307 was a bad day for the Knights Templar.  Period.