Notes on Templar personnel and government at the turn
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
Alan Forey
The Bell House, Church Lane, Kirtlington, Oxon, OX5 3HJ, UK
Keywords:
Templars
Hospitallers
Recruitment
Provincial and central administration
Sergeants
a b s t r a c t
The Hospital of St John is thought to have been in various respects
in a rather more healthy condition than the order of the Temple in
the late thirteenth century, and comparisons and contrasts
between the two orders have recently been made, often to the
detriment of the Templars. This view is examined with reference to
recruiting, the role of sergeants, ignorance among brothers,
provincial administration, central government, and roles after the
collapse of the crusader states. The argument is advanced that the
Temple was not in a noticeably worse state than the Hospital and
that on many issues the similarities between the two orders are
more marked than the differences.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
In recent years the Templars have been having a bad press. Not only have several writers maintained
that during admission ceremonies recruits to the order denied Christ, spat on the cross and engaged in
indecent kissing;
there have also been claims that at the end of the thirteenth century the Templars
had difficulty in recruiting, were often ignorant, and, in Riley-Smith’s words, possessed ‘an anarchic
and archaic system of management’. He also writes that ‘the state of the order seems to have been so
E-mail address:
1
B. Frale, L’ultima battaglia dei Templari: dal codice ombre d’obbedienza militare alla costruzione del processo per eresia (Rome,
2001); B. Frale, ‘The Chinon chart. Papal absolution to the last Templar master Jacques de Molay’, Journal of Medieval History, 30
(2004), 109–34; A. Demurger, Chevaliers du Christ. Les Ordres religieux-militaires au moyen a
ˆge, XIe–XVIe sie`cle (Paris, 2002), 223;
A. Demurger, Les Templiers. Une chevalerie chre´tienne au moyen a
ˆge (Paris, 2005), 484–94; A. de la Croix, L’Ordre du Temple et le
reniement du Christ (Paris, 2004); J. Riley-Smith, ‘Were the Templars guilty?’, in: The medieval crusade, ed. S.J. Ridyard
(Woodbridge, 2004), 107–24; E. Lord, The Templar’s curse (Harlow, 2008), 136.
Contents lists available at
Journal of Medieval History
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e /
0304-4181/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2009.03.002
Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
dire that one wonders how long it could have been allowed to remain in existence.
Slowness of
communications inevitably made effective central control difficult in any international order, but the
Hospital is thought to have been in various respects in a rather more healthy condition, and
comparisons and contrasts between the two orders have been made, often to the detriment of the
Templars.
Although numerous criticisms could be voiced of the arguments relating to Templar admission
ceremonies, here the focus will be on the personnel and governmental structures of the Temple at the
turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the extent to which the Temple differed from the
Hospital in these matters, although comparisons are inevitably hampered by the differing nature of the
sources surviving for the two institutions. Many of the criticisms which have been expressed about
Templar personnel and government are based on comments made during the Templar trial, and there
is, of course, no material of a comparable kind for the Hospitallers. On the other hand, the central
archives of the Temple have completely disappeared, and there are, for example, no surviving texts of
any statutes issued by Templar general chapters.
Recruitment
It has on several occasions been suggested that the Temple encountered difficulties in recruiting in the
later thirteenth century.
The argument has related in some cases to an apparent lack of postulants
from particular groups. Attention has been drawn to the ages of those who testified during the Templar
trial in some regions, and it has been suggested that the recruitment of young men capable of fighting
had not been maintained.
Most of the Templars questioned in the West were certainly not very young
when interrogated: of those who gave evidence in Paris in 1307, nearly 60 per cent were over 40.
On
this point it is impossible to make any comparison with the Hospitallers in the early fourteenth century,
although in 1373 the average age of Hospitallers in some western priories was greater than that of
Templars at the beginning of the century. The situation in the Hospital in the later fourteenth century
may, however, have been influenced by particular factors, such as plague.
It may be pointed out,
however, that the average age on entry of Templars questioned during the trial was the mid- to late-
twenties.
Little is known about ages on recruitment in earlier periods of Templar history, but the
records of interrogations in Paris in 1309–11,
which provide the most extensive information about
ages, do not suggest a marked change in the years after 1291 (see
Of course, many recruits who had been middle-aged or elderly when they entered the order in the
decades before 1291 would have died before the time of the interrogations: if this is taken into account
the figures of 69 per cent joining before 1291 when below 30 and 59.3 per cent in the order’s last 16
years suggest that recruiting patterns had not changed to any considerable extent, although there had
apparently been more postulants in their teens before 1291. Since nearly 60 per cent of those entering
the Temple after the collapse of the crusader states were below 30 on admission it can scarcely be
2
J. Riley-Smith, ‘The structures of the orders of the Temple and the Hospital in c.1291’, in: The medieval crusade, ed. Ridyard,
127–8, 131, 141, 143; similar comments are made in J. Riley-Smith, ‘ Towards a history of military-religious orders’, in: The
Hospitallers, the Mediterranean and Europe. Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell, ed. K. Borchardt, N. Jaspert and H.J. Nicholson
(Aldershot, 2007), 281, where it is also stated that ‘it is indisputable that the order was in chaos.’
3
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 127–8; M. Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie (Paris, 1995), 128; E. Gooder, Temple
Balsall. The Warwickshire preceptory of the Templars and their fate (Chichester, 1995), 83–4; R. Studd, ‘From preceptor to prisoner
of the Church: Ralph Tanet of Keele and the last of the Templars’, Staffordshire Studies, 8 (1996), 43.
4
Gooder, Temple Balsall, 83.
5
A.J. Forey, ‘Towards a profile of the Templars in the early fourteenth century’, in: The military orders. Fighting for the faith and
caring for the sick, ed. M. Barber (Aldershot, 1994), 197; see also A. Gilmour-Bryson, ‘Age-related data from the Templar trials’, in:
Aging and the aged in medieval Europe, ed. M.M. Sheehan (Toronto, 1990), 132–3.
6
A.M. Legras, ‘Les Effectifs de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Je´rusalem dans le prieure´ de France en 1373’, Revue
Mabillon, 60 (1984), 362–3, 368–9; L’Enqueˆte pontificale de 1373 sur l’ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Je´rusalem, ed. A.M.
Legras (Paris, 1987), 105.
7
A.J. Forey, ‘Recruitment to the military orders (twelfth to mid-fourteenth centuries)’, Viator, 17 (1986), 150; see also
Gilmour-Bryson, ‘Age-related data’, 134. Age on recruitment was recorded only in some districts.
8
J. Michelet, Proce`s des Templiers, 2 vols (Paris, 1841–51).
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
151
claimed that the order did not have enough men who were of fighting age. It is also clear that at least in
some regions most recruits to the rank of knight in the period after the fall of Acre were still joining at
a young age: of 10 knights who were recruited in Aragon and Catalonia after 1291 and whose age on
recruitment is known, all but one had entered the order when below 20: the average age of these nine
knightly recruits was little more than 15.
Admittedly, not all young recruits were capable of fighting. Many Templar sergeants did not have
a military role, which was the preserve of knights and sergeants-at-arms; and it has further been
maintained that the order no longer appealed sufficiently to the knightly class.
Certainly, it could be
pointed out that by contrast, the Hospital found it necessary in 1292 to impose restrictions on the
admission of knights, except in the Iberian peninsula,
and it has been claimed that towards the end of
the thirteenth century the proportion of sergeants in the Temple was much greater than in the
Hospital.
It is undeniably true that the majority of Templars who were arrested and questioned in the
early fourteenth century were sergeants, although it is not known how many of these were capable of
serving in the field: of the lay brothers who testified before the papal commissioners in Paris between
1309 and 1311 and whose rank is definitely known, 177 were sergeants and only 16 were knights; and
an undated record of testimonies presented in the south of France includes the evidence given by six
knights and 17 sergeants.
Even in the Iberian peninsula, where the Templars still had a military role,
sergeants outnumbered knights: of the brothers questioned in Aragon and Catalonia, 20 were knights
and 46 were sergeants.
The situation was, however, different at the order’s headquarters in Cyprus,
where knights predominated.
Of course, the brothers in Cyprus constituted only a small proportion of
the order’s membership, but it must be remembered that in the East many brothers were killed or
captured when the remnants of the crusader states were being lost and when the island of Ruad fell in
1302, and that most of these brothers were knights.
The life expectancy of sergeants d most of whom
did not serve in the East d at that time must have been greater and this would affect the ratio of
knights and sergeants.
No comparable figures about the proportions of knights and sergeants exist for the Hospital at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. The earliest surviving evidence dates from 1338. Surveys
undertaken in that year show that of the lay Hospitallers in England, Scotland and Wales whose ranks
are known, 31 were knights and 47 sergeants, while in the priory of St Gilles there were 72 knights and
Table 1
Ages on entry of Templars questioned in Paris, 1309–11
Age on entry
Up to 1291
1292–1307
Below 20
21 (25%)
10 (8.6%)
20–29
37 (44%)
71 (50.7%)
30–39
22 (26.2%)
38 (27.1%)
40–49
3 (3.6%)
13 (9.3%)
Over 50
1 (1.2%)
6 (4.3%)
9
These figures are derived from Barcelona, Archivo Capitular, codex 149, and H. Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des
Templerordens, 2 vols (Mu¨nster, 1907), vol. 2, 364–72, doc. 157, although Finke gives Bernard of Puigvert’s age on recruitment as
20, when it was in fact stated to have been 15 (Barcelona, Archivo Capitular, codex 124, f. 20–20v).
10
Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie, 128; Strudd, ‘From preceptor to prisoner’, 44.
11
J. Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire ge´ne´ral de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Je´rusalem, 4 vols (Paris, 1894–1906), vol. 3,
608–9, doc. 4194, art. 2.
12
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 125.
13
Forey, ‘Recruitment’, 144; Michelet, Proce`s, passim; Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 342–64, doc. 156.
14
A.J. Forey, The fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Aldershot, 2001), 76.
15
Forey, ‘Recruitment’, 144.
16
Of eight Aragonese Templars who wrote from an Egyptian prison to James II of Aragon in 1306, all those whose rank is
known were knights: A. Masia´ de Ros, La Corona de Arago
´n y los estados del Norte de Africa (Barcelona, 1951), 299–300, doc. 32.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
152
144 sergeants.
Sergeants were in the majority, but the preponderance of this rank numerically was
then not so marked as in the Temple earlier.
Yet it should be remembered that only a minority of the members of either order was expected to
fight, and that in the years following the collapse of the crusader states the military undertakings of
both Temple and Hospital were limited. In these altered circumstances the Hospital was in 1292
seeking to increase the proportion of non-knightly brothers, who were less costly to maintain and who
could undertake many of the administrative and other tasks which had to be fulfilled in the West. It is
not known whether the Temple was adopting a similar policy: the majority of Templars who were
interrogated had entered the order after 1291, and it is not known whether the ratio of knights to
sergeants had earlier been higher.
That the Temple’s appeal to the knightly classes was declining at
the end of the thirteenth century can only be a supposition.
Clear evidence is also lacking about overall recruitment to the Temple. At times in the early four-
teenth century the Hospital was placing general restrictions on recruiting, suggesting that there was
a sufficient supply of postulants to that order,
but no similar decrees survive for the Templars.
Evidence about length of service given during the proceedings of the trial does not, however, suggest
any marked decline in overall recruitment in the Temple’s later years. The accompanying tables
indicate the proportion of brothers interrogated in various places who were admitted in the 15 years
leading up to the Templars’ arrest (
), and the numbers admitted in each of the last three five-
year periods up to 1307 (
The smallest proportion of recruits from 1293 onwards was among those questioned at Clermont,
but this is the smallest sample, and recruitment in that group was brisk between 1303 and 1307. The
exceptionally high proportion of recent recruits in Cyprus is to be explained by the practice of sending
brothers, especially knights, to the East shortly after their admission in western countries. This custom
obviously affects to some extent the figures for overall recruitment compiled from western sources. All
the Aragonese brothers interrogated in Cyprus, for example, had entered the Temple after the fall of
Acre in 1291.
In order to assess the precise significance of the statistics presented, information would
also be needed about death rates, and this does not exist. Yet as between a fifth and a quarter of those
interrogated in western Europe had joined the order in the five years leading up to the arrests, and in
most cases between 40 per cent and 50 per cent had entered in the 10 years up to 1307, the figures do
not lend support to the notion that recruitment was noticeably declining.
Table 2a
Dates of admission of interrogated Templars
Paris, 1307
Clermont, 1309
Aragon, 1309–10
Paris, 1309–11
Cyprus, 1310
Recruited up to 1292
52 (38.8%)
38 (56.7%)
38 (39%)
91 (40.4%)
12 (16.7%)
Recruited 1293–1307
82 (61.2%)
29 (43.3%)
59 (61%)
134 (59.6%)
60 (83.3%)
Total
134
67
97
225
72
17
L.B. Larking, The Knights Hospitallers in England (Camden Society, first series 65, London, 1857), passim; D. Selwood, Knights
of the cloister. Templars and Hospitallers in central-southern Occitania, 1100–1300 (Woodbridge, 1999), 158; cf. J. Gle´nisson,
‘L’Enqueˆte pontificale de 1373 sur les possessions des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean-de-Je´rusalem’, Bibliothe`que de l’E
´cole des
Chartes, 129 (1971), 92; Forey, ‘Recruitment’, 145.
18
Half of the knights interrogated in Paris between 1309 and 1311 had joined the order before the loss of Acre, but it is
difficult to draw any conclusions from this evidence, partly because some young knights recruited in France were in the East.
19
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 4, 23–4, doc. 4550, art. 2; C.L. Tipton, ‘The 1330 chapter general of the Knights Hospitallers
at Montpellier’, Traditio, 24 (1968), 305–6; Legras, ‘Effectifs’, 363.
20
Michelet, Proce`s; R. Se`ve and A.-M. Chagny-Se`ve, Le Proce`s des Templiers d’Auvergne, 1309–1311 (Paris, 1986); Finke,
Papsttum, vol. 2, 364–72 doc. 157; Barcelona, Archivo Capitular, codex 149; K. Schottmu¨ller, Der Untergang des Templer-Ordens, 2
vols (Berlin, 1887), vol. 2, 143–400; A. Gilmour-Bryson, The trial of the Templars in Cyprus. A complete English edition (Leiden,
1998). There is some overlap between the groups questioned in France: overall totals of those questioned are therefore not
given.
21
The figures do not take into account those held in Muslim captivity in Egypt at the time of the trial: these included some
captured at Ruad in 1302 who were fairly recent recruits, such as the Aragonese brothers William of Castellbisbal and G. of Bac,
who had entered the order in the mid-1290s: Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 453; Masia´ de Ros, La Corona de Arago
´n y los estados del
norte de Africa, 299–300, doc. 32; Forey, Fall of the Templars, 217.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
153
The number of brothers in many western houses at the time of the arrests was certainly small,
which might be taken to suggest declining numbers, but it is usually difficult to make comparisons
about the personnel in houses in different periods of Templar history. Moreover, some indicators of
generally declining numbers and a shortage of recruits to which attention has been drawn are of
questionable value. Although it has been noted that the number of brothers who can be traced in some
Aragonese convents declines in the later thirteenth century,
this comment is based on lists of
brothers in documents issued in the name of the Templars and may reflect merely scribal practice
rather than an actual diminution in numbers: the decline is not apparent in the documentation of all
Aragonese convents. The Aragonese provincial master Berenguer of Cardona also on one occasion
wrote to the commander of Mallorca saying that he could not meet the latter’s request for some
brothers to be sent to the island; but the master was ready to allow men to be recruited in Mallorca: the
letter does not indicate that potential recruits were lacking.
It has also been observed that the
number of silver spoons in English Templar houses recorded in inventories compiled when the
brothers were arrested was usually greater than the number of Templars known to have been resident
in 1307.
Yet it needs to be established that such spoons were intended exclusively for the use of
brothers, and not also for guests. It has further been alleged that the Templars could no longer man all
their conventual houses: the records of the Templar trial show, for example, that heads of some
neighbouring commanderies were living in the convents of Montpellier and St Gilles.
But it needs to
be demonstrated that these commanderies had at one time been independent of Montpellier or St
Gilles, and had not always been merely dependencies of these houses: those administering depen-
dencies remained members of their mother convent and were often mentioned among those
approving documents issued in the name of the convent. There is, however, evidence of the apparent
downgrading of some Templar houses in England. The existence of dormitories was recorded at the
time of the arrests of the Templars at Dokesworth (Duxford) in Cambridgeshire and Templehurst in
Yorkshire, but these houses each then contained only one brother other than the preceptor; and there
were no brothers at Rockley in Wiltshire, where there was a refectory and chapel.
Downgrading
could, of course, result from reorganisation rather than a decline in the supply of recruits: the Templar
convent of Chivert in Valencia was downgraded when the castle of Pen
˜ ı´scola, which was acquired in
1294, became the centre of Templar administration in northern Valencia;
and it has been pointed out
that the downgrading of South Witham in Lincolnshire, which at the time of the arrests was admin-
istered by a lay bailiff, may have been occasioned by the nature of the site rather than a lack of
recruits.
Downgrading might in some cases also be explained by a lack of resources to maintain an
establishment rather than a lack of potential recruits. In the later thirteenth century the Temple, like
the Hospital, was experiencing financial difficulties which were occasioned by the loss of estates in the
Table 2b
Dates of admission of those recruited 1293–1307
Paris, 1307
Clermont, 1309
Aragon, 1309–10
Paris, 1309–11
Cyprus, 1310
Recruited 1293–97
19
7
19
26
7
Recruited 1298–1302
32
7
22
53
21
Recruited 1303–07
31
15
18
55
32
Total
82
29
59
134
60
22
A.J. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n (London, 1973), 278; Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 128.
23
Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Arago´n (henceforth ACA), Cancillerı´a real, Cartas reales diploma´ticas (henceforth CRD),
Templarios 285; see also CRD, Templarios 371.
24
Gooder, Temple Balsall, 83–4.
25
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 127; see L. Me´nard, Histoire civile, eccle´siastique et litte´raire de la ville de Nismes, 7 vols (Paris,
1750-8), vol. 1, Preuves, 198–201, 203–4, 207–8.
26
Gooder, Temple Balsall, 83.
27
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 102.
28
Gooder, Temple Balsall, 83. On buildings at South Witham, see E. Lord, The Knights Templar in Britain (Harlow, 2002), 100–1;
‘South Witham’, Current Archaeology, 9 (1968), 232–7.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
154
East, the dwindling of donations in the West, reductions in privileges and immunities, and the obli-
gation to contribute to new forms of royal and papal taxation.
Financial hardship is apparent not only
from letters stressing the lack of funds but also from the alienating of property to meet current
expenses. It might, of course, be argued that after the loss of the Holy Land the Temple was spared the
costs of maintaining castles and garrisons there, but after 1291 the Templars still had a military role in
Armenia and they held the island of Ruad, off the Syrian coast, from 1300 until 1302. The order’s
headquarters on Cyprus had to be maintained and there was also the cost of shipping men and supplies
out to the East, besides naval expenses in the eastern Mediterranean. That the financial situation
remained difficult after 1291 is apparent from continued requests for supplies from the West in
addition to the normal responsions: in 1300, for example, the Aragonese provincial master received
a plea from James of Molay to give all possible assistance to those in the East.
It was also reported that
in the mid-1290s instructions were issued to restrict Templar almsgiving because of the lack of funds,
and at the time of the Templars’ arrest a considerable number of the order’s properties were in a state
of disrepair. In England, for example, a fulling mill at Witham was derelict and another mill at Rothley
was broken down,
and at Bretteville in Normandy extensive repairs to buildings had to be made
before the property could be farmed out by French royal officials in 1309.
Repairs were similarly
undertaken in Aragon while Templar property was in royal hands: among buildings restored was the
parish church of Orrios, which was said in 1310 to be in such a ruinous state that services could not be
held there.
If there was in fact any reduction in overall numbers, it may have been because the order was
seeking to restrict recruitment at a time of financial difficulty, as some monasteries did in the thir-
teenth century and as the Hospital was doing in the early fourteenth,
rather than because there was
a lack of potential recruits. There are indications that in the Temple’s later years provincial masters
were keeping a close control on recruitment and that heads of houses were not allowed complete
freedom of action. In his testimony during the Templar trial Ponzard of Gizy stated that ‘the said
masters of bailiwicks seek permission from provincial commanders to create brothers.’
Examples of
permission being given are provided by letters written at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries by the Aragonese provincial master Berenguer of Cardona to Peter of San Justo when the
latter was commander of Corbins and later when he had charge of the convent in Mallorca: needed
recruits were to be admitted.
Many Templar witnesses also stated during the trial that they had been
admitted by a local Templar official on the orders or authority of a superior, often a provincial master or
visitor, implying a degree of central control of recruitment.
The backing and support of family and
influential friends were also sometimes still necessary at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries to gain admission, as they had been earlier. During the trial a non-Templar witness in Paris
stated that about the year 1300 an individual had sought his help in gaining admission to the order, and
Robert le Brioys, who had entered the Temple about 1297, asserted that his request for admission had
been supported by the bishop of Be´ziers.
Several Templars also claimed that simoniacal admissions
29
On Templar acquisitions and privileges in Aragon, see Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, caps. 2, 4.
30
H. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, 3 vols (Berlin, 1908–22), vol. 1, 78–9, doc. 55.
31
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 629, 641; vol. 2, 87–8.
32
Gooder, Temple Balsall, 86.
33
Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie, 177–8.
34
ACA, Cancillerı´a real, registro 291, f. 273; Forey, Fall of the Templars, 137.
35
U. Berlie`re, ‘Le Nombre des moines dans les anciens monaste`res’, Revue be´ne´dictine, 41 (1929), 231–61; 42 (1930), 19–42;
G.G. Coulton, Five centuries of religion, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1923–50), vol. 3, 540–58.
36
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 38.
37
ACA, CRD Templarios 285, 400.
38
See, for example, Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 265, 342, 418, 541, 605, 611. A. Demurger, ‘Le Personnel des commanderies
d’apre`s les interrogatoires du proce`s des Templiers’, in: La Commanderie. Institution des ordres militaires dans l’Occident
me´die´val, ed. A. Luttrell and L. Pressouyre (Paris, 2002), 139–40, points out that in Provence a large proportion of Templars
questioned had been admitted by the provincial master, although this trend was less marked in more northerly parts of
France: but the important issue is the extent to which admissions were controlled by the heads of provinces.
39
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 184, 449; see also vol. 2, 259, 351.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
155
were still common: some recruits had to pay to be admitted.
It should also be remembered that
younger sons who did not obtain a share of family properties still had to find a livelihood, and that for
many of them entry to a military order may have been more attractive than enclosure in a monastery.
Although no decrees issued by the Temple survive, as they do for the Hospital, which was seeking to
ensure that recruitment did not place a strain on resources in the early fourteenth century, it is
nevertheless possible that the Templars were imposing restrictions on recruitment rather than
suffering from a lack of postulants.
Role of sergeants
It has been argued that besides being more numerous in the Temple than in the Hospital, sergeants
comprised a more significant component of the former order than of the latter.
They were certainly
appointed to some important Templar offices in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. At
the order’s headquarters certain positions were filled by brothers of this rank. Apart from the posts
listed in Templar regulations as the preserve of sergeants,
the office of treasurer in Cyprus in the early
fourteenth century was held by Peter of Castello´n, who was a sergeant, as were all the brothers
interrogated in Cyprus who had held the posts of almoner or infirmarer.
The two Templar treasurers
in Paris called John of Tour were similarly sergeants, as was their predecessor Humbert,
and many
preceptors in France were of that rank, some of them holding leading positions: the sergeants Auvret
and Philip Agate were preceptors of Normandy, and the last three commanders of the important
commandery of Ponthieu belonged to the rank of sergeant.
In France, knights appear at times to have
been subordinate to sergeants.
In Aragon, on the other hand, where the Templars still had a military
role, sergeant commanders were few and tended to be placed in charge of lesser convents or those
sited in cities: they were not usually given command of convents located in castles.
In making use of
sergeants in administrative positions, especially in areas away from the frontiers of Christendom, the
Temple was taking advantage of the skills possessed by some brothers of this rank, and Templar
practice can hardly be looked upon in this context as being archaic, even if the exercise of authority by
sergeants over knights may in some instances have aroused resentment.
Much of the information about the rank of office-holders in the Temple comes from the records of
the trial, and it is more difficult to discover the status of individual Hospitaller officials in the late
40
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 38; vol. 2, 206; Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 338, doc. 155.
41
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 125.
42
La Re
`gle du Temple, ed. H. de Curzon (Paris, 1886), 113, art. 143.
43
Schottmu¨ller, Untergang, vol. 2, 184, 262, 296, 298, 301, 303; Gilmour-Bryson, Trial in Cyprus, 106, 210, 255, 257, 260, 263;
A.J. Forey, ‘Letters of the last two Templar masters’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 45 (2001), 164–5, 168–70, docs. 11, 17; Finke,
Papsttum, vol. 2, 371, doc. 157.
44
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 595; vol. 2, 192. On the treasurers in Paris, see L. Delisle, Me´moire sur les ope´rations financie`res des
Templiers (Paris, 1889), 61–73.
45
Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie, 127; A. Trudon des Ormes, ‘Liste des maisons et de quelques dignitaires de
l’ordre du Temple en Syrie, en Chypre et en France’, Revue de l’orient latin, 7 (1899), 247, 269–70. Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 126–7,
states that the sergeant William Charnier ‘seems to have reached the rank of grand commander’, signifying that he was the
head of a province. William was certainly a sergeant and one Templar witness in Italy referred to him as ‘grand preceptor in
the Patrimony of the blessed Peter in Tuscany’, while another referred to the province of Rome: Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 137;
A. Gilmour-Bryson, The trial of the Templars in the Papal State and the Abruzzi (Vatican City, 1982), 202, 206, 209; T.
Bini, ‘Dei Tempieri e del loro processo in Toscana’, Atti della Reale Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 13
(1845), 497. But the Patrimony appears not to have been a province: see F. Bramato, Storia dell’ordine dei Templari in
Italia. Le fondazioni (Rome, 1991), 90, 157–8; Gilmour-Bryson, Papal State, 131–2, 173, 188, 201–2, 214, 250; F. Tommasi,
‘L’ordine dei Templari a Perugia’, Bollettino della Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 78 (1981), 12, 51–2, doc. 7.
46
A.J. Forey, ‘Rank and authority in the military orders during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Studia monastica, 40
(1998), 310.
47
A.J. Forey, ‘Templar knights and sergeants in the Corona de Arago
´n at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, in:
As ordens militares e as ordens de cavalaria na construça
˜o do mundo ocidental, ed. I.C.F. Fernandes (Lisbon, 2005), 634–5.
48
On tensions between knights and sergeants, see Forey, ‘Rank and authority’, 325–7.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
156
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. But it has been suggested that the Hospitaller treasurer
Thomas Mausu may have been a sergeant,
and in 1338 half of the Hospitaller bailiwicks in England
and Wales were administered by sergeants. Six of these sergeant commanders had knights subject to
them: at Quenington, in Gloucestershire, where three Hospitallers resided, a sergeant had authority
over two knights.
Hospitaller practice in employing sergeants for administrative tasks was not totally
different from that of the Temple.
It has, however, further been argued that, whereas many Templar sergeants were engaged in menial
work, in the Hospital this was done by servants.
The Temple certainly used brothers for many
domestic or agricultural tasks: the functions undertaken by Templars in the Aragonese province, for
example, included those of cook, shoemaker, tailor, smith, gardener, cowherd, oxherd and shepherd,
and many were referred to by the term ‘labourer’ (operarius, obrero) and were presumably manual
workers with no particular skill.
Yet, as the number of brothers in many Templar houses was very
small, domestic tasks were inevitably performed mainly by outsiders, as was agricultural work when
some demesne farming was undertaken. At Baugy in Normandy in 1307 there were apparently only
three brothers but the Templar house there employed 27 outsiders in various capacities, including
those of cowherd, shepherd, swineherd, carter, baker, cook and porter; and an inventory compiled at
that time for Bretteville lists 12 outsiders in the service of that Norman house.
The situation in
English Hospitaller houses in 1338 seems to have been not very different, while in commanderies of the
Hospitaller priory of Provence at that time the numbers of full-time agricultural workers varied from
none to 37, the average being about 10.
It is difficult to draw a clear-cut distinction between the
Temple and Hospital in the employment of outsiders for domestic and agricultural tasks.
Ignorance
It is true that many Templars in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries had an inadequate
grasp of their order’s rule and regulations.
The evidence is found in testimonies provided during the
Templar trial, and there is, of course, no comparable evidence for other military orders, although the
Teutonic order did find it necessary to decree that a penance should be imposed on brothers who failed
to learn the Paternoster, Creed and Hail Mary within six months of entry and that a more severe
punishment should be meted out to those who had not mastered them after a year.
But it would be
surprising if brothers of the Hospital, or of other military orders, were much better informed than
Templars. Members of the various orders came from similar backgrounds and the majority were
laymen; and there is no evidence of a novitiate in the Hospital during which recruits might receive
formal instruction, while in the Teutonic order a probationary period was not compulsory.
Although
in most military orders vernacular copies existed of rules, statutes and customs, many lay brothers
were probably incapable of reading them, and in all orders it was assumed that regulations would be
assimilated partly by periodic public readings: that this practice was not just an obsolete survival from
earlier monastic usage is indicated by the Hospital enacting a decree in 1293 stating that a part of the
49
J. Burgtorf, ‘Leadership structures in the orders of the Hospital and the Temple (twelfth to early fourteenth century):
select aspects’, in: The crusades and the military orders. Expanding the frontiers of medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Z. Hunyadi and
J. Laszlovsky (Budapest, 2001), 384–5.
50
Forey, ‘Rank and authority’, 311.
51
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 126.
52
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 280–1.
53
L. Delisle, E
´tudes sur la condition de la classe agricole et de l’e´tat de l’agriculture en Normandie au moyen aˆge (Evreux, 1851),
721–4; G. Lizerand, Le Dossier de l’affaire des Templiers (Paris, 1964), 46–54; cf. M. Miguet, ‘Le Personnel des commanderies du
Temple et de l’Hoˆpital en Normandie’, in: La Commanderie, 96.
54
Larking, Hospitallers in England, xxx–xxxii, xxxiv–xxxv; B. Beaucage, ‘L’Organisation du travail dans les commanderies du
prieure´ de Provence en 1338’, in: La Commanderie, ed. Luttrell and Pressouyre, 110–12.
55
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 131; A.J. Forey, ‘Novitiate and instruction in the military orders during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries’, Speculum, 61 (1986), 15–16.
56
M. Perlbach, Die Statuten des Deutschen Ordens nach den a
¨ltesten Handschriften (Halle, 1890), 61, Gesetze II(e).
57
Forey, ‘Novitiate’, 2, 4–5.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
157
order’s statutes should be read at every chapter.
It has been stressed that the Templars decreed that
no brother should have a copy of the rule or statutes without the permission of the central convent
d
only brothers in positions of authority were expected to have them d and that many brothers
interrogated in the early fourteenth century said that they had never seen a copy of the rule;
but in
1283 the Hospitallers themselves decreed that no brother should possess a copy of the rule and statutes
unless he had authority over other brothers or had the master’s permission.
How many houses of
military orders actually possessed copies of rules and regulations is not known. Certainly only a limited
number of copies of the Templar rule and customs are known to have been seized when brothers were
arrested,
but the evidence is, of course, far from complete. It has been claimed that the Hospitallers
‘seem to have circulated their rule and statutes widely’, but there is no evidence to indicate what
proportion of Hospitaller convents possessed copies of the order’s regulations.
It would certainly be
rash to assume that Hospitaller houses usually possessed a copy of the rule and statutes, for the
Teutonic order found it necessary to decree that every house of the order should have a copy of its
rule,
and in the thirteenth century even some monasteries d where the literacy rate would have
been higher than in military orders d possessed no copy of their rule.
Provincial administration
A number of differences in structure and organisation at the provincial level of administration has been
postulated between the Temple and Hospital. Hospitaller priories and Templar provinces have been
compared, and it has been argued that the Hospitallers displayed a preference for smaller adminis-
trative units at this level: they therefore had a greater number of senior officials who were in
communication with the East.
The number of Hospitaller priories in European lands certainly
58
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 638–40, doc. 4234, art. 7; cf. Forey, ‘Novitiate’, 14.
59
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 129–30; for the Templar regulation, see, Re
`gle du Temple, 189, art. 326; see also Michelet, Proce`s,
vol. 1, 388.
60
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 450–5, doc. 3844, art. 7; cf. A. Luttrell, ‘The Hospitallers’ early statutes’, Revue Mabillon,
75 (2003), 12.
61
Fewer than a dozen copies in Aragonese lands are mentioned in surviving inventories and other documentation relating to
Templar possessions passing into James II’s hands: J. Villanueva, Viage literario a las iglesias de Espan
˜a, 22 vols (Madrid,
1803–52), vol. 5, 200–2, doc. 2; J. Rubio´, R. d’Alo´s and F. Martorell, ‘Inventaris ine`dits de l’orde del Temple a Catalunya’, Anuari de
l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1 (1907), 393–6, doc. 4; F. Martorell y Trabal, ‘Inventari dels bens de la cambra reyal en temps de
Jaume II (1323)’, Anuari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 4 (1911–12), 553, 562–6; J.E. Martı´nez Ferrando, ‘La ca´mara real en el
reinado de Jaime II (1291–1327). Relaciones de entradas y salidas de objetos artı´sticos’, Anales y Boletı´n de los Museos de Arte de
Barcelona, 11 (1953–54), 182–98, doc. 134 (in this and the preceding source seven copies in the king’s hands in 1323 are listed);
J. Masso´ Torrents, ‘Inventaris dels bens mobles del rey Martı´ d’Arago´’, Revue hispanique, 12 (1905), 415, 420, 422, 435, 453 nos 6,
39, 53, 154, 285 (this lists five in the early fifteenth century). A copy belonging to the house of Mas-De´u in Roussillon, which
formed part of the Aragonese province, was surrendered by a Templar chaplain to the bishop of Elne in 1310: Michelet, Proce`s,
vol. 2, 434.
62
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 130. Reference is made there to A. Luttrell, ‘ The Hospitallers’ early written records’, in: The
crusades and their sources. Essays presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. J. France and W.G. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), 143–6, but this
essay mentions merely a handful of manuscripts.
63
Perlbach, Statuten, 63, Gesetze III(b); 71, Gesetze 17.
64
C.R. Cheney, Episcopal visitation of monasteries in the thirteenth century, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1983), 157–8, 168. It has also
been argued that on some issues, such as the nature of chapters and various types of legislation, many Templars were confused:
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 136, 141. Yet it does not follow that, because the term ‘general chapter’ was used of both provincial and
central assemblies, brothers could not distinguish between them; and it would be surprising if all Templars interrogated during
the trial had a clear notion of the various types of regulation. Whether a clear distinction between types of legislation was
necessary for efficient government may be questioned. Certainly confusion about forms of legislation was by no means
unknown in the Hospital: see Luttrell, ‘Hospitallers’ early written records’, 151; Luttrell, ‘Hospitallers’ early statutes’, 15, 17; and
it can hardly be claimed that Hospitaller regulations constituted a coherent and user-friendly collection of rulings.
65
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 131–2, 141.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
158
exceeded that of Templar provinces: one estimate is that the Hospitallers had 23 priories and the
Templars 12 or 13 provinces.
Yet Hospitaller priories varied greatly in size and importance. The
French houses of the Hospital were grouped into only three priories,
whereas there were apparently
nine in Italy. The number in the latter peninsula was hardly justified by geographical extent or by the
importance of Italy to the Hospital: in 1302 the Italian priories were together expected to provide only
13 brethren-at-arms to serve in the East, while the three French priories were to supply a total of 41.
And although the Hospitallers had four priories in the Iberian peninsula, that of Castile and Leon
covered the larger part of the lands under Christian rule, and was very much larger than those of
Portugal and Navarre. It is therefore difficult to discern any consistent Hospitaller policy of creating
small provinces. It has been suggested that in some cases provincial boundaries were determined by
linguistic frontiers;
but these were not always very clear-cut, and the limits of both Hospitaller
priories and Templar provinces were more clearly influenced by political frontiers. Although bound-
aries of Hospitaller priories in Italy did not necessarily conform to existing political divisions, the
creation of numerous priories there may be in part a reflection of the political fragmentation which
characterised the country.
A further difference at the level of the province which has been postulated is that Templar provincial
masters were itinerant, whereas Hospitaller priors had a fixed base.
The Templar master of Aragon
and Catalonia was certainly not based at a central convent, although a provincial archive and possibly
a provincial treasury were housed at Miravet on the lower Ebro in the later thirteenth century.
Yet it
needs to be demonstrated that the itinerant character of the Aragonese provincial master was typical.
The head of the English province presumably spent much of his time in London, where he had
a chamber at the New Temple,
and probably the provincial master of France similarly resided mainly
in Paris: the provincial chapter certainly normally met there.
The distinction between sedentary and
itinerant heads of provinces or priories should also not be exaggerated. The heads of all provinces or
priories spent a considerable amount of time in visitations of houses subject to them. In 1338 the
English Hospitaller prior, who was based in London, was undertaking visitations for 121 days in the
year.
It has further been suggested that within Templar provinces, commanderies were grouped into
bailiwicks, while this practice was not generally adopted in Hospitaller priories.
Templar organisation
within provinces has been insufficiently investigated, and for some regions there is a lack of detailed
evidence. Difficulties are also created by the imprecision of the terminology employed in surviving
documents: words such as ‘commander’, ‘preceptor’ and ‘bailiff’ could be used in varying contexts, and
interchangeably. An official bearing one of these titles could be the head of a province, have charge of
a Templar convent, be responsible for a dependency of a convent, or have a more menial task: those in
charge of animals were sometimes called preceptors or commanders of sheep, cows or pigs.
The
66
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 131–2.
67
Templar lands in France and Provence constituted at least four provinces. E.G. Le´onard, Introduction au cartulaire manuscrit
du Temple du Marquis d’Albon (Paris, 1930), 19–20, discusses the evidence about the status of Normandy and comes to the
conclusion that it formed part of the province of France; cf. Demurger, Templiers, 149. For an alternative view, see Miguet,
Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie, 13.
68
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 4, 36–41, doc. 4574, art. 14.
69
J. Riley-Smith, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c.1050–1310 (London, 1967), 353; A. Soutou, ‘Les Templiers et
l’aire provençale: a` propos de ‘‘La Cabane de Monzon’’ (Tarn-et-Garonne)’, Annales du Midi, 88 (1976), 93.
70
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 133.
71
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 315–16; A.J. Forey, ‘Sources for the history of the Templars in Aragon, Catalonia and
Valencia’, Archives, 21 (1994), 16–17.
72
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 454, f. 61, 92, 125, 127v; D. Wilkins, Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 4 vols
(London, 1737), vol. 2, 348, 371–2. References to a master’s chamber in some other English houses occur, but these may
merely indicate a room which was temporarily assigned to him while he was staying: London, British Library, Cotton MS
Julius B xii, f. 74; MS Bodley 454, f. 40–1, 155; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 2, 343.
73
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 399, 413, 501, 514, 535, 553, 627–8; vol. 2, 35–6; Delisle, Ope´rations financie`res, 176, 208.
74
Larking, Hospitallers in England, 211.
75
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 127.
76
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 281; Me´nard, Histoire de Nismes, vol. 1, Preuves, 186, 189, 198, 199, 207, 214.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
159
terms ‘bailiwick’ (baiulia) and ‘house’ (domus) could similarly be used in a variety of contexts. It is
therefore often difficult to discern the precise nature of Templar establishments. Furthermore, little is
usually known in detail about arrangements for the payment of responsions to the head of a province
and it is difficult to trace which Templars attended provincial chapters: information on these topics
could throw considerable light on administrative organisation.
The evidence for the Aragonese province is, however, fuller than that for other regions, and the
administrative organisation there is relatively clear. In 1307 there were 36 houses or convents d the
latter term was commonly used in Aragonese documents d which were assessed for responsions and
paid them directly to the provincial master.
There were no intermediate officials between the heads
of these convents and the central authorities of the province, even though the province covered several
distinct political units. The order admittedly had only two convents in the kingdom of Navarre d at
Aberı´n and Ribaforada
d
and the same number in the kingdom of Mallorca, which was not created
until James I’s death in 1276. Yet there was no deputy of the provincial master who had overall charge
in Aragon or Catalonia. The convents consisted of a commander or preceptor and a varying d often
fairly small d number of brothers, who normally included a ‘keeper of the keys’ (claviger) or ‘cham-
berlain’ (camerarius). These houses also usually had a chapel
and a chaplain, although the latter was
not necessarily a member of the order. It was in these convents that all the recorded admissions in the
province took place.
Within the district subject to each of these establishments brothers were often
appointed, with the title of commander or preceptor, to have charge of the administration of a group of
estates.
These subordinate officials remained members of their mother house, and were answerable
to the head of the convent. They might spend most of their time at the convent, but sometimes
a subordinate commander was accompanied by one or more other brothers and a small dependent
house was created; some of these even had chapels.
Yet these brothers remained under the authority
of the head of the convent. Arrangements about appointing subordinate commanders were, however,
often flexible, and at times the tasks performed by such nominees were carried out by laymen.
Although the surviving documentation for the Catalan convent of Gardeny is very considerable and
a subordinate commander of Segria´ can be traced throughout the thirteenth century, a commander of
Urgel was mentioned only in 1282 and between 1296 and 1302, while a commander of Escarabat was
named only in 1278.
It is clear, however, that there were in the Aragonese province no more than two
levels of administration below the provincial master: convents were not grouped into larger bailiwicks.
As Castile, Leon and Portugal were usually subject to a single provincial master, a deputy for Castile
and Leon was at times appointed with the title of comendador mayor,
but there is no other evidence of
77
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 415–19, doc. 45.
78
On the Templars in Navarre, see S.A. Garcı´a Larragueta, ‘ El Temple en Navarra’, Anuario de estudios medievales, 11 (1981),
635–61.
79
Several Templar communities, however, held services in nearby parochial churches: J. Fuguet Sans, L’arquitectura dels
Templers a Catalunya (Barcelona, 1995), 235 n. 8.
80
Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 364–72, doc. 157; Barcelona, Archivo Capitular, cod. 149; Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 423–515.
81
For lists and comment, see Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 270–1, 451–2. To those named should be added Rourell,
which was a dependency of Barbera´: see J.M. Sans i Trave´, ‘El Rourell, una preceptoria del Temple al Camp de Tarragona
(1162?–1248)’, Boletı´n arqueolo
´gico, 103–4 (1976–7), 133–201. For the dependencies of Mas-De´u in Roussillon, see L. Verdon, La
Terre et les hommes en Roussillon aux XIIe et XIIIe sie`cles. Structures seigneuriales, rente et socie´te´ d’apre`s les sources templie`res
(Aix-en-Provence, 2001), 24; and for those of Huesca, A. Conte, La encomienda del Temple de Huesca (Huesca, 1986), 57–8.
82
The Templar house of Barcelona, for example, had its own chapel from the mid-thirteenth century, even though it was then
dependent on the convent of Palau: Fuguet Sans, Arquitectura dels Templers, 286–8. H. Nicholson, The Knights Templar. A new
history (Stroud, 2001), 123, states that in 1198 there were at least nine members of the Temple at Rourell, which was subject to
Barbera´, but this would be an exceptionally large number for a dependency, and possibly not all those listed in the relevant
document were normally resident there: Colleccio
´ diploma
`tica de la casa del Temple de Barbera
` (945–1212), ed. J.M. Sans i Trave´
(Barcelona, 1997), 286–7, doc. 193.
83
Information about these offices is found in the Gardeny parchments in ACA, Ordenes religiosas y militares, San Juan de
Jerusale´n.
84
G. Martı´nez Diez, Los Templarios en la Corona de Castilla (Burgos, 1993), 55, 61.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
160
the grouping of houses into bailiwicks in these kingdoms. The summons sent out during the Templar
trial by the archbishop of Toledo to brothers in Castile and Leon does allude to Templars ‘who used to
live in the houses of Cebolla and Villalba which belong to the bailiwick of Montalba´n’,
but the word
‘bailiwick’ (bayliva) was used in this document of almost all Templar establishments in Leon and
Castile: Cebolla and Villalba were probably merely dependencies of Montalba´n.
More than a century ago Trudon des Ormes maintained that Templar houses in France were by
contrast grouped into 11 bailiwicks, and his opinion has been repeated a century later.
But some of
the bailiwicks which he identified were provinces, while others were not, and he admitted that his
groupings were often tentative and in some cases merely guesswork.
Yet, although the use of the
term baiulia in French sources is not necessarily significant, there is evidence to suggest that the
grouping into bailiwicks of houses which were comparable to the convents in Aragon was the custom
in various regions of France. Commanders were said sometimes to be in charge of Templar houses in
a region, or to be commanders of a district rather than just a house, even in the later period of Templar
history. In 1254 a brother Hugh was preceptor of the houses of the Temple in Brie and in 1274 William
Borelli was preceptor of the houses of the Temple in the bailiwick of Chartres, while Templar estab-
lishments in the county of Burgundy were administered by a ‘preceptor of the houses of the Temple in
Burgundy’.
In 1245 Peter Langan was preceptor of the houses of the Temple in Brittany,
and there
was also a preceptor of Normandy.
In some places there were two commanders d one of the baiulia,
with apparently wide authority, and the other of the house itself where the baiulia was centred: the
latter was not called merely sub-commander, as existed in some convents in certain periods in the
order’s history. Robert of St Just was reported to have been preceptor of the bailiwick of Sommereux
about the year 1294, while Peter of Bresle was preceptor, presumably only of the house there.
John of
Tour was similarly preceptor of the baiulia of E´tampes when Arnulf of Champenelhe was preceptor of
E´tampes itself.
It is often difficult to distinguish which officials had authority over a larger bauilia and
which ruled merely a house, but the existence of two commanders in the same place lends support to
the notion that houses were sometimes grouped into bailiwicks. It may also be noted that some
commanders conducted receptions in neighbouring houses or gave instructions that a recruit should
be admitted in a nearby foundation. The places where recruits were received by the commander of
Ponthieu or on his command included Beauvoir, Forest-l’Abbaye, Grandselve, Loison, Mouflie`res and
Oisemont,
and the Templar in charge of Chartres was responsible for admissions at several houses
including Arville, La Bossie`re and Villedieu-les-Maurepas.
Such receptions were sometimes stated to
have been conducted in the presence of the commander of the house where the recruit was admitted.
Regional commanders also involved themselves in other ways in the affairs of particular houses in the
district: in 1300, for example, the ‘commander and procurator of the houses of the knighthood of the
Temple of Brie’ took action in a dispute between the Templars of Provins and the prior of Saint-Ayoul.
It is, of course, often difficult to be certain about the status of some subordinate houses and to discover
whether they housed a Templar community similar to an Aragonese convent, or were just granges
85
F. Fita y Colome´, Actas ine´ditas de siete concilios espan
˜oles celebrados desde el an
˜o 1282 hasta el de 1314 (Madrid, 1882),
81; A. Javierre Mur, ‘Aportacio´n al estudio del proceso contra el Temple en Castilla’, Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, 69
(1961), 75–8, doc. 3.
86
Trudon des Ormes, ‘Liste des maisons’, Revue de l’orient latin, 5 (1897), 392, 440–2; M. Barber, The new knighthood. A history
of the order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), 229.
87
Trudon des Ormes, ‘Liste des maisons’, Revue de l’orient latin, 5 (1897), 390, 394, 443.
88
Le´onard, Introduction, 121, 145, 155; J. Richard, ‘Les Templiers et les Hospitaliers en Bourgogne et en Champagne me´r-
idionale (XIIe–XIIIe sie`cles)’, in: Die geistlichen Ritterorden Europas, ed. J. Fleckenstein and M. Hellmann (Sigmaringen, 1980),
232.
89
Le´onard, Introduction, 109.
90
A list of preceptors of Normandy is given by Le´onard, Introduction, 116.
91
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 241–2.
92
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 598.
93
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 243, 328, 374, 444, 465, 468–9, 480, 481, 488, 489, 491, 622; vol. 2, 1, 75, 132; Schottmu¨ller,
Untergang, vol. 2, 63; Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 331, doc. 155.
94
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 543, 558; vol. 2, 184, 288.
95
V. Carrie`re, Historie et cartulaire des Templiers de Provins (Paris, 1919), 165–8, doc. 159.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
161
where no more than a single Templar was resident. Yet the office of claviger is recorded in some houses
which lay within a bailiwick, which suggests that they were more than small dependencies: a Templar
who was questioned at Poitiers in 1308 held that post at Campagne, which was stated to be in the
bailiwick of Ponthieu.
Houses which apparently formed part of a bailiwick also in some instances had
their own subordinate houses, implying a three-tier level of administration below the level of
provincial master: an inventory compiled in 1309 thus lists the houses or granges dependent on Mont-
de-Soissons, which seems to have lain in the bailiwick of Brie; and Moisy, which apparently also lay in
the same bailiwick, apparently had La Sablonnie`re and Nanteuil-le`s-Meaux among its dependencies.
Houses which were under the authority of the preceptor of Normandy similarly had dependencies.
That at Renneville had several, including Brettemare and Beaulieu; and according to an inventory of
Fresnaux drawn up in 1307, that house had one brother resident at Louvigny.
Payments made at the
time of provincial chapters in Paris in 1295 and 1296 include some made by houses which lay within
bailiwicks, such as Mont-de-Soissons and Moisy: these houses were presumably paying the respon-
sions for which they were responsible.
Admittedly, evidence of these kinds is not necessarily to be accepted in all cases. In the testimonies
given by Templars during the trial there were no doubt lapses of memory and in some cases confusion:
one brother questioned in Paris in 1311 said that he had been admitted to the order c.1306 by Gerard of
Villiers, preceptor of Brie and Mont-de-Soissons; but Gerard was in fact then master of the province of
France.
Nor did the admission of a recruit by a preceptor of another house always signify that the
latter was the head of the bailiwick conducting a ceremony in a subordinate house: although some
admissions at Neuville were conducted by the commander of Chaˆlons-sur-Marne, who was apparently
the head of the bailiwick in which Neuville was situated, the commanders of Reims and of Payns are
also known to have received recruits there.
Nor should it be assumed that all houses where
admissions took place were more than granges, for several Templars stated that they had entered the
order at places which were described merely as granges.
But the evidence is sufficient to indicate the
grouping of houses which were more than small dependencies into bailiwicks in several parts of
France.
Yet the grouping of such houses into bailiwicks may not have been practised in all parts of the
province of Provence. It has recently been pointed out that Provençal sources make no reference to
bailiwicks as a tier of organisation between the province and the commandery;
and records of the
interrogations of Templars conducted during the Templar trial at Nıˆmes, Aigues-Mortes and Ale`s allude
to the convent as the main unit of organisation: those mentioned include St Gilles, Montpellier and Le
Puy-en-Velay, and brothers who had charge of lesser establishments were listed among the members
of such convents.
Although it has been suggested that in the south the convent was the equivalent of
the bailiwick in the north,
it is arguable that in some districts the administrative organisation was
similar to that in north-eastern Spain, which until 1240 was linked to Provence to constitute a single
province of ‘Provence and certain parts of Spain’.
It has been maintained that the English province was also divided into bailiwicks, within which the
various preceptories or commanderies lay.
Certainly in the inquest compiled in 1185 Templar
96
Schottmu¨ller, Untergang, vol. 2, 63.
97
Le´onard, Introduction, 127–8. For a reception at La Sablonnie`re by the commander of Moisy, see Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 520.
98
Miguet, Templiers et Hospitaliers en Normandie, 293–6; Delisle, E
´tudes, 727–8.
99
Delisle, Ope´rations financie`res, 176–8, 209–10.
100
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 637.
101
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 406-7.
102
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 181, 336; Me´nard, Histoire de Nismes, vol. 1, Preuves, 176.
103
D. Carraz, L’Ordre du Temple dans la basse valle´e du Rho
ˆne (1124–1312). Ordres militaires, croisades et socie´te´s me´ridionales
(Lyon, 2005), 98 n. 75.
104
Me´nard, Histoire de Nismes, vol. 1, Preuves, 172–219. On Templar foundations in Provence, see d apart from Carraz, Ordre du
Temple d J.-A. Durbec, ‘Les Templiers en Provence. Formation des commanderies et re´partition ge´ographique de leurs biens’,
Provence historique, 9 (1959), 3–37, 97–132; Selwood, Knights of the cloister, cap. 5; Le´onard, Introduction, 28–88.
105
Demurger, ‘Personnel’, 141.
106
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 88–9.
107
Lord, Knights Templar in Britain, 22; cf. Barber, The new knighthood, 375 n. 3.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
162
properties were in some parts of England grouped into bailiwicks, but this term was not used in a very
precise sense. Lincolnshire constituted one baiulia, but within that there was the baiulia of Lindsey, and
Lindsey was divided into the smaller baiulie of Cabourn, Goulceby, Bolingbroke and Tealby.
The last
of these comprised merely some three and a half carucates of land and six tofts, and produced a yearly
rent of only £3.
The inquest makes no reference to Templar officials in charge of these districts, and in
the surveys of some parts of the country d such as Essex and Oxfordshire d the term baiulia was not
used. The groupings in the 1185 inquest were usually not of long-term significance: in most of England
there was later no intermediary between the preceptory and the provincial master. The only exception
was Yorkshire, which was described as a baiulia in 1185 and which at least from the early thirteenth
century until 1307 was subject to a preceptor of Yorkshire.
That this official had authority over
houses which can be classified as convents is suggested by lists of Templars arrested in Yorkshire in
1308, for these indicate a number of communities consisting of several Templars including a preceptor
and claviger.
There is also evidence of an intermediate official in Ireland at least from the later twelfth
century: the master of Ireland had charge of Templar houses there but was subordinate to the English
provincial master.
Although not all provinces have been examined here, and more research is needed on Templar
organisation in some regions, it would seem that Templar organisation within provinces did not
conform rigidly to a single pattern. Whereas in the Aragonese province there is no evidence of the
grouping of convents into bailiwicks, this does appear to have happened in some parts of France and in
some areas of the English province. In England, the reason for the existence of a commander of
Yorkshire is possibly that the English provincial master was based mainly in the south of England.
Remoteness probably also accounts for the existence of a master of Ireland. In parts of France, the
formation of bailiwicks may have been encouraged by the large number of Templar houses within
a province.
Yet the flexibility which apparently characterised Templar provincial organisation is also to some
extent apparent in the Hospital: in that order the creation of an intermediate level of administration
between the house and the priory was not unknown. Until the middle of the thirteenth century the
Hospital had a commander who had authority over all the houses in the district of Rouergue, and for
the rest of the century one commander had charge of houses in that region to the north of the Tarn and
another exercised supervision south of that river.
And just as the Templar provincial master of Leon,
Castile and Portugal at times had a comendador mayor to act for him in some areas, so after 1230
lieutenants were appointed in Leon and Castile to act as deputies of the Hospitaller prior of Leon and
108
Records of the Templars in England in the twelfth century. The 1185 inquest with illustrative charters and documents, ed.
B.A. Lees (British Academy, Records of the economic and social history of England and Wales, first series 9, London,
1935), xxxii, clii, 78, 100, 104, 106, 108.
109
Records of the Templars, ed. Lees, xxxii, 106.
110
E.J. Martin, ‘The Templars in Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 29 (1927–29), 371; J.E. Burton, ‘The Knights Templar
in Yorkshire in the twelfth century: a reassessment’, Northern History, 27 (1991), 27. A list is given in The Victoria history of the
counties of England. Yorkshire, vol. 3 (London, 1974) 257.
111
E.J. Martin, ‘The Templars in Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 30 (1930–31), 141.
112
H. Wood, ‘The Templars in Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 26C (1907), 332–3; Lord, Knights Templar in
Britain, 179–80. References also occur to a Templar master or preceptor of Scotland: see, for example, Calendar of documents
relating to Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1884), 125, 126–7, 147. Yet there appear to have been only two Templar establishments in
Scotland d at Balantrodoch and Maryculter d and in the records of the Templar trial only four brothers resident in Scotland
d
including two fugitives d are mentioned: Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 2, 381; The Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Scotland,
ed. I.B. Cowan, P.H.R. Mackay and A. Macquarrie (Scottish Historical Society, 4th series 19, Edinburgh, 1983), xviii–xix,
xxii; and in the records of a dispute in 1287 it was stated that certain dues owed by Maryculter to St Mary of Kelso
were to be paid at Balantrodoch: Registrum episcopatus Aberdonensis, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1845), vol. 2, 288–93. It
would seem that Maryculter was dependent on Balantrodoch and that the Scottish master was in fact the preceptor
of Balantrodoch.
113
A. Soutou, ‘ Trois chartes occitanes du XIIIe sie`cle concernant les Hospitaliers de La Bastide-Pradines (Aveyron)’, Annales du
Midi, 79 (1967), 122–6, 144–53.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
163
Both orders appear to have adopted a fairly flexible approach in matters of administration
within a province or priory.
Central government
In the central government of the Temple, consisting of master, convent and chapter-general, weak-
nesses have been discerned in the Templar chapter general. It has been argued that, although Hospi-
taller chapters-general were ‘proper legislatures’, in the Temple legislation rested in the hands of the
master and convent: ‘chapters-general were legislatures only because they were present at them.’
Yet the Barcelona version of the Templar Customs includes a clause stating that ‘all these aforemen-
tioned things the master and the convent may add to or remove, and establish and keep just as seems
to them beneficial to the house. And furthermore it [. . .] should be done by the chapter general, for in
no other way [. . .] may the establishments of the house be removed.’
This could be interpreted to
signify that the consent of the chapter general was necessary only for the repealing of regulations,
although the wording is not free from ambiguity and can be taken in a different sense; but even
a limited interpretation would give the chapter general a role in legislative matters.
It has further been maintained that whereas the Hospital had a ‘properly representative chapter-
general’, the chapters-general of the Templars ‘were not representative, because the western grand
commanders [provincial masters] did not come to them’.
Representative government might be
regarded as desirable as an end in itself, irrespective of practical consequences, but it may be questioned
whether this was a widely-held view towards the end of the thirteenth century: although then and in
the early fourteenth century demands were made in various kingdoms for regular parliamentary
assemblies, to which certain issues should be submitted (as in England in Henry III’s and Edward II’s
reigns, and in Aragon in 1283), these demands were prompted by unpopular or unsuccessful royal
policies and were not of long-term significance. But representative government could also be seen as
having the practical advantage of making for effective rule. In this context doubts have been expressed
about the extent to which the central authorities of the Temple were in touch with events in western
provinces.
The degree of representation at Templar chapters-general needs therefore to be
considered.
The Barcelona version of the Templar Customs certainly states that ‘it is established in the Temple
that the commanders of the lands of Tripoli and Antioch should come each year to chapter where the
master and the convent are.’
Yet this merely implies that western provincial masters did not have to
come to the East every year. To have expected heads of western provinces to travel frequently to the
Holy Land or later to Cyprus would obviously have occasioned numerous prolonged absences from
their provinces, as journeys were affected not only by the difficulties and slowness of travel but also at
times by bouts of sickness. When the Aragonese provincial master Berenguer of San Justo went to the
Holy Land in 1286 his province was in the hands of a lieutenant from September of that year until May
1287: in that period no documents were issued in Berenguer’s name in Spain.
His successor,
Berenguer of Cardona, sailed for Cyprus in August 1300 and was not back in the peninsula until at least
114
C. Barquero Gon
˜ i, ‘Los Hospitalarios en el reino de Leo´n (siglos XII y XIII)’, El reino de Leo
´n en la alta edad media, 9 (1997),
356.
115
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 135, 139.
116
The Catalan rule of the Templars. A critical edition and English translation from Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Arago
´n, Cartas
reales, MS 3344, ed. J. Upton-Ward (Woodbridge, 2003), 38, art. 72.
117
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 140, suggests that there was little legislative activity in the Temple, but the early demise of the
order and the loss of its central archives make assessment difficult: there was no doubt a greater concern after the trial to
preserve title deeds than copies of Templar regulations. In the records of the trial reference was made on a number of occasions
to decrees issued in general chapters, but these have not survived: Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 458; F.J.M. Raynouard, Monumens
historiques relatifs a
` la condemnation des chevaliers du Temple et a
` l’abolition de leur ordre (Paris, 1813), 282–3; Wilkins, Concilia,
vol. 2, 350–1; Se`ve and Chagny-Se`ve, Proce`s des Templiers d’Auvergne, 120.
118
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 135, 137.
119
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 139.
120
Catalan rule, 22, art. 44.
121
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 422.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
164
June 1301, while his journey to the East in 1306 began in late summer, and a lieutenant exercised
authority in the province until April 1307.
There was therefore a justification for the Templar ruling
that ‘commanders of western lands should not come to the East, unless they are ordered to do so by the
master and the chapter’: it took account of the practicalities of travel.
Even religious orders which
were based in the West did not insist on the attendance of abbots of more distant monasteries at every
chapter general.
Yet clearly western provincial masters of the Temple did at times travel out to the
East: in the later thirteenth century it was apparently the norm for them to be recalled every four
years.
As decisions about appointments to the post of provincial master were expected to be made in
the chapter-general,
and as within provinces commanders were expected to provide an account of
their houses at the provincial chapter, it would seem likely that provincial masters would be expected
usually to have their tenure confirmed or ended at a chapter-general.
The situation in the Temple may not in fact have been very different from that in the Hospital. The
heads of western priories could obviously not attend every Hospitaller general chapter, as at some
periods these met annually, and this may have been the expected frequency. In the later thirteenth
century heads of western priories were apparently obliged to go to the East every five years, and in
1301 a Hospitaller statute was issued which stated that two or more priors d particularly those who
had been away longest d should be recalled each year.
Even these regulations were not always
observed: in 1299 it was claimed that in his 30 years as prior of St Gilles in the later thirteenth century,
William of Villaret had travelled to the East only twice instead of six times;
and journeys to the East
by western officials of both the Hospital and the Temple were at times impeded by secular rulers.
Although the statutes of Alfonso of Portugal refer to the presence of western priors at chapters-general,
Hospitaller priors holding office in the West were in practice only occasionally present.
Contact between East and West in the Temple was, of course, not wholly dependent on the presence
of the heads of western provinces at chapters-general. It is true that most masters of the order were
already resident in the East at the time of their election d only two out of the last seven were in the
West when elected d and did not have very recent experience of western conditions;
and visitations
of the West by grand masters were not common. Yet they occurred more frequently in the later
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries than in the first half of the thirteenth. William of Beaujeu
visited several countries, including France, England, Aragon and Italy.
In the mid-1290s James of
122
Forey, ‘Letters’, 153–4; A. Demurger, ‘Between Barcelona and Cyprus: the travels of Berenguer of Cardona, Templar master of
Aragon and Catalonia (1300-1)’, in: International mobility in the military orders (twelfth to fifteenth centuries). Travelling on
Christ’s business, ed. J. Burgtorf and H. Nicholson (Cardiff, 2006), 65–74.
123
Re
`gle du Temple, 80, art. 87.
124
See, for example, J.B. Mahn, L’Ordre cistercien et son gouvernement. Des origines au milieu du XIIIe sie`cle (1098–1265)
(Paris, 1951), 179–80.
125
Finke, Acta Aragonensia, vol. 3, 10, doc. 5. For journeys to the East by English provincial masters, see H. Nicholson, ‘Inter-
national mobility versus the needs of the realm: the Templars and Hospitallers in the British Isles in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries’, in: International mobility, ed. Burgtorf and Nicholson, 88.
126
Re
`gle du Temple, 80-1, arts. 87–8; Catalan rule, 56, art. 136.
127
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 769–76, doc. 4462; vol. 4, 14–23, doc. 4549, art. 12.
128
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 769–76, doc. 4462. In fact William was prior of St Gilles from 1271 until 1296, although
he had been vice-prior from 1269 until 1271: J. Bronstein, The Hospitallers and the Holy Land. Financing the Latin East, 1187–1274
(Woodbridge, 2005), 153–4, 165. Jochen Burgtorf has suggested to me that he retained the priory for several years after he had
been made master in 1296; see also Barquero Gon
˜ i, ‘Hospitalarios en Leo´n’, 358.
129
Nicholson, ‘International mobility’, 92.
130
It has further been argued that some western priors of the Hospital, unlike Templar provincial masters in Europe, also took
part in the election of a new master: Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 133. It is true that leading Templar officials in the West were not
summoned, and that some western Hospitaller priors may on occasion have been present at magisterial elections; but the early
thirteenth-century Hospitaller statutes issued by Alfonso of Portugal mention the required presence only of brothers from the
East: Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 2, 31–40, doc. 1193. The summoning of western priors would have necessitated
undesirably long vacancies in the office of master.
131
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 139–40.
132
Les Gestes des Chiprois, cap. 383, ed. G. Raynaud (Geneva, 1887), 202; Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 329; Finke,
Papsttum, vol. 2, 318, doc. 152; Tommasi, ‘L’ordine dei Templari a Perugia’, 10, 49–50, doc. 5; Bramato, Storia dell’ordine dei
Templari in Italia, 117; M.L. Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae domus militiae Templi Hierosolymitani magistri. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des
Templerordens 1118/19-1314 (Go¨ttingen, 1974), 261.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
165
Molay is known to have travelled to France, England, Aragon and Italy, and to have held chapters at
Montpellier, Paris, Arles and in the English commandery of Temple Bruer, and he also attended
a Templar assembly at Le´rida in Catalonia at which eleven Aragonese and Catalan commanders, as well
the provincial master, were present.
He left Cyprus again in the autumn of 1306 and was in France in
the months before proceedings against the order began.
Nor was the master the only central official
who visited the West: the ‘preceptor of the land overseas’ was apparently in Paris about the year
1279.
And although many knights sent from western provinces to serve in the East were recent
recruits who had little experience of Templar life in European districts, some leading officials in the
central convent in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries did have recent experience of the
situation in western provinces. Peter of Moncada, who was commander of Acre in the later 1280s, had
been Aragonese provincial master until 1282,
and his successor as provincial master, Berenguer of
San Justo, who held the Aragonese province until 1290, was commandeur de la terre in Cyprus in
1292.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the order’s turcoplier was the Catalan Dalmau of
Timor, who had been out in the East about the year 1288, but who was resident at the Catalan convent
of Gardeny in 1292.
Contact was also maintained, and information passed, by correspondence, much
of which has inevitably disappeared. Letters were sent not only by leading officials: after he returned
from Cyprus to the Aragonese province in 1291 the Templar Peter of San Justo maintained a corres-
pondence with James of Molay during the latter’s mastership. He was also one of the Templars who was
given the right to visit the order’s headquarters whenever he wished: such a privilege was intended
mainly as a favour to the recipient, but it was a further means of maintaining contact between East and
West.
There is certainly evidence of issues being referred to the centre and of Templar masters concerning
themselves with the affairs of western provinces in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.
In 1275 William of Beaujeu involved himself in matters relating to the administration of the Catalan
city of Tortosa, where the order enjoyed powers of lordship, and in the granting of a settlement charter
(carta de poblacio
´n) for Belloch and Cambor in Aragon.
The plan to alienate the Catalan lordship of
Puigreig and the Aragonese estate of La Zaida received the approval of the master and convent in 1292,
and two years later James of Molay gave authority for the exchange of Templar rights in Tortosa.
In
1304 James of Molay further decreed that the recently-purchased lordship of Culla in northern Valencia
should form part of the commandery of Pen
˜ ı´scola.
It is difficult to find examples of judicial matters
133
A. Demurger, Jacques de Molay. Le Cre´puscule des Templiers (Paris, 2002), 118–23; Forey, ‘Letters’, 161-2, doc. 4; L. Pagarolas i
Sabate´, Els Templers de les terres de l’Ebre (Tortosa). De Jaume I fins a l’abolicio
´ de l’orde (1213–1312), 2 vols (Tarragona, 1999), vol.
2, 197–8, doc. 171; on the chapter at Temple Bruer, see MS Bodley 454, f. 73, 73v, 94v, 121, 124v, 155; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 2, 380.
134
Forey, ‘Letters’, 156; Demurger, Jacques de Molay, 211–14. The Templar post of visitor to a group of provinces appears to have
become a long-term appointment by the end of the thirteenth century, but this did not usually signify direct intervention in
western affairs by a brother sent from the order’s headquarters, as those appointed in the later thirteenth century tended to be
heads of a western province: the Aragonese provincial master was visitor in Spain from 1297 until his death 10 years later, and
Hugh of Pairaud, the former provincial master of France, held a similar post in French and English lands from 1299 until 1307:
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 328–30; Le´onard, Introduction, 17, 115.
135
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 313.
136
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 418; Gestes des Chiprois, cap. 474, ed. Raynaud, 235; Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 421.
137
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 405–6 (doc. 36), 421.
138
Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 371, doc. 157; ACA, Ordenes Religiosas y Militares, San Juan de Jerusale´n, Pergaminos, Gardeny 366,
892, 1736, 1818; Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 414, doc. 44.
139
Forey, ‘Letters’, 160–1, 164, docs. 2, 9; Finke, Papsttum, vol. 1, 21. On Peter of San Justo, see A.J. Forey, ‘The Career of
a Templar: Peter of St Just’, in: Knighthoods of Christ. Essays on the history of the crusades and the Knights Templar, presented to
Malcolm Barber, ed. N. Housley (Aldershot, 2007), 183–94, especially 188–9.
140
ACA, Cancillerı´a real, Pergaminos, Jaime I, 2233-4; Madrid, Archivo Histo´rico Nacional, Seccio´n de Co´dices, co´d. 649B/467,
442, doc. 424.
141
Forey, Templars in the Corona de Arago
´n, 405–6, doc. 36; Forey, ‘Letters’, 161–2, doc. 4; Pagarolas i Sabate´, Templers, vol. 2,
197–8, doc. 171.
142
Forey, ‘Letters’, 163, doc. 8.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
166
being referred to the master and convent in the closing decades of the order’s existence, but there is no
reason to believe that earlier practice on this point had been discontinued.
James of Molay also made
appointments to some commanderies in the Aragonese province, especially when there was a vacancy
in the office of provincial master, and requested posts for some brothers returning to the West from
Cyprus.
The examples of contacts which have been quoted are drawn from Aragonese records, which
are much more extensive than those for other western countries, but there is no reason to believe that
the Aragonese province was exceptional.
Admittedly, not all appointments made by the master were implemented, and his requests for posts
were on some occasions ignored. James of Molay complained that the commandery of Ribaforada in
Navarre, to which he had nominated Bernard of Tamarite, was given to another brother, and that the
Aragonese provincial master had not shown favour to Peter of Castello´n, for whom James of Molay had
requested an office.
Nor apparently were all central decrees fully implemented:
during the trial
one Templar mentioned that a restriction on meat-eating imposed by James of Molay had been
ignored, although the extent of the non-observance is not clear.
Yet the Temple was hardly unique in
this respect. The re-issuing of decrees by Hospitaller general chapters indicates widespread flouting of
regulations: in 1270 an earlier prohibition on the use of gold and silver on daggers and swords was re-
issued and it was repeated again in 1288; and the chapter-general of 1288 also reiterated a decree
enacted in 1283 restricting the wearing of silk.
There are in fact few signs that Templar provinces in the West were seeking to weaken their links
with the order’s headquarters in the later thirteenth century. Recruits were still being sent out to the
East, and financial assistance consisted not only of the usual responsions but also of additional sums
when the order had lost its lordships in the Holy Land and had to rely more extensively on western
revenues. When Berenguer of Cardona was summoned to Cyprus in 1300 he wrote to the commander
of Corbins, stating that he wanted to give whatever aid he could to the East, and asked the commander
to ‘obtain for us from anywhere in the world as much money and salted meat as you can and anything
else that is required’.
Similar sentiments were also expressed in several other letters sent by
Berenguer to his subordinates.
In times of financial hardship, the Aragonese provincial master was
apparently doing his utmost to give support to his superiors in Cyprus.
The overall day-to-day management of both the Temple and the Hospital inevitably rested with the
master and central convent rather than the chapter-general. It has, however, been argued that in the
Temple’s last decades its central convent was divided: James of Molay reported that when he first went
to the East he and other young brothers were dismayed by the master’s readiness to negotiate with
neighbouring Muslim powers; James of Molay’s later election as master was bitterly contested; and it
was difficult to reach agreement in the central convent about the suitability of candidates for
admission.
Yet it was probably common for brothers of both the Temple and the Hospital who were newly
dispatched from the West to be anxious to fight and to be loath to maintain peace with the Muslims,
just as crusaders from western Europe expected to take on the enemy. During the third crusade the
military orders incurred the hostility of French crusaders by advising against marching on Jerusalem;
and in the early stages of his Egyptian crusade Louis IX refused to negotiate with Muslim rulers. But, as
James of Molay admitted, he and his young colleagues in time came to understand the need for
flexibility in dealings with Muslim rulers.
143
The practice of referring cases to the central authorities is mentioned in the Templar customs, which provide some
examples relating to brothers living in European provinces: Re
`gle du Temple, 303–4, 314, arts. 583, 607; Catalan rule, 76–8, 98,
arts. 174, 176, 200.
144
Forey, ‘Letters’, 168–70, doc. 17.
145
Forey, ‘Letters’, 168–70, doc. 17.
146
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 141.
147
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 503; cf. vol. 1, 616.
148
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 225–9, doc. 3396, art. 23; 450–5, doc. 3844, art.3; 525–9, doc. 4022, arts. 15, 16.
149
Finke, Acta Aragonensia, vol. 1, 78–9, doc. 55.
150
ACA, CRD Templarios 142, 507.
151
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 140; Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 44–5; vol. 2, 220–5.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
167
The claim that James of Molay’s election as master was hotly disputed rests upon the testimony
given in 1311 during the Templar trial by the Templar knight Hugh of Fauro to papal commissioners in
Paris. He argued that brothers from the Auvergne and the Limousin, who made up the majority in the
central convent, were in favour of Hugh of Pairaud, and that James of Molay agreed with that choice
and said that he did not wish to be master. James was then made interim grand commander d this was
part of the normal election process d but he then forced his own candidature on the assembled
brothers. This account is, however, suspect. Brothers from the relatively unimportant province of the
Auvergne could hardly have comprised a majority in the convent, even in the exceptional circum-
stances following the loss of Acre in 1291;
Templar regulations decreed that the 13 electors were to
be drawn from various provinces;
Hugh of Pairaud, who had spent his Templar career in the West,
had not before 1292 occupied any major post in the order; and, if the normal electoral procedures were
followed, it would have been difficult for James of Molay, who according to regulations would not have
been present at the election, to force himself on the brothers in Cyprus.
Hugh of Fauro came from the
Limousin, and his account may have been coloured by disappointment at not having his favoured
candidate elected as master: it certainly should not be accepted at its face value without question.
It is also Hugh of Fauro’s testimony that provides the basis for the claim that the convent could not
agree on admissions: he said that he had become a Templar about the year 1286 and had spent 14 years
in the East, but because of divisions within the convent had never seen a brother admitted. He was
apparently sent out soon after his reception in the order and was back in the West by c.1303, when he
was present at an admission ceremony in France.
He was therefore in the East during the later 1280s
and the whole of the last decade of the thirteenth century. As he has been seen to be a not altogether
reliable witness, corroborative evidence to support his claim about admissions would be welcome. It
has been pointed out that the records of the Templar trial mention only four receptions at Acre d one
by Thomas Berard and another on his orders, and two by William of Beaujeu.
But it should be
stressed that few admissions took place anywhere in the crusader states or Cyprus. Of the 76 brothers
questioned in Cyprus during the Templar trial only five had entered the order in the crusader states,
Armenia or Cyprus.
The records of the trial do mention a number of admissions on the mainland at
places other than Acre, but most of these were in the county of Tripoli and in Armenia. Hugh of Fauro
spoke of recruits being sent ‘to nearby castles or islands’ to be received, but admissions of recruits at
places near Acre are rarely mentioned in the records of the Templar trial: only one reception at Tyre is
noted and two at Atlit d two of these three ceremonies being by the master William of Beaujeu.
Any
who had been admitted at Acre very shortly before the loss of the city in 1291 could well have been
killed when it was under attack in that year, and there could, of course, have been no receptions at Acre
during the 16 years between 1291 and the arrest of the Templars. Yet James of Molay or his lieutenant
152
P.-V. Claverie, L’Ordre du Temple en Terre Sainte et a
` Chypre au XIIIe sie`cle, 3 vols (Nicosia, 2005), vol. 1, 153, draws attention to
the fact that 24 brothers from the province of Auvergne are known from the records of the Templar trial to have been in the
crusader states in the later thirteenth century. Yet this figure hardly proves that brothers from the Auvergne constituted
a majority in Cyprus in 1292. Except when those interrogated had entered the order in the East, references to service in the Holy
Land occur only randomly in the records of the trial: brothers were not asked whether they had been there. It should also be
noted that more is known about brothers of this province than of many others because the testimonies of 69 Templars
questioned at Clermont in 1309 have survived, and some brothers from this province also appeared before the papal
commissioners in Paris. It should also be remembered that the numbers relate to a period of some 20 years, and that many
served in the east for only a short period, or, like Stephen of Cellier, were only paying very brief visits as an envoy. See also
the comments on this point by A. Demurger, ‘Outre-mer. Le Passage des templiers en Orient d’apre`s les de´positions du proce`s’,
in: Chemins d’outre-mer. E
´tudes sur la Me´diterrane´e me´die´vale offertes a` Michel Balard, ed. D. Coulon, C. Otten-Froux, P. Page`s and
D. Vale´rian, 2 vols (Paris, 2004), vol. 1, 224–5. Of the 76 brothers interrogated in Cyprus during the Templar trial, none appears
to have originated in the Auvergne: Schottmu¨ller, Untergang, vol. 2, 166–217; Gilmour-Bryson, Trial in Cyprus, 77–153.
153
Re
`gle du Temple, 145, art. 207.
154
Re
`gle du Temple,148–9, art. 215; cf. the comments of Demurger, Jacques de Molay, 101–9.
155
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 222.
156
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 140; Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 418; vol. 2, 14; Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 317, 352, docs. 152, 156.
157
Schottmu¨ller, Untergang, vol. 2, 166–217; Gilmour-Bryson, Trial in Cyprus, 77–153.
158
Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 2, 238; Se`ve and Chagny-Se`ve, Proce`s des Templiers d’Auvergne, 192, 215; Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 2, 345.
Five at Sidon, farther north, are recorded: Se`ve and Chagny-Se`ve, Proce`s des Templiers d’Auvergne, 186; Michelet, Proce
`s, vol. 2,
136, 138, 147, 259; Finke, Papsttum, vol. 2, 342, doc. 156.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
168
did admit recruits in Cyprus in the intervening years, and on some occasions other leading officials
were said to have been present. One admission ceremony was conducted by James of Molay at Nicosia
about the year 1295, when Hugh of Fauro was presumably in Cyprus.
The latter was probably not
completely fabricating evidence about admissions, for he said that he had been present at admission
ceremonies in the West: he was not merely trying to distance himself from the practices allegedly
occurring on such occasions. There may therefore be some basis for his claim, but he may also have
been influenced by his dissatisfaction with James of Molay’s election and have been generalising from
a particular incident.
The evidence about divisions in the Temple’s central convent, which consists mainly of the
comments of one Templar, should be viewed with caution, and there is much more reliable evidence of
prolonged rifts between the master and central convent in the Hospital in the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries. In 1296 the Hospitaller convent wrote to the new master William of Villaret,
complaining of the arbitrary actions of previous masters and stating that it would confirm his election
only after he had promised to observe the statutes and customs of the order.
Yet further letters
dispatched by the convent show that fresh discord was soon caused by William’s remaining in the West
and his summoning of general chapters there.
Such conflicts continued after the Hospital had
transferred its headquarters to Rhodes. If Philip IV had turned against the Hospital and not the Temple,
there would no doubt be a temptation to argue that the Hospital was in a poor state and in need of
reform at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Philip did in fact agree to the transfer of Templar
lands to the Hospital in 1312 only on the understanding that the latter order would be reformed by the
papacy, and later in the same decade John XXII felt obliged to intervene directly in the management of
the Hospital.
Loss of military role
The alleged shortcomings of the Temple are lastly seen to be epitomised in its failure to find a new role
after the fall of the Holy Land. Whereas the Hospital in 1306 began the invasion of Rhodes and soon
established its headquarters there, ‘the Templars appeared to be paralysed.’
Yet it may be pointed
out that the Hospitallers began the conquest of Rhodes only in the year preceding the arrest of the
Templars: they had spent fifteen years in Cyprus before starting to implement new initiatives, and the
Teutonic Order did not transfer its headquarters to Marienburg until 1309, eighteen years after the fall
of Acre. There is also a danger of allowing hindsight to influence judgements. Although the Holy Land
was not reconquered after 1291, in the early fourteenth century the West’s main concern in the eastern
Mediterranean remained the recovery of Jerusalem and the re-establishment of western rule in Syria.
Numerous proposals were formulated and plans made: the heads of the Temple and Hospital each
submitted advice to Clement V on the recovery of the Holy Land.
At the Council of Vienne, at which
the Temple was abolished, a leading item on the agenda was the recovery of Jerusalem. The military
orders could scarcely assume the burden by themselves: help from the West was needed, together with
an effective alliance with the Mongols. But Cyprus was near to the Syrian coast and in that context
a suitable base for the military orders. And in the years after 1291 the Templars were still pursuing
military activities linked to the Holy Land: as has been seen, in the last decade of the century they
continued to be active in Armenia, and they held the island of Ruad for two years. The Hospitallers’
159
Schottmu¨ller, Untergang, vol. 2, 192; Gilmour-Bryson, Trial in Cyprus, 116; see also Schottmu¨ller, Untergang, vol. 2, 173,
210–11, 216; Gilmour Bryson, Trial in Cyprus, 88, 142–3, 151; Michelet, Proce`s, vol. 1, 562; vol. 2, 294.
160
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 681–3, doc. 4310.
161
Delaville Le Roulx, Cartulaire, vol. 3, 766–79, docs 4461–3. On relations between the master and convent in this period, see
Riley-Smith, Knights of St John, 296–303, and A.J. Forey, ‘Constitutional conflict and change in the Hospital of St John during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33 (1982), 20–9.
162
Lizerand, Dossier, 198–202; J. Delaville Le Roulx, Les Hospitaliers a
` Rhodes jusqu’a
` la mort de Philibert de Naillac (1310-1421)
(Paris, 1913), 19–27.
163
Riley-Smith, ‘Structures’, 142.
164
For the texts of the masters’ proposals, see E. Baluze, Vitae paparum Avenionensium, ed. G. Mollat, 4 vols (Paris, 1914–27),
vol. 3, 145–9; J. Petit, ‘Me´moire de Foulques de Villaret sur la croisade’, Bibliothe`que de l’E
´cole des Chartes, 60 (1899), 603–10.
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
169
conquest of Rhodes took them farther away from the Holy Land and involved them in the affairs of Asia
Minor. The seizure of the island and the establishment of their headquarters there gave them the
independence which they lacked in Cyprus, but did little to further the cause of Jerusalem and the Holy
Land. By staying in Cyprus the Templars could be viewed as adhering to their true purpose.
Although the Temple experienced financial difficulties in its later years and was not altogether free
from other shortcomings, the problems it faced were not very different from those encountered by the
Hospital. The stark contrast which has been drawn between the two is hardly justified, and it may
certainly be questioned whether the Temple was in any more parlous a state at the turn of the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries than other leading military orders.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Malcolm Barber and Jochen Burgtorf for their comments on a draft version of this
paper.
Alan Forey, who is now retired, taught in the universities of Oxford, St Andrews and Durham. His main field of research has been
crusades and military orders, and his publications include The military orders from the twelfth to the early fourteenth centuries
(1992) and The fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (2001).
A. Forey / Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009) 150–170
170
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