Rixtel - How a Dutch Templar Estate Was Run from Ter Brake

In 1214 the count of Megen gave his estate at Rixtel, in eastern Brabant, the Netherlands, to the Knights Templar as told in our post on Low Countries nobles [1]. Less known is what the order did with it: a lease to a town family, a dispute over arrears, and a farm that outlived the order. What do the sources show?

Friday 13 October 1307 - Esquieu de Floyran and the Informer's Reward

On Friday 13 October 1307 royal officers arrested the Templars all over France. The man who claimed to have started it, Esquieu de Floyran (also Esquin or Floyrac), soon asked to be paid. How were the arrests organised, and what did the informer get?

Power Play - The Pope, the King and the Templars 1305-1307

Around the middle of 1305 the informer Esquieu de Floyran (also Esquin or Floyrac) told Philip IV of France that the Templars denied Christ. The king struck only on 13 October 1307. In between, pope, king and master met, wrote and waited. Why two years, and was the real fight about the Templars at all?

Esquieu de Floyran - The Jailed Informer

On 28 January 1308 one Esquieu de Floyran, or Esquin de Floyrac, calling himself valet of the French king, wrote proudly to King James II of Aragon. The affair of the Templars, revealed by him to James at Lerida probably in 1305, was now proven, he claimed, and the promised reward was due. Who was this man, and how did he work?

Rumours in the South - Trigger of the Templar Arrests

The charges of 1307 against the Templars are usually dismissed as standard slander against heretics and political enemies. Yet reports from 1306 and 1307 show that rumours about the Order had circulated for years in south west France, le Midi. What was said, who spread it, and did it indeed trigger the arrests?

Den Tempel Vlaardingen, the Netherlands - a Templar House?

North of Vlaardingen (Vlaardingue), beside the Bommeer, the farmstead Den Tempel stood for centuries until Rotterdam harbour sludge buried it after 1958. A Dutch website on Templar traces suggests the name may preserve a lost outpost of the Order of the Temple. Is that supported by documentary record?

Hugues de Payns - A Champagne Knight's Hidden Family Ties

Every history of the Knights Templar opens with Hugues de Payns, yet who he actually was remained hazy for centuries. Was he a knight of Champagne, as tradition holds? Or was he an outsider from Italy, as some historians argue? And was he indeed kin to Bernard of Clairvaux as is sometimes claimed also? Can this post lift the veil?

Templar and Cistercian Refectories - Same Meal, Different Setting

Bernard de Clairvaux helped draft the Templar Rule, and the order's meals were built almost line for line on Cistercian custom: silence, scripture read aloud, equal rations. Yet the rooms where Templars ate rarely resembled a Cistercian refectory at all. What did the two orders actually build, and why did the buildings diverge?

Bernard de Clairvaux and the Making of a Respectable Knighthood

In 1129, a small band of knights secured papal favour and grew into one of medieval Europe’s wealthiest institutions. A 2012 thesis argues that the Cistercian Order, and one abbot in particular, made this possible. What exactly did Bernard de Clairvaux do for the Templars?