A gift of local lords
The Templars appear near Carcassonne in 1132. In 1133 local lords, among them Bernard de Canet, gave them the village of Douzens with its territory, and by 1141 the house had its own preceptor [1, 3]. The Aude valley already counted at least ten water mills, most of them owned by the laymen who had built them [2, 3].
Buying, building, negotiating
The brothers bought a mill at Espéraza in 1140 and received mills in the territory of Gaure in 1148, but from 1141 they also built their own on the Aude and its tributary the Orbiel [3]. Every weir needed the neighbours’ consent. In April 1141 Pierre d’Auriac gave up his rights on a paxeria, a weir, at Blomac across the river. That December Bernard Guilhem, his wife Rixendis and their sons allowed new canals for ten sous, while Bernard Modol and his family renounced their claims for forty. In 1154 Pons Porcel and his family ceded their canals for a measure of wheat [1, 3].
Grain and cloth
Some ten years after the first grain mills came fulling mills, which beat woollen cloth. In 1153 two landowners granted land at Arrapesac for a fulling mill against a yearly rent, and a second stood at Caumont [1, 2]. The Order eventually held three groups of grain mills, two at Douzens and one of six mills at Brucafel near Carcassonne, ahead of the town’s own boom in cloth [3].
Shared with local families
The Templars did not grind the grain themselves. Local families ran the mills for a rent or a share of the profits: the Montirat family worked a mill at Mas les Cours, and a member of the Parator family passed his mill rights to his daughters. Sellers often kept rights too; Bérenger du Prat, who sold his mill in 1147, could still come to cut his millstones [1, 3].
From Templars to merchants
In 1305 the indebted commander leased the revenues of the grain and fulling mills of Brucafel and Montredon to two Italian merchants of Carcassonne for six years, for 1,500 livres tournois. Witnesses later said the grain mills ground four setiers a week and the fulling mill brought in fifty livres a year, but gravel and broken canals could stop a mill at any time [3]. After the arrests of 1307 the king’s men expelled the merchants, and the dispute over the mills was still open in 1319 [3, 4].
The Hospitallers inherited Douzens; their first known commander there, Jean de Bogie, appears in 1322 [3]. The mills show the Templars less as warriors than as investors, who needed the consent and the labour of their neighbours at every weir.
This blog, which is an improved version of an earlier one, is original work by TemplarsNowTM based on an AI-assisted quick scan on the topic. References and further reading, Open Access if available, all links verified October 13, 2026 and all sources checked but not all studied in detail: [1] Gérard, P. and Magnou, E. (eds) (1965) Cartulaires des Templiers de Douzens, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale (acts A 2, A 13, A 42, A 48, A 54, A 60, A 61, A 118); [2] Macé, L. (1994) L’utilisation des ressources hydrauliques par les templiers de la commanderie de Douzens (Aude), Archéologie du Midi médiéval 12, pp. 99-113; [3] Delmas, L. (2024) La transmission des biens de l’ordre du Temple. Autour d’un procès de la sénéchaussée de Carcassonne concernant la commanderie de Douzens (1312-1313), master’s thesis, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, pp. 14, 25-26, 32-47; [4] Satora, M. (2025) Filip IV Piękny i majątki templariuszy (1307-1314), Saeculum Christianum 32/2, pp. 28-29 (Polish, English abstract). The illustration shows the present day Castle of Douzens (picture by Pierre Stienstra, TemplarsNow)
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