Medieval Templar Libraries - Product of Necessity and Circumstances

Did the Templars, les Templiers, own libraries? Inventories made after the arrests of 1307 to 1311 list psalters, missals and legendaries in their chapels, from London to Arles. Who used these books, and where did they come from?

What the inventories list
Crown and Church officials drew up most inventories soon after the arrests, in France, Spain, England, Ireland and Italy; the published ones are only part of the whole [1]. Most Provençal houses held about ten books, remote ones two or three, but Arles stood out [2]. Schenk writes of almost sixty books there, following Legras and Lemaître [1]; Damien Carraz counts 40 items in the inventory of 1309 (p. 161) and 23 in the chapel in 1308 (p. 162) [2]. Either way, a few dozen. Elsewhere the largest collections held San Vitale in Verona (41), London (at least 25), Bisham in Berkshire (23) [3], Sainte-Eulalie (21) and Denny in Cambridgeshire (almost 20) [1].

Small, but not negligible
Beside the 150 books of the Cistercian abbey of Silvacane in 1289 these collections look modest, but Arles comes near a medium Provençal cathedral such as Carpentras, with about 55 manuscripts in 1322 [2]. Two English lists can be read online. London in 1308 had antiphonaries, psalters, processionals, a martyrology and an organ book [4]. At Denny the sheriff’s account after the arrest of 10 January 1308 names missals "of the use of the Templars", a legenda [things to be read], psalters, antiphonals, an epistolary and graals [graduals] [5].

Who used the books
Most Templar communities had fewer than ten professed brothers, so twenty or more books point to real, mostly liturgical use [1]. Carraz therefore speaks of collections rather than libraries: the orders issued no rules on books and the commanderies had no scriptoria [places for copying] [2]. Almost all English books were liturgical; exceptions include a "book of beasts" at Shipley and a liber infirmorum [book of the sick] at Combe [3]. At Arles the commander had a book in romancio [in the Romance vernacular] [2], and the house held a Historia Scolastica [Scholastic History] [1]. Forey adds that most Templars could not read, that Arles and Monzón were exceptions, and that the books say little about what Templars did: a vernacular Justinian Codex at Miravet did not make it a centre of legal study [6].

Gifts or purchases
Schenk sees these libraries mostly as products of necessity and circumstance: gifts and bequests of brothers, entrance gifts, and books that came with inherited churches such as Sainte-Trinité in Reims [1]. Forey agrees that some were certainly gifts, probably made for the donor’s salvation [6]. Carraz doubts that the orders could count on outside patrons as monasteries did, and supposes purchases and commissions [2]. Some books were made for the order, like an ordinary secundum usum et consuetudinem Templi [according to the use and custom of the Temple] found at San Vitale [1] or the Templar missal of Modena.

Templar libraries were small and mostly liturgical, built without a plan. In southern France the Hospitallers probably took over the Templar collections, with their later fate unknown [2]; in Aragon the books were scattered among religious houses, and only a handful of Templar liturgical manuscripts have been identified [7].

This blog, an inproved version of an earlier one, is original work by TemplarsNow^TM based on an AI-assisted quick scan on the topic. References and further reading, Open Access if available, all links verified October 18, 2026 and all sources checked but not all studied in detail: [1] Schenk, J. (2017) The documentary evidence for Templar religion, in: K. Borchardt, K. Döring, P. Josserand and H. Nicholson (eds), The Templars and their Sources, London: Routledge (Crusades Subsidia 10), pp. 199-211 (author’s accepted version); [2] Carraz, D. (2018) Les collections de livres dans les maisons templières et hospitalières. Premiers jalons pour la France méridionale (XIIIe-XVe siècle), in: I. C. F. Fernandes (ed.), Entre Deus e o Rei. O Mundo das Ordens Militares, vol. 1, Palmela: GESOS, pp. 153-176, here pp. 161-162; [3] Nicholson, H. (2026) The inventories, accounts, and records of debts for the Templars’ estates in England and Wales, 1308-1313, as a source for the everyday lives of the Templars, Yearbook for the Study of the Military Orders 30 (1), pp. 7-60, here pp. 22-23; [4] Page, W. (ed.) (1909) Houses of Military Orders: The Temple, in: A History of the County of London, vol. 1, London: Victoria County History, pp. 485-491; [5] Salzman, L. F. (ed.) (1948) Houses of Knights Templars: Preceptory of Denney, in: A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, vol. 2, London: Victoria County History, pp. 259-262; [6] Forey, A. J. (2020) Aspects of Templar conventual life in western Europe circa 1250-1307, Revue Mabillon, n.s. 31 (= 92), pp. 29-80, here pp. 38-39; [7] Salvadó, S. (2011) Templar liturgy and devotion in the Crown of Aragon, in: H. J. Nicholson (ed.), On the Margins of Crusading: The Military Orders, the Papacy and the Christian World, Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 31-44, here p. 33.

The illustration shows one page of the Walters Ms. W.132, Rule of the Knights Templar, Walters Art Museum, last quarter of the thirteenth century, License Creative Commons CC. 

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