Small Rural Commanderies - The Heart of the Templar Organisation

The heart of the Templar order was not the castle but the small rural commandery, a farm with a chapel and often only two or three brothers. How many commanderies were there in France, who lived in them, and what did they do?

How Many Commanderies?
Numbers about the Templars are easily exaggerated. In 1244 the English monk Matthew Paris, explaining why many doubted a letter from the Holy Land, pointed to the old ill repute of Templars and Hospitallers and to their wealth: nine thousand manors for the Templars and nineteen thousand for the Hospitallers, each manor able to supply a knight for the Holy Land [1]. For France a count of commanderies is still a considerable challenge. Demurger brought earlier estimates down to 660 in 2002 [2][3]. Regional studies give firmer figures: 17 commanderies for the six Norman bishoprics, 18 for the six dioceses of Picardy, 24 for the diocese of Clermont and 34 for Champagne and Brie [2]. Josserand’s own opinion is 300 to 350 commanderies in France, against thirty to forty each for England, Aragon, Castile and Portugal [2].

Who Lived There
Knights, clerics and sergeants lived together in the commandery. At Saint-Jouan in Brittany, nine kneeling figures at the foot of a Calvary cross of the late thirteenth century may represent them [2]. Most often the brethren hardly formed a community in the full sense: a cloister, known for the Temple in Paris, was exceptional, and dormitories and refectories were rare [2]. The threshold of four brothers was not always reached, and the household and dependents outnumbered those who had taken vows [2]. In Normandy the six establishments whose members are precisely known at the time of the trial had three brothers on average, and at Baugy some twenty seven people lived with the brothers [2]. In England the median house in 1308 held two brothers, the average 2.9 [4].

What They Did
Commanderies were sparsely populated compared with priories and abbeys, yet they were crucial. The brothers carried out their religious duties there, as the Rule prescribed. Commanderies were centres of recruitment, offered hospitality and sometimes medical care, which also promoted the order, and through a range of economic activities they collected the funds that paid for the military mission in the East [2].

A Farm on the Hill
Most commanderies were rural establishments with an agricultural vocation. They were often built on high ground, enclosed by walls high enough to stop brigands but not truly fortified. The buildings stood around one rectangular courtyard, sometimes two or three. The residential buildings, chapel, commander’s house and stables lay highest on the slope, with the common buildings below, sometimes with a dovecote and a pond. The domain stretched over several hundred hectares, which the Templars tried to unite through exchanges and purchases [2]. Some specialised, in wine at Douzens and at Clisson near Nantes, in sheep at Payens and on the Larzac [2]. Unlike monks, the brothers were from the beginning present in the world, and commanderies lay near busy roads, waterways and crossings [2].

A commandery was a working farm in a lordship, run by a few brothers with many helpers, and its income paid for the war in the East. That is why the small rural house, not the castle, stood at the heart of the order.

This blog, an improved version of an earlier one, is original work by TemplarsNow^TM based on an AI-assisted quick scan on the topic, inspired by the paper of Josserand (2015), reference [2]. References and further reading, Open Access if available, all links verified November 2, 2026 and all sources checked but not all studied in detail: [1] Matthew Paris Chronica majora, ed. H.R. Luard, vol. 4, London: Longman, 1877 (Rolls Series 57), pp. 290-291; [2] Josserand, P. (2015) The Templars in France: Between History, Heritage, and Memory, Mirabilia 21, pp. 446-479, here pp. 460-465; [3] Demurger, A. (2002) Chevaliers du Christ. Les ordres religieux-militaires au Moyen Âge (XIe-XVIe siècle), Paris: Seuil, p. 124, as seen in [2]; [4] Nicholson, H.J. (2025) 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, Ordines Militares 30, pp. 7-60, here Table 1 on p. 12, doi:10.12775/OM.2025.001.

The illustration shows the Templar commandery of Lachal at Épinouze (Drôme, France). Photo by E. Georges, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 FR, via Carte du patrimoine de la Drôme.

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