The Langue d’Oïl - The Mother Tongue of the Knights Templar

French lands had a special bond with the Temple, and the official language of the order was not Latin but the langue d’oïl, the French of northern France. How did a vernacular become the language of a religious military order, and why did it matter?

Founders from Northern France
The founders came from what is now northern France. Hugues de Payns belonged to the family of the lords of Montigny, from the area between Champagne and Burgundy. Godefroy de Saint-Omer and Payen de Montdidier were of higher status and came from Flanders and Picardy [1]. Most of the brethren were born in French lands, and the lands of oïl culture were crucial to the birth of the Temple [1].

A Rule in the Vernacular
The Rule given to the brothers at the council of Troyes in 1129 was written in Latin. It was translated into oïl French ten to twenty years later, under the Mastership of Robert de Craon, according to Cerrini [1][2]. This was revolutionary, because religious communities of the time normally kept to Latin [1]. The texts and statutes that regulated the order afterwards were written in the langue d’oïl [1]. The Old French Rule speaks for instance of a confanon baucent (piebald banner), the black and white banner described in our post on the Templar banner [3]. The French text of the Rule is available in English translation [4].

Latin Did Not Disappear
Most probably Latin never disappeared from the practice of the Temple, and other vernacular languages were used as well, but from the outset oïl French was the international language of the order [1]. The Rule shows the mix. A clerk read the holy lesson aloud at the meals of the convent, and a brother’s letters were read out to him in front of the Master or his commander [5]. The households of the Master, the Seneschal and the commanders of Jerusalem, Tripoli and Antioch included an écrivain sarrasinois (Saracen scribe), so the order also dealt with the Muslim East [5]. Hugues de Payns left Payen de Montdidier behind in 1129 to establish the order in the oïl lands, probably the birth of the province of France, whose counterpart would soon be organised in the lands of the langues d’oc (languages of the south) [1].

Two Languages on Trial
The trial of 1307 to 1314 shows the same division, with Latin for the record and French for the people. In Paris on 14 March 1310 the papal commissioners had the articles against the order read to Templars who wished to defend it in Latino (in Latin) and then explained in Galico vulgariter (in French, in the vernacular) [6]. Jacques de Molay confessed in October 1307 in lingua materna (in his mother tongue) [7]. At Poitiers in 1308 the king’s spokesman, William de Plaisians, addressed the pope in French while two archbishops spoke Latin, and he warned Alias oportet nos vobis loqui de alio lenguagio (Otherwise we must speak to you in another language) [7]. The speakers for the barons even represented two languages, a Parisian for the lingua Gallica (French language) and a man from Toulouse for Toulouse, Montpellier and the whole lingua Occitana (Occitan language) [7].

The language of the Temple was the language of its founders and of most of its brethren. Latin kept the record and the liturgy, but French was the voice of an order that stretched from the Atlantic to the Holy Land.

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. 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] Josserand, P. (2015) The Templars in France: Between History, Heritage, and Memory, Mirabilia 21, pp. 446-479, here pp. 446, 449 and 458; [2] Cerrini, S. (2007) La révolution des Templiers. Une histoire perdue du XIIe siècle, Paris: Perrin, pp. 192 and 195-196, as seen in [1]; [3] Maillard de Chambure, C.H. (1840) Règle et statuts secrets des Templiers, Paris: Brockhaus et Avenarius, Old French Rule, pp. 256 and 288-290; [4] Upton-Ward, J.M. (2005) The Rule of the Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, further reading on the French text; [5] Staf, C. (Projet Beaucéant) La règle de l’ordre du Temple, modern French translation, templiers.org, articles 16 and 41 (regle1), 77, 99, 120 and 125 (regle2) and 288 (regle5), numbered as in [4]; [6] Michelet, J. (ed.) (1841) Procès des Templiers, vol. 1, Paris: Imprimerie royale, p. 89; [7] Finke, H. (1907) Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols, Münster: Aschendorff, vol. 1 pp. 205-206 and vol. 2 pp. 307 and 340.

The illustration shows a map of the langues d’oïl according to Henriette Walter, drawn by Oie blanche, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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