A Possible Templar Location at Groessen, the Netherlands

Groessen, a village near Duiven in Gelderland, has a Tempelstraat, a farm called De Tempel and a Commendereijstraat. These names have been read as the traces of a lost Templar house. Do the sources support that idea?

The names
According to Brus, an atlas of the Ambt Liemers shows in 1735 an unusually large plot of eleven morgen called Der Tempel, owned by Heinrich von Hüssen, with the farm De Tempel and the Tempelstraat lying inside it [1]. Other plots on the same map belong to the “St. Jean Commendereij”, the Hospitaller commandery of Arnhem, which the Commendereijstraat commemorates [1]. The historical society of Duiven, Groessen and Loo, which Brus quotes, states that the origin of the name Tempel is unknown, that the Hof Emaus is also of unknown origin, and that a link between these names and the Templars or the crusades was never discussed [1].

What is missing
No medieval charter names the Templars at Groessen. Brus argues that the Hospitallers of Arnhem held much land around Groessen in later times, which would fit an inheritance from the Templars after 1312 [1]. He adds that Groessen lay on the road from Arnhem to Wesel, near the Leuvense Veer ferry over the Rhine [1], and that in 1559 pastor Jacob Vallick found graves of men in full armour, although a dig in 1981-82 found nothing that confirmed or weakened the story [1]. Brus himself calls a Templar house plausible but admits that there is no definitive proof [1]. Michel Nuyttens’ survey of the Templars in the Low Countries discusses only one Dutch commandery, Ter Brake near Alphen [2], and the only other certain site is Zaamslag in Zeeland [3]. Names such as Tempel, Heiligland and Emaus are religious field names that occur in many places and can have other origins; the society reads Heiligland as perhaps Helligland (bad land) [1]. The Commendereijstraat points to the Hospitallers of Arnhem, not to the Templars [1].

A hypothesis, not a site
Brus’ list of possible Templar sites in the Netherlands has been very useful as a guide to field names [1]. But most of these attributions dissolve under source criticism, and the Hospitallers are often the more likely owners [3]. For Groessen the evidence is a set of names, later Hospitaller land, a good location on a route and an unconfirmed story of armoured burials, nothing more.

Groessen remains a possible, not a probable, Templar location. The names deserve archival research, starting with the holdings of the Hospitaller commandery of Arnhem around Groessen. Until a medieval document is found, the Templars at Groessen belong to hypothesis.

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 3, 2026 and all sources checked but not all studied in detail: [1] Brus, B.Th. (n.d.) Groessen, Sporen van de Tempelieren in Nederland, tempelieren.nl (as quoted with permission in the original post); [2] Hosten, J. (2008) Review of M. Nuyttens, Krijgers voor God. De orde van de tempeliers in de Lage Landen (1120-1312), BMGN Low Countries Historical Review 123 (3), web review; [3] TemplarsNow (2026) Nobles of the Low Countries and the Knights Templar.

Illustration: the Sint Andreaskerk at Groessen, photo Michielverbeek (2019), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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