Counting the Templars is an exercise in archival triangulation because, as we know, the Templars did not keep membership lists; certainly none have survived. From a handful of founding knights in the 1120s to a pan-European order by the later thirteenth century, estimates vary widely. This blog synthesises peer-reviewed scholarship and trial-catalogues to give the best evidence-based picture of membership and rank composition of the Templar Order during its first century of existence.
On January 16, 1120 the Council of Nablus of ecclesiastic and secular lords of the Kingdom was convened by Warmund,
Patriarch of Jerusalem, and King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. The council, a parliament and an ecclesiastical synod, provided the first written laws for the kingdom, It probably also contributed to the formal establishment of the until that moment informal Templar-group.
Between about 1050 and 1150, Europe underwent one of the most transformative periods in its environmental and social history. Forests, marshes and wilderness were rapidly reshaped into fields, villages and monastic estates. This sweeping “Age of Clearance” altered landscapes, power structures and daily life in ways still visible today and provided for the establishment of both new monasteries and preceptories. But what forces drove the major actors in this dramatic rural reshaping of medieval Europe?
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