A small lordship with large rights
The oldest charters known date from 1485 and 1500, and the one that moved the fief into citizen hands from 1512 [1]. They describe a manor farm with orchards and twelve morgen of land, held against a heriot of a red sparrowhawk or ten shillings, yet with high and low jurisdiction [1]; a new gallows was raised in 1777 [1]. The exemptions from schot, lot and ruitergeld point to a late origin, and the lordship is not named in the charter of 9 April 1290 that moved Rodenrijs from Schieland to Delfland [1]. In 1715 the mayor of Rotterdam, Johan van der Hoeven, moved the name and the rights to his farm Berkeloord, today's estate De Tempel [1].
Two meanings of tempel
The name is older than the lordship's legal status: an Isebrant van der Tempel paid grain tithes in the district of Vlaardingen in 1331 [1]. It may go back to a temple-like farmhouse (Latin templum), but the coat of arms with a silver temple is later and explains nothing [1]. In the Dutch delta tempel also meant a beam that propped a sluice gate open, and the name may have been given to a place where water was let in and out, in the disputed border area between Schieland and Delfland [1][2]. A hydraulic origin is therefore at least as likely as a religious one [1][2].
The Templar hypothesis
The Templars were certainly present in Holland. Around 1300 Count John II confirmed their right to feudal relief payments on all his fiefs, an income later passed to the Hospitallers [3]. Small estates with high justice and no foundation charter have been read as possible former holdings of a military order whose charters vanished when donors reclaimed property after 1312 [4]. Ben Brus, the late researcher behind Sporen van de Tempelieren in Nederland, suggested a former Templar hospice or trading post, but called this a supposition [5]. The local historian Kersbergen never mentions the Templars: in his reading the counts favoured a first vassal from the overlord's family, probably a younger son [1].
The argument has weak points. No document names the Templars at De Tempel, and the record starts in 1485, nearly two centuries after their suppression [1]. A statement repeated online, that Bishop Guy of Avesnes of Utrecht declared in 1307 that there were no Templar houses in his diocese, has not been traced to any source.
De Tempel shows a name that can be hydraulic or religious, rights out of proportion to its size and a missing beginning. The favour to a younger son explains the rights without the Templars. A Templar holding remains possible, but it rests on pattern and inference, and only an earlier charter could decide.
This blog, an improved version of an earlier one, is original work by TemplarsNowTM 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] Kersbergen, A.Th.C. (1950) Uit de geschiedenis van De Tempel, Rotterdamsch Jaarboekje, pp. 129-147; [2] TemplarsNow (2026) Tempel in the Low Countries, Water Control, Power, and Place; [3] Koorn, F.W.J. and Mol, J.A. (2015) Jacob van Zuden and the Early Fourteenth Century Expansion of the Hospitallers in the Bishopric of Utrecht, Crusades 14, pp. 183-209, author’s draft p. 7; [4] TemplarsNow (2026) High Justice and Vanished Charters, the Fingerprints of Templars in the Netherlands?; [5] Brus, B.Th. (2012) Berkel en Rodenrijs, Sporen van de Tempelieren in Nederland, 13th ed., tempelieren.nl.
Illustration: plans of the territory of De Tempel in 1660, 1750 and 1949, from Kersbergen (1950), fig. 19, Stadsarchief Rotterdam Fair Use intended.
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1 comment:
Interesting to read! Thanks for sharing!
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