Templar and Cistercian Refectories - Same Meal, Different Setting

Bernard de Clairvaux helped draft the Templar Rule, and the order's meals were built almost line for line on Cistercian custom: silence, scripture read aloud, equal rations. Yet the rooms where Templars ate rarely resembled a Cistercian refectory at all. What did the two orders actually build, and why did the buildings diverge?

A Borrowed Discipline
The Primitive Rule of 1129, shaped with input from Bernard de Clairvaux at the Council of Troyes, transplanted Cistercian table discipline wholesale into the new military order. Brothers ate together in near silence, a passage of scripture was read aloud during the meal, and rations of food and wine were distributed equally, with anything left over given to the poor [1]. Meat was permitted three days a week, closely following the Cistercian model already discussed in earlier blogs.

No Cloister to Build Around
Where the two orders parted ways was architecture. Templars were not cloistered monks, and their commanderies typically had no cloister at all. The refectory sat instead in an ordinary domestic range, the logis, alongside the kitchen and dormitory, a working household rather than a claustral quadrangle [2]. English preceptories are a partial exception. Heritage surveys of sites such as Penhill describe buildings grouped around a courtyard that reflects the monastic cloister arrangement, without reproducing its formal covered walk [3].

What Survives on the Ground
Archaeological and archival evidence shows just how variable the result was. At the Templar house in Avignon, a document from 1198 already mentions a refectory fronted by a porticus, built specifically to satisfy the Rule's requirement of communal dining [4]. At Celles in the Cantal, the surviving refectory has a coffered ceiling and a large fireplace, more the character of a lord's hall than of an austere Cistercian dining room. Recent archaeological synthesis on Templar and Hospitaller houses in southern France likewise stresses how much commandery buildings reused, adapted, and departed from any single template [2].

A Room That Fits the Order
The contrast makes sense once the two institutions sit side by side. Cistercian monks lived permanently inside an abbey built for one unchanging purpose, so their refectory could be standardized down to the position of the lavabo and the height of the reading pulpit. Templars ran working farms, urban houses, and frontier garrisons that answered to local materials, local wealth, and local need first. The custom of the table crossed from Cîteaux to the Temple almost intact. The room that held it did not. 

This blog 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 September 7, 2026 but sources usually not studied in detail: [1] "The Primitive Rule of the Templars," trans. after Henri de Curzon, La Règle du Temple (1886). Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University;  [2] Piana, M., Carlsson, C. (eds.). Archaeology and Architecture of the Military Orders: New Studies. Routledge, 2014; [3] Historic England. "Penhill Knights Templar Preceptory and Earlier Field System at Temple Farm, West Witton." List Entry 1019232; [4] Templiers.net, "Une commanderie templière et sa chapelle en Avignon." 

The illustration shows the former Templar commandery of Avalleur (Aube), one of the few French commanderies where the main residential building survives substantially from the Templar period itself. The main building is a typical L-shaped farmhouse next to a courtyard, without a claustral quadrangle common at monasteries. Picture by Claude PIARD, source Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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