Esquin de Floyran - The Jailed Informer

On 28 January 1308 one Esquin de Floyran, or Esquieu de Floyrac, calling himself valet of the French king, wrote proudly to King James II of Aragon. The affair of the Templars, which he had earlier revealed to James at Lerida, probably in 1305, was now proven, he claimed, and he reminded the king of the reward promised then. It was time to pay. Who was this man, and how did he work?

Béziers or Agen?
Esquin left no birth date and no family record, only a letter and two chronicles. A list of traitors made during the trials in 1309 calls him de Biterris [1] and a chronicle of around 1362 civis Biterrensis [2], long read as Béziers. Recent research places him in the Agenais, where Floyrac is the name of a district of Agen and members of his family had been canons [3]; another recent book links Biterris to a fief in the neighbouring Brulhois [4]. If he wrote his letter himself, its formally correct but grammatically poor Latin, coloured by Occitan, suggests a minor cleric from the south [5].

Lerida, 1305
In 1305, or perhaps 1304, Esquin told James II at Lerida about the factum Templariorum, the affair of the Templars, in the presence of the royal confessor, the Dominican Martin de Ateca [5]. He named no sources, but these may well have lain in his home region, the Agenais in Aquitaine [6]. The king did not believe him and mocked him [4], yet promised 1000 pounds in rents and 3000 in money from the Templars' goods if the story was proved [3].

A cell near Toulouse, after June 1305
By the middle of 1305, perhaps, Esquin had turned to the king of France [3]. How, only a chronicle tells, with an honest ut fertur (it is said). After June 1305 royal officers jailed him for his own crimes, of which nothing is known, in a royal castle in the diocese of Toulouse, together with an apostate Templar. Despairing of their lives more navigantium, like sailors in a storm, the two confessed their sins to each other, and the former Templar spoke of errors at his reception [2]. As Lerida probably came first, Esquin may have known the story from his own region before the cell. Now he had a witness.

Bound, to the king
The next day Esquin had the chief official of another royal castle summoned. He offered the king "a secret worth more than a new kingdom", but would tell no one else: "have me brought to him well secured and bound". The official wrote to Philip IV, who had him taken to Paris under guard, heard him in private and promised "safety and profit" if the story proved true [2].

A trap?
No source shows that the crown planted Esquin, though the sequence of events invites the suspicion. Guillaume de Nogaret, the king's leading jurist and adviser, did use moles: in May 1308 an Aragonese envoy reported that the king had ordered twelve men to enter the Order and report back. Royal agents also used apostates such as the sergeant Jean de Vaubellant, who left in 1305 and denounced the Order to the inquisitor at Poissy [3]. Inquisitors, too, rewarded fellow prisoners as informers [7].

Paid by two kings?
No payment from Aragon is recorded; France paid better. By 27 November 1309 Esquin was prior of Montfaucon [1][3]. His richest reward, the lordship of the former Templar house of Montricoux, is the subject of another post.

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 October 2, 2026 but not all sources studied in detail: [1] Michelet, J. (ed.) (1841) Procès des Templiers, vol. 1, Paris: Imprimerie royale, pp. 36-37; [2] Baluze, E. and Mollat, G. (eds) (1914) Vitae paparum Avenionensium, vol. 1, Paris: Letouzey et Ané, pp. 92-94 (life by Amalric Auger); [3] Demurger, A. (2018) The Persecution of the Templars: Scandal, Torture, Trial, transl. T. Lavender Fagan, London: Profile Books, pp. 12-23; [4] Demurger, A. (2018) Les Templiers, Paris: Jean-Paul Gisserot, pp. 92-97; [5] Finke, H. (1907) Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols, Münster: Aschendorff, vol. 1 pp. 111-118; vol. 2 pp. 83-85 (no. 57, letter of Esquin to James II, 28 January 1308); [6] TemplarsNow (2026) Rumours in the South - Trigger of the Templar Arrests?, templarsnow.com, part 1 of this series; [7] Lea, H.C. (1906) A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. 1, New York: Macmillan, p. 417.

The illustration shows the Seu Vella, the old cathedral of Lleida (Lerida), on its fortified hill, in the town where Esquin de Floyran first denounced the Templars to King James II of Aragon. Picture by IM027 (2025), source Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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