Key Players in the Rural Clearance of Medieval Europe 1050-1150

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?

English Templar estates - origin and sources

"Templar scholars have tended to concentrate on the military aspects of the Order rather than the extent and organisation of their estates in England. Conversely, students of medieval agriculture have concentrated on the records of secular and ecclesiastical estates other than those of the Templars. The Templar estates have fallen between two stools." Until recently.

Small rural commanderies: the heart of the Templar organisation

Templar commanderies, or preceptories, formed an interlocking network, despite significant regional differences. They housed brethren that belonged to three categories of members of the Order: knights, clerics, and sergeants, living together in the everyday life of the commandery. How was the commandery organized?

Making the Crusades possible - the agricultural revolution

A series of revolutions in economic and political life transformed Northern Europe. Technology (tools) drove the process, and it was the entrepreneurial spirit of inventive farmers, craftsmen, and what we call today business that triggered change

The Templar workforce

"Whenever Templars appear in books or films, it is always the knights of the Order in their flowing white surcoats, hacking their way through the dust of battle. But to function properly, the Order needed more than squadrons of combat-hardened knights. It required armies of other men to undertake the hundreds of skilled tasks necessary to keep everything running. The Templar workforce.