7 New Google maps of French Templar sites added

TemplarsNow is still working on its mapping project, aimed at pinpointing the geographical location of major and in many departments also minor Templar sites in France on modern Google-maps. Recently 7 new departmements in Northern France were added: Ardennes, Aisne, Marne, Nord, Oise, Pas de Calais and Somme. Check them out!

More Templar sites in the Allier department, Central France.

Beauchassin Templar house,
Saint Hilaire, Allier
source Google Maps
 

On internet much information on the Knights Templar in France is available. Many mix fact and imagination, myths and truths. Two sites are above question.

Project Beauceant (www.templiers.org) is an extensive website (in French), with the main objective to set up a kind of encyclopedia on the Templar Order and a catalogue of diverse historical remnants that the presence of these men has left everywhere in Europe and the Middle-East. To do it, the Project is open to any person, professional or not, who wants to share his research and experiences on this topic. It also contains much information on Templar commanderies.  Regretfully many commanderies in the Centre of France seem to be missing. For these additional sources have to be considered, such as the ones below.

Templiers.net is another great website (in French) with a lot of information on the Knights Templar and the crusades. It includes very detailed descriptions of the French commanderies, in alphabetical order and per Département.

Mainly from this latter source TemplarsNow composed a new map containing all known and probable Templar sites in the Allier department according to templiers.net. To this were added sites mentioned on templarii3m.free.fr. All sites were checked on other maps and aerial photographs and categorized, and indicated on the best possible geographical location.

The resulting map is shown below and can also be reached by this link. The work on the map continues, adding information from other sources. TemplarsNow acknowledges gratefully that this map could not have been made without the data from templiers.net.

Similar maps for (for now) 20 other French Departements can be found here.

 

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Templars in Switzerland - then and now

As we have argued in an earlier post, certain historians and conspiracists alike suggest that the Knights Templar did in fact form Switzerland.  The evidence and likelyhood seem plausible. At the same time hard evidence is scarce and circumstantial at best. 

Templar locations in France pinpointed

TemplarsNow runs a project which pinpoints the geographical location of Templar sites in France. TemplarsNow has earlier done a similar job for The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. 

Templar Houses and local society in Britain

"This article has set out a small selection of the evidence surviving in the records of the ‘Templar’s affair’ in the British Isles that may deepen scholars’ knowledge of the Templars’ relations with society at large.

It appears that at least some Templar houses were integrated into their locality, with travellers passing through the house on a regular basis, lodging there or visiting the chapel. Many local people were employed by a Templar commandery, on a full-time basis all year round or on a part-time seasonal basis. In addition, through the provision of corrodies and charitable giving, a Templar house could be a significant local provider of care to the elderly or needy. The evidence set out here indicates that the level of provision varied from house to house, and that some houses were more significant to their locality than others.

However, as this article has barely scratched the surface of the surviving evidence, there is great potential for further research in this area(....) The documents relating to the investigations into the Templars in the British Isles between 1308 and 1312 contain many examples of contact between the brothers and their local communities which, taken together, suggest that the relationship between the order’s houses and their localities could be close, even though this relationship might infringe the letter of the order’s privileges and regulations."

This blog quotes from the text of the paper "Relations between Houses of the Order of the Temple in Britain and their local communities" by Helen J. Nicholson published in Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar Presented to Malcolm Barber, ed. Norman Housley (Aldershot etc.: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 195-207. Published article Copyright © 2007; this edition © 2015; Illustration adapted from this source

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