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?

Myth vs Mud - What Archaeology Tells Us About the Knights Templar

For over seven centuries, Templar commanderies have fired the popular imagination as fortified bastions of a warrior brotherhood. Yet systematic archaeological investigation across France tells a strikingly different story: one of farms, chapels, cemeteries, and artisan workshops. Can material evidence alone finally displace the myth with historical reality?

The Templar Commandery at Alphen, the Netherlands

The Knights Templar held a significant but often overlooked presence in the northern Netherlands. In Brabant they had their commandery at Ter Brake near Alphen. What is known?

The Templar house at Feuilloux - a commandery for sale

Not often a Templar commandery is for sale. Therefore the putting up for sale of the House of the Temple at Feuilloux, Nièvre (58), France deserves some attention.

Templars and water

The Templars carefully chose the site where they would build their "domus". One of the most important points was accessibility to water. What was the situation at Arville Commandery, France?

Templar territorial organisation in the West

The purpose of the European Templar sites was to transfer significant amounts of resources to the East. Provisions, weapons, horses, and coinage formed an ensemble that Templar sources termed "responsio", from "to respond". What did the Temple do to organize this?

The Knights Templar Commandery at Arville, France

This video, hosted by a very enthousiastic Frenchman, provides a nice introduction to the well preserved Knights Templar Commandery at Arville, Loir-et-Cher Department, France.

  

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"The Templars in Bretagne (France) during the Middle Ages"

The Templars established themselves in the duchy of Brittany in the second quarter of the twelfth century, perhaps as early as 1128, during the travels in western Europe of the first master of the order, Hugh of Payns.

The Templars lived on well beyond the Middle Ages in the local collective memory, in spite of the poorness of the buildings which may be directly ascribed to them.

Even if the present paper is interested in the traditions and myths the Templars provoked in Brittany, it is based on medieval and modern sources which are not as scarce as scholars have often thought.

Thus, over a period of two hundred years, this study explains the Templars’ regional growth, violently broken by the trial of 1307, and it throws light on the establishment of a complete network of possessions organized at its peak, during the second half of the thirteenth century, in about ten commanderies and integrated in the province of Aquitaine.

This blog quotes the English abstract of the paper "Les Templiers en Bretagne au Moyen Âge : mythes et réalités" by Philippe Josserand published on journals.openedition.org. Illustration from the same sorce, showing the Chapel of the Commandery of Coudrie (cliché Chr. Renault). 

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Reconstruction of a Templar Commandery in 3D

Video in French - source

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Cistercian monasteries - preface to Knights Templar preceptories

The development of the 12th and 13th century Templar commanderies in Europe seems to have been closely related to the pattern of Cistercian settlements. This is one of the ways the Cistercians preceeded the Templars. In what way did the Cistercian monasteries preceed Templar commanderies?

The Temple of Zaamslag, the Netherlands

The Temple of Zaamslag or Tempelhof was a Commandery of the Knights Templar, located at Zaamslag, a village in the south-west of the Netherlands. It is a very important archaeological site.