Early Templar Administration in Provence and North-Eastern Spain

Abstract

A very considerable proportion of the documents published by the Marquis d'Albon in his Cartulaire général de l'ordre du Temple concerns rights and properties in northeastern Spain, Provence and neighbouring regions, such as Roussillon, which did not come under Aragonese control until 1172 1 . It is, however, not easy to trace the early development of Templar administration in these districts in the years up to the middle of the 12th century, as charters sought to define what was passing into the Order's hands and not to describe Templar organisation. Terminology presents a further obstacle. The military orders were a new form of religious institution that was dominated by lay brothers, and the terms currently used in monastic foundations were not always applicable to them. To facilitate the dispatch of men and supplies to the Holy Land, the Templars and Hospitallers were also creating new forms of organisation to group together their establishments in a region. The Hospital did adopt the terms 'prior' and 'priory', but in many instances these orders were developing their own terminology. This happened, however, only slowly, and in the early years of the Temple and Hospital the words used to describe officials or establishments lacked precision and consistency. Furthermore, even when brothers were given a title before 1150, it was frequently not linked to a particular place or district. Some documents were, moreover, not precisely dated. The creation of houses and a province cannot therefore be examined very fully or precisely from a simple reading of this document base alone, but some tentative conclusions can be reached.