The Knights Templar in Europe

Born in the XIIᵉ century and suppressed in 1312, the Order of the Temple was at once a religious community, a military network and a European land power. The brothers were governed by a single set of rules, yet their settlements varied according to the terrain. In Iberia, the Knights Templar took part in the Reconquest frontier, administering castles and valleys, before their legacy passed largely to the Hospital or Montesa in the XIVᵉ century. In France, a dense network of commanderies, backed by donor families and Cistercian routes, made the Temple a leading agricultural and seigneurial manager, before the arrests of 1307. In England, their presence in the towns around the London Temple encouraged the deposit of funds and the lending of power. In Northern Italy, the houses were part of merchant cities and the interplay between the Papacy and the Empire; in German-speaking countries, they were closely linked to prince-bishops and local nobility. At the top, the "central convent" in the East, successively in Jerusalem, Acre and Cyprus, coordinated the whole. This page follows this European thread: the same institutional framework, practices adapted to regional realities... and a lasting legacy in architecture, archives and memory.