La Couvertoirade

La Couvertoirade had belonged to the Knights Templar since the area was given to them by the Viscount of Millau in the 12th century. The Templars built the fortress in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries and the village that grew up around it.  La Couvertoirade formed part of the extensive estates administered from the Commandery of Sainte-Eulalie de Cernon. The Templars  chose the site because of the dome of exposed limestone that meant good foundations and a ready supply of  material for building a castle. Also for the Lavognes, the natural drinking pools in this arid region that provided a reliable source of water for their sheep on the trails connecting the summer and winter pastures; the transhumance routes.

Following the Dissolution of the Knights Templar in 1312 La Couvertoirade passed into the hands of the Order of St John who built the church. The village became an important staging post for pilgrims making their way south to Santiago da Compostella, Rome and the Holy Land. In 1328 there were 135 "fires" in the village and between 540 and 600 inhabitants.

Between 1439 and 1442 the Knights of St John built the high curtain wall and the five square and round towers around the village.

La Couvertoirade in particular and the Larzac in general prospered in the peace following the end of the 100 Years War in 1453. Many of the houses in La Couvertoirade date from this period. The characteristic houses have sheep folds on the ground floor and a flight of stone steps that leads to the accommodation above.

The walls protected the village again during the Wars of Religion. La Couvertoirade was besieged by the Huguenots and the siege  was only lifted when the bishop of Lodeve rode to its rescue in 1562.

Along with all of the Hospitaller's properties in the Larzac, La Couvertoirade was able to prosper during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, as some of the beautiful houses in the village show. 

 The last commander of Sainte-Eulalie and of La Couvertoirade was Fra' Riquetti Mirabeau. During the Revolution religious orders of the Church were abolished and the long ownership of  La Couvertoirade by the Order of St John was over

Our Lady of Tortosa

Tortosa (modern day Tartus) on the coast of Syria is reputed to be where St Peter the Apostle said his first mass.  As early as the 3rd century, before Christianity was even tolerated, a chapel was built here to consecrate the site. The chapel has the distinction of being the first to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was popularly believed to have contained an icon of the Virgin painted by St Luke. This Sanctuary became an important pilgrimage site during the Byzantine Empire.

In 1123 the Crusaders began work on the Cathedral of Our Lady of Tortosa built to sanctify the site of the chapel dedicated to the Virgin, to provide a focus for visiting pilgrims. This supremely elegant building was erected on the cusp of the transition between the Romanesque and the Gothic. It has, with good reason, been described as the finest surviving example of Crusader ecclesiastical  architecture in the Holy Land. While the facade is severe and almost unembellished; apart from the main door, there are only five, high, Gothic windows. The interior has graceful columns,Gothic arches and soaring vaulted ceilings. The columns in the nave show marked stylistic variations from Romanesque at the east end to early Gothic at the west.

In 1152, Tortosa was captured by the Nur al-Adin whose army burnt and sacked the city, leaving it destroyed and deserted. After it had been retaken by the Crusaders it became apparent that the County of Tripoli lacked the resources to restore the city. So Tortosa was entrusted to the Order of the Temple which embarked on an ambitious  programme of fortification. Unique among the surviving Crusader churches of the Holy Land, the Cathedral of Our Lady is fortified. Defensive tower-like sacristies still stand at the north east and south east corners of the Cathedral. There were once also defensive towers along the western aisle bays, indicating  that the Cathedral was an integral part of the defences of  Tortosa.

Today the (deconsecrated) Cathedral houses the National Museum of Tartus and houses artifacts from all historical epochs found across Syria.

Temple Manor, Strood

The manor of Strood near the River Medway in Kent was given to the Order of the Temple by Henry II in 1159. The hall was built at the beginning of the 13th century to provide accommodation for their knights and other dignitaries travelling to Dover and on to the Holy Land. By the 14th century the estate had been farmed out to tenants and the income was used to support the military activities of the Order in the East.

When in 1312 the Order of the Temple was suppressed in England, all their assets including Temple manor passed to the Order of St.John. An inventory of 1313 at Strood lists a hall, a chamber a chapel and a barn. Some years later the Prior of St. John complained that the King was still occupying former Templar properties, including Strood. The protest had no effect and in 1324 Strood, although legally the property of the Order of St.John, had to be ceded to the King. In 1342 Edward III granted it to the Countess of Pembroke who gifted it to support her nunnery at Denny in Cambridgeshire, another former Templar property.

The brick fireplace was inserted into the hall in the 17th century when the manor was used as a farmhouse.

Templecombe Commandery

Templecombe on the edge of the Blackmore Vale in Somerset became the most important centre of  the Order of the Temple in the west of England. In 1185 Serlo Fitz-Odo  who held the manor had given the land on the south side of the village to the Knights Templar.(The north side, Abbascombe belonged to Shaftesbury Abbey.) The preceptory buildings occupied the site of the manor house, and local tradition has it that the long building with the tiled roof that runs at right angles to the manor had housed the kitchens, stores and the refectory. In one of the kitchens a huge beam across the fireplace is admired locally for its length and size. The three walls of what remains of the chapel are now separated from the main buildings. The guest house has been identified with the former public house, the old Blue Boar. In 1312, after the suppression of the Order of the Temple, their properties, including the preceptory of Templecombe were handed over to the Order of St. John after which it became known as a commandery.

Next door to the old pub is a row of three cottages that had been known as the old Rectory and may  have been the presbytery or priest's house. It was in one of these cottages, during the last war that an extraordinary panel painting was discovered. The bizarre accusation that the Templars worshiped an idol in the shape of a head has not ceased to fascinate the public, with predictable consequences. The painting of a head painted on a panel from Templecombe has been cited as evidence for idol-worship. But the image surely dates from the Order of St John's period. Although carbon dating dates the panel to c1280, the "head" depicts their patron, John the Baptist, on a charger.

In 1539 after the Dissolution of the Monastries, Templecombe was awarded by Henry VIII to William Sherrington who also obtained Lacock Abbey. The former commandery was later bought by Richard Duke who reorganized the buildings and built the present manor house.

Balantrodoch (Temple) Commandery

The preceptory of Balantrodoch was the principal house of the Order of the Temple in Scotland. It is eleven miles south of Edinburgh on the wooded banks of the river South Esk. The original church had a round nave, like so many Templar churches in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. There would also once have been a full range of domestic and administrative buildings, none of which have survived.

The Templars settled at Balantrondoch  some time after Hughues de Payens came to Scotland and had met David I on his tour of European powers. He was  gathering  support for the expansion of the original band of nine knights into an international Order. While there is no clear evidence, it does seem likely that King David himself made the original grant of Balantrodoch to the fledgling Order. From here the Templars  administered the extensive properties donated by the faithful across Scotland.

The Templars remained at Balantrodoch until the suppression of the Order in 1307.  It appears that Balantrodoch was one of the few Templar properties that was transferred to the Order of St John. Like all property of the Hospitallers  in Scotland Balantrodoch was administered from their preceptory (commandery) at Torphichen. The present, ruined, chapel seems to date from the early 14th Century and so would have been  built by the Hospitallers.

 In the 15th Century the Preceptor Fra.William Knollis obtained an act of parliament changing the name 'Temple' to the 'Barony of St. John.' But the name was not accepted by the locals who always called it simply 'Temple'. The Temple remained in the hands of the Hospitallers of St. John until 1535 when they, also, lost control due to Henry VIII of England's Act of Reformation. The chapel became the area's Protestant church and in 1618 the name 'Temple' became formally applied to the village. The building was in constant use as the parish church until 1840 after which it was left to fall into ruin.

It is curious that this picturesque chapel in its wooded valley is so little known compared to another village only a few miles away, Roslin. That is of course due to the Rosslyn chapel and all the fanciful stories that surround it.

Sainte Eulalie Commandery

 In 1158  Count Raymond Beranger, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, as guardian of his young nephew Raymond Berenger II, Viscount of Millau  gave the village of Sainte Eulalie and the surrounding territory , the limestone plateau of the Larzac, to the Order of the Temple. After the suppression of the Templars, Sainte Eulalie became the property of the Order of St John in 1312 and was the most valuable legacy of the Templars to the Priory of Saint-Gilles. From 1312 until 1792 Saint Eulalie was one of the Order of St. John's richest commanderies, if not the richest in the south of France
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However the prosperity was interupted as a result of the disasters of the late 14th Century. First, the Hundred Years War devastated the lands to the west of the Rhone. At first Provence managed to remain relatively unscathed but the papal schism of 1378 led to its own six year war of succession. Then from their possessions in Gascony the English were able to devastate wide areas of southern France during the 14th and 15th Centuries. The English even captured Sainte Eulalie in 1385 and stayed until at least 1389. To better protect their possessions the Order of St John  threw up 30' high defensive walls around the Commandery of Sainte Eulalie and the villages  of La Cavalrie and La Couvertoirade, the "Ramparts of Larzac." between 1442-1450, on the orders of Commander Fra.Bertrand d'Aapajon.

The oldest building at Sainte Eulalie is the church, which dates from the beginning of the Templar occupation in the 12th Century. However Commander Fra. Jean de Bernay Villeneuve decided to reverse the orientation of the church in 1642. He removed the cemetery and laid out the fountain square in its place opening a new entrance to the church in the existing apse, with a statue of the Virgin and child from Genoa placed over the door. Now the faithful could enter the church without having to pass through the courtyard of the commandery.

Another building dating from the Templar occupation is the tower in the north-west of the village, the Tower of Quarante.This was where grain was stored and where taxes and kind were collected, 1/40th of the harvest. In return the peasantry could take refuge inside.

At the heart of Sainte Eulalie is the "Palace", the residence of the commander and the resident brethren. The original, austere Templar building was rebuilt by the Hospitallers in the middle of the 14th Century. In the 17th Century commander Fra. Jean Bernay Villeneuve as part of his improvements  reorganized the building by inserting extra floor into the great hall. The first floor known as the "upper palace" was the dormitory. Fireplaces were installed in each of the new rooms.The main room in the "lower palace" was used as the refectory and chapter room.

The loveliest room in the palace is the frescoe room, a combined corridor and ante chamber completely painted with frescoes on the theme of the virtues. The work was done in 1648 at a considerable cost of 200 livres.

A small room in the round bartizan tower has interesting graffiti depicting 17th and 18th century churches which may well be based on some unfortunate confined person's memories of Malta.

The capuchin's room was fitted out c1730 and has a door constructed from reused floorboards.

The size of the Hospitaller community living at Sainte Eulalie fluctuated over the centuries. There were five brethren after the fall of Acre. But in later years it seems to have been just two, the commander himself and one other.

Beside the brethren, also living at Sainte Eulalie were the chaplains in charge of the church and the "donats" lay people who had contributed to the Order and in return were accommodated and looked after by them. There were officials including the cellerer who had the functions of a steward and the keeper of the bedchamber among others. Finally there were the servants, the shepheards, oxherds, grooms woodsmen, porters, cooks, bakers, brewers and agricultural labourers. A census of 1373 records 29 people living there including two women. The house also fed eight poor folk throughout the year.

Commander be Bernay Villeneuve also created a new entrance to the commandery, from fountain square where a vaulted passage gave access to the staircase and the upper floors and to the courtyard. The courtyard was fortified, until the ramparts were built in the mid 15th Century it was the only protected place in the village. The original entrance to the commandery is on the south side. Arranged around the courtyard are various service buildings, stabling for horses, mules and oxen, workshops, a sheep house and a poultry yard, with accommodation for the servants who looked after them.

Above the arch next to the south tower of the palace is the study of the last commander of Sainte Eulalie, Fra. Elzear de Riqueti-Mirabeau (1768-1789), uncle of the grand tribune revolutionary. After the Revolution all the escutcheons were removed from the buildings of Sainte Eulalie as outdated symbols of nobility and the ancien regime, but in most other respects this former commandery of the Templars and the Hospitallers is little changed.

Garway Commandery

The preceptory of Garway in the Monow valley had been the main house of the Order of the Temple in Herefordshire. Granted to the Templars by Henry II c.1185-1187 he gave them the right to asssart 2000 acres in the Archenfield forest which had been the Crown's possession  since the revolt of Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford (in 1072). In due course Garway became an important manor and administrative centre responsible for their property throughout the dioceses of Hereford and Llandaf. It is probable that the church at Garway dates from after 1162 when the Order was permitted to have its own chaplains. Originally the church was built with a circular nave in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. (The foundations of the circular nave were unearthed during excavations in 1927).

The Knights of Rhodes took over the former Templar estate at Garway in 1324. As soon as they arrived the Hospitallers began a programme of building and restoring the infrastructure of the property which had fallen into disrepair after the departure of the Templars in 1307. The nave of the church, the chancel, font and the upper storey of the tower all date from the Hospitallers' rebuilding.

The church of St Michael at Garway  was used by both the Hospitaller community and as the parish church. Seating was provided in the chancel for use by members of the Order and its officials. No seats were provided for the lay congregation who stood or knelt on the floor strewn with rushes of other hedgerow plants. However there was a stone ledge against the nave walls where the elderly and infirm could sit, giving rise to the saying "let the weak go to the wall."

After Garway had been transferred to the Knights of Rhodes it lost its status as a preceptory or commandery and became a camera of the commandery at Dinmore. However Garway continued to function as a separate unit of administration and remained a commandery in all but name, in 1338 it was in the charge of a keeper,Brother William Dalmaly, a chaplain of the Order. The estate had become an extensive manor with a demesne of 720 acres of arable and 60 acres of meadow.

 There were officials including the chamberlain, bailiff and seneschal  and numerous servants. The scale of the establishment at Garway in those days can be gauged from the numerous servants who included cooks, bakers, porters, personal servants of the keeper and two attendant pages and the reaper of the manor who was responsible for the allocation of labour services of the villeins living on the demesne (home farm). In 1338 all the servants on the estate were in receipt of wages varying from 3/4d to 13/4d a year.

There were also three holders of corrodies or pensions living at Garway in 1338, one of whom Gilbert of Pembridge dined at the table of the brethren and received a pension 20/s a year while the other two received 10/s and ate at the table of the free servants. Due to the establishment's position on the Welsh marches there was a steady stream of visitors and wayfarers who made heavy demands on the houses's hospitality.

There are no remains of the domestic buildings at Garway with the exception of the circular dovecot. According to the inscription over the door "Anno domini millesimo tres entesimo vic esimo sexto factum fuit istud columbare frrem Ricardum." "In the year 1326 this dovecot was built by Brother Richard." Outside is a projecting string course high above the ground to prevent rats from getting in. Inside there are 666 nesting boxes arranged in 19 rows.

It had been a custom or the Bishop of Hereford to make a triennial visit to the parish church at Garway, recieving on each occasion 53/4d in respect of procurations, but in 1524 the parishioners memorably barred the door to him, refusing to ring the bells. In consequence the bishop retaliated by placing the church under interdict and excommunication all those who had barred his entry.

                                              

Temple Balsall Commandery

Temple Balsall in the Forest of Arden was gifted to the Knights Templar in 1146 by Roger de Mowbray. He was a major patron of the Order and an enthusiastic supporter of the crusade, so much so that he went on crusade three times himself . On the last occasion when over 65 he was taken prisoner and had to be  ransomed by the Templars, he was buried in the Holy Land.

Temple Balsall had by 1226 became a preceptory, an administrative centre for other estates gifted to the Order in the area, and was overseen by a senior member of the Order known as the preceptor. It would have been a large establishment, the domestic buildings including the hall and the preceptor's lodging attached to it, a pantry, buttery, kitchen, larder, bakehouse, brewhouse and a dovecot with boxes for 80 birds. The hall still stands, though it was covered with a skin of bricks in the eighteenth century.

Only the preceptor and one or two others would have been members of the Order of the Temple. Most of the other members of the community living  at Balsall would have been involved in agriculture. At one time it is recorded that there were 19 people living in the home farm at Balsall. There were ploughmen and stockmen, a dairyman, a miller, a groom, two woodsmen,and a lad to make 'pottage' for the labourers. In addition there were also six pensioners who had board and lodging in return for their faithful service to the Order.

The chapel was the last to be built by the  Templar's  in England before their suppression. After falling into disrepair in the seventeenth century the chapel was restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1849. In the Order's day there were three chaplains who said Mass every day and a deacon to serve them.

With the loss of the Holy land the fabulously wealthy and powerful Order had lost the very reason for its existence, the protection of pilgrims. This weakness allowed the Order's enemies to strike. Seizing the opportunity the King of France moved against them using  trumped up charges of heresy, homosexuality and obscenity. The Templars in France were suddenly arrested in 1307, tortured and tried. Almost one hundred and twenty were burnt at the stake.

The Templars in England were also all arrested without warning in January 1308. Some were held in prison for over three years but nothing was ever proved against them. Five Templars were arrested at Balsall, a chaplain, two knights and two serving brothers. There was no mention of a preceptor. So the Order was suppressed.(An inventory made at the time of the arrests shows that the larder was well stocked for winter, including 38 sides of bacon, 2 hams,3 carcasses of beef, over 2000 herrings, over 100 dried fish and 7 cheeses.)

By an edict of Pope Clement, the Templar's possessions went to their great rivals, the Order of St John. The Knights of St John used the term commandery instead of preceptory, headed by a senior member of the Order known as a commander. At the time of the enquiry  into the state of the Order in England by Grand Prior de Thame in 1338, Balsall was headed by Commander Henry de Buckston assisted by Brother Simon Dyseny, a knight and Brother John de Sprottelee, a serving brother. The Commander Henry de Buckston was also of the rank of serving brother. There were two chaplains (not Hospitallers) who said Mass in the chapel and the rest of the domestic staff included a turnkey, cook, baker, a porter, three youths who acted as servants to the commander and a steward to hold the manor courts.

Temple Balsall was combined with their existing  commandery of Grafton, and the name 'Temple' became attached to Grafton although it had never been a Templar property. Two of the commanders of Balsall and Grafton rose to hold the office of Grand Prior of the Hospital of England, Robert Mallory, in 1433, and John Langstrother in 1470, but he was beheaded the next year after being captured at the battle of Tewkesbury, where he had fought on the losing Lancastrian side.

By 1470 Temple Balsall had ceased to be the residence of a commander, instead it was leased out to a lay tenant, John Beaufitz who live there. From then on the estate was farmed out until the Order of St. John was suppressed by Henry VIII along with the monasteries and other religious orders.

Preserved in the old hall are a number of heraldic shields which date to before 1540. The anchor device may have been awarded to William Weston, Grand Prior of the Hospital in England, 1527-1540 in recognition of his prowess at sea.