L’Ordre du Temple dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône (1124–1312) by Damien Carraz

Abstract

Reviewed by: L’Ordre du Temple dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône (1124–1312) by Damien Carraz Michael Peixoto L’Ordre du Temple dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône (1124–1312). By Damien Carraz. (Lyon: Lyon University Press. 2020. Pp. 608. €35,00. ISBN: 9782729712129.) Originally published in 2005, this edition offers an updated re-issue of one of the most important recent contributions to the history of the military orders and the Crusades. While Dr. Carraz’s work centers on the lower Rhône region, the implications of his detailed study show how Templar activity in the region rippled through the medieval world. As an area that provided both rural economic opportunities, access to Mediterranean trade routes, a legacy of Carolingian culture, and persisting Roman urban centers, the Rhône valley offers an ideal case study for Templar activity outside of the Holy Land. Carraz brings together a comprehensive study of the documentary records (1,600 documents) of the Knights Templar along with archeological and narrative sources. Such exhaustive research allows Carraz to examine nearly every aspect of Templar life. He estimates numbers of written transactions, populations of Templar houses, tenure of individual commanders, internal organizational structures for house, and patronage relationships with regional elites to name just a few (chapter 5). The sources for the Templars in the south of France are especially rich and unique as local houses compiled cartularies, like their northern counterparts, but also drew from the local notarial culture and the more routine written transactional practices that accompanied it. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Templars were an omnipresent feature of the social and geographical landscape of the south of France. Their earliest establishments are recorded in donations dating to 1124, five years before the official foundations of the order in the Council of Troyes (p. 82). As much as the nobility supported the Templars, who were able to tap into a fervor of crusading support, much of the property attained by the Templars came by way of purchase. Templars consolidated land, making the most of donations by buying and selling to maximize efficiency. Carraz distinguishes the activities of urban houses from their rural and semi-urban counterparts, showing how urban houses were able to draw on trade networks and greater access to capital from ports, markets, and roads, while rural houses focused on natural resources. Templars similarly utilized their diversity of houses to appeal to different types of supporters. [End Page 185] The Templars played an important role in the religious landscape of southern France. Part of the early enthusiasm for the founding of local Templar houses came from the experience of inter-religious conflict and specifically the fear of Muslim piracy (p. 55). But Templars also offered a way to engage in religious life beyond traditional monasticism. In this capacity, they performed many similar functions as traditional Benedictine houses, such as memorializing donors and offering Masses, for a community that extended beyond the ranks of the nobility. Carraz explains the downfall of the Templars in the trials of 1307 and the subsequent Council of Vienne as an abrupt change, but one that was foreseeable. He dismisses the heresy charges that were leveled against them but does point out how the Templar membership had declined by the end of the thirteenth century. Estates were often inhabited by only a few brothers. While some Templars persisted even past the trial, their popularity seems to have waned as other types of popular religious movements, such as the mendicants, rose to replace them. Carraz’s work is essential reading for those interested in the Templars and the Military Orders, but his real contribution comes in the way he connects the activities of the Templars to the wider medieval context. In working from such an abundance of documentary sources, he elucidates the intersection of Templar history and nearly every aspect of medieval life, from religious devotion to royal and papal politics. In this, Carraz clearly shows how the military orders should not be thought of as a peripheral part of medieval history, but rather as the embodiment of many of its most important conceptual innovations, economics changes, and religious movements. Michael Peixoto University...