Two thirteenth-century hospitaller castles in Provence

Abstract

Apart from border areas with Islam or the pagans, few constructions of military orders are known to have all the attributes of a castle. This was however the case of the castle or fortified palace of Manosque and its reproduction, on a smaller scale, at Puimoisson. These two constructions, located in the Haute-Provence, were commissioned by the Hospital during the thirteenth century, the first on the basis of a fortified palace of the Counts of Forcalquier, the second erected ex nihilo. Although these two castles were completely razed to the ground following the French Revolution, their construction and occupation between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries have left a great deal of written evidence: charters, accounts, minutes of visits. The use of accounts documents certain phases of the construction of the Manosque palace and allows us to formulate hypotheses on the organization of the spaces. By comparison, this major construction site sheds light on the more modest, and as yet unstudied, side of Puimoisson. In conclusion, these two long-forgotten buildings are placed in the current of fortified architecture that spread throughout Provence in the thirteenth century.