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The Templars in the Corona de Aragón

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Savannah
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« on: January 11, 2009, 04:05:22 am »

This accumulation of property which was occurring throughout the Corona de Aragón while the Aragonese rulers were granting newly conquered lands to the Temple has parallels in the histories of other religious orders; but the motives of the donors of this property were, to some extent, different from those of patrons of monasteries. Whereas patrons of the regular clergy would often -- if they had the means -- found a monastery or convent and provide revenues for its support, none of the charters of donation recording gifts to the Temple is a foundation charter of a convent of the Order. The property which was granted to the Temple in various parts of the Corona de Aragón was given primarily in order to provide resources for the struggle against the infidel in Spain and the Holy Land or to further the work of resettlement in reconquered areas. (200)

Yet although these benefactors of the Temple did not found convents, they -- like the Aragonese rulers when they granted frontier estates to the Order -- expected the Temple to provide for their spiritual welfare in the same ways as monasteries did for their patrons. They hoped to gain spiritual reward through prayers said for them in the Order's houses and through good works performed by Templar convents, and sought by this means to avoid the agonies of hell and to share in the joys of paradise. (201) This aspect of patronage is revealed especially in contracts of confraternity, which sometimes give details of the spiritual benefits received by confratres. Confratres were included in the prayers said not only in their local Templar convents, but in all houses of the Order. (202) They were also considered to participate in the fasts and alms -- giving undertaken by the Templars. (203) These benefits were usually extended to a confrater's family and [43] occasionally to a few friends as well. (204) The Temple in addition promised to bury confratres in its cemeteries and agreed to grant the habit, if it was demanded, even to female confratres. (205) In most cases, of course, a confrater would not seek the habit until he was dying and this promise by the Temple referred primarily to the custom known as ad succurrendum, which allowed individuals to die in the habit. The wording of the Templar Customs indicates, however, that as in some other orders those who took the habit when dying were not considered full members:

If a man asks to be made a brother when he is dying, he who gives him the habit shall say nothing to him, but put it on him when he is on the point of death. The brother can take it off him again when he sees that he is dead; and if he dies in the habit there is no obligation to say the paternosters which must be said for a brother. (206)
The dying person merely had the habit placed upon him, without any proper profession; he was not buried in the habit nor was he treated as a brother after death.
Some patrons, considering further their spiritual welfare, provided through donations for the saying of masses or for the maintenance of lamps or candles which were to burn before the altars of Templar chapels. Those who had the means endowed chantries or lamps in perpetuity. In 1275, for example, G. of San Melione established two chantries in the Templar church at Valencia, ordering that

the clerics who serve the said chantries in the said church are to celebrate daily a requiem mass for my soul and for those of all my benefactors, and are to be present by day and night at the offices which are said and celebrated in the said church every day and night, and are to go every day to my grave to absolve me and say prayers (207)
and when in 1282 Peter Cornel stated in his will that he would leave the castle of Fréscano to the Temple if he died without legitimate sons, he made the condition that the Order was to maintain ten priests to say masses for his soul and keep ten lamps burning day and night in the chapel in which he was to be buried. (208) Such provisions required a considerable endowment. The priests whom Peter Cornel provided for were to receive an annual salary of 150s. each, and in 1280 the bishop of Valencia considered that an income of 20l.V. was necessary to maintain a chantry priest and his boy and to provide for lamps and [44] candles, (209) while an endowment of a lamp alone appears usually to have required a rent of from 10s. to 30s. a year.(210) Those who could not give enough to make perpetual endowments might merely provide for masses to be said on the anniversary of their death or state that masses should be said for a certain period or that a certain number of masses should be said. In 1295 Gayeta, the wife of Peter of Rueda, provided in her will for the celebrating of daily masses for a year, while by the terms of his wife's will, drawn up in 1208, Peter of Tena was obliged to see that 2,000 masses were said for her soul by a chaplain provided by the Templars in Zaragoza. (211) Alternatively a few shillings or a few pence might be left to the Temple and masses were to be said or candles and lamps kept burning until the money was used up.
While spiritual benefits were sought by all those who made gifts to the Order, at least a considerable minority of donors also sought a more worldly reward. In a world where largesse was extolled as a virtue, nobles could enhance their prestige by making generous benefactions. Some individuals, however, sought more precise material returns from the Order, although it cannot be stated what proportion of benefactors obtained benefits of this kind, for charters do not necessarily record all aspects of a transaction. It has been argued that during the civil war in England between Stephen and Matilda the Templars were given property in return for political support, and it has been maintained that the rival powers in the disputed borderlands between Poland and Pomerania sought to retain a hold over these districts by granting extensive properties there to the Templars. (212) There may similarly have been political motives behind some of the grants to the Temple in the disputed areas on the borders of Aragon and Navarre in the years following the death of Alfonso I. García Ramírez may have given Novillas to the Hospital and Temple in 1135 in the hope that they would defend it for the Navarrese, and a similar motive may explain in part the confirmation of Templar rights over Razazol issued in 1138 by Raymond Berenguer IV, for in the previous year García Ramírez had given it to Raymond of Cortes. (213) But the Order's reluctance to become involved in political disputes probably meant that gifts made for such reasons were few. (214)

There is clearer evidence of other material benefits obtained by donors. Those who entered into the confraternity of the Temple [45] received a promise of protection from the Order, and this privilege was also sought by others. Many individuals, especially in Cataluña Vieja, bound themselves to make payments to the Order, which were considered partly as benefactions -- in many of the surviving contracts the phrases 'for the salvation of our souls' or 'for the safety of our souls' occur (215) -- and partly as payments for protection by the Temple. Requests for Templar protection are encountered not only in these formal contracts but also in a number of wills. The Temple was asked, in return for a donation, to give its protection to the testator's family after his death. In 1195, for example, a butcher called Arnold left a vineyard at Gardeny to the Templars and placed his wife and three children in their custody. (216) Some of those who sought the protection of the Temple were men who had no lords: thus in 1280 and 1281 several individuals who had redeemed themselves from the lordship of Galcerán of Pinós placed themselves under Templar protection. (217) Yet not all who sought the Order's protection lacked lords of their own. (218) In a society where violence was endemic many needed protection from any possible source and saw the advantage of having a Templar cross on their property, even though they already had a lord. (219) The frequency with which men turned to the military orders for protection is illustrated by a gloss on the Usage In baiulia ve1 guardia, which makes the comment

What of the Hospitallers and Templars, who daily receive custodies of this kind? (220)
and the need for protection was clearly important in bringing to the Temple a considerable number of small payments.
Besides seeking Templar protection for his dependants, a donor might also see to their interests by asking the Temple to pay off his debts after his death or to make payments to his family or other dependants. In 1255 Gonzalbo Gómez, an inhabitant of Teruel, gave a vineyard to the Templars on the condition that after his death they would pay off his debts and

make good all the injuries I have caused and also give to a certain woman named Mary by whom I have a child and who is now pregnant 100s.J. and to the son who has been born 200s.J. and to the one who is to be born, if he is then living, another 200s.; (221)
[46] in 1219 after making several bequests Bernard of Savasona left the remainder of his possessions to the Templars on the condition that they would marry off his grand-daughter and provide her with a dower of 200maz.; (222) and in her will drawn up in 1298 Mary Rossa, an inhabitant of Valencia, asked the Temple to make an annual gift of a cahíz of corn to her servant for four years. (223)
Other donors sought to provide for themselves. It was common for benefactors of the Temple, especially confratres, to be granted regular corrodies during their lives. Sometimes a single payment in kind or money was made by the Order each year. When Bartholomew of Miracle and his wife became confratres of the Order in 1199 and gave it houses and land in Huesca, the Templars assigned them annually on All Saints' day three cahíces of wheat, two measures of wine, an arroba of cheese and 40s.J., (224) and when Peter of Montañana gave the Temple some land at Torre de Bafes in 1169 the Temple agreed to give him a quarter of the produce during his life. (225) But most of those who received corrodies were promised a daily allowance of food and drink, and occasionally clothing or a payment for clothing as well: a confrater called Stephen of Monzón, for example, was given his food and drink and also 50s. a year, which were stated to be for his clothing. (226) But such promises did not necessarily mean that the recipient was in fact regularly maintained by the Temple. Benefactors were sometimes seeking merely the right to hospitality, which might be exercised only occasionally or when the donors were no longer able to maintain themselves. Thus although in 1176 the Templars promised Dominic of Batizo and his wife food and drink 'in our house of Huesca or of Monzón, wherever you want to receive it, all the days of your life', this couple lived in Pertusa and could scarcely have received regular maintenance at either Huesca or Monzón. (227) The desire on the part of benefactors to provide against future need is sometimes revealed very clearly in the sources. When Nina of Talladell gave the Templars a vineyard at Gardeny in 1196, they promised to give her assistance if she became poverty-stricken, and in the middle of the twelfth century a priest at Novillas named Gerald made a donation to the Temple on the condition that it would give him 10s. if he was ever in need of money because of illness and would provide him with a mount if he wanted to go on a pilgrimage. (228)

Most of the obligations entered into by the Temple in return [47] for grants were of this temporary kind. Usually only ecclesiastical patrons obliged the Templars to pay rents in perpetuity for property given to the Order; but it was of course difficult for ecclesiastical institutions to make unconditional gifts. Thus when the abbot of Ripoll granted the lordship of Alfantega to the Order in 1217 he imposed an annual rent of 400s.B. on the Templars. (229) Grants to the Temple were not often looked upon by laymen as a means of exploiting property, although a few instances of this attitude are encountered in the sources. In 1176 Arnold of Murello gave a plot of land to the Templars on the condition that they built a mill there and that when the mill had been built Arnold would contribute half of the costs of running it and would receive half of the profits; (230) and in 1192 Alfonso II gave land at Lérida to the Temple on the same terms. (231) Nor was the rent of 1,000s. which James I demanded of the Templars for the Puente de Monzón and Castejón del Puente in 1219 merely a nominal sum; he admitted at the time that the grant was not then worth that amount and in 1224 the rent was reduced to 500s. (232) The imposition of permanent obligations on the Order by laymen occurred only occasionally, however, and in many charters the words 'per proprium alodium' or a similar phrase were included apparently to denote not that the property being transferred was necessarily free from all obligations but that the donor himself was not imposing any dues on the Order: such phrases were used to characterize the nature of the transaction, not the nature of the property. (233)

Some of those who made grants to the Temple did not seek any future material recompense from it, but did obtain a single payment from the Templars at the time of the transaction. Some charters recording the transfer of property to the Temple are worded as charters of donation but refer to payments made by the Order 'out of alms' or 'out of charity'. The earliest example of this practice occurs in ?1135 when Raymond Adalbert of Juiá received 20m. from the Temple for the gift of his rights over land at Collsabadell, (234) and numerous further instances are recorded, especially in Catalonia. (235) The amount paid by the Templars in such cases presumably did not represent the full value of the property, for in addition to the monetary return the donor was also gaining the spiritual benefits which resulted from a grant. Such transactions were therefore partly gifts and partly sales. The same [48] may be said of conveyances by gift of land which was to be redeemed from pledge. An early example of this form of transaction is provided by Peter Taresa's grant of the castle of Alberite to the Templars, for the Order was obliged to pay 300m. to recover it from Simon Garcés of Bureta. (236) There was thus no clear-cut distinction between the gift and the sale of property; some transactions had the characteristics of both types of conveyance, and this is reflected in the wording of some charters. In a document drawn up in 1182, for example, it is stated that for the redemption of their souls and of those of their ancestors Berenguer Bafarul and his wife gave and sold to the Temple their rights in Torre de Bafes. (237)

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