[256] Ripoll II. 566.—Wadding. ann. 1409, No. 12.—Tamburini, Storia Gen. dell’ Inquis. II. 437-9.
[257] Jac. de Vitriaco Hist. Hierosol. cap. 65 (Bongars, II. 1083-4).—Rolewinck Fascic. Tempor. (Pistorii R. Germ. Scriptt. II. 546).—Regula Pauperum Commilitonum Templi c. 72 (Harduin. VI. ii. 1146).—Règle et Statuts secrets des Templiers, §§ 125, 128 (Maillard de Chambure, Paris, 1840, pp. 455, 488-90, 494-5).
Since this chapter was written the Société de l’Histoire de France has issued a more correct and complete edition of the Rule and Statutes of the Templars, under the care of M. Henri de Curzon.
[258] Jac. de Vitriaco loc. cit.—Roberti de Monte Contin. Sigeb. Gembl. (Pistorii, op. cit. I. 875).—Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. I. c. 52-3.—Art de Vérifier les Dates V. 337.—Teulet, Layettes, I. 550, No. 1547.—Grandes Chroniques, IV. 86.—Gualt. Mapes de Nugis Curialium Dist. I. c. xxiii.—Hans Prutz, Malteser Urkunden, München, 1883, p. 43.
A curious illustration of the prominence which the Templars were acquiring in the social organization is afforded in 1191, when they were made conservators of the Truce of God, by which the nobles and prelates of Languedoc and Provence agreed that beasts and implements and seed employed in agriculture should be unmolested in time of war. For enforcing this the Templars were to receive a bushel of corn for every plough.—Prutz, op. cit. pp. 44-5.
[259] Rymer, Fœdera, I. 30.—Can. 10, 11, Extra. III. 30.—Prutz, op. cit. pp. 38, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56-61, 64, 76, 78-9.
[260] Prutz, op. cit. pp. 38-41, 43, 45, 47-8, 57, 64-9, 75-80.—J. Delaville le Roulx, Documents concernant les Templiers Paris, 1882, p. 39.—Bini, Dei Tempieri in Toscana, Lucca, 1845, pp. 453-55.—Raynald. ann. 1265, No. 75-6.—Martene Thesaur. II. 111, 118.
The systematic beggary of the Templars must have been peculiarly exasperating both to the secular clergy and the Mendicants. Monsignor Bini prints a document of 1244 in which the Preceptor of Lucca gives to Albertino di Pontremoli a commission to beg for the Order. Albertino employs a certain Aliotto to do the begging from June till the following Carnival, and pays him by empowering him to beg on his own account from the Carnival to the octave of Easter (op. cit. pp. 401-2, 439-40). For the disgraceful squabbles which arose between the secular clergy and the Military Orders over this privileged beggary, see Faucon, Registres de Boniface VIII. No. 1950, p. 746.
[261] Guillel. Tyrii Hist. Lib. XVII. c. 27; XX. 31-2.—Gualt. Mapes de Nugis Curialium Dist. I. c. XX.—Innoc. PP. III. Regest. X. 121. Cf. XV. 131.—Règle et Statuts secrets, § 173, p. 389.—Michelet, Procès des Templiers, I. 39; II. 9, 83, 140, 186-7, 406-7 (Collection de Documents inédits, Paris, 1841-51).
When, in 1307, the Templars at Beaucaire were seized, out of sixty arrested, five were knights, one a priest, and fifty-four were serving brethren; in June, 1310, out of thirty-three prisoners in the Château d’Alais, there were four knights and one priest, with twenty-eight serving brethren (Vaissette, IV. 141). In the trials which have reached us the proportion of knights is even less. The serving brethren occasionally reached the dignity of preceptor; but how little this implies is shown by the examination, in June, 1310, of Giovanni di Neritone, Preceptor of Castello Villari, a serving brother, who speaks of himself as “simplex et rusticus” (Schottmüller, Der Ausgang des Templer-Ordens, Berlin, 1887, II. 125, 130).