CHARITY AND HOSPITALITY IN MILITARY ORDERS

Although for the majority of the medieval military-religious orders their hospitable function was as important to them as their military function, scholars have not given as much attention to this more peaceful side of their activities as they have to warfare. In recent decades interest in their charity and hospitality has widened, but this remains an area on which much more work needs to be done1 . Unlike the orders’ military activity,which was reported by chronicles and histories, their acquisitions of lands, recorded in charters, and their work for kings and princes, recorded in government records, the sources of information on charity and hospitality are scattered and variable. This article will concentrate on the material from Britain relating to the Hospitallers and the Templars, as that is the area of my current research.

First, what is charity? As Jonathan Riley-Smith reminded us in his paper of 1980, crusading was an act of love; fighting was a work of charity2 ; and Karl Borchardt has also referred to this fact in his paper ‘Historiography and memory: was there something new and unique about the Templars?’. Alan Forey has recently defined charity as cases in which: ‘those who obtained benefits were not themselves normally expected to make a specific payment for what they received’3 . For the purposes of this article, charity and hospitality will be interpreted as care for the poor and sick, giving alms to the poor, lodging travellers and caring for the elderly. This does not include all the charitable tasks performed by the military orders: for example, the Hospitallers buried the dead4 .

As Alan Forey has pointed out, the military religious orders ‘performed the social and charitable functions which characterized other religious foundations’5 . This included the maintenance of confraternities, on which Damien Carraz and Jochen Schenk have recently published important and detailed studies6 , and the provision of corrodies – food, drink, clothing and housing in one of the order’s houses, on which Forey himself has published7 . Some corrodies were granted for former servants of the orders; others seem to be part payment to professionals who were in the ongoing employment of the order. A good deal of information about the military orders’ corrody-holders survives. The Hospitallers and Templars in England and the Hospitallers of Ireland kept records at certain times of who was due to receive what8 .

Beyond these records, the picture of the military religious orders’ charitable operations becomes less clear. We can refer to the rules, the normative texts which tell us what the orders ought to have been doing9 . These show that the Hospitallers and the Teutonic order should have been caring for the poor sick, but not how far they actually did so. In the thirteenth century the Teutonic Order had hospices in many locations in western Europe, but Klaus Militzer and others have argued that these soon became homes for elderly nobility, rather than caring for the poor and needy10. In theory the Hospitallers need only maintain a hospital in Jerusalem, but they also maintained hospitals at many locations in the West, which could care for the sick, or provide housing for the better-off in their old age, or provide lodging for pilgrims on their way to the East or elsewhere11.

The medieval hospital could perform many functions, and it is not always clear from the surviving evidence what the major function of any particular hospital might have been12. That is the case for all medieval hospitals, not only those belonging to the military religious orders. In Hereford, for example, the Hospitallers had a hospital given to them by King Richard the Lionheart, which lodged poor and infirm men (but not, apparently, pilgrims) and was noted for being so poor that the bishops of Hereford regularly exempted it from taxation. It was still an almshouse in the 1530s or early 1540s, and after King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in England and Wales it was converted into a hospital for old servants and soldiers13. At Skirbeck in Lincolnshire the Hospitallers had responsibility for a hospital where twenty poor people lived and forty more were fed each day14. The Hospitallers also maintained a hospital at Chippenham in Cambridgeshire for their own elderly and sick brothers15. But the majority of their houses did not have such specifically-defined functions. It has been suggested that the Hospitallers’ house at Clanfield in Oxfordshire cared for the sick, but the evidence for this is that there was a Hospitaller sister in the house in the early 1180s, and that women in medieval hospitals were generally responsible for nursing the sick. While this is true in general, it is not true of the Hospital of St John, and there is no other evidence that Clanfield ever had a hospital for the sick16. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the Hospitallers were given hospitals at Guilsborough in Northamptonshire, Stidd in Lancashire, Sutton at Hone in Kent, Swansea in south Wales and a hospital of St Giles at Worcester, but the English prior’s report of 1338 does not mention that any of these places were still caring for the poor or sick.17

It is still more difficult to establish how far the Hospitallers lodged pilgrims in their houses on pilgrim routes other than that to Jerusalem. For example, did they support pilgrims on the road to the important pilgrimage site of St Davids, in south west Wales? Historians have generally assumed that they did, but the evidence can be slight. The assumption that the Hospitallers lodged pilgrims on the road to St Davids is based on the 1338 report, in which the Hospitallers of Slebech in south-west Wales, near to St Davids, complained that they were suffering from:

pluribus aliis supervenientibus de Wallia, qui multum confluunt de die in diem, et sunt magni devastatores, et sunt inponderosi18. (many others coming over from Wales, who rush in every day, and devastate the place, so that the expense that they cause cannot be calculated.)

As the house is on an obvious southerly route to St Davids, the great Welsh medievalist William Rees concluded that these were pilgrims to St Davids19. If this were the case, it would explain why in the fifteenth century the Hospitallers petitioned the pope to allow them to build a causeway across the river, for travellers to cross20, and it would provide an explanation for the extensive buildings in the Hospitaller’s estates on the south bank of the river, away from the order’s main house21. Pilgrims also travelled to the Hospitallers’ houses in Wales on pilgrimage. The fifteenth-century Welsh poet Lewys Glyn Cothi wrote a poem on the occasion of his making a pilgrimage to the Hospital of St John at Slebech22. His fellow-countryman Dafydd Nanmor, writing in around 1460, cited the Hospital of St John as an example of generous hospitality23.

Building on this evidence, historians have assumed that other Hospitaller houses in Wales, apart from Slebech, lodged pilgrims on the way to other pilgrim sites. Ystradmeurig in Ceredigion, donated to the Hospitallers by Roger de Clare and confirmed by Prince Rhys of Deheubarth, was only five kilometres west-south-west of the Cistercian monastery and pilgrim centre of Strata Florida, and so could have acted as a pilgrim hospice, but there is no documentary or archaeological evidence that it did. Ysbyty Cyfyn in central Wales, which was on a pilgrim route to Strata Florida, has been claimed to be a Hospitaller house which cared for pilgrims, but in fact there is no documentary or archaeological evidence that it ever belonged to the Hospitallers24.

Evidence from England also suggests that the Hospitallers in England and Wales regularly gave hospitality to all, not only pilgrims. According to the English prior, Philip de Thame, in 1338, the order’s founders had laid down that it should give hospitality to all – ‘prout ordinatum est per fundatores domus’ (as was ordained by the founders of the house) or ‘per ordinationem fundatoris dictorum locorum ex antiquo’ (through arrangement by the founder of the said places, from antiquity) – which apparently included any travellers, not only pilgrims25. The prior indicated that hospitality for travellers, on horseback or on foot, had become a major expense for the majority of the English and Welsh commanderies.

This evidence presents two problems. May we deduce that all remote Hospitaller properties would lodge travellers? Gwanas, now in Gwynedd, North Wales, lies on the junction of two important routes through the Cambrian Mountains, where it could have functioned as a hospice for travellers. It is mentioned in Philip de Thame’s report of 1338 as contributing forty shillings a year to the incomes of Halston commandery, but the report gives no further details of its function26. After 1338 no other sources mentioned it until the dissolution of the monasteries in England and Wales27. So there is no definite evidence that it did lodge travellers, and yet that would have been a natural function in this part of the world, where the traditional obligation of offering hospitality to strangers was strong.

Ysbyty Ifan (‘St John’s Hospital’), originally Dolgynwal in Gwynedd, comprised a hospice and church near a ford on the River Conwy on an important route from north to west Wales. Philip de Thame’s record in 1338 that the Hospitallers at Halston and Dolgynwal had to bribe various local lords and officials ‘to have their aid, and favour, and friendship’, indicates that this was a dangerous area, where travellers would have valued a safe place to stay. The hospice here was burned down during the revolt of Owain Glyndwr and never rebuilt, but the location continued to be a place of refuge, including – according to local complaint in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – for bandits28.

All of this is indirect, rather than direct evidence: the building is in the right location for travellers, and we know that travellers used that road, therefore they probably lodged with the Hospitallers. Apart from the two Welsh poets there are no personal records of anyone staying with the Hospitallers in Wales.

The other problem is that even for those Hospitaller houses which Philip de Thame’s report states incurred considerable expenses lodging travellers29, there is no indication where those travellers were lodged. There is no surviving material evidence of a guest house or a pilgrim hospice at any of these sites. The archaeologist Roberta Gilchrist notes possible pilgrim hospices at two former Hospitaller commanderies in England, at Standon (which in fact did not lodge travellers in 1338) and Ansty, and I have suggested where one might have been located at Slebech in Wales, but these remain suggestions30; excavation might clarify the question, but it is unlikely that this will be done.

Alan Forey has argued that although literary sources refer to the Templars’ lodging individual guests, this was not the norm: ‘The Temple did not normally extend hospitality to outsiders ... to pilgrims and travellers’31. Yet the English Hospitaller priory’s report of 1338 also included seven former Templar commanderies that had passed into Hospitaller possession and incurred annual expenses in lodging travellers: Wetherby (plures sunt supervenientes, quia in itinere versus Scociam); Willoughton (north Lincolnshire, just off the main road running north from Lincoln to the Humber); Bruer in Lincolnshire (near the main road approaching the city of Lincoln from the south), and Garway in Herefordshire, on the English/Welsh border, where the Hospitallers noted that most of the travellers were from Wales; while under Eagle in Lincolnshire, Wilburgham in Cambridgeshire, Templecombe in Somerset and Sandford in Oxfordshire the report listed the expenses of looking after guests’ horses, and the horses of those ‘coming over’ (supervenientibus) 32. As these houses were lodging travellers in 1338, it is most likely that they had also lodged travellers three decades earlier, in the time of the Templars.

But at none of these sites is there direct evidence of a guesthouse or hospice. Yet if we cannot find the Hospitallers’ hospices, what hope do we have of finding the Templars’ guesthouses? The question is, what are we looking for? Are we looking for a guest house? Damien Carraz’s research from the lower Rhône valley indicates that guests at the Templars’ house at Arles stayed in the Templars’ own residential wing, between the commander’s chamber and the room for sick knights, so there would be no guest house33. In that case, the guest room was mentioned in the inventory of the house. I have not yet found any such references from the English inventories.

The problem is that any outbuilding whose function is not clear could be a guesthouse; any room within the main building which was not assigned to a specific use could lodge travellers. It is also possible that Philip de Thame exaggerated the extent to which the Hospitallers in England and Wales lodged travellers, in order to emphasise to the master and convent on Rhodes the heavy financial burden which his province had to bear.

Evidence is a major problem in assessing the extent of the military religous orders’ charitable work. It is too tempting to draw broad conclusions from a single piece of evidence from a single point in time, or to make sweeping deductions from complaints that the orders were not doing this or that which they ought to do. It is all too easy to take at face value evidence which was never designed to be used in that way.

For example, much of the evidence cited for the Templars’ charitable activities comes from the trial of the order. This evidence is often assumed to be a factual, objective record of testimonies given on oath, as in a modern court. The information given by the Templars and non-Templars is treated as if it were a balanced, accurate picture of what had happened in the past (for instance, in the present case, of what charitable work the Templars had done). But scholars of other disciplines do not accept this evidence as such. For example, scholars of the trials of the Albigensian heretics in the south of France argue that it is not possible to analyse material from inquisitorial investigations to any purpose unless one understands the process by which it was put together. The work of scholars such as John Arnold, James Given and Mark Pegg argues that inquisitors ‘repositioned’ what those under interrogation said so that it became heretical: the inquisitors shaped their questioning to obtain the answers they required, ‘bent the truth to meet’ their needs, and had ‘perfected techniques by which the very fabric of reality could be altered’34. This certainly happened in the British Isles, where in the report that they sent to the papal commissioners in France the inquisitors adjusted and presented the testimonies they had collected so that the Templars appeared guilty, whereas the full record of the testimonies gives a different picture35.

We could argue that when they were explaining what charitable work their order had carried out, the Templars were denying rather than confirming the charges against them, and so their evidence is reliable. The modern scientific studies on interrogation techniques and the psychology of interrogation, in particular the work of Gisli Gudjonsson, show that this position is untenable36. Modern study of the human brain – notably the recent report by Shane O’Mara, head of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin – has shown that torture or simply the prolonged stress of interrogation damages the part of the brain responsible for memory, making the accused less able to tell the difference between fact and fiction, and so more open to suggestion from the interrogator. The accused becomes more susceptible to false memories and comes to believe that whatever the interrogator says that they (the accused) did is a fact37. This means that anything that a prisoner says when he or she has been under stress, even without torture, is likely to be distorted. The prisoner may confess as instructed, or may deny the charges but say things which are in fact false.

So it is not possible to rely solely on the testimonies given during the Templars’ trial; it is essential to find supporting evidence from outside the interrogation process. There is some evidence from England about the Templars’ charitable activities. King Edward II instructed his sheriffs to find out the value of the Templars’ properties and their obligations. At two commanderies, the trustworthy local men (called ‘jurors’ because they were on oath) reported that alms were given on three days each week to all comers. These two were Foulbridge in north Yorkshire and Cressing in Essex38. However, in several locations the jurors noted that by the original terms of the donation the Templars were not bound to give regular alms in charity39. Does this mean that the Templars did not in fact give regular alms, or that they did give although they did not have to, or that the jurors did not know whether they did or not? It is impossible to say.

Some further evidence comes from the various legal cases which ensued after the English Parliament of 1324 decided that the Templars’ former properties should be passed to the Hospitallers. Parliament stated that the Hospitallers should maintain ‘the same services by which the brethren of the order of the Temple held them at the time of the cessation of the order, such as in feeding the poor, hospitalities, celebration of divine service, defence of the Holy Land and other charges and services previously due’40. This implies that such services were due, but at some locations local landowners complained that they were not maintained. However, Simon Phillips has argued that such complaints often came from the families who had originally given the land to the Templars: ‘The only way for Templar patrons to regain lands was to prove that the Hospitallers were not maintaining services’41. In March 1335 King Edward III set up a commission to investigate why the Hospitallers had ceased to perform the charitable works that the Templars of Eagle in Lincolnshire had been bound to perform by the terms of the original gift, including distribution to the poor of fifteen shillings in cash or food each week, with shoes and other clothing yearly42, but on investigation it was established in 1344 that no such alms were due. The question arose again in 1377, and was resolved by reference to the 1344 decision43. As Eagle had originally been given to the Templars by King Stephen of England, it may be that the king was attempting to recover property given by his predecessor.

A similar dispute arose in the 1420s between royal officials and the Hospitallers of Upleadon, a former Templar commandery in Herefordshire. Phillips states that the alleged services due at Upleadon included masses to be said, the care of the sick and hospitality for travellers: ‘It was stated that three priests should celebrate in the chapel, there should be five sick beds with two men in each, with meat and raiment, and if one died, he was to be replaced’ (probably the provision of corrodies). ‘Travellers should also be entertained and refreshed with food and drink’44. There was some support for this claim in the fact that there had been at least three corrodiaries at Upleadon at the time of the Templars’ arrest45, but otherwise it is not possible to say whether these claims were true or not.

In the 1330s the king’s escheator in Yorkshire confiscated the Hospitallers’ camera of Stainton-upon-Blackholmoor, alias Staintondale in North Yorkshire, because he claimed it had been given to the Templars by King Stephen on condition that the master should ‘find a chaplain there to celebrate divine service daily and to receive and entertain poor guests and pilgrims there and to ring and blow the horn every night at dusk lest pilgrims and strangers should lose their way there’ (presumably on the road along the coast from Scarborough to Whitby), and the Hospitallers had allowed these services to lapse. The Hospitallers explained that the property had never belonged to the Templars, having been granted to the Hospitallers by King Richard I without any such services due46. While it is worth noting that the escheator believed that such services would have been reasonable for the Templars, this is also an illustration of how unreliable such claims could be; and we should note that although this was a Hospitaller house in a remote location it did not apparently have any obligation to lodge travellers47.

Templars in the British Isles did not operate any hospitals except for their own sick brothers (at Eagle in Lincolnshire and Denney in Cambridgeshire)48, but the question of whether the Templars owned and ran hospitals elsewhere has generated much scholarly ink. Elena Bellomo has pointed out that the Templars were given various hospitals in north-west Italy, but has not been able to find any evidence of these hospitals caring for the sick. She suggests that they could have been ‘a gathering point for Templar familiares’ and notes the Templar house at Milan, which did not have a hospital, where a group of lay people based at the Templar house carried out charitable work in the city49. Alan Forey has pointed out that although hospitals were put under the protection of the Templars, the Templars played no role in their management, and noted a number of hospitals which were put under Templar protection but where there is no evidence of the ‘hospital’s’ function while under Templar ownership50. To take a case which Forey did not discuss: the hospital of St James of Andravida, in the Morea, was founded in 1213 and was granted to the Teutonic Order by Geoffrey II de Villehardouin, but Pope Gregory IX opposed the donation. During the 1240s Pope Innocent IV transferred the hospital to the Templars, and William de Villehardouin confirmed the donation in around 125051. It is not clear what role that hospital actually played in looking after the poor and sick, nor what role the Templars played in its day-to-day management. That said, it has already been noted that it is also difficult to establish the specific function of Hospitaller properties in Britain, or to identify the use of specific buildings.

CONCLUSION

The lack of specific evidence for certain charitable activities for both the Hospital and Temple in Britain leads me to suspect that we are asking too much of our sources, and concluding too much from them – both from what they say and from what they do not say. Practice varied from one location to the next: at one location the Hospitallers cared for the elderly, at another they lodged pilgrims, at a third location they did neither. Outsiders who commented on the orders’ activity or lack of activity usually had their own axe to grind, so their comments are not ‘safe’ evidence; and it remains unclear, for Britain at any rate, how far the Hospitallers actually interfered in the running of a local hospital such as the one at Hereford and how far it was left essentially to local management. Past scholars’ assumptions and preconceptions must be put aside: it is necessary to go back to the archives and consult the sources afresh. Above all, however, it is necessary to remember that the surviving sources were not produced for our convenience, and we must use them with caution accordingly.

1 For literature, see: Malcolm BARBER, ‘The Charitable and Medical Activities of the Hospitallers and Templars’, in Gillian R. EVANS (ed.), A History of Pastoral Care, Cassell, London, 2000, p. 148–168; Jessalynn BIRD, ‘Medicine for Body and Soul: Jacques de Vitry’s Sermons to Hospitallers and their Charges’ and ‘Texts on Hospitals: Translation of Jacques de Vitry, Historia Occidentalis 29, and Edition of Jacques de Vitry’s Sermons to Hospitallers’, in Peter BILLER and Joseph ZIEGLER (ed). Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, York Medieval Press, Woodbridge, 2001, p. 91–108, 109–134; J. BLAIR, ‘Saint Leonard’s Chapel, Clanfield’, Oxoniensia, 50, 1985, p. 209–214; The Templars: Selected Sources, trans. Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002, nos 27–30, p. 126–130; Damien CARRAZ, ‘Causa defendende et extollende christianitatis. La vocation maritime des ordres militaires en Provence (XIIe –XIIIe siècles)’, in Michel BALARD (ed.), Les ordres militaires et la mer, 130e Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques (La Rochelle, 2005), CTHS, Paris, 2009, p. 21–46, here p. 30–32; Bernhard DEMEL, ‘Welfare and Warfare in the Teutonic Order: A Survey’, in Helen NICHOLSON (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1998, p. 61–73; Susan EDGINGTON, ‘Medical Care in the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem’, in Helen NICHOLSON (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1998, p. 27–33; Susan EDGINGTON, ‘Administrative Regulations for the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem dating from the 1180s’, Crusades, 4, 2005, p. 21–37; Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 109–141; Roberta GILCHRIST, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism, Leicester University Press, London, 1995, chap. 3; Rafaël HYACINTHE, ‘De Domo Sancti Lazari Milites Leprosi: Knighthood and leprosy in the Holy Land’, in Barbara S. BOWERS (ed.), The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, p. 209–224; Benjamin Z. KEDAR, ‘A Twelfth–Century Description of the Jerusalem Hospital’, in Helen NICHOLSON (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1998, p. 3–13; Anthony LUTTRELL, ‘The Earliest Hospitallers’, in Benjamin KEDAR, Jonathan RILEY-SMITH and Rudolf HIESTAND (ed.), Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1987, p. 37–54; Anthony LUTTRELL, ‘The Hospitallers in twelfth-century Constantinople’, in Marcus BULL and Norman HOUSLEY (ed.), The Experience of Crusading, vol. 1: Western Approaches, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 225–232; Anthony LUTTRELL, ‘The Hospitallers’ Hospice of Santa Caterina at Venice: 1358–1451’, in Anthony LUTTRELL (ed.), The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291- -1440, Variorum, London, 1970, chap. 9; Anthony LUTTRELL, ‘The Hospitallers’ Medical Tradition: 1291–1530’, in Malcolm BARBER (ed.), The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1994, p. 64–81; reprinted in Anthony LUTTRELL (ed.), The Hospitaller State on Rhodes and its Western Provinces, 1306–1462, Variorum, Aldershot, 1999, chap. 10; Klaus MILITZER, ‘The Role of Hospitals in the Teutonic Order’, in Helen NICHOLSON (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare, p. 51–59; Piers D. MITCHELL, Medicine in the Crusades: warfare, wounds, and the medieval surgeon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Piers D. MITCHELL, ‘The Infirmaries of the Order of the Temple in the Medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in Barbara S. BOWERS (ed.), The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, p. 225–234; David MARCOMBE, Leper Knights: The Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, c.1150–1544, Boydell, Woodbridge, 2003, chap. 5; Timothy S. MILLER, ‘The Knights of St. John and the Hospitals of the Latin West’, Speculum, 53 (1978), p. 709–733; Helen NICHOLSON, ‘The Motivations of the Hospitallers and Templars in their Involvement in the Fourth Crusade and its Aftermath’ (Hill Monastic Manuscript Library Malta Study Center Lecture, 2003) online publication at: http://www.hmml.org/centers/malta/publications/ /lecture3.html; Helen NICHOLSON, ‘The Sisters’ House at Minwear, Pembrokeshire: Analysis of the Documentary and Archaeological Evidence’, Archaeologica Cambrensis, 151, 2002, p. 109–138; Ralph B. PUGH, ‘The Knights Hospitallers of England as Undertakers’, Speculum, 56, 1981, 566–574.

2 Jonathan RILEY-SMITH, ‘Crusading as an Act of Love’, History, 65, 1980, p. 177–192.

3 Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 109.

4 Ralph B. PUGH, ‘The Knights Hospitallers of England as Undertakers’, Speculum, 56, 1981, p. 566–574.

5 Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 109.

6 Damien CARRAZ, ‘L’affiliation des laics aux commanderies templières et hospitalières de la basse vallée du Rhône (XIIe–XIIIe siècles)’, in Anthony LUTTRELL and Francesco TOMMASI (ed.), Religiones militares: Contributi alla storia degli Ordini religioso-militari nel medioevo, Selecta, Città di Castello, 2008, p. 171–190; Jochen SCHENK, ‘Forms of Lay Association with the Order of the Temple’, Journal of Medieval History, 34, 2008, p. 79–103.

7 Alan FOREY, ‘Provision for the aged in Templar Commanderies’, in Anthony LUTTRELL and Léon PRESSOUYRE (ed.), La Commanderie, Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, Paris, 2002, p. 175–186.

8 In 1185 the Templars had a thriving fraternitas throughout England, whose members paid a yearly fee for spiritual benefits: Beatrice LEES (ed.), Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century: The Inquest of 1185 with Illustrative Charters and Documents, Oxford University Press, London, 1935, p. lxi–lxii. English Hospitallers were still collecting money from their own confraria in 1338: Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. xxx, 4, 7, 10, 13, 15, 17, 21, 24, 26, 28, 30, 34, 38, 43, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, 57, 63, 66, 68, 70, 74, 75, 81, 84, 87, 89, 91, 93, 94. The Hospitallers’ confraria or fraria in 1338 is described (p. 4) as a voluntary annual collection in the order’s churches. For the Hospitallers in Ireland, see Charles MCNEILL (ed.), Registrum de Kilmainham: register of chapter acts of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in Ireland, 1326–1339 under the grand prior, Sir Roger Outlawe with additions for the times of his successors, Sir John Mareschall, Sir John Larcher and Sir John Fitzrichard, grand priors of Ireland / edited from the Bodleian MS. Rawl. B. 501, Stationery Office, Dublin, 1932. After the arrest of the Templars in England King Edward II, on the request of grand commander William de la More, had a record made of the orders’ corrody-holders: Henry COLE (ed.), ‘Corrodia petita de domibus Templariorum, annis Io & IIo Edwardi II’, in Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, selected from the Records of the Department of the Queen’s Remembrancer of the Exchequer, Eyre and Spottiwoode, London, 1844, p. 139–230 (edition of Kew: The National Archives: Public Record Office (hereafter TNA: PRO) E 142/9). The grand commander’s letter requesting this (TNA: PRO SC 8/191/9530) also mentions that the Templars held many chantries, and requested that the king take steps to ensure that these continued.

9 James BRODMAN, ‘Rule and Identity: The Case of the Military Orders’, The Catholic Historical Review, 87.3, 2001, p. 383–400.

10 Klaus MILITZER, ‘The Role of Hospitals in the Teutonic Order’, in Helen Nicholson (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1998, p. 51–59; Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 128, n. 136.

11 Malcolm BARBER, ‘The Charitable and Medical Activities of the Hospitallers and Templars’, in Gillian R. EVANS (ed.), A History of Pastoral Care, Cassell, London, 2000, p. 163–165.

12 Martha CARLIN, ‘Medieval English Hospitals’, in Lindsay GRANSHAW and Roy PORTER (ed.), The Hospital in History, Routledge, London and New York, 1989, p. 21–39; Miri RUBIN, ‘Development and Change in English Hospitals, 1100–1500’ in Lindsay GRANSHAW and Roy PORTER (ed.), The Hospital in History, Routledge, London and New York, 1989, p. 41–59, here p. 49; Elizabeth PRESCOTT, The English Medieval Hospital, 1050–1640, Seaby, London, 1992, p. 1–2; P. H. CULLUM, ‘St Leonard’s Hospital, York: the spatial and social analysis of an Augustinian Hospital’, in Roberta GILCHRIST and Harold MYTUM (ed.), Advances in Monastic Archaeology, Tempus Reparatum, Oxford, 1993, p. 11–18, here p. 11–12, 16, 18; Carole RAWCLIFFE, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England, Alan Sutton, Stroud: 1995, p. 205; Roberta GILCHRIST, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism, Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1995, p. 8–10, 28; Roger PRICE and Michael PONSFORD, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Bristol: The Excavation of a Medieval Hospital: 1976–8, Council for British Archaeology, York, 1998, p. 14–16, 81; Christopher THOMAS, Barney SLOANE and Christopher PHILLPOTTS, Excavations at the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Spital, London, Museum of London Archaeology Service, London, 1997, p. 3, 89, 99.

13 John STILLINGFLETE, ‘Liber Johannis Stillingflete de nominibus fundatorum Hosp. S. Johannis Jerusalem in Anglia’, in William DUGDALE, Roger DODSWORTH, John CALEY, et al. (eds), Monasticon Anglicanum: a history of the abbies and other monasteries, hospitals, frieries, and cathedral and collegiate churches, with their dependencies, in England and Wales, Bohn, London, 1846, vol. 6.2, p. 831–839, at p. 836, 839; Joseph Henry PARRY (ed.), Registrum Johannis de Trillek, episcopi Herefordensis, A.D. MCCCXLIV–MCCCLXI, Canterbury and York Society, vol. 8, 1912, p. 297; Arthur Thomas BANNISTER (ed.), Registrum Caroli Bothe, episcopi Herefordensis, A.D. MDXVI-MDXXXV, Canterbury and York Society, vol. 28, 1921, p. 365; Hereford, Hereford Record Office, A63/VIII/1: Coningesby’s Hospital; William REES, A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and on the Welsh border, including an account of the Templars, Western Mail and Echo, Cardiff, 1947, p. 39–40, 44; E. HERMITAGE DAY, ‘The Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Dinmore, Co. Hereford’, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, 1927, p. 45–76, here p. 62–65.

14 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 61, 228; David KNOWLES and R. Neville HADCOCK, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn, Longman, London, 1971, p. 306.

15 L. F. SALZMAN, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, vol. 2, Oxford University Press, London, 1948, p. 264–266; David KNOWLES and R. Neville HADCOCK, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn, Longman, London, 1971, p. 302, 352.

16 J. BLAIR, ‘Saint Leonard’s Chapel, Clanfield’, Oxoniensia, 50, 1985, p. 209–214; Anthony LUTTRELL and Helen J. NICHOLSON (eds), Hospitaller women in the Middle Ages, Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, VT: 2006, p. 33.

17 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 35, 93, 111, 117, 231; David KNOWLES and R. Neville HADCOCK, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn, Longman, London, 1971, p. 304, 306–307, 394, 396, 406,

18 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 35.

19 William REES, A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border, including an account of the Templars, Western Mail and Echo, Cardiff, 1947, p. 33.

20 William REES, A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border, including an account of the Templars, Western Mail and Echo, Cardiff, 1947, p. 34.

21 Helen NICHOLSON, ‘The Sisters’ House at Minwear, Pembrokeshire: analysis of the documentary and archaeological evidence’, Archaeologica Cambrensis, 151, 2002, p. 109–138.

22 Lewys Glyn COTHI, ‘Mal Enlli amla’ unllwybr’, in Dafydd JOHNSTON (ed.), Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1995, no. 91, p. 208.

23 ‘Megis ysbytau Ieuan/ Yw i dai o fwyd i wan’: Dafydd NANMOR, ‘Rhys orau ’nhir Is Aeron’, line 5, in Thomas ROBERTS (ed.), The Poetical Works of Dafydd Nanmor, rev. Ifor WILLIAMS, University of Wales Press Board, Cardiff, 1923, p. 1, and p. 122, note on line 5.

24 David KNOWLES and R. Neville HADCOCK, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn, Longman, London, 1971, p. 339, 409, citing William REES, South Wales and the Border in the Fourteenth Century, N. W. Sheet, Southampton, Ordnance Survey, 1932; but Rees does not repeat this suggestion in his A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border, including an account of the Templars, Western Mail and Echo, Cardiff, 1947. I am very grateful to Paul Sambrook for his help with this point.

25 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 5, 8, 12, 14, 15, 18, 22, 25, 28, 36, 39, 43, 47, 50, 61, 76. Stanton in Hertfordshire may also have lodged travellers, as a possible hospice has been identified: Roberta GILCHRIST, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism, Leicester University Press, London, 1995, p. 92; Victoria History of the Counties of England: Hertfordshire, ed. William Page, vol. 3, Constable, London, 1912, p. 349.

26 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 38.

27 William REES, A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border, including an account of the Templars, Western Mail and Echo, Cardiff, 1947, p. 66, 128 (citing Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 38, and J. CAYLEY and J. HUNTER (ed.), Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII auctoritate Regis institutis, 6 vols, Eyre and Strahan, London, 1810--34, vol. 4, p. 455).

28 Edward J. J. DAVIES, ‘The church of St John the Baptist, Ysbyty Ifan’, Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions, 56, 1995, p. 37–46; J. EVANS, ‘Yspytty Ifan, Or the Hospitallers in Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd series 6, 1860, p. 105–124; William REES, A History of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border, including an account of the Templars, Western Mail and Echo, Cardiff, 1947, p. 63–67, 128.

29 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 5, 8, 12, 14, 15, 18, 22, 25, 28, 39, 36, 43, 47, 50, 61, 76.

30Roberta GILCHRIST, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism, Leicester University Press, London, 1995, p. 90–93; but compare William PAGE (ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Hertfordshire, vol. 3, Constable, London, 1912, p. 349; D. A. CROWLEY (ed.), Victoria History of the Counties of England: Wiltshire, vol. 13: South-West Wiltshire: Chalke and Dunworth Hundreds, Oxford University Press, London, 1987, p. 95 and plate facing p. 97. See also Helen NICHOLSON, ‘The Sisters’ House at Minwear, Pembrokeshire: analysis of the documentary and archaeological evidence’, Archaeologica Cambrensis, 151, 2002, p. 109–138.

31 Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 127

32 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grandmaster Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 137, 149, 155, 158, 164, 186, 192, 198.

33 Damien CARRAZ, L’Ordre du Temple dans la basse vallée du Rhône (1124–1312): Ordres militaires, croisades et sociétés méridionales, Presses universitaires de Lyon, Lyon, 2005, p. 267.

34 See Andrew P. ROACH, The Devil’s World: Heresy and Society, 1100–1300, Pearson Longman, Harlow, 2005, p. 250; John H. ARNOLD, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2001, p. 7–15, 76–8, etc.; J. ARNOLD, ‘Inquisition, Texts and Discourse’, in Caterina BRUSCHI and Peter BILLER (ed.), Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, York Medieval Press, Woodbridge, 2003, p. 63–80; James GIVEN, ‘The Inquisitors of Languedoc and the Medieval Technology of Power’, American Historical Review, 94, 1989, p. 336–59, here 351–2; Mark PEGG, ‘Heresy, Good Men, and Nomenclature’, in Michael FRASSETTO (ed.), Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of R.I. Moore, Brill, Leiden, 2006, p. 227–239. The subject is also discussed by Malcolm BARBER, Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, p. 308–309.

35 Helen J. NICHOLSON, The Knights Templar on Trial: The trial of the Templars in the British Isles, 1308–1311, The History Press, Stroud, 2009, p. 173–176, 183–184, 202–203.

36 Gisli H. GUDJONSSON, The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions and Testimony, Wiley, New York, 1992. The growing body of literature is discussed by, for example, Hollida WAKEFIELD and Ralph UNDERWAGER, ‘Coerced or Nonvoluntary Confessions’, Behavioural Sciences and the Law, 16, 1998, p. 423–440; Jessica R. KLAVER, Zina LEE and V. Gordon ROSE, ‘Effects of Personality, Interrogation Techniques and Plausibility in an Experimental False Confession Paradigm’, Legal and Criminological Psychology, 13, 2008, p. 71–88.

37 Shane O’MARA, ‘Torturing the Brain: On the Folk Psychology and folk Neurobiology Motivating “Enhanced and Coercive Interrogation Techniques”’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 2009, 497–500.

38 TNA: PRO E 142/16, mem. 15; Michael Gervers (ed.), The Cartulary of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in England, Secunda Camera, Essex, Oxford University Press, London, 1982, p. 56, doc. 85, from British Library MS Cotton Nero E vi, f. 304r; see also Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 118

39 London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero E vi: at Chingford in Herts (new foliation: f. 68v–70r), at ‘Elfande’ (Elsand?) in Surrey (f. 141r), Loxwood in Sussex (f. 142r), Merrow in Surrey (f.147r), Shipley in Sussex (f. 152v–153v), Compton in Sussex (f. 164), and Berwick in Sussex (f. 151r and 200r).

40 Translated in Calendar of the Close Rolls: Edward II, AD 1323–1327, H.M.S.O., London, 1898, p. 91.

41 Simon PHILLIPS, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in late medieval England, Boydell, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2009, p. 8.

42 Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward III, AD 1334–1338, H.M.S.O., London, 1895, p. 199.

43 Calendar of the Close Rolls: Edward III, AD 1343–1346, H.M.S.O., London, 1904, p. 313; but cf. Calendar of the Charter Rolls, AD 1342–1417, H.M.S.O., London, 1916, p. 40; Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward III, AD 1374–1377, H.M.S.O., London, 1916, p. 424.

44 Simon PHILLIPS, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in late medieval England, Boydell, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2009, p. 8: quoting Calendar of the Close Rolls, Henry VI, 1422–1429, H.M.S.O., London, 1933, p. 244.

45 Calendar of the Close Rolls: Edward II, AD 1307–1313, H.M.S.O., London, 1892, p. 388: John Parson of Garway and Richard de la Felde, chaplain; Henry COLE (ed.), ‘Corrodia petita de domibus Templariorum’, in Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1844, p. 163–164: Nicholas de Stounesby. See also p. 175 for a corrodiary who received a regular payment and clothes but did not live in the commandary.

46 Calendar of the Close Rolls: Edward III, AD 1339–1341, H.M.S.O., London, 1901, p. 410–411.

47 Lambert B. LARKING and John Mitchell KEMBLE (ed.), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grandmaster Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden Society 1st series, 65, 1857, p. 113: in 1338 there were no expenses for lodging travellers here.

48 L. F. SALZMAN, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, vol. 2, Oxford University Press, London, 1948, p. 259–250; David KNOWLES and R. Neville HADCOCK, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn, Longman, London, 1971, p. 293.

49 Elena BELLOMO, The Templar Order in North-west Italy (1142–c. 1330), Brill, Leiden, 2008, p. 68–73.

50 Alan J. FOREY, ‘The Charitable Activities of the Templars’, Viator, 34, 2003, p. 127–8.

51 The Hospital of St James of Andravida was founded in 1213: Antoine BON, La Morée franque; recherches historiques, topographiques et archéologiques sur la principauté d'Achaïe (1205–1430), 2 vols, E. de Boccard, Paris, 1969, vol. 1, p. 100; but see p. 319; it also held land near Véligosti, given by Robert de Lisle: BON, La Morée franque, vol. 1, p. 100, citing Ernest Strehlke (ed.), Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici: ex tabularii regii Berolinensis codice potissimum, preface to new edn Hans E. Mayer, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1975, p. 131–132, 136, nos 130, 137. For the donation to the Teutonic Order: Lucien AUVRAY (ed.), Registres de Grégoire IX, Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 4 vols, A. Fontemoing, Paris, 1896–1955, nos 3878, 4917–4918; see also 6070–6071; STREHLKE (ed.), Tabulae Ordinis Theutonici, p. 137–139, nos 138, 139. It was transferred to the Templars by Pope Innocent IV: Élie BERGER (ed.), Les registres d’Innocent IV, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, 4 vols, E. Thorin, Paris, 1884–1921, no. 2869, vol. 1, p. 429; confirmed around 1250 by William de Villehardouin: Jean LONGNON (ed.), Livre de la conqueste de la princée du l’Amorée. Chronique de la Morée (1204–1305), Renouard, Paris, 1909, p. 212; Harold E. LURIER (trans.), Crusaders as Conquerors: the Chronicle of the Morea, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1964, p. 290.