The Rule of Bernard of Clairvaux: the charisma of the new militia

I.Context: the winter of Troyes and the profession of the nine

In January 1129, the papal legate Matthew of Albano convened in Troyes, capital of the county of Champagne, a provincial council attended by the archbishops of Reims and Sens, the bishops of Chartres and Paris, and some twenty abbots. Among them, Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot of a Cistercian monastery founded fourteen years earlier and already head of a filiation that counted dozens of houses. The assembly did not meet for the militia. It met for diocesan affairs. The militia arrived in it by the hand of Hugh of Payns.

Hugh of Payns had landed in the West in 1127 or 1128, after nearly a decade guarding the roads of Jerusalem with eight companions. He brought two commissions from King Baldwin II and Patriarch Stephen of La Ferté: to recruit knights and to obtain canonical recognition. He recruited in Champagne, in Burgundy, in Flanders. The canonical recognition he requested at Troyes. He appeared before the fathers, presented his profession of poverty, chastity and armed defense of the pilgrim, and laid on the table a draft rule drawn up, according to the chronicle, by the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

The conciliar fathers had no precedent. No religious order, until then, had armed its professed. The Rule of Saint Benedict — the matrix norm of all Latin monastic life — forbade the monk to bear the sword. How to articulate canonically a knight who is at once religious and combatant? The question was not military. It was theological. If the knight kills, does he commit sin or execute justice? If he is religious, how does he reconcile the vow of peace with the office of arms?

Bernard, present in the hall, took up the pen. The Cistercian tradition, recorded by his secretary Geoffrey of Auxerre, attributes to the abbot of Clairvaux the effective drafting of the Primitive Rule that the council approved: seventy-two chapters in Latin, signed by the fathers and sent to Rome for papal confirmation. The Church was not going to leave the military charisma without a frame. It gave it canonical form before anyone could call it heresy.

II.Bernard of Clairvaux: the monk who wrote the Rule

Bernard was thirty-nine years old in 1129. He had been born in the castle of Fontaine-lès-Dijon, third son of the knight Tescelin le Sorrus, and entered at twenty-two into Cîteaux with thirty relatives — brothers, uncles, cousins — whom he dragged after him into the novitiate. In 1115, Stephen Harding sent him to found Clairvaux, in a hostile valley of southern Champagne. From that valley would come, in less than twenty years, a congregation of more than sixty daughter abbeys.

His authority in 1129 did not come from office. It came from the word. Bernard wrote letters that kings read on their knees, preached crusades that moved multitudes, intervened in schisms and in councils. He was, at once, contemplative and man of action — the double cipher of the Cistercian. When Hugh of Payns asked him to defend in writing the new militia, Bernard did not write a treatise of military theology. He wrote a panegyric. He titled it De laude novae militiae, "In Praise of the New Knighthood", and in it he opposed, chapter by chapter, the secular knight — who kills for vanity, covers himself in gold, pursues the glory of the world — to the knight of Christ, who kills for justice and dies for Christ.

The De laude is not the Rule. It is its living gloss. The primitive Latin Rule, approved at Troyes, fixes the canonical frame — vows, hierarchy, liturgy, conventual discipline —, and the De laude articulates the theology that justifies that frame. Bernard knew what he was doing: he gave the militia a rule to obey and an ideal to love. The Church approves rules. Men obey out of love.

Hugh of Payns's commission was not gratuitous. Bernard was related, on his mother's side, to several knights of Champagne who had entered the new militia. He knew the men to whom he wrote. He wrote to them at Clairvaux, probably between 1130 and 1135, after Troyes and before the bull Omne datum optimum. The text circulated in manuscript among the commanderies for years before consolidating. Today it survives in some thirty witnesses, critically edited by Jean Leclercq in volume III of the Sancti Bernardi Opera (Rome, 1963).

III.The content of the primitive Latin Rule

The Primitive Rule approved at Troyes consists of seventy-two chapters in medieval Latin. It survives in some thirty manuscripts; the reference edition is Henri de Curzon, La Règle du Temple (Paris, 1886), revised and translated into English by Judith Upton-Ward in The Rule of the Templars (Boydell, 1992), which incorporates also the hierarchical statutes added between 1139 and 1250. The text fixes four axes — profession, hierarchy, liturgy and conventual discipline — that the Church would articulate in that January of 1129 and that the order would preserve, without rupture, for nearly two centuries.

The profession — chapters I to XIV — establishes the three vows: poverty, chastity and obedience. The knight who enters the order renounces all personal property; contracts the obligation of chastity, even if married, for he professes to live apart from his wife; promises obedience to the Master. Chapter IV replaces the choral office with a fixed number of Paternosters: the lay brothers, mostly illiterate, could not read the Psalter, and the Church, instead of excluding them from prayer, gave them a rule that any knight could fulfill — thirteen Paternosters at Matins, seven at each of the lesser hours, in place of the canonical Breviary. The Church knew how to adapt the liturgy to the man without lowering the deposit.

The hierarchy — chapters XV to XLIV — fixes the offices. The Master, elected by general chapter, has supreme authority but is bound to consult the chapter in war, in peace and in the reception of brothers. The Seneschal is his lieutenant; the Marshal commands the cavalry; the Commanders rule the provincial commanderies. The knight brothers, of noble origin, wear a white mantle — granted to distinguish them from the sergeants — and on the mantle, from 1147, the red cross pattée, added by grant of Eugene III for the Second Crusade. The sergeant brothers, of plebeian origin, wear a black or brown mantle. The chaplains — ordained clergy, with faculty to hear confessions and celebrate — are incorporated into the order from 1139, when the bull Omne datum optimum of Innocent II exempts the Temple from episcopal jurisdiction and permits it to have its own clergy. The hierarchy is not military: it is monastic adapted to the office of arms.

The conventual discipline — chapters XLV to LXXII — regulates dress, food, sleep, horses and arms. It forbids hunting with dogs, except for the lion — that is, the beasts that attack the pilgrim — falconry, games of chance, luxury in trappings. No brother may carry gold or silver on his equipment. Meals are communal, in silence, with reading. No brother may kiss any woman, not even his mother or his sister. The Rule does not legislate piety: it legislates the everyday, because in the everyday the profession is proven.

Seventy-two chapters. Poverty, chastity, obedience. Liturgy adapted to the lay brother. Clear hierarchy. Discipline without concessions. The Church was not improvising a new charisma: it gave it canonical form so that the knight could be religious without ceasing to be a knight.

• Profession (cap. I-XIV): three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Replacement of the choral office by Paternosters for the lay brothers.
• Hierarchy (cap. XV-XLIV): Master, Seneschal, Marshal, Commanders. Knights of the white mantle, sergeants of the brown mantle, chaplains from 1139.
• Liturgy: thirteen Paternosters at Matins, seven at each lesser hour. Own chaplains after Omne datum optimum.
• Discipline (cap. XLV-LXXII): hunting forbidden except the lion, falconry forbidden, no gold or silver on trappings, no kissing of any woman, meals in silence with reading.

✦✦

«Nos, Deo auspice, in odore suavitatis devote suspirantes ad Dominum Iesum Christum, et gloriosae Virginis genitricis eius patrocinio confidentes, ordinem suscepimus militiae templi Salomonis, sub regula beati Benedicti abbatis a patribus in concilio Tricassino approbata.»

We, under the auspices of God, sighing devoutly in an odor of sweetness toward the Lord Jesus Christ, and trusting in the patronage of the glorious Virgin his Mother, have received the order of the militia of the Temple of Solomon, under the rule of the blessed abbot Benedict, approved by the fathers at the council of Troyes.

Primitive Latin Rule, prologue (Council of Troyes, January 1129). Edition: Henri de Curzon, La Règle du Temple, Paris, 1886; trans. Judith Upton-Ward, The Rule of the Templars, Boydell, 1992.

IV.The theology of the new militia in the De laude

Bernard wrote the De laude novae militiae at Clairvaux, probably between 1130 and 1135, after Troyes and before the bull Omne datum optimum. He dedicated it to Hugh of Payns and to the brothers of the new militia. The text survives in some thirty manuscripts, critically edited by Jean Leclercq in volume III of the Sancti Bernardi Opera (Rome, Editiones Cistercienses, 1963, pp. 213-239). It is not a systematic treatise: it is a panegyric, written to move knights to profession, which articulates in a few chapters the theology that justifies the Templar charisma.

The central argument is audacious. Bernard distinguishes two species of knighthood. The secular knighthood — the knight who kills for vanity, covers himself in gold, pursues the glory of the world — lives and dies in sin. The knighthood of Christ — the knight who kills for justice and dies for Christ — lives and dies in grace. The distinction is not rhetorical: it is theological. The secular knight, in killing, commits homicide or exposes himself to homicide, and in both cases puts his soul at risk. The knight of Christ, in killing the enemy of Christ, does not commit homicide: he commits, Bernard says, malicide — he kills the evil, not the man. And in dying, he gains heaven.

The formula is deliberately paradoxical, and Bernard sustains it with Scripture. He cites the counsel of John the Baptist to the soldiers who ask him what to do: "Do not extort anyone, make no false accusations, be content with your pay" (Lk 3:14). John does not command them to hang up the sword: he commands them to use it with justice. He cites the Maccabees, who fought for the law and for the Temple. He cites the psalmist: "Beatus vir qui retribuet retributionem" (Ps 57:11) — blessed the man who will return retribution. The doctrine of just combat is not a patch that the Church adds reluctantly: it is the recognition that evil exists, that armed evil is not stopped with words and that the good man skilled in the legitimate use of force is the answer that evil cannot bear. The Church knew this in 1129. Bernard writes it without hesitation: the knight of Christ is not a monk who apologizes for bearing the sword. He is a monk who bears the sword because the sword, in just hands, is an instrument of charity toward the weak.

The Church was not inventing in 1129 a theology of the sword: it applied, to the new charisma, the doctrine of just combat that Augustine had articulated eight centuries earlier in Contra Faustum XXII, 74-79 and that Thomas Aquinas would codify a century later in Summa Theologica II-II, q.40. The Church preserved the deposit: it applied it to a militia that demanded form.

This is the tension that the De laude resolves. The monk, according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, is a man of peace: ora et labora, he does not kill. The knight, according to the feudal order, is a man of the sword: he kills or dies for his lord. The novelty of the Templar militia is to join the two states — religious and armed — without either being emptied. Bernard articulates it in a phrase that remained as the cipher of the order: the knight of Christ "kills with security, dies with security". If he kills, he kills for Christ; if he dies, he dies for Christ. In neither case does he lose his soul. The theology preceded the Rule. The Rule gave it canonical body. The De laude gave it voice.

• Secular knight: kills for vanity, covers himself in gold, dies in sin.
• Knight of Christ: kills for justice, dies for Christ, gains heaven.
• Malicide, not homicide: in killing the enemy of Christ, he kills the evil, not the man.
• Augustinian foundation: the Church does not invent in 1129; it applies the doctrine of just combat from Contra Faustum XXII, later codified by Thomas in Summa II-II, q.40.

✦✦

«Miles Christi securus occidit, securus moritur. Si enim moritur, pro Christo moritur; si occidit, pro Christo occidit. Nam cum occiderit malum, non homicida sed malicida dicitur.»

The knight of Christ kills with security, dies with security. For if he dies, he dies for Christ; if he kills, he kills for Christ. And when he kills the evil one, he is called not homicide but malicide.

Bernard of Clairvaux, De laude novae militiae, cap. III (c. 1130-1135). Critical edition: Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, H. Rochais, C. H. Talbot, vol. III, Rome, Editiones Cistercienses, 1963, pp. 217-218.

V.The limit of malicide: the captive and the surrendered

The argument of the De laude has a canonical limit that the Rule fixes with precision. The knight of Christ kills the enemy in combat. He does not kill the captive, does not kill the surrendered, does not kill the one who has laid down arms. The distinction is not ornament: it is the line that separates the knight of Christ from the mercenary.

The chapter XLVIII of the Primitive Rule forbids the brother to put to death an enemy who surrenders, unless the Master or the Commander so orders for reason of war. The chapter CXXX of the hierarchical statutes, added in the mid-thirteenth century, forbids mistreating the captive and obliges feeding the prisoner before one's own brother if provisions run short. Malicide applies to combat, not to defeat. Once the enemy has laid down the sword, he ceases to be an active enemy and becomes a captive — a creature of Christ to whom the knight owes food and protection.

Bernard articulates the limit in the De laude itself, chapter V, when he writes that the knight of Christ does not rejoice in the death of his adversary but in the justice that causes it. The death of the Saracen is not an end: it is a means. The end is the protection of the pilgrim and the defense of the Holy Land. If death ceases to be a means and becomes an end, the knight has ceased to be of Christ and has become secular again — he kills no longer for justice but for blood, and again he puts his soul at risk.

The limit is tested in the most difficult case: the captive of one's own order. The Rule provides that a brother fallen prisoner is not to be ransomed at exorbitant price, because the order is poor and an onerous ransom would impoverish the community. Chapter CCXLI of the retrais, already in medieval French, fixes that the Master may not pay for a captive brother more than it would cost to maintain ten knights in the commandery for a year. The norm is harsh. It is also doctrinal: the life of a brother is not worth more than the mission of the order, and the mission of the order is to defend the pilgrim, not to enrich the Saracen who captures him. The Church did not permit the charisma to be corrupted by sentiment. The knight of Christ loves his captive brother. But he loves justice more than the brother.

Malicide, then, is not license. It is doctrine with an edge. It kills the enemy in combat, not the captive. It kills for justice, not for blood. It kills as a means, not as an end. Whoever crosses the edge ceases to be a knight of Christ and becomes a mercenary again — he kills now for price, not for charity, and loses the soul that the profession had promised to save. The Rule knew it. Bernard wrote it. The Church kept it in seventy-two chapters so that no brother could plead ignorance.

VI.From Troyes to the commanderies: the diffusion of the Rule and of the De laude

The Primitive Rule, approved at Troyes, spread in Latin among the chaplains and in medieval French — Retrais — among the lay knights. The French translation, dated around 1140, is earlier than the bull Omne datum optimum and proves that the order wanted to put the Rule into the mouths of the brothers who did not know Latin. The edition of Curzon (1886) and the translation of Upton-Ward (1992) preserve both versions, Latin and French, in parallel: the Latin for the chapter, the French for the commandery.

Papal confirmation arrived in stages. Innocent II, with the bull Omne datum optimum of 29 March 1139, exempted the order from episcopal jurisdiction and permitted it to have its own chaplains with faculty to hear confessions and celebrate. Celestine II, with Milites Templi (1144), granted the order's benefactors indulgence for their alms. Eugene III, with Militia Dei (1145), authorized the order to build its own chapels and to bury in its cemeteries the brothers and the relatives of the benefactors. Three popes in six years. The Church had not only approved the charisma: it had armed it canonically against any episcopal interference.

The De laude spread by another route: that of the manuscript. Copied in the Cistercian scriptoria and in the Templar commanderies, it circulated as a recruitment text and as spiritual reading for the knights. Some thirty manuscripts survive, the oldest from the mid-twelfth century, held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (ms. lat. 15094). The critical edition of Leclercq in 1963 collated the principal witnesses and established the text. The De laude was not a bull: it did not bind canonically. It was voice: it moved to profession and gave the brothers the reason for their life.

Reception in the Peninsula was immediate and dense. The donation of Alfonso I the Battler to the Temple in 1126 — before the council of Troyes — shows that the militia was already operating on the Ebro frontier before it had a Rule. In 1131, the same king donated to the order the city of Zaragoza after its conquest, and in his testament of 1134 — a unique document in medieval history — he bequeathed his kingdoms to the Temple, to the Hospital and to the Holy Sepulchre. The Aragonese nobles did not accept the testament, but the donations to the Temple were maintained: Barbastro, Monzón, Huesca. In 1143, Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona and prince of Aragón, signed with the order the concordat of Girona, promising the Templars a third of the lands to be reconquered south of the Ebro. Tortosa fell in 1148, Miravet in 1153, Peñíscola was ceded in 1294 by James II. The Ebro frontier became Templar.

In Castile, the order of Calatrava was founded in 1158 under its own Cistercian rule — parallel to the Temple, not subordinate —, but the Temple operated in Castilian and Leonese commanderies: Villalpando, Ponferrada (ceded in 1178 by Ferdinand II), the bridge of Alcántara. In Portugal, the donation of Soure in 1128 preceded Troyes; the commandery of Tomar was ceded in 1159 to Gualdim Pais, Portuguese Master of the order, who began construction of the convent-fortress in 1160. Tomar was the head of the Portuguese commanderie and would become, in 1319, the seat of the Order of Christ. The Rule was one. The Church made it prevail from Jerusalem to the Atlantic.

The Primitive Rule did not remain frozen. The hierarchical statutes, added between 1139 and 1250 in successive general chapters, extended it without repealing it: they fixed the ceremonial of reception of the brother, regulated war in detail, codified conventual discipline. The edition of Curzon gathers the whole, with the Primitive Rule at the beginning and the retrais in chronological order. The Church does not freeze the charisma: it lives it, extends it, refines it. The Rule of 1129 remained the root. Everything that came after was branching.

VII.The Rule as matrix of the successor orders

The Primitive Rule of 1129 did not die with the order in 1312. The Church transferred it.

The bull Vox in excelso of 22 March 1312, which formally dissolved the Temple under pressure from Philip IV, did not condemn the Rule. It could not condemn it: it was a Cistercian rule approved in council, confirmed by three popes and lived for nearly two centuries by men whom the Church had canonized in life. The dissolution fell upon the institution, not upon the charisma. The charisma — religious knight who defends the pilgrim under monastic vows — remained canonically licit. The Church does not destroy what it has approved: it transfers it when the institution that embodied it has become corrupt or has fallen.

In 1317, five years after the dissolution, John XXII approved the Order of Montesa with the bull Pia Matris Ecclesiae (10 June 1317). Montesa received the Templar properties of the Crown of Aragón, the brothers who wished to continue, and the Primitive Rule — adapted to the Cistercian frame of Calatrava, under Aragonese royal patronage. The order followed the Rule of Bernard until 1592, when Philip II incorporated Montesa into the Crown. Three centuries of Rule. In 1319, two years after Montesa, the same John XXII approved the Order of Christ with the bull Ad ea ex quibus (14 March 1319). The Order of Christ received the Templar properties of Portugal, the brothers, and the Rule. Tomar, the commandery founded by Gualdim Pais in 1160, remained the seat. The Order of Christ followed the Rule until 1789, when Queen Mary I secularized it; the definitive extinction came in 1834. Five centuries of Rule in Portugal.

The continuity of the Rule is the canonical proof that the Church did not want to destroy the militia. If it had wanted to destroy it, it would not have approved successor orders seven years after the dissolution, with the same Rule, in the kingdoms — Aragón and Portugal — that had not bent to the persecution of Philip IV. The dissolution of 1312 was pastoral pragmatism under French pressure. The restoration of 1317 and 1319 was doctrine: the Church preserved the charisma that the French Crown had wanted to smother.

The Rule of Bernard survived, then, the order that had received it. It lived in Montesa until 1592. It lived in the Order of Christ until 1789. It lived in Calatrava — Cistercian parallel since 1158 — until 1836. Five and a half centuries of Rule, from the council of Troyes to the disentailments of the nineteenth century. A single voice, articulated in January 1129 in a hall of Champagne, that the Church made resound until the liberal State silenced it.

• 1312: Vox in excelso formally dissolves the Temple (by French pressure, not doctrinal condemnation). The Rule is not condemned.
• 1317: John XXII approves Montesa as canonical successor in Aragón (bull Pia Matris Ecclesiae). Rule until 1592.
• 1319: John XXII approves the Order of Christ as canonical successor in Portugal (bull Ad ea ex quibus). Rule until 1789.
• Conclusion: the Church preserved the charisma under new names. The destruction was royal, not papal.

VIII.The esoteric myth and its dismantling

Read the Rule. Seventy-two chapters in medieval Latin, edited by Curzon in 1886 and translated by Upton-Ward in 1992. Poverty, chastity, obedience. Liturgy adapted to the lay brother. Monastic hierarchy. Conventual discipline. Hunting forbidden except the lion, no gold or silver on trappings, no kissing of any woman. There is not a single chapter on astrology. There is not one on alchemy. There is not one on the Grail, on Baphomet, on the Priory of Sion. The Rule is orthodox Cistercian. Whoever wishes to find Templar esotericism has to not read the Rule.

The Templar esoteric myth is a nineteenth-century construction, and each link of its invention is documented. Eliphas Lévi, in Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (1854-1856), fabricated the image of Baphomet as an androgynous idol with a goat's head, with no source but his own imagination. Papus (Gérard Encausse) popularized it in the 1890s within French occultist Martinism. Pierre Plantard, in 1956, invented the hoax of the Priory of Sion — registered as a civil association in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, dissolved the following year — and fabricated the famous "dossiers secrets" deposited in the Bibliothèque nationale in the 1960s. Gérard de Sède, in L'Or de Rennes (1967), gave the hoax literary diffusion. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), turned it into a best seller. Dan Brown, in The Da Vinci Code (2003), elevated it to mass culture. Each link has a signature and a date. None has a twelfth-century source.

The Rule dismantles the myth without need of long refutation. Seventy-two chapters of Cistercian monk-knight. No grimoire. No secret rite. No initiation. The reception of the brother, fixed in the hierarchical statutes, is public: the brother professes in chapter, before the Master and the brothers, with canonical formula taken from the Benedictine profession. There is no hidden grade. There is no "inner knight". Whoever enters the Temple enters by the door of monastic profession, not by that of esoteric initiation.

The myth, moreover, needs the Church to have persecuted the Templars for that supposed esotericism. But the Chinon parchment (1308) proves the contrary: Clement V absolved them of heresy. The persecution was royal, not papal. If the Church did not persecute the Templars for esotericism, there was no esotericism to persecute. The myth is left without historical cause. What remains is the Rule — orthodox, Cistercian, seventy-two chapters of military-monastic charisma that the Church approved, lived and preserved.

The Rule is not a hermetic text. It is a conventual text. Whoever reads it, finds monks with swords. Whoever does not read it, finds whatever he wishes to find. The Church wrote the Rule so that there should be no need to imagine anything. Seventy-two chapters. Cistercian. Orthodox. Without Baphomet.

IX.The Rule in modern historiography

Historiography on the Primitive Rule runs through three phases. The first, opened in 1886 with the edition of Henri de Curzon, La Règle du Temple, brought the Rule out of the archives. Curzon, archivist of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, collated the Parisian manuscript (BnF, fr. 1977) with the principal witnesses of the French Rule and the hierarchical statutes, and published for the first time the integral text in a critical edition. Before Curzon, historians worked on extracts cited in the trial of 1307-1314; from Curzon on, they could read the Rule. His edition, reprinted by Slatkine in 1977, remains the basis of any serious work.

The second phase, opened in the 1950s-1960s by the French monastic school, relocated the Rule within its Cistercian matrix. Jean Leclercq, Benedictine of Clervaux and the foremost Bernard scholar of the twentieth century, published in 1963 the critical edition of the De laude novae militiae in volume III of the Sancti Bernardi Opera (Editiones Cistercienses, Rome), collating some thirty manuscripts and establishing the Latin text. Leclercq showed that the De laude was not a freestanding oratorical piece: it was the theological gloss of the Rule, and both texts — Rule and De laude — were understood only together. Anselme Dimier, in parallel studies on the Cistercian Carta Caritatis, showed that the Primitive Rule took from Cîteaux the structure of the chapter, the profession and the filiation. The Rule was not an ad hoc invention: it was Cistercian at the root.

The third phase, opened in the 1990s, brought the Rule to the English reader and to the frame of the Gregorian reform. Judith Upton-Ward published in 1992 The Rule of the Templars (Boydell), an annotated English translation of the Latin Rule and of the French retrais, with a historical introduction. Malcolm Barber, in The New Knighthood (Cambridge UP, 1994), placed the Rule in the context of the twelfth-century monastic reform and of the theology of just combat. Helen Nicholson, in The Knights Templar: A New History (2001, revised 2017), synthesized the state of the question. Alain Demurger, in Les Templiers: Une chevalerie chrétienne au Moyen Âge (Seuil, 2005), articulated the Rule with the effective practice of the commanderies. The line is clear: the more the Rule is read, the less room is left for the myth.

Hispanic historiography has worked the Rule from the peninsular reception. Alan Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragón (Oxford UP, 1973), remains the reference work for the Aragonese diffusion. Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Las órdenes militares hispánicas en la Edad Media (Madrid, 2003), integrates the Temple into the ensemble of the Hispanic orders and articulates the Rule with the frame of the Reconquista. The most recent synthesis agrees on the essentials: the Primitive Rule is Cistercian, orthodox, and its documentary traceability is maximal. Whoever says otherwise has not read the Rule.

X.Chronology

XI.Sources and bibliography

• Primitive Latin Rule (Council of Troyes, January 1129), 72 chapters. Edition: Henri de Curzon, La Règle du Temple, Paris, 1886 (repr. Slatkine, 1977). English trans.: Judith Upton-Ward, The Rule of the Templars, Boydell, 1992.
• French Rule / Retrais (c. 1140), medieval French translation of the Latin Rule. Edition: Curzon, La Règle du Temple, 1886.
• Hierarchical statutes (additions 1139-1250), fixed in successive general chapters. Edition: Curzon, La Règle du Temple, 1886.
• Bernard of Clairvaux, De laude novae militiae (c. 1130-1135). Critical edition: Jean Leclercq, H. Rochais, C. H. Talbot (eds.), Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. III, Editiones Cistercienses, Rome, 1963, pp. 213-239.
• Innocent II, bull Omne datum optimum (29 March 1139). Exemption from episcopal jurisdiction and authorization of own chaplains. In: Bullarium Romanum, vol. III.
• Celestine II, bull Milites Templi (1144). Indulgences for benefactors. In: Bullarium Romanum, vol. III.
• Eugene III, bull Militia Dei (1145). Own chapels and cemeteries. In: Bullarium Romanum, vol. III.
• Geoffrey of Auxerre, Vita Sancti Bernardi (c. 1160-1170). Attribution to Bernard of the effective drafting of the Primitive Rule. Edition: Patrologia Latina, vol. CLXXXV, col. 301-568.

XII.Frequently asked questions