ABSTRACT
The divergence between the Latin tradition and the French tradition is striking. The Latin version is placed alongside very different works, although their authors are often contemporaries of the Rule and derive from a monastic milieu, particularly Cistercian; the context is always literary. Of six Latin manuscripts written in the course of the twelfth century, we have two which have only the text of the Rule and a third which adds fragments of the Order's legal texts in Latin before and after the Rule. In the thirteenth century, the presence of the retrais, which were mostly composed in French, probably induced the Templars, even those who were not French, to abandon progressively the Latin text of the Rule and to adopt a Romance version, particularly one in French. The Rule of the Temple is the text through which the Templars expressed their ideal way of life.
