ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the growing influence of Templar sergeants in the Order’s communities in Europe in the thirteenth century, which also manifested itself in the establishment of non-noble family networks within the Order. The Templar sergeants were professed brothers of the Order who were either of non-noble stock or the sons of knights who had not yet been knighted. They differed from the Templar knights in their habit, equipment and status. As a group, they were subdivided into the sergeants-at-arms, who alongside the knights were considered members of the convent, and the sergeants-at-service, who worked in the Order’s administration and on its estates.1 There is today little doubt that, in the thirteenth century at least, the number of Templar sergeants exceeded that of Templar knights in the commanderies of western Europe; it may, in fact, have done so throughout the history of the Order.2 With perhaps the exception of Spain, most Western Templar communities were agricultural and economic enterprises that were purpose-built to guarantee the material support of the Order’s fighting convent in the East.3 As such, they were in constant need of labourers, farmers, craftsmen and skilled artisans. It was from among these groups that the Templars recruited their sergeants-at-service, whose status seems not to have been unlike that of the conversi in the Cistercian order.4
