ABSTRACT
A 1304 inventory of the Templar chapel of Orrios describes its contents in the following manner: primerament I vestiment dominical e otro ferial e II libros e I missal, el huno domincal e el otro santoral e I libro misto santoral e dominical e I caliz d’estano e II campanas e II cruces e una capa oficiadera, I acelde, II sobrepellices, I enssensero. 1 If an art-historical inquiry were carried out on such a list of objects, scholars would be hard pressed to understand fully the nature and scope of items used in the Templars’ daily liturgical celebrations. As this example illustrates, the inventories produced by Templars in the crown of Aragon in their chapels tended to be short, concise, and often verbatim repetitions of the previous year’s list. 2 Surviving examples from the chapel of the commandery of Xivert between 1302 and 1305 further exemplify this point. From a total of 11 inventories, historian Maria Vilar Bonet transcribes only those of 3 March 1302 and 22 June 1304, noting that the rest are copies of these two. 3 To judge from this conciseness and lack of detailed descriptions, these lists served the primary function of keeping a tally on the items present in chapels and were not created to meet any strict financial inquiry on the value of the chapel goods.
