ABSTRACT
I am no longer convinced by the general belief that in the Hospital and the Temple the sergeants-at-arms, who are identified with those the Templars called conventual sergeants (frères sergents dou couvent) and in both orders were subject to the marshals, should be distinguished from the sergeants-at-service, identified by Dr Alan Forey with a group called frères de mestier, who performed a range of civil tasks, from administrative to menial, were subject to the grand commanders and were of inferior status.1 I am concerned in this paper with the definition of the categories of sergeantry and I do not discuss its origins or the criteria which qualified a man to become a knight or a sergeant in the first place. My comments mostly refer to the situation in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. I will argue that although in Templar regulations the terms sergeant-atarms and sergeant of the convent could be synonymous, it does not follow that all conventual sergeants had to be brothers-at-arms. I have come to believe that sergeants-at-service could rank equally as conventuals with sergeants-at-arms and did not, therefore, constitute a separate category. All conventual sergeants, whether at-arms or at-service, had the right to vote in chapter elections, but in the Temple, and perhaps to a much lesser extent in the Hospital, the frères de mestier, who constituted an under-class of unskilled brothers, with apparently no voice in chapter,2 should be distinguished from other sergeants-at-service.
