ABSTRACT
It has been generally assumed that the suppression of the Templars in Portugal rode on the coat-tails of the dissolution process in Castile and León and the Aragonese diplomatic initiative at Avignon as King Dinis sought, vainly, to retain the order of the Temple. The scarcity of records concerning the activities of Dinis’ envoys at the papal court and the absence of any trace of a papal commission in portugal has left our understanding of the suppression of the Templars in Portugal, almost literally, as a footnote in history, and led to the rather simplistic notion of Dinis as an obdurate defender of the Temple, whose acquiescence in a new military order was only as the better alternative to unification with the Hospitallers. 1 This paper offers a somewhat different perspective and suggests that the Portuguese crown had a very clear view about its relationship with the Templars, that it had the legal means to impose that view at home and that, through its diplomatic efforts, it was active in asserting it at the papal curia.
