The Templars and the Parisian Builders 115never any legal confusion between the Hospitaller's own domain and
what they owned in the name of the ex-commandery of the Temple.
Distinguishable was the "censive district of high, middle, and low jus-
tice of Milord and the high prior of the town, city, and university of
Paris, because of the commandery of the Temple." This was the phrase-
ology used during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries in
the accounts and inventories raised by the high prior of the
Hospitallers.* For a long time the high prior of France pronounced his
title to be: "Humble prior of the Hospital in France and commander of
the bailiwick that formerly belonged to the Temple."
The Hospitallers were not only surrogates for the manorial rights
of the Temple, but also for its purely ecclesiastical and spiritual privi-
leges. On certain holidays until the eve of the Revolution, the clergy of
the parishes of Saint Nicholas des Champs, Saint Jean en Greve, and
Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, all dependencies of the Templar cen-
sive, continued to march in procession to the church of the Temple, as
they had at the height of the Templars' influence. The homage that was
once rendered to the Templars was thus transferred to the Knights of
Malta.
The Temple church always maintained its independence from the
archbishop of Paris, which was why, in 1787, free masons went to the
Temple after encountering difficulties from the Paris archbishop
Monsignor de Juigne for their wish to have a High Mass sung "with a
large choir." In the Temple, the Mass was sung and on the next day a
service was celebrated for brothers who had died over the course of the
previous year.^12
This independence even extended so far as to allow those who had
been excommunicated by the Church to be buried with the sacraments
in the cemeteries of the Temple.
The kings tried their best to restrict rights and privileges inherited
by the Hospitallers from the commandery of the Temple, either by lim-
iting exercise of these rights within the confines of the Enclos itself or,
in a more general way, by fighting against the sovereignty of manorial
- Lebeuf, Histoire de la Ville et de tout le diocese de Paris, vol. 2, 465 ff. The Hospitaller
Order, governed by a grand master, was divided into eight provinces, or tongues, each
with a high prior at their head who was assisted by a chapter of commanders.