The Templars and the Parisian Builders 119journeyman status, operative oaths, and celebration of patron saints'
holidays—all specifics that clearly imply an organization.
To compensate for the absence of a judicial body charged with pro-
tecting common interests and ensuring that the rules of the profession
were respected, craftsmen of francs metiers were likely more inspired to
follow traditional and symbolic rites and practices. Such customs are
much more strictly respected when they take on the force of law.
The free craftsmen living in the Temple commandery did not, then,
scorn the prospect of becoming part of a sworn confraternity. With it
they were able to exercise their talents in two arenas. As Templar sub-
jects, they benefited from certain privileges and franchises. As associates
of the community, they were assured of being able to work and of being
protected throughout the territory of the city. "It was in the best interest
of the worker who, placed under the jurisdiction of an abbey, shared the
legal status of the area in which he lived, to submit at the same time to
royal jurisdiction so that his affairs would prosper."^17 Joint allegiance—
to the Templars and to the royalty—ensured commissions from both.
This state of affairs does not make the historian's task an easy one.
Templar documents are fairly scarce.* We do have useful testimonies that
help us pick up the trail of craftsmen in the former Templar censive dis-
trict: the old epitaph records in Paris churches; street names; records of
pious and charitable foundations, chapels, and trade groups. All of these
are sources of evidence that help us follow through the centuries until
the French Revolution the existence of what we call Templar communi-
ties. The example of the builders—masons, carpenters, mortar makers,
* The most valuable source for documents is glaring by its absence. It is known that,
much to the chagrin of Philip the Fair, the general archives of the Templars, as well as
those concerning individual houses—just as the considerable treasure of the Order—
mysteriously disappeared before the arrest of Jacques de Moray. Were they destroyed?
Housed in a safe place? Their disappearance is one of the great enigmas of history. Henri
de Curzon surmises that the disappearance was to someone's personal advantage. The
most likely hypothesis is to view the Templars themselves as the architects of this dis-
appearance some time prior to the fall of the Order. See also Gerard de Sede, Les
Templiers sont parmi nous, ou l'Enigme de Gisors (Paris: J'ai Lu, 1962), a work that
judiciously and methodically examines a number of important clues that were corrobo-
rated by the 1970 discovery in Gisors of a bronze vessel containing 11,359 coins, most
of which were minted during the twelfth century. They are currently housed in the
Cabinet des Medailles in the Bibliotheque Nationale.