The Crusades and the Templars 67for purposes of attack and defense. Rather than being assumed by the
knights, who were primarily soldiers, the role of architect must have
fallen upon the chaplains, who were religious clerics, as well as upon
actual specialists. Each Templar commandery, though under the orders
of a single commander, was managed by a certain number of officers,
one of whom was a master carpenter.^12
In addition to their servant brothers, the Templars also employed
Christian workers who were not officially members of the Order. These
persons were sometimes Crusaders, but might also be local operatives,
especially in northern Syria, where the Armenian and Syrian population
had remained entirely Christian and welcomed the Crusaders as libera-
tors." According to the chronicles, these workers held free status,
rather than that of serfs, and enjoyed consideration beyond that
accorded the simple manual laborers.
Bernard the Treasurer, the continuer of Guillaume de Tyr, recounts
how in 1198 when the Christians laid siege to Beirut, the Saracens
"emptied the castle of women, children, and weakened individuals and
sent as hostages to the land of the pagans the wives and children of all
the slaves and a carpenter they held therein, so that these would not
commit any treachery." Thanks to a ruse, this carpenter made it possi-
ble for the Crusaders to successfully capture the castle. Amaury, king of
Jerusalem, "honored him greatly, giving to him and his heirs a large
private income inside the castle and ensuring that his wife and children,
who had been sent to the land of the pagans, were freed."^14 The useless
precautions of the Saracens and the honors bestowed by King Amaury
on this "carpenter" show that this title must have concerned a man of
a certain high social standing, most likely a master builder.
Hugues Plagon, the second continuer of Guillaume de Tyr, writes
that in 1253 the Saracens of Damascus came to Acre, destroyed Doc
and Ricordane and captured Sidon, "and slew eight hundred men and
more, and took prisoners, including masons as well as other folk, some
four hundred persons."^15 This quote from a contemporary underscores
the regard held for the masons on the part of the Crusaders. What
might have been the nature of this true crafts community? Was it a
monastic association formed by the Crusaders or an association of the
type that then existed in the Byzantine and Islamic world?