Templars 687ECCLESIASTICAL TAXATIONThe church’s first financial system rested on its landed
property or patrimony, as well as gifts, alms, and legacies.
All these forms continued throughout the Middle Ages.
Bishops administered the goods and incomes of their
churches. However, clerical families, lay donors or
founders, and their descendants considered their church
and its fabric and fiscal rights as a private property. This
was an issue of lay control and was one of the principal
concerns of the GREGORIAN REFORM.TITHESon incomes
of all types were to be paid by the laity and were used
mainly to support pastoral care, local churches, and
parishes. Bishops and dioceses taxed these parishes and
collected money in other ways such as the right of SPOIL
on deceased clerics. Clerics began to charge for specific
services. The popes, especially those residing at AVIGNON,
sought every opportunity to tax the clergy, developed an
elaborate fiscal bureaucracy, and needed strong links with
Italian bankers to move their monies around. The costly
Crusades demanded large taxes and elaborate machinery
to collect funds, move the wealth around Europe, and
send it to the eastern Mediterranean. The church as a
result became more and more identified with this sort of
fund-raising. The avarice of the church and its clergy
became a topic of satire and a cause of demands for
reform in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, but lit-
tle was done to control even abuses.
TAXATION IN ISLAMPayment of taxes is considered a religious duty by Mus-
lims. The most important tax was the zakah.It was
based on wealth at a standard rate of 2.5 percent of what
was considered to be surplus income. It was to be paid to
the poor and needy. The jizyahor poll tax was paid by
non-Muslim but protected members of an Islamic state,
the DHIMMI, in exchange for protection and toleration.
The land tax or kharajwas applied to Muslims and non-
Muslims according to the amount of land they owned
and its potential output.
Further reading:J. B. Henneman, Royal Taxation in
Fourteenth Century France: The Development of War
Financing, 1322–1356(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1971); A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman
Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative
Survey(Oxford: Blackwell, 1964); Walter Goffart, Caput
and Colonate: Towards a History of Late Roman Taxation
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974); Frede
Løkkegaard, Islamic Taxation in the Classic Period, with
Special Reference to Circumstances in Iraq(Copenhagen:
Branner & Korch, 1950); Sydney Knox Mitchell, Taxation
in Medieval England, ed. Sidney Painter (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1951).
technology There was little systematic or theoretical
thought about work and technology in the Middle Ages,
although people were constantly and rationally finding
technological assistance for what they had to do. There
were numerous technological advances during the
period. In the 12th century HUGH OFSAINT-VICTORwas
attentive to the reality of work and eager to associate a
certain intellectual dignity with the production of objects.
He included in his universal classification of knowledge
the seven mechanical arts as complementary to the SEVEN
LIBERAL ARTS. The mechanical arts comprised the manu-
facture of woolen cloth, the production of armaments,
and the practices of NAVIGATION, AGRICULTURE, HUNTING,
MEDICINE, and the THEATER. Iconography, archaeological
sources, manorial documents, accounts, commercial cor-
respondence, and travel literature reflect considerable
technological change and innovation, in mining, metal-
working, water and wind MILLS, agriculture, cloth pro-
duction, shipbuilding, methods of work, record keeping
on accounting, and business technique and organization.
See alsoALCHEMY; METALSMITHS AND METAL WORKING,
METALLURGY; SHIPS AND SHIPBUILDING; TEXTILES.
Further reading:Grenville Astill and John Langdon,
eds., Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of
Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1997); Kelly DeVries, A Cumulative Bibliography of
Medieval Military History and Technology(Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 2002); Ahmad Yusuf Hasan, Islamic Technology: An
Illustrated History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986); Claudia Kren, Medieval Science and Technol-
ogy: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography(New York: Gar-
land, 1985); Pamela O. Long, ed., Science and Technology
in Medieval Society(New York: New York Academy of Sci-
ences, 1985).Templars (Knights of the Temple Pauperes commili-
tones Christi templi Solomonici) They were a military
and religious order founded to protect pilgrims and the
Christian states founded on Palestine and the Lerant.
After the capture of JERUSALEM in July 1099, some
KNIGHTSdecided to stay there to protect and serve the
canons of the church of the HOLYSEPULCHER. A small
group under Hugh de Payens (ca. 1070–1136) deter-
mined to live according to a religious rule, which was
approved by the king of Jerusalem and the patriarch in- This first military order, called the Order of the
Chivalry of the Poor Knights or Soldiers of Christ, was
better known by the name of their house, the Temple of
Solomon. They were approved again in January 1128 at
the Council of Troyes. Their rule was written by BERNARD
OFCLAIRVAUX. The Templars’ main mission then was the
armed protection of pilgrims. A papal bull in 1139 made
them responsible only to the PAPACY.
The Templars wore a white cloak or mantle with a
red cross with a half-white, half-black banner. Their
constitution provided for an elected grand master,
provinces, districts, and individual preceptories, some