The Templars, the Francs Metiers, and Freemasonry 97There is no doubt that the Templars held a role of great importance
in Moissac, for on the outskirts of the city discoveries have been made
of towns with names like La Villedieu du Temple (the seat of a com-
mandery founded in 1137) and la Bastide du Temple, as well as farms
that are still called "the Temple." In Moissac itself there was until fairly
recently a Temple Street (part of the current rue des Mazels) that got its
name from an old building alleged to have once been the "seat of the
Temple," which leads us to believe a Templar establishment once
existed in close proximity. It just so happens that in this Benedictine and
Templar city of Moissac—once a very important crossroads of different
influences and one of the stations and pilgrimage cities on the road to
Compostella—there is a rue des Francs-Masons located in the old city.
M. A. L. Bittard, the former master of conferences at the National
Conservatory of Arts and Crafts and president of the Friends of Old
Moissac, writes in regard to this subject:
The rue des Francs-Macons in Moissac is the same street that bore
this name in the past—and no doubt quite earlier than the eigh-
teenth century, the time when speculative Freemasonry first
appeared in France. It therefore concerns corporative freemasons
who, from the time of the Middle Ages in France, had inherited a
name and professional traditions from the journeyman of Hiram... Moreover, it was also included in the quarter of those corpo-
rations that had probably been freed from the censive district of
the abbey and whose old memory has been perpetuated by the
names of other streets: rue des Mazels (butchers), rue de
l'Escauderie (tripe butchers), and so forth.*
*The current nomenclature of the old streets of Moissac dates from 1824, but the
names used then would have been even older ones that had been suppressed at the time
of the Revolution. See also Lagreze-Fossat, Etudes historiques sur Moissac (Montauban:
Forestie Printers, 1870). This author believes that the "seat of the Temple" that could
still be seen in the eighteenth century "on the west side of the corner formed where rue
Malaveille meets rue Saint Paul, was a vast building that displayed all the appearances
of a former monastery inside. This monastery, according to tradition, had belonged to
the Templars, which explains why rue Saint Paul was called rue des Templiers in 1824,
in the alignment map of the city."