The Templars and the Parisian Builders 141Merri, Saint Jean de Latran, Saint Jacques du Haut Pas, Saint Victor,
Saint Laurent, and Saint Lazare reveal not a single mason or carpenter
in their records. Only one was found at Saint Jacques de la Boucherie
(Jean Douillier, 1562) and at Saint Germain des Pres (the famous Pierre
de Montreuil, deceased March 17, 1266), and only two each were
found at Saint Eustache and Saint Martin des Champs. The epitaph
record of the charnel house of the Holy Innocents, which is quite con-
siderable and the largest in Paris, gives only three builders' names.
Likewise, it seems that very few masons appear to have settled in
the juridictions of the large abbeys where other trades enjoyed fran-
chises. We learned earlier that Saint Nicolas des Champs Parish, a
dependency of the Saint Martin Priory, was only a peasant village
before the Templars installed themselves there. The settlement of the
abbey of Saint Germain des Pres was also quite slow. A 1523 cartulaire
confirms that the abbey exercised the right of all justice in its censive
district and specifically stated that "said religious lords can make sworn
masters of every trade in the forsbourgs of said Saint Germain, just
solely as bakers, wine sellers, butchers, fishmongers, drapers, couturi-
ers, stocking makers, cobblers, locksmiths, chandeliers, grossiers,
apothecaries, barbers, surgeons, and generally of all other trades as it
pleases said lords, with neither the king nor any others having the right
to prevent it."^63 Not a single building trade figures in this list, which
implies that none were practiced within the abbey's jurisdiction.
The Temple and Contemporary Masons
Neither the disappearance of secular privileges and franchises with the
Revolution nor the suppression of the Order of Malta by Bonaparte in
1798 caused any change in the localization and traditions of crafts and
commerce in the former Templar censive district. Up into the present
day, this localization has given a very distinctive physiognomy to the
third and fourth arrondissements. The construction of the Marais and
its splendid mansions in the seventeenth century did not manage to
change this character. Crafts and small businesses prevailed. This is
something everyone knows, though it is a social and historical reality
that those responsible for the renovation project of the Marais have