As 2007 was the 700th anniversary year of the arrest of the Templars, we organised conference sessions on the trial of the Templars at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at the University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo (3-6 May 2007), and the International Medieval Congress 2007 at the University of Leeds (9-12 July 2007). Themes included the religious, political and social context of the trial, the papacy, royalty, biography of individual participants, regional aspects, procedural aspects, the aftermath of the trial (e.g. the ‘surviving’ Templars), the historiography of the trial, both contemporary and later, and fictional writing about the trial. We brought together an international group of both young and experienced scholars in order to examine these themes.
There were two sessions at the IMC Kalamazoo, nos 263 and 323, and eight at the IMC Leeds. For details of the sessions at Leeds, please see the list of sessions in the ‘Crusade’ strand. The sessions at the University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo, and two of the sessions at Leeds University, were sponsored by Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at St John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota.
The conference sessions were very successful. As the fruits of research on the trial of the Templars across Europe were brought together and discussed, it became clear that there is much new and exciting material being discovered about the background, proceedings and aftermath of the trial. The presentation of the papers was followed by lively debate.
A volume of the papers, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307-1314), was published by Ashgate Publishing in 2010. Please click here for further details.
If you have any questions about these sessions or the publication, please contact one of the editors:
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This page was last updated on 6 January 2012 and is maintained by Dr Helen Nicholson