Templars reading

It’s well known that the Templars were not as well educated as most monks. After all, their vocation was to protect Christendom through fighting and prayer, not to study. The inventories of the Templars’ property made after the Templars were arrested in 1307-8 include a lot of service books for the ‘prayer’ aspect of the Templars’ lives, but not many other books. From time to time, however, an impressive book appears which shows the Templars in one location in a different light.

The inventory of the church at New Temple, London, mentions a book whose title was variously spelt Cabeham or Chabeham and was obviously too well known to require further description ( The National Archives: E 358/18 rot. 7(2); E 358/20, rot. 3). As the modern spelling of Chabeham is Chobham, this was probably Thomas of Chobham’s very influential Summa de penitentia et officiis ecclesiae, written between 1215 and 1217. Trained at the University of Paris, Chobham was a theologian who served the bishops of Salisbury, taught at the University of Paris and composed works of theology and sermons. Described by Chobham’s modern biographer as a ‘handbook containing almost everything a thirteenth-century priest needed to know for the pastoral care of souls’, the Summa de penitentia was a widely-used book of practical theology which would have been very useful for the Templars’ clergy in their day-to-day work.

What happened to this copy of ‘Chobham’? It was probably sold. Perhaps it still exists!