INTRODUCTION

This short pamphlet records the reconstruction of the castle of Saphet by the Templars from 1240 onwards. The narrative centres on Benoît d'Alignan, Bishop of Marseilles from 1229 to 1267, who visited the Holy Land twice in 1239–40 and 1260–2. He seems to have been the inspiration for the rebuilding of the castle, as the pamphlet makes clear. The text exists in two copies, one in Paris of the fourteenth century and the other an undated Italian manuscript in Turin. Both are bound in with other Crusader texts including the Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry. The pamphlet must have been written between 1260 when Benoît visited Saphet for the second time and 1266 when the castle fell to the Muslims. Its anonymous author may have composed it simply to commemorate the bishop's work but it seems more likely that this is a fund-raising treatise, designed to be read or used as a basis for sermons and appeals. The emphasis on the cost of the castle, its continuous usefulness to the Christians and, in the final section, its role in protecting well-known Holy Places, suggest that this is a strong possibility. Whatever the motivation of the author, however, the treatise remains one of the fullest and most circumstantial accounts we have of the building of a medieval castle and provides a fascinating insight into what contemporaries thought on the subject.

de constructione castri saphet

Since it is our firm and steadfast intention to be always zealous in those things which are to the honour of God and to dwell continually and chiefly on those which we perceive to be for the exaltation of the Faith and the Church, the…