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The Templars in the Corona de Aragn Alan John Forey Preface

[v] I had not been long engaged in the study of the Templars in the Corona de Aragn before it became apparent that, because of the wealth of manuscript material available and because of the general lack of adequate catalogues and calendars, it would be impossible to examine all the relevant unpublished material thoroughly and that some limits would have to be imposed. The manuscript sources on which this book is based are therefore primarily those which are contained in the Archivo Histrico Nacional in Madrid and the Archivo de la Corona de Aragn in Barcelona, where the main collections of materials concerning the Templars are housed. Even so it has not been possible to examine fully all the relevant royal manuscripts in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragn, for to do so this would in itself require years of sustained research. Nevertheless, the many thousands of documents which have been consulted should be sufficiently representative to provide a reliable guide to the history of the Templars in the Corona de Aragn. During the preparation of the book I have received welcome assistance from a number of people and institutions. The early stages of my work on the Templars were supervised by Professor P.E.L. Russell and Dr. J.R.L. Highfield, whom I would like to thank for much help and good advice. I have also benefited from discussions with Professor D.W. Lomax and Dr. A.T. Luttrell, and a number of valuable comments and suggestions were made by Miss E.E.S. Procter and Mr. R.D.F. Pring-Mill, who examined an earlier version of the work when it was submitted as a thesis. I am further indebted for their help and courtesy to many archivists and librarians in Barcelona, Madrid, Oxford, and Durham. I would also like to acknowledge grants received from the University of Durham Travel Fund, and to thank the Durham University Publications Board for accepting the work for publication. During the course of publication I have become very [vi] grateful to members of the staff of the Oxford University Press for the care and patience they have shown. I would finally like to express my gratitude to my wife, without whose encouragement and assistance this book would probably never have been finished. Durham, October 1972