“The conflict of the trial of the Templars (1307-1314): the real identity

and long life of the templar Pietro da Bologna, defender of the

Templars in Paris, from new local sources.”

This work concerns my preliminary research on the Templars in Bologna, focusing on the

famous brother Pietro da Bologna, general attorney in Curia Romana, with the purpose of

discovering his real identity and seeking a more detailed understanding of his life. This article

forms part of my doctoral research project on the Templar house of Bologna.

The economic power of Templar Order at the end of thirteenth century had grown

considerably through the many donations of goods and properties made by pilgrims, kings

and nobles. All these properties were well managed by the Order and used to build a huge

income.

At the same time, the reign of King Philip of France needed money desperately to support all

the wars and campaigns he was conducting. Thanks to his influence on the pope, Clement V,

the king was probably able also to take advantage of the criticisms in regard to the utility and

morality of the Order after the fall of Acre in 1291.1 So the Order appeared as another

possible easy source of funds to the king, who had already obtained money, by force, from

Jews, Florentine bankers and others.

For obtain this result the king began the trial of the Templars in October 1307 with the arrest

of Templars in France. In the first period of the trial the Pope was not able to act in any way

and it was only in the summer of 1308 that pope Clement V wrote the papal bull Faciens

1 For discussion on this question: H. Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic

Knights: Images of the Military Orders, Leicester University Press, 1993.

misericordiam that advocated to himself all the trials regarding Templars from any secular

control, ensuring the control of local trials to local ecclesiastical authorities. From this point,

many local trials were held all around Europe, however attention remained focused on Paris,

where the Order had one of its principal bases. This article considers a crucial stage in the

Templar trial, which was held in Paris in the spring of 1310, when the Order was finally

permitted to defend itself properly by nominating four advocates led by Pietro da Bologna,

the Templar general attorney in the Curia Romana.2 This French trial was one of the most

important because it led to the imprisonment of the Templar Master Jacques de Molay and

many other key knights.

It has long been known that Pietro defended the Order from March 1310 to 18 May 1310, and

that he then disappeared. Many important historians such as Michelet, Lizerand, Oursel and

Partner have concluded that he may have died in prison in Paris. They reported that he was

the main defender at this trial and that he vanished at the moment at which the Bishop of

Sens, who was controlling the city of Paris, began to execute the Templars under his custody.

Alternatively, modern historians of the Masons presumed that Pietro escaped to reach La

Rochelle and then Scotland, where he acted as a vehicle to connect the “knowledge” of

Templars to Masonry with the creation of the Scottish-Templar grade3.

From my study of local sources in Bologna I can supply a very different account of what

happened to him by drawing-upon new sources that describe his movements following the

trial. We know from the same important historians referred to above that he was: a legal

expert, a priest, that he came from Bologna and was general attorney of the Order in the

Curia Romana. However we do not have his full name or much further information.
2 R.Oursel, Le procès, Paris 1955, p.81; J.Michelet, Procès des Templiers, II, Paris

1841.P.398; G. Lizerand, Le dossier de l’affaire des Templiers, Paris 1923. P. 156 ;

P.PartnerP. Partner, I Templari, Milano 1987. P.88.

3 A. Ramsay . M., Discours, 1741. P. 22

There are several local sources, either contemporaneous or successive, in Bologna’s archives,

which mention Pietro during the years of the trial and later.

We will analyse these materials in chronological order. The first batch are original documents

produced by the records office of the archbishop of Ravenna, Rinaldo da Concorezzo, who

was nominated by the Pope to be the main judge in local trials in the north-east of Italy

between 1309 and 1311. In September 1309 he was able to take the place of the Inquisition in

the management of Templar properties in Bologna. Among these documents is an inventory

of Templar properties, which mentions some of the Templars who had been appointed to

manage the Templars ‘farms in Bologna’s territory. This inventory was prepared by the

Inquisition in March 1309, before the Archbishop replaced the Inquisition in their

management: it was used by him and kept in his office and still remains in Ravenna’s

archiepiscopal archive. One of the eight pages of this scroll mentions one Petrum de Rotis,

who managed an important farm in the suburbs of Bologna after August 1308, when the

inquisitor took possession of Templar goods and before March 1309 when the inventory was

completed as we can see in the notary’s signature and dating at the end of the document.4

This is evidence that, on this date, this Templar was in Bologna. It is my hypothesis (as we

shall see below) that Pietro Rota could be the full name of brother Pietro da Bologna, the

famous defendant at the trial.

Another interesting document, also from the Ravenna archive and dated 13 October 1309, is

one where the archbishop provides “room and board” for the Bolognese Templars who were

under his custody during the local trial, along with clothes and money. It mentions Petro as

preceptor of the house of Bologna. If Pietro Rota was preceptor of the house of Bologna in

this period, it seems likely that references to every time is mentioned Pietro preceptor,5 in any

local document, could be always related to him.

4 AARa 12575

55 AARA 9688
We also have an account of an instrument,5, as an arbitrament, made by a notary in Bologna’s

municipal office, now in Bologna’s state archive, on October 1313, which mentions Petrus de

Monte Achuto (Monte Achuto is a small village in the territory controlled by Bologna), who

was the preceptor of Bologna’s Templar house. After the council of Vienne the Pope decided,

with the papal bull Ad providam Christi vicarii to allocate Templar assets to Hospitallers:

from the document it is evident that he was a legal expert who represented the local Templar

Order in Bologna, according to the papal bull mentioned above, in the passage of its

properties to the Hospitallers. This person is mentioned also as camerario (chamberlain) of

the archbishop of Ravenna. Given that this man is documented as being in Bologna on this

date and that Pietro Rota was preceptor of Bologna in this period and earlier, it is necessary to

verify if were these Pietros one and the same. In the relatively small Templar house in

Bologna it seems very improbable that were two Templars named Pietro, both legal experts,

and both preceptors in the same period. A serious historical investigation of the identity of

Pietro da Bologna needs an extensive work of comparison of different sources: this article

should be considered only a first step in this research.

Another important text, which relates to this matter, is the book written by Nicolò Pasquali

Alidosi, a local historian, about Bolognese knights of all orders, who were present in Bologna

from XIII century to 1616.6 We do not know all the sources used by this author, but the names

of the knights reported by Alidosi are confirmed in various medieval documents relating to

the local trial of Templars. The book was also dedicated to an important knight of Malta: this

may strengthen the author’s credibility because he could have had access to local archive of

the Order of St. John. He lists the Bolognese Templars and shows that in 1304 there was a

knight called Pietro Rota who was the general attorney of the Templars in Curia Romana.

This book also supplies a list of Hospitallers, which includes the same Pietro Rota who is
5 ASBo, Ufficio dei Memoriali, Reg.127 (1313), c.110r.

6 N. Pasquali Alidosi, Tutti li Cavalieri.., Bologna 1616. PP. 9-10.

listed as a knight in 1315, together with the inscription on his tomb dated 1329 and located in

the church of St. Mary of the Temple, in Strada Maggiore in Bologna. We should notice that

medieval sources confirm duly various information provided by Alidosi in these lists of

knights.

Analysing these kinds of local burial sources, we can focus on two inscriptions found on

tombs reported by another local historian, Marcello Oretti7, in the eighteenth century. These

burials were inside the same church, St. Mary of the Temple. The first is the inscription on the

tomb of friar Bartolomeo Tencarari, secretary of Pietro, who had previously already been

general attorney of Templars in Roman Curia. This person is in Alidosi’s list of Templars in

Bologna in 1304-14 and is confirmed his presence also by early fourteenth century documents

regarding local trial.

Plate 1 shows the drawing of the possible tomb of Pietro as reported again by Oretti in the

same church in the centre of the floor. The inscription, which has exactly the same text as that

reported previously by Alidosi, can be translated as follows:

"(Here lies) Pietro of the family Rota, illustrious in the grace of <his> virtue. Here rests the

intrepid legal defender of Christ, loved within the Order. On the tunic bringing the spirit

<moral values>, which he was full of, and the cross; now scale the heights supreme, offering

us the example of a look that contemplates the things of heaven. In the year 1329, at the sixth

hour, in the fourth <day> of May, the light broke through the organs of the mind."

In Plate 1, the person is represented in liturgical dress, as is to be expected if this person was

correctly identified as the priest Pietro da Bologna.

The family name Rota (or Roda) is recorded in the city of Bologna, and the mountain

countryside where Monte Achuto is located, as a reasonably important family coming from

Lombardy since XII century. However, Roda it is not a common family name in Bologna, but

is attested its presence for sure, in that date, already in a good position in local society.
7 BCB, Ms Oretti, B114, c.205 r and v.
Another interesting source is the ancient bell from the local Mansion on which the name of

Pietro from Bologna is inscribed, proving that he was in Bologna in 1303 and held a senior

position. In fact, during the Napoleonic period, the local government acquired the properties

of the Hospitallers and some objects were sold, such as this bell, which is now in a bell tower

in the countryside of Bologna. Its inscription reads:

“Friar Pietro da Bologna made it in 1303, Cesare Lambertini, commendatory of St. Mary of

the Temple re-made it in 1779…”

It was common practise, when church bells were re-cast, to mention the original inscription to

express the continuity of the devotion. It may be the case that Lambertini, every morning

going in his church, saw the tomb of his predecessor, who seems to have died as a Hospitaller

brother.

There are also specific records of legal documents regarding Templars in Bologna in 1313, as

mentioned before, made by notaries in Bologna’s municipal office in the early XIV century,

in which Pietro is mentioned: the research on this specific archival material called Memoriali

is far away from being completed due to the presence of around 20.000 recordings which

were made per year. In fact for all Bolognese notaries was necessary to register at the

Commune, after 2 days, all acts in excess of the value of 20 lire. Comparing these records

with previously presented documents, it is the possible to verify wheter Pietro Rota was the

same person as Pietro da Bologna, comparing all different kinds of local sources in

chronological data sequence.

Drawing these pieces of evidence together we can notice that the bell's inscription reports that

in 1303 “Pietro da Bologna fecit ” as preceptor of Bologna’s Mansion, and the local historian

Alidosi, reported that in 1304 Pietro Rota was general attorney of the Templars. Following

chronological order, we can observe that the inventory of Templar properties reports that in

March 1309 Pietro de Rotis was an important Bolognese Templar.

Concerning the links between “de Rotis” and “Rota” or “Roda”, it is important to note that,

in those years, Latin and “volgare” translation into Italian language co-existed, for literary or

legal purposes, as exemplified by the “Divina Commedia” by Dante Alighieri. The poet,

incidentally, lived in Bologna and Ravenna and it is possible that he knew all the actors of this

story: the Pope, Pietro and the Archbishop. They were studying law all together in Bologna

around 1280. This may have influenced Dante to take the Templars’ side when he was

writing Purgatorio in Ravenna in 1313, two years after local absolution of Templars by

Archbishop Rinaldo.

Dante wrote:

“ I see the modern Pilate so relentless,

This does not sate him, but without decretal

He to the temple bears his sordid sails!

When, O my Lord! Shall I be joyful made

By looking on the vengeance which, concealed,

Makes sweet thine anger in thy secrecy?”8.

We may also focus on the above-mentioned document dated October 1309, providing room

and board, in which it is reported that Pietro was preceptor of the Bologna Mansion.

Following this analysis, we have a document9 dated June 1311 that reports that Pietro was

preceptor of Bologna’s Mansion and was judged innocent in the trial in Ravenna by

archbishop Rinaldo. Unfortunately this document is damaged and we have only brief

references of Pietro by local historian Rossi.10

8 Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, XX, 91-96.

9 AARa 8011

10 H. Rubei, Historiarum Ravennatum libri decem, Venezia, 1589.

After 2 years of silence in local sources, the registration of 1313 mentions Pietro from

Monte Achuto as having already been preceptor of the Bologna Mansion, and, at the time,

also camerario of the Archbishop of Ravenna Rinaldo.

The most important information was related by local historian Alidosi reporting that, in 1315,

Pietro Rota, previously a brother of the Temple, became a Hospitaller and he is remembered

as “pugil”, namely a legal defender. In fact also in the tombstone drawn by Oretti, and

showed in plate 1, Pietro Rotis, stirpe rotis petrus, is remembered as“pugil”, namely a legal

defender again.

The last interesting source is the inscription on the tomb of friar Bartolomeo, died in 1323,

also mentions Pietro as general attorney of the Order in the Curia Romana.

This diverse collection of sources paints a rather different picture of Pietro’s life. Building

upon the foregoing we can reconstruct his actions at the time of the trial of the Templars as

follows. He was probably born on the hills of Bologna in Monte Acuto, thus the name Pietro

da (from) Bologna used in Paris, so far from Bologna. His family name was Rota (Rotis),

family name attested in Monte Acuto and in Bologna at that time; he was general attorney in

the Curia Romana and probably also preceptor of the Mansion in Bologna. In 1309 he was

attested in Bologna in the Inventory of Templar properties, in 1311 he was judged innocent in

Ravenna trial, in 1313 he was identified in Bologna probably as Camerario of the Archbishop

of Ravenna, in 1315 he became knight of St. John, and, finally, in 1329 he was buried, as

showed in Plate 1, in St. Mary of the Temple in via Emilia in Bologna city, destroyed in the

last world war. No local information about him is available for 1310, the year of the trial in

Paris.

If this identification is correct, there is the possibility that Pietro survived the trial in Paris in

1310 and later became a knight of St. John. This article represents only the first step in this
research and a wider comparison of the sources, connected to him, should reveal more explicit

confirmations of his identity and details about his life and career.

Abbreviations:

AARa: Archbishop Archive of Ravenna.

ASBo: State Archive of Bologna

BCB: Municipal library of Archiginnasio in Bologna.

Plate 1. Tomb of Pietroof Pietro Roda as drawn by Marcello Oretti in eighteenth century in

Bologna.

Acknowledgements.

I would like to thank Nottingham Trent University for this opportunity of research, my DoS

Nicholas Morton, together with Martyn Bennet and Natasha Hodgson for helping me to write

down this article; Anne Gilmour-Bryson and Anthony Luttrell for their interest in this

research, expressed during the Conference.