Commanderie de Sallebruneau

Frontenac

Sallebruneau contradicts the received idea that the Hospitallers inherited the Templar houses only in 1312. The commandery was indeed founded by the Temple, in 1214, and then comprised only a church. But as early as 1280 the commander Jean de Greilly undertook to bequeath it to the Hospital, and the gift was validated by a charter of 1297, in which he freely ceded the jurisdiction of Sallebruneau to Guillaume de Villaret, by then grand master: the house was therefore Hospitaller ten years before the arrest of the Templars and fifteen years before the bull Ad providam. It was the brothers of St John who, in the 14th century, gave it the look of a small agricultural fortress — a residential range attached to the church, a corner tower at the north-west pierced with cross-shaped arrow slits, two bartizans, a ditch, a cemetery. In 1477 the district was attached to that of Bordeaux. Sold at the Revolution, the commandery then served as a stone quarry and lost its roofs; the site, inscribed on 22 December 1987, has been cleared, excavated and reopened by an association, which has replanted at the foot of the walls a garden of medicinal plants, in memory of the order's first calling.

Wikipédia — Commanderie de Sallebruneau ↗

Getting there : At Frontenac, by the D 671 from Créon then the small signposted roads towards Sallebruneau. The site, maintained by an archaeological association of the Gironde, can be visited: guided tours and volunteer work camps in season, performances in summer; check opening times before coming. The remains stand in open fields, the ground is uneven, sturdy shoes are useful.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound