The headquarters of the order was the monastery and hospital called the Dômerie d'Aubrac in the town of
Aubrac in the
Diocese of Rodez. According to later tradition, it was founded in 1031 by Adalard, viscount of
Flanders, who was beset by brigands while passing through the
County of Rouergue on his way to the shrine of Saint James in
Compostela.[1] If this later story is accurate, then the Order of Aubrac is a unique example in the eleventh century of a military order in the style of the later
Knights Templar and
Knights Hospitaller.[2]
The Order was chartered in 1120 or 1122[3] and adopted the
Augustinian rule with the approval of Bishop Peter of Rodez in 1162.[1] The Order's statutes from that year survive.[4] They were revised several times in the
later Middle Ages.[3] The Order included priests, knights, lay brothers, noblewomen and lay sisters. Satellite hospitals, called "
commanderies", were established at
Bozouls,
Milhau,
Najac, and
Rodez.[1] Though never large, the
Knights Hospitaller failed in several attempts to annex it and it remained independent and operational until the
French Revolution, when it disappeared.[5]
Paul Crawford in his 1993 study of military orders, classifies Aubrac as one of the "hospitaller orders which may have had military functions" alongside
Order of Saint James of Altopascio and the
Order of Saint Anthony of Vienne, while noting that it is the only one of the three that seems definitely to have had a military status.[3]
^Crawford 2016, p. 178, who cautions that "institutional mythology" often created "pasts of greater antiquity than the facts justified" in the Middle Ages.
Bom, Myra Miranda. 2012. Women in the Military Orders of the Crusades. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brodman, James William. 2009. Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
Crawford, Paul F. 1993. Militia Christi: A Categorization and Assessment of the Military Orders of the Middle Ages. MA thesis. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Crawford, Paul F. 2016. "Gregory VII and the Idea of a Military-Religious Order". In Susan B. Edgington and Helen J. Nicholson (eds.), Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the Military Orders Presented to Peter Edbury. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 171–180.
Goyau, Georges. 1912.
"Rodez."The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 22 February 2009 from New Advent.
Jugnot, Gérard. 1978. "Deux fondations augustiniennes en faveur des pèlerins Aubrac et Ronceveaux". In Marie-Humbert Vicaire (ed.), Assistance et charité. Cahier de Fanjeaux, 13. Toulouse: E. Privat, pp. 321–341.