Members of the Order and Conventual Life

Abstract

In the autumn of 1303 the brothers gathered in Limassol for the meeting of a General Chapter. There, they sat in judgement on a case brought by Marshal Gerard of Gragnana. The Prior of Castile had sent to Cyprus an envoy called Suero, who had died in Nicosia, and the Marshal claimed his armour for the marshalsy, inviting the court to read the eleventh statute issued by a General Chapter held in 1206, which he produced as evidence of his rights. The prior’s representative in Limassol argued that Suero’s armour should be returned to his own province. He had not died a conventual brother in the East, but was on a mission from Spain and, moreover, had bought his armour specially for the journey with money given him by his prior. On his return to the West he would have handed it over to his superior. The Marshal rose again and replied that whether he usually carried arms or not, Suero was a brother-at-arms who had come overseas in harness. The brethren of the court heard both sides of the case and examined the statute put before them. This laid down that all harness, from whatever source it derived, escheated to the Marshal. Because this statute could be interpreted widely and all the more because it found that the Marshal’s rights here established had been exercised on several occasions, the Chapter ruled that Suero’s arms should escheat to Gerard of Gragnana.¹