How did the debt collection of Gregorius IX work?

score:4

Accepted answer

This mechanism is describing the cheque. It was not sufficient to present the "cheque", one also had to establish one's identity as the "payee" - just as in a modern chequing transaction.

That this service was being provided suggests that there was already such a mechanism in place for internal use of the Templars, such that only the net transfers would have to be remitted in specie at some interval. Also, you are talking here about a well structured military organization. Generally such do not have the same difficulties in transporting large sums of money and valuables around that you or I might.


Questions of course arise, concerning just how the Templars managed the internal transactions and transfers that supported their system., nobody knows. Not only that, nobody even knows how Barings Bank and the Rothschild's managed to transfer assets across the Atlantic a mere 200 years ago:

[After reading] a couple of chapters of an old treatise on the early merchant bankers ... it basically confessed that no-one knows how either Barings or Rothschilds transported much of their assets across the Atlantic. Either trade secret, or still classified in the Admiralty office. Recall though that by late 1814 the New England states were on the verge of secession over the war. Smuggling British ships in and out of Boston would likely not have been difficult.

The facts we do know are:

  • Letters of credit were issued, honoured, and redeemed across distances that could be multiple months travel - certainly over distances as great as London to Jerusalem.

  • Basic double-entry bookkeeping had already been invented, in Italy - though being originally a trade secret it is uncertain, for some centuries, just when, by whom, and available to whom. It is certainly difficult to imagine any arrangements as complex and reliable as that of the Templars without it.

  • They operated successfully for about 200 years, roughly 1119 to 1312.

More post

Search Posts

Related post