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and the austerities of an ascetic life could not have been more dreadful to them than the privations of camp life and the wounds of battle. These impetuous natures, who did nothing by halves, were eager to take Heaven, as they took earthly strongholds, by storm (Matt., xi, 12). However, the Order of Calatrava owes its origin not to any deliberately prepared plan, but to fortuitous circumstances, the recital of which would seem to be mere romance if the teller, Rodrigo of Toledo, did not add that he himself had known in his youth the hero of the story. It runs as follows:
fast days during the year; they were also obliged to recite a fixed number of paternosters for each day Hour of the Office; to sleep in their armour; to wear, as their full dress, the Cistercian white mantle with the scarlet cross fleur de lise. Calatrava was subject not to Cteaux, but to Morimond in Burgundy, the mother-house of Fitero, from which Calatrava had sprung. Consequently, the Abbot of Morimond possessed the right of visiting the houses and of reforming the statutes of Calatrava, while the highest ecclesiastical dignity of the order, that of grand prior, could be held only by a monk of Morimond."
Battle of Alarcos[edit]
After the disastrous Battle of Alarcos, the knights abandoned their bulwark of Calatrava to the Almohades (1195). Velasquez lived long enough to witness the failure of his daring scheme. He died the next year in the monastery of Gumiel (1196).[2] The order in Castile appeared to be finished, and the branch of Aragon sought primacy. The Knights of Alcaiz actually proceeded to elect a new grand master, but the grand master still living in Castile claimed his right. Finally, by a compromise, the master of Alcaiz was recognized as second in dignity, with the title of Grand Commander for Aragon. The scattered remains of Castilian knights sheltered in the Cistercian monastery of Cirvelos, and there began to regroup and expand. They soon erected a new bulwark at Salvatierra[disambiguation needed], where they took the name, which they kept for fourteen years, of Knights of Salvatierra (1198). But Salvatierra itself fell to the Almohades in 1209. Summoned by Pope Innocent III, foreign crusaders joined Iberian Christians. An early battle was the reconquest of Calatrava (1212), which was returned to its former masters. In the same year the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa turned the tide of Muslim domination in Spain. Having recovered its stronghold, and resumed the title of Calatrava (1216), the order nevertheless removed to more secure quarters of Calatrava la Nueva, eight miles from old Calatrava (1218). In 1221 the Order of Monfrage was merged into that of Calatrava.
With the decline of Muslim power, new orders sprang up, including the Alcntara in the Kingdom of Len, Avis in Portugal. Both begun under Calatrava's protection and the visitation of its grand master. This age marks the climax of Iberian chivalry: it was then that King Ferdinand the Saint, after the definitive coalition of Castile and Len (1229), in (1235) captured the capital of the old caliphate, Crdoba, soon afterwards Murcia, Jan, and Seville. The European crusade seemed at an end. Encouraged by these victories, Ferdinand's successor, Alfonso X, the Wise, planned a crusade in the East and contemplated marching, with his Castilian chivalry, to restore the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1272). Calatrava had developed abundant resources of men and wealth, with lands and castles scattered along the borders of Castile. It exercised feudal lordship over thousands of peasants and vassals. Thus, more than once, we see the order bringing to the field, as its individual contributions, 1200 to 2000 knights, a considerable force in the Middle Ages. Moreover, it enjoyed autonomy, being by its constitutions independent in temporal matters and acknowledging only spiritual superiorsthe Abbot of Morimond and, in appeal, the pope. These authorities interfered, in consequence of a schism which first broke out in 1296 through the simultaneous election of two grand masters, Garca Lopez and Gautier Perez. Lopez, dispossessed a first time by a delegate of Morimond, appealed to Pope Boniface VIII, who quashed the sentence and referred the case to the general chapter at Cteaux, where Lopez was reestablished in his dignity (1302). Dispossessed a second time, in consequence of a quarrel with his lieutenant, Juan Nuez, Lopez voluntarily resigned in favour of Nuez, who had taken his place (1328), on condition that he should keep the commandery of Zurita; as this condition was violated, Lopez again, for the third time, took the title of Grand Master in Aragon, where he died in 1336. These facts sufficiently prove that after the fourteenth century the rigorous discipline and fervent observance of the order's earlier times had, under the relaxing influence of prosperity, given place to a spirit of intrigue and ambition.
Pedro Giron remained the only grand master (1457). Giron belonged to an eminent Castilian family descending from Portugal, ; an ambitious intriguer, more anxious about his family interests than about those of his order, he played an important part as a leader in the factions which disturbed the wretched reigns of John II andHenry IV, the last two lamentably weak descendants of St. Ferdinand of Castile. By turns, Giron sustained first Henry IV, in a war against his father, John II, then Alfonso, who pretended to the throne, against Henry IV. Such was Giron's importance that Henry IV, to attach him to his cause, offered him the hand of his own sister, Isabella I of Castile. Giron had already had his vow of celibacy annulled by the pope, and was on his way to the court, when he died, thus saving the future Queen of Castile from an unworthy consort (1466). The same pope, Pius II, granted to Pedro Giron the extravagant privilege of resigning his high dignity in favour of his bastard, Rodrigo Telles Giron, a child eight years old. Thus the grand mastership fell into the hands of guardiansan unheard of event. The Abbot of Morimond was called upon to devise a temporary administration, until Telles should reach his majority. The administration was entrusted to four knights elected by the chapter, and from this period date the definitive statutes of the order known as "Rules of Abbot William III" (1467). These statutes recognized in the order seven high dignitaries: the grand master; the clavero (guardian of the castle and lieutenant of the grand master); two grand comendadores, one for Castile and the other for Aragon; the grand prior, representing the Abbot of Morimond in the spiritual government; the sacristan (guardian of the relics); the obrero (supervisor of buildings). The order, having reached its apogee of prosperity, now held sway over fifty-six commanderies and sixteen priories, or cures, distributed between the Diocese of Jan and the Vicariate of Ciudad Real. Its lordships included sixty-four villages, with a population of 200,000 souls, and produced an annual income estimated at 50,000 ducats. The kings whose fortune the mismanagement of the late reigns had depleted could not but covet these riches, while such formidable military power filled with distrust the monarchs who were obliged to tolerate the autonomous existence of the order. During the struggle between Afonso V of Portugal and Ferdinand of Aragon for the right of succession to Henry IV of Castile, the last male of his house (1474), much depended upon the attitude of Calatrava. The knights were divided. While the grand master, Rodrigo Giron, supported Portugal, his lieutenant, Lopez de Padilla, stood by Aragon. The battle of Toro(1479), where the pretensions of Portugal were annihilated, ended this schism, the last in the history of the order. The grand master, reconciled with Ferdinand of Aragon, fell, during the war against the Moors, at the siege of Loja (1482). His lieutenant, Lopez de Padilla, succeeded him and, as the last of the twenty-seven independent grand masters of Calatrava, revived for a season the heroic virtues of his order's better days. A mortified monk in his cell, a fearless warrior on the battlefield, the glory of Padilla shed its last rays in the war of the conquest of Granada, which he did not live to see completed.
Pedro de Barberana y Aparregui, Knight of Calatrava, by Diego Velzquez (1631) Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
The canonical bond between Calatrava and Morimond had been relaxing more and more. The King of Spain was too jealous of his authority to tolerate any foreignespecially Frenchintervention in the affairs of his kingdom. The canonical visits of the Abbot of Morimond ceased; difficulties were raised when the grand prior came from Morimond to take possession of his dignity. The last French prior was Nicholas of Avesnes, who died in 1552. After a long contest, a compromise was effected in 1630, leaving to Morimond its right of electing the grand prior, but limiting its choice to Spanish Cistercians. Moreover, the knights of the order were virtually secularized: Pope Paul IIIcommuted their vow of celibacy to one of conjugal fidelity (1540). As members of the order were allowed to found families, and were authorized by Julius III (1551) to make free use of their personal property, the vow of poverty also passed into virtual desuetude. In 1652, under Philip IV, the three Spanish orders took a new vow: that of defending the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This was the last manifestation of any religious spirit in the orders. The
military spirit, too, had long since disappeared. The orders had, in fact, fallen into a state of utter inactivity. The commanderies were but so many pensions at the king's free disposal, and granted by him rather predictably to the high-born than to the deserving in character, whatever their social status. In 1628 the Order of Calatrava was declared to be inaccessible not only to tradesmen, but even to sons of tradesmen. The last attempt to employ the knights of the three orders for a military purpose was that of Philip IV, in quelling the rebellion of the Catalans (164050), but the orders restricted their efforts to the complete equipment of one regiment, which has since been known in the Spanish army as "The Regiment of the Orders". In 1750 the singer Farinelli was made a Knight of the Order of Calatrava. When the Bourbon dynasty occupied the throne, Charles III, having founded the personal order of his name, levied upon the old orders a contribution of a million reals to pension 200 knights of the new order (1775). Their revenues being the only remaining raison d'tre of the order, confiscation necessarily led to dissolution. Confiscated by King Joseph (1808), re-established by Ferdinand VII at the Restoration (1814), the possessions of Calatrava were finally dissipated in the general secularization of 1838.