Religious orders in Spain.
The Holy Land was not the only country which gave birth to the religious orders of knighthood. Several arose in Spain, and their arms were mainly instrumental in effecting the triumph of the Christian cause over that of the Moors. War with the usurpers was the pristine object of some of these societies, and in other cases it was based and pillared upon a foundation of charity. Perpetual enmity to the Arabian infidels was the motto of all. Unlike the Christian kings of Spain, the orders never relaxed in their hostility; they never mingled with the Moors in the delights of peace, and their character was formed by their own rules and principles, unaffected by the graceful softenings of oriental luxury and taste.
That of St. James.
The most considerable of these Spanish religious orders of knighthood was that of Saint James, of Compostella, which sprang from the association of some knights and monks in the middle of the twelfth century, for the protection of the pilgrims who flocked from all countries to bow before the relics of the tutelar saint of Spain.[358] The monks were of the society of St. Eloy, a holy person of great fame among our English ancestors; for Chaucer’s demure prioress was wont to verify her assertions by appealing to his authority.
“Her greatest oath n’as but by St. Eloy.”
The monks and knights lived in friendly communion, the prior of the convent regulating the spiritual concerns, and a grand master, chosen by the cavaliers, leading the soldiers. They were taken under the protection of the papal see, on their professing the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience; but afterwards Pope Alexander the Third sank the ascendancy of the monastic portion of their character, for he permitted an oath of connubial fidelity to be substituted for that of chastity. A descent of two degrees of gentle birth was required for admission into the order of Saint James, and the Christian blood must have been uncontaminated with any Jewish or Moorish mixture.
Its objects.
The guarding of the passages to the shrine of Saint James from the incursions of the Moors became extended into a general defence of the kingdom against the hostilities of those enemies of the Christian name; and in time their active military operations far exceeded their defensive wars in consequence and splendour. The simple object of their association being forgotten, their glories became associated with the earliest struggles of the Christians for the repossession of their inheritance; and they pretended to trace their line up to the ninth century, when Saint James himself, riding on a white horse, and bearing a banner marked with a red cross in his hand, assisted them to discomfit the Moors. A cross, finished like the blade of a sword, and the hilt crossleted, became the ensign of the order, and the order was then appropriately called La Orden de Santiago de la Espada. The centre of the crosslet was ornamented with an escalop-shell, the badge of Saint James; and nothing can more strongly mark the popularity of his shrine in the middle ages than the fact of the escalop-shell being the usual designation of an European palmer. The cross was worn on a white cross mantle, and was painted red, agreeably, as it might seem, to that on the banner already alluded to. But Don Rodrigo Ximines, an archbishop of Toledo, who dealt in allegories, observed the reason to be that the sword was red with the blood of the Arabs, and that the faith of the knights was burning with charity.
The grand master of the order of Saint James had precedence over the grand masters of other Spanish orders; but the internal government of the fraternity was in the hands of a council, whose decrees were obligatory, even on the grand master himself. The order of Saint James had two great commanderies, one in Leon and the other in Castile; and to them all other establishments were subordinate. There were perpetual disputes for precedency between these commanderies, and the kings of Castile and Leon fomented them, thus preventing an union which might be dangerous to the state itself, and obtaining military aid in return for occasional interference. The gratitude of sovereigns enriched the order with various possessions; but it was its own good swords that won for it the best part of its territories.
Notwithstanding that, like all other religious orders of knighthood, the order of Saint James had originally enjoyed independence of royal authority, yet in the course of time the kings of Castile acquired the right of delivering to every newly-elected grand master the standard of the order. The obedience was only titular till the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Emperor Charles V. obtained from Popes Leo X. and Adrian VI. the supreme direction of all the affairs of the order, and, consequently, the dignity of grand master became attached to the crown. But the power of the king was not suffered to be absolute; for the popes compelled him to consent that the affairs of the order should be managed by a council, with a right of appeal to the pope himself. The power of the Spanish kings then became a species of influence, rather than of direct prerogative.