Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/354

210 '210 ADMINISTRATION OF CASTILE. TART Spanish Arabs," there can be no doubt that the ! forms, under which they were permanently organ- ized, were derived, in the latter part of the twelfth century, from the monastic orders established for the protection of the Holy Land. The Hospitallers, and especially the Templars, obtained more exten- sive acquisitions in Spain, than in any, perhaps every, other country in Christendom ; and it was partly from the ruins of their empire, that were constructed the magnificent fortunes of the Spanish orders. ^^ Order of St. Thc most eminent of these was the order of St. Jago, or St. James, of Compostella. The miracu- lous revelation of the body of the Apostle, after the lapse of eight centuries from the date of his inter- ment, and his frequent apparition in the ranks of the Christian armies, in their desperate struggles with the infidel, had given so wide a celebrity to 34 Conde gives the following services to Christendom ; for both account of these chivalric associa- the institutions were established on tions among the Spanish Arabs, similar principles." Conde, His- which, as far as I know, have hith- toria de la Dominacion de los erto escaped the notice of Euro- Arabes en Espaiia, (Madrid, 1800,) pean historians. "The Moslem tom. i. p. 619, not. frontcros professed great austerity ^^ See the details, given by Ma- m their lives, which they conse- riana, of the overgrown possessions crated to perpetual war, and bound of the Templars in Castile at the themselves by a solemn vow to de- period of their extinction, in the fend the frontier against the incur- beginning of the fourteenth centu- sions of the Christians. They ry. (Hist, de Espana, lib. 15, cap. were choice cavaliers, possessed 10.) The knights of the Temple of consummate patience, and en- and the Hospitallers seem to have during fatigue, and always pre- acquired still greater power in Ara- pared to die rather than desert gon, where one of the monarchs their posts. It appears highly was so infatuated as to bequeath probable that the Moorish fraterni- them his whole dominions, — a ties suggested the idea of those bequest, which it may well be be- military orders so renowned for lievcd was set aside by his iiigh- their valor in Spain and in Pales- spirited subjects. Zurita, Anales, tine, which rendered such essential lib. 1, cap. 52