Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/441

190 Dionysius devised a means of giving an asylum to the Knights and their Order in Portugal, without openly violating the decision of the Pope. He transferred (1317), the castles and vassals, as also the statutes of the Order of the Templars, to a new Order which he founded under a different name, and for which he received, after two years' negotiations, the sanction of Pope John XXII.

Nor was Dionysius deceived in his expectations. With grateful feelings, the Knights of the Order of Christ joined the Portuguese Kings in their crusades against the infidels, and accompanied them in their adventurous campaigns to Africa and India, while the Kings, on their part, acknowledged the important services of the Knights, by increasing their possessions with the increase of their own conquests, and procured for the Grand Prior of the Order, from Pope Calextus III., an investment of power, equal to that of a Bishop. As an encouragement to further conquests and discoveries, they were finally promised, also, the independent possession (under, however, Portuguese protection), of all the countries which they might happen to discover.

Under such favourable circumstances, the new Order grew in power and wealth to such an extent, as to raise the fears of the subsequent Kings of Portugal, who began to endeavour to limit and curtail the concessions made by their predecessor, especially as regarded the eventual discoveries made by the Order, which mstead of, as originally stipulated, being its own independent property, were now to be marked Crown domains; leaving to the Knights only, the civil jurisdiction, and a certain military preponderance in them. Nor was the limitation confined to the future conquests of the Order alone; even the territories which were already in their possession, the Pope thought fit to include in the new contract, when laid before him for sanction. Subsequently, King John II]. even procured from Pope Adrian VI. (1522), an edict by which the functions of Administrator