Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/653

302 the adventurer with money, and summoned, in an open assembly, all men, high and low, to support the efforts of the Abbot, and arm themselves in behalf of the Christian religion and their native land. Roused patriotism, and a delay in the arrival of Almohade, whom important matters retained for a while in Africa, greatly contributed to promote the rapid and complete organization of the measures of defence, the town was saved; and Calatrava with its vast but desolate district, soon after received a colony of nearly twenty thousand inhabitants from Fitero, whom Raimond helped to settle on a solid footing, and amongst whom he created a new religious Order. This Order received statutes from the Chapter-General of the Cistercian monks, which were sanctioned by the Archbishop of Toledo (1164), and subsequently also by Pope Alexander III. Numerous privileges, civil and religious, were gradually added, such as the undisturbed possession of all the provinces and districts taken from the Moors, exemption from taxes and royal jurisdiction, and permission for the cattle belonging to the Order to pasture everywhere in the kingdom, and for their herdsmen or shepherds, to fell wood for their own use wherever they might please, &c.

After the death of Raimond (1163), those Knights who were unwilling to obey any longer the commands of an Abbot, separated themselves from the Cistercian monks, and elected Don Garcias de Redon, as Grand Master. Subsequently, they again reunited, and even more closely than before, with the Cistercian Order, and received in 1187 new statutes from the Abbot Guy, after they had acquired many rich possessions in Spain and Portugal, the result of their victories over the Moors.

When Castille had fallen into anarchy, after the death of Sancho, and the other kingdoms of Spain were weakening themselves by incessant feuds amongst themselves, the war of religion was almost exclusively carried on by the Knights of Calatrava alone. To protect his European subjects against