Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/656

Rh Crown, the Grand Mastership of the three Orders: Calatrava, Alcantara, and St. James of Compostella, thus putting an end to the independence of those Orders, even as regarded the nomination of members, &c. which thenceforth became a mere matter of Court favour, irrespective of merit or distinction. By way of compensation, Pope Paul III. granted, in 1540, permission to the Knights to renounce celibacy, and to marry once, though they were still bound to make vows of poverty, obedience and conjugal chastity, and after the year 1652, to profess belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin.

Until 1397, when the Anti-pope Benedict XIII. granted them the permission to wear, in battle, a civil apparel, instead of the cumbersome dress of the Order, their costume consisted of a white coat-of-mail with a white scapulary, and of a black cap, with a pilgrim's hood. The present costume is a white mantle with a red cross cut out in the form of lilies, upon the left side of the breast. (Plate 87, Tab. L. No. 3), while the Cross of the Order has the same symbol upon silver ground (No. 4).

The Grand Master Don Martin Fernandez, who built the new town, Calatrava, about thirty-five English miles distant from the old one, and who transferred to it the seat of the Order, intended to have added a convent for nuns, but, his death intervening, the plan was carried into effect, in 1219, by his successor Don Gonzalvo Yanes. The cloister Barrios at St. Felix, near Amaya, was the first residence assigned to the nuns, who were, however, afterwards transferred to Burgos. A second convent was established in 1479, in the cloister of St. Salvador at Pinilla, but the most magnificent one was founded by the Grand Master Walter of Padilla, in the cloister of 'the Assumption of the Holy Virgin,' at Almagra.

The nuns, who, like the Knights, must, before their