ABSTRACT
The societies of ascetical warriors or monk-knights were professionally dedicated to the holy war, and in them Christian knighthood found its apotheosis. In Spain and Portugal, where the reconquest of the peninsula from the Moors was a major political preoccupation of Christian rulers, the Orders of Calatrava and Alcantara were formed under royal patronage in the middle years of the twelfth century, and adopted many features of the Templars' observance. The Order of Santiago, created in Leon in 1170, was spiritual stepchild of the Templars, though it differed from the model in being less a religious order than a pious confraternity of knights, whose members continued to live as married men. The Knights of the Temple and the Knights of Saint John found their identity as defenders of the Latin states in Syria against the counter-attack of Islam; and their fortunes inevitably waxed and waned with the rise and decline of Outremer.
