The Character of the Hospitaller Properties in Spain in the Middle Ages

The Hospital of St John began to acquire properties in Spain within a few years of the First Crusade. The earliest donation known is that of a farm at Sarroca in the County of Barcelona given in 1108; it was followed by four more farms given in the next year, and by 1111 perhaps a commandery already existed in Cervera. ¹ Aragon was slower to endow the Order; the royal gift of the village of Aliaga has been dated 1118, and other small bequests are recorded in the 1120s. ² But in Castile a notable flow of royal favour begins with Queen Urraca, who in 1113 gave the Hospital the village of Paradinas near Salamanca. In 1116 she made a grant of no fewer than eleven neighbouring villages in the region of La Boveda de Toro. Her son's grant in 1126–7 of the village of Atapuerca on the road to Compostela enabled the Order to build a hospice, thus inaugurating its work of hospitality on the pilgrim route. ³