Order of Monfragüe

The Order of Monfragüe (Spanish: Orden de Monfragüe) was a Spanish military order founded at the castle of Monfragüe near Plasencia on the Tagus in 1196. The order was founded by the knights of the Order of Mountjoy who dissented from a merger with the Knights Templar. The order never prospered and on 23 May 1221, by order of Ferdinand III of Castile, it was merged into the Order of Calatrava.

In the twelfth century Monfragüe was the centre of a Mountjoy commandary before it became the headquarters of its own order. The earliest reference to the commandary is in an economic transaction involving the commander, Gonzalo Padilla, and his fellow brothers (freyes, freires) of the Order. As early as 1186 the Order had tried to amalgamate with the Templars but failed. The remaining decade of its existence was spent in a state of utter collapse. The Order was united in December 1187 with the Hospital of the Holy Redeemer, but already a distinction had appeared in its ranks between the master of the order, Fralmo, and his followers on one hand and the commander of the Order in the Kingdom of Castile, Rodrigo González, and his support. By mid-1188 there was a schism in the Order, though it does not appear to have broken down along the lines Castile and León on one hand and the Crown of Aragon on the other, as sometimes supposed. When the final split occurred in 1196, over the successful amalgamation with the Templars, all opponents of the merger would have had to leave the lands of Alfonso II of Aragon, a strong supporter of the Temple.

The internal split of 1188 was sparked by opposition to the leadership of Fralmo and he was forced to leave Alfambra, the Order's headquarters, by the supporters of Rodrigo. In 1198 his supporters claimed that at that time (1188) Rodrigo had been acclaimed master (he had not). In March 1195, Pope Celestine III issued a bull granting a "certain house", evidently the Holy Redeemer, which Fralmo had been seeking for his own purposes, to the Templars. The validity of this action was subsequently to be challenged by the knights of Mountjoy opposed to a merger with the Templars. The final split within the Order of Mountjoy occurred only with the Templar merger in 1196. The discontents managed to hold onto Monfragüe, which they made their centre of operations, and make Rodrigo González their master. They were confined to Castile.

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