Order of Alcantara

The Order of Alcantara began as the Order of San Julian del Pereiro, a military religious order founded around the middle of the twelfth century in the Kingdom of Leon to fight in the Reconquista, and took its better-known name after King Alfonso IX of Leon granted it the frontier town of Alcantara in 1218, previously held by the Order of Calatrava, which formally ceded its rights there to the younger order. Alongside Calatrava and Santiago, it became one of the three great Spanish military orders, concentrating its activity chiefly in Extremadura and along the western frontier with Portugal, where it built and garrisoned a network of castles. Like its sister orders it followed a rule derived from the Cistercians and combined monastic religious life with active soldiering against Muslim-held territory. Its mastership was incorporated into the Spanish Crown in 1495 by the Catholic Monarchs, part of the same consolidation that absorbed Calatrava and Santiago, and the order today survives only as a ceremonial honour within the Spanish honours system.