Castellany of Amposta, Zaragoza

The earliest donation to the Order in Aragon was the the royal donation of Aliaga, in 1118. Royal patronage was exemplified by the famous will in 1131 of Alfonso el Ballatador when he bequeathed his kingdoms, Aragon and Navarre, to the Hospital, to the Templars and to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, in equal portions. It seems that the childless monarch believed they would be in the best position to continue the fight against the Moors. However at this death in 1134, the barons disagreed. In Navarre they elected Garcia Ramirez and in 1137 Aragon passed to the Count of Barcelona, through his marriage to Alfonso's niece.

To compensate the Hospitallers for their loss they received instead the port of Amposta at the mouth of the Ebro. Although it was not on the front line of the Reconquista, Amposta was the Order's first military enfeoffment in Aragon. This donation led to the establishment of  an Aragonese priory in 1149, which in 1154 became independent from Saint-Gilles, and was known as the Castellany of Amposta.

However in 1280 the Order was forced by the King, to relinquish Amposta. In response the Hospitallers moved their headquarters in Aragon to Zaragoza  although they continued to style their prior, Castellan of Amposta. The prioral palace at Zaragoza included the Tower of La Zuda, part of which  which had been gifted to the Order by Alfonso II back in 1180.

The tower of La Zuda had been built by the Moors on top of the Roman city walls that daated rom the 3rd century AD. La Zuda was the keep of the governor of Saraqusta's palace. When on 18th December 1118 the city surrended to Alfonso, el Ballatador, the King occupied La Zuda which was to become the royal residence of Aragon until the 13th Century, when they moved to the Aljafaria Palace.

Royal patronage of the Hospital in Aragon continued into the 14th century when Don Sancho, an illegitimate half brother of James II, after serving as Admiral of the Order at the conquest of Rhodes, in 1328 received the Castellany of Amposta. So when Pope Clement V ordered the transfer of the Templar's properties to the Order of St.John, in Aragon at least, there was royal acquiescence. With the transfer of the Templars estates in Catalonia to the Order of St.John, the Hospitallers became lords of almost all of Catalonia on the west bank of the River Ebro.The accession of so many  estates led to the creation of a separate Priory of Catalonia in 1319, although the part of Catalonia on the east bank of the Ebro remained part of the Castellany of Amposta, and became the personal estate of the Castellan himself.

The most famous, and controversial  Castellan of Amposta was the extraordinary Fra' Juan Fernadez de Heredia. Born in 1310, he was the  penniless scion of a family of marcher barons from the Aragonese frontier with Castile. His father had a place at court in the household of the Infanta Leonor and the young Juan became a childhood friend of Infante Pedro, heir to the Aragonese throne. Fra' Juan joined the Order of St. John in 1328 at the age of eighteen. While still in his twenties he was appointed to the former Templar commanderies of Villel and Alfambra which his family had somehow managed to wrest from royal control. Fra' Juan was able to benefit from the order's rule that whoever brought a property back to the Order was entitled to hold it for life.

Fra' Juan Fernandez de Heredia

Heredia's career was secured in 1346 when his old friend, by now King Pedro IV, in clear violation of the Order's rules on seniority and promotion, appointed him Castellan of Amposta. Fra' Juan's estates as Castellan included all the estates in Catalonia on the east bank of the Ebro including the castle of Miravet. As Castellan of Amposta he was the most powerful magnate in the kingdom of Aragon. Heredia used his position as Castellan to distribute rich commanderies to his relations and to increase his own landholdings in the kingdom.Fra' Juan soon showed the administrative flair for which he was to become famous by ordering the complilation of the Cartulary of Amposta in which all its possessions were recorded meticulously, in six volumes.

From time to time the Castellan was entrusted with delicate diplomatic missions by the King, to Castille (1348), Navarrre (1351) and Avignon where he was visiting the Papal Curia when he was urgently summoned home. King Pedro's half brother was threatening to invade  from Castille and the Castellan was needed to oversee the kingdom's defences. The following year (1352) Heredia was back in Avignon, on this occasion to do homage for Sardinia on behalf of King Pedro in front of the pope. It would be a meeting that would change his life. The new pope, Innocent VI (1352-62) was  to form as high an opinion of Heredia's abilities as King Pedro.

Innocent soon showed the Castellan his favour by using his influence (at the expense of the Hospital) with the Master to demand that Heredia be appointed to the vacant Priory of Castille (27 March 1354). However the king of Castille, an implacable opponent managed to prevent him from taking up the appointment.

In 1355 Innocent despatched Heredia on a mission to the Convent at Rhodes to enforce the administrative and disciplinary reforms he was trying to impose on the Order. It can be imagined what the brethren thought of Heredia at the best of times let alone in his role as the advocate of reform; he was the father of four illegitimate children and held one of the highest offices in the Order, the Castellany of Amposta in violation of all the rules on seniority and promotion, and what is more, did not pay his responsions to the Convent. Heredia informed the Convent of the pope's intention to remove the Convent from Rhodes to a more exposed position on the mainland. In the end this proposal came to nothing. However at the general chapter of the Order held in 1357, the Order passed statutes that attempted to curb Heredia's abuses by appointing new officers known as general receivers to whom all responsions were to be paid, in place of the priors, and by whom they would be sent to Rhodes.

However the pope further rewarded Heredia by instructing the Master to nominate him as Prior of Saint-Gilles, which he managed to take control of in January 1357, in a further violation of the Order's rules. Heredia now combined the two most powerful and prestigious offices of the Order in the west. An unprecedented abuse of power.

Next his patron Innocent sent the Castellan and Prior on a diplomatic initiative to try and prevent the coming clash of arms between England and France. Heredia had few illusions and the prospects of success and took the precaution of asking the pope for permission to fight alongside whoever was most willing to accpt his ofers of mediation should the other side reject it. Fra' Juan found that the King of France was the more anxious to secure peace and informed the King of England that he would fight for the French. Within days, the English, led by the Black Prince defeated the much larger French army at Potiers (19 September 1356). Heredia fought with conspicuous bravery and towards the end of the battle he was credited with saving the French king's life. He himself was so severely wounded that for a while his life hang in the balance. At first the Black Prince wanted to have him executed for having flouted his neutrality, but settled for a ransom of 10 000 francs. At the subsequent truce concluded between England and France at Bordeaux (march 1357) Heredia was given much of the credit.

As a consequence of the truce bands of unwanted soldiers roamed southern France. The pope at Avignon felt threatened, and turned to Heredia who was appointed Captain-General of the Comtat-Venaissin (1357) and the following year Captain- General of Avignon itself with responsibility for the defence of the papal city, a position  that he was to hold until 1376.

Only when his native Aragon was at war with Castille (1359) was Heredia grated a temporary leave of absence from Avignon. So anxious was Innocent VI that he return, he was threatened with excommunication should he fail to do so. On his return Heredia was rewarded with the Governorship of the Comtat-Venaissin, for his part Heredia showed his gratitude towards his patron by refortifying Avignon with splendid new walls at his own expense. A gift of staggering generosity. Fra' Juan was now at the height of his powers.

The accumulation of so much power naturally aroused suspicion and hostility, not least amongst his fellow brethren in the Order of St. John. Fra' Juan created outrage by accumulating a fortune at the expense of the Order and using it to provide for his children and relations. Not only did he hold the Castellany of Amposta and the Priory of Saint-Gilles simultaneously in violation of the Order's rules, but added further to the injury by refusing to pay his responsions. The Master sent the Grand Preceptor and the Marshal on a mission (1359) to seek the pope's approval before moving against Heredia. But Fra' Juan was too close to the pontiff to be seriously threatened. The issue was sidetracked by the appointment of cardinals whose submission (1361) not only exonerated Heredia but confirmed him in all his offices and cancelled all of his debt to the Order.

Only with the death of his patron Innocent VI (1362) did Heredia's position become more exposed, but it was not until the election of Fra' Raymond Berenger as Master (1365) that things became uncomfortable for him. Fra' Raymond was a Provencal knight who resented Heredia's disloyalty to the Order and his possession through papal patronage of an office, the Priory of Saint-Gilles that had always bee n held by a Frenchman. So Fra' Raymond decided to travel to Avignon in person where he found in the new pope Urban V a more sympathetic ear. Heredia thought it wise to withdraw to Aragon (1369) and he was stripped of the Priory of Saint-Gilles and his theoretical possession of the Priory of Castille.

But Fra' Juan remained Castellan of Amposta and his prestige was undiminished in Aragon where he formed a close relationship with Infante Juan, heir to the throne. Heredia used his position at court to outmaneuver the Master and when the Priory of Catalonia became vacant he managed to get nominated to the dignity, once again holding more than one high office, in violation of the Order's rules.

When Urban V died (1370) Fra' Juan had already returned to Avignon and was installed in the papal palace before the new pontiff had been chosen. Gregory XI (1370-78) was to become a friend of Heredia. It had long been the new pope's wish to return the papacy to Rome, after its seventy years in exile. When the great day approached it fell to Fra' Juan Fernandez de Heredia the honour of escorting the pope on the long and dangerous journey. After embarking at Marseilles, Heredia himself took the helm of the galley on which his holiness had embarked. The papal party finally arrived at Rome on 17th January 1377. Heredia's loyalty was rewarded by the ultimate prize when he was appointed by the pope to the Mastership of the Order of St.John

This increase in prestige enabled two further Spanish knights to assume the magistry. Fra' Antonio de Fluvia, who served under Naillac as his Lieutenant, was to succeed him as Master (1421-37) and Fra' Raimundo Zacosta who was Castellan when he was elected Master in 1461. At that time the King of Aragon was trying to put down a rebellion by the Catalans and as the Castellany with its vast estates was an important player, he imposed a knight loyal to him in the post, Fra' Bernado de Rocaberti.  However the Master supported his countrymen which led the King to sequester the Order's commanderies. Only after Zacosta's death were relations repaired and the Order recognised Rocarberti as Castellan.

The tower of La Zuda  in Zaragoza was rebuilt in the second half of the 16th century by Castellan Fra' Francisco Iniguez. The palace of the Castellan of Amposta occupied the western corner of the great square of del Pilar in Zaragoza, the largest urban square in Spain. The last major rebuilding of the palace was the construction of the Baroque church of  San Juan de Los Panetes, completed in 1725 by Castellan Fra' Vicente de Ora that replaced the Medieval chapel.  The leaning tower beside the church, like the tower of La Zuda, dates from the 16th century.

After the fall of Malta King Charles IV took the opportunity to impose his rule on the Spanish priories. In January 1802 he annexed them to the Crown by royal decree. After the hiatus of the French Revolution the King appointed his brother Don Francisco as Castellan. The anti-clerical regime of Queen Isabella confiscated the property of the Church and banished the Castellany of Amposta to history.

Consuegra, Priory of Castile

During the Reconquista the kings of Castile entrusted the Order of St. John with a series of frontier castles, most of which they relinquished as the Christian frontier advanced. But in 1183 King Alfonso VIII of Castile bestowed on  the Hospital the definitive grant of the castle of Consuegra, together with a large frontier march that came to be known as the Campo de San Juan. This was the central area of a large expanse of border marches that were  entrusted to the military orders of Calatrava, St. John and Santiago. Consuegra became the headquarters of the Hospital in the kingdom, the seat of the Priory of Castile from 1187 until c.1287, and from 1517.

The Hospitallers had not long been established at Consuegra when the Christian advance was reversed by the Almohads who defeated the Castilian army at the battle of Alarcos (1195) and swept north pushing the frontier to the north of the capital Toledo. For seventeen years Consuegra was a beleaguered Christian outpost, although the Campo de San Juan was not conquered. In 1212 the power of the Almohads was broken decisively at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, at which the Hospitallers fought under the Prior of Castile, Fra. Gutierre Ermegildez.

In c.1187 the seat of the Priory of Castile was transferred to nearby Alcazar de San Juan. The Priory was to become, for over a century, the appenage of the ducal house of Bejar. When in 1482 Antonio de Bejar expected to become prior his accession was was opposed by the duke of Alba who had his own candidate, Don Diego de Toledo appointed, against the wishes of the Order, but with the backing of King Ferdinand and the acquiescence of pope Leo X. The dispute was only resolved in 1517 after Charles V had come to the throne. He ordered that the Campo de San Juan be divided between the two rival claimants. Consuegra became the seat of the prior of Castille, while Don Toledo resided in the palace of Alcazar de San Juan as the nominal prior of Leon. The division persisted until 1566.

The 16th century was to be the golden age of the order of St. John in Castile. While the national military orders went into decline after the end of the Reconquista and the annexation of their masterships to the crown, the gift of Malta by the Emperor Charles V to the Order of St. John and the strategic cooperation between Spain and the Knights gave new prominence to the Order. After the Siege of Malta in 1565 there was a surge in  membership of the Order in Castile.

The castle of Consuegra occupies a strategic position at the end of the Cerro Calderico, one of the long ridges that rise from the plains of La Mancha. It lies beside the main route from the capital, Toledo, to the south. The first castle at Consuegra may have been built by Roman Emperor Trajan, who was an Iberian. The Knights of St. John built the present fortress on earlier Moorish foundations. An indication of the importance Alfonso VIII gave to the presence of the Hospital on his frontier was the  award of the revenues from a tax gathered in Toledo, for ten years, to help with the cost of building and maintaining the castle's defences. Within the curtain walls are three internal wards and and inner enciente protected by strong impressive towers. Above the entrance to the inner enciente are carved in stone the arms of Don Juan Jose of Austria. In 1642 Philip IV conferred the Priory on his thirteen- year-old illegitimate son, Don Juan Jose of Austria, who became a confessed knight and grew up to become one of the great statesmen of his age.

Don Juan Jose of Austria
Prior of Castile

In the 18th century the Grand Priory of Castile  became reserved for royal nominees. Charles III appointed his second son, Don Gabriel, Grand Prior of Castile in 1766, and in 1785 he turned the Priory into a appenage of the royal cadet line, severing in all but name its link with the Order of St. John.

The Castle of Consuegra was badly damaged in 1813 during the Peninsula wars and has since been restored.

Since the 16th century, Consuegra has been famous for windmills. That is when the Knights of St.John built the thirteen windmills along the Cerro Calderico behind the castle of Consuegra. The ridge, rising above plains of la Mancha, is superbly placed to take advantage of the incessant winds that blow across the flat treeless plains, with nothing to impede its velocity. This technology, harnessing the wind for grinding corn was appreciated and utilized by the Hospitallers in Outremer, they built windmills on the ramparts of Crac des Chevaliers. On Rhodes they built windmills along the harbour moles.

At Consuegra farmers would haul their grain (mostly wheat) up to the ridge for grinding. Over the centuries the windmills were handed down from father to son. Consuegra has more of them in one place than anywhere else in Spain. These are the windmills that were made famous by Miguel de Cerventes in his celebrated novel, 'The Ingenuous Gentlemen Don Quixote of La Mancha'. These are the 'giants' that challenged our hero. Where once there were thirteen, there are now only twelve, though they are scarcely less impressive for that.

Cizur Menor, Priory of Navarre

There may have been a few donations to the Order of St. John in Navarre before Alfonso I, el Ballator, king of Aragon and Navarre gave the Hospital his palace of Sanguesa, and properties at Sos and Uncastello in 1131. In his will of  the same year, Alfonso famously left his kingdom in equal shares to the Order of St. John, the Order of the Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Even though neither of the military orders had  fought by then in the Reconquista, it seems that Alfonso, who had spent 30 years fighting the Moors, believed they would defend the kingdom and  take the fight to the Moors. But at his death in 1134, the barons  rejected the will and chose instead Garcia Ramirez to be king. Perhaps to partly compensate the Hospital for its loss, Garcia Ramirez and his successor Sancho VI granted the Order further privileges and property. With the death of Alfonso, Navarre ceased to play any further part in the Reconquista.

A second commandery was set up by the Hospital  at Cizur Menor in the foothills of the Pyrenees near Pamplona. The Priory of Navarre itself was established there c1185. The Romanesque priory church at Cizur Menor, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel dates from this period. By 1189 a further 10 commanderies had been added to the priory. The Hospitallers were the only military order with significant landed property in Navarre and the Prior was ranked as one of the four prelates of the kingdom, along with two bishops and the prior of Roncesvalles.

The marriage of the queen of Navarre to Philip the Fair of France in 1284 brought Navarre into the Provencal sphere of influence and from 1297 it was Provencal knights who were appointed as priors of Navarre. From 1314 Hospitallers serving at the convent in Rhodes belonged to the Langue of Provence. Only when Charles II came to the throne in 1350 was the kingdom reoriented  towards Spain and in 1358, the Priory of Navarre was restored to the Langue of Spain.

During the 14th and 15th centuries the priors of  Navarre managed ,most of the time ,to maintain close relations with the monarchy. The prior of the Hospital was a member of the royal council and an important and influential member of the court in the reigns of both Charles II and Charles III. The Hospitallers contributed troops to Charles II's wars. During the reign of King John II and his wife Queen Blanca, the prior of the Hospital, Fra. Jean of Beaumont was appointed guardian of Charles, prince of Viana and chancellor of the kingdom. He had position in the prince's household and a seat in the Navarrese parliament.

However there were serious breaches of these good relations. One of these occurred when Prior Jean of Beaumont sided with the prince of Viana is his rebellion against his father King John II which began in 1451. The king  confiscated all the Hospital's properties, which were only restored after the tenuous truce brought about by the Concord of Barcelona that ended the conflict in 1460.

However when John II arrested his son, the prince of Viana later the same year, the Beaumont family resumed their armed struggle. And as the prior aligned himself with Henry IV of Castille in his war against John II all the Order's properties in Navarre were confiscated again. It was only in 1564 when the prior  realigned himself with the king that the Hospital's property in Navarre were restored. A new revolt by the Beaumont family in 1471 brought yet another confiscation, this time of four of their commanderies, though the king did not prevent the payment of their responsions to the convent at Rhodes.

The price paid by the Hospital of their close proximity to royal power was increasing interference in the Order's internal affairs by the monarchy, a trend that was to become all to common elsewhere.

The  prioral church at Cizur Menor now belongs  to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta who have established a hostel for pilgrims following the Camino to Santiago de Compostella that is open from July to September.

Sijena Priory

The convent of Sijena was the most prestigious house of Hospitaller nuns in Europe.  A royal convent, it was founded by Queen Sancha of Aragon  in 1183. Queen Sancha herself and her daughter Dona Dulce both took the veil there. Sijena  also became the burial place of members of the royal family, including King Peter II after he was killed at the battle of Murat in 1213. Dona Sancha herself died at Sijena and was interred in a tomb before the high altar. The Prioress of Sijena exercised great power within the convent's dominions which covered  almost four hundred square miles. Nowhere was Sijena's prestige better reflected that in the legendary chapter house whose walls were said to have been covered with the most impressive early 13th Century frescoes to be seen anywhere in Europe.

Sijena's prestige increased further still during the reign of James II (1291-1327) when his daughter Dona Blanca was appointed prioress,  at the age of nineteen, and the convent was given the right of coinage within its own dominions. She built a new prioral palace with a magnificent throne room and developed Sijena into a royal residence. The choir rose to more than 100 nuns, drawn from the most noble families of the kingdom who entered the convent with  retinues of servants and built themselves private apartments that famously perched haphazardly over the convent.

The nuns wore linen rochets and carried silver sceptres. Dona Blanca herself enjoyed frequent absences at court and allowed the nuns the same freedom to travel, which their dowries permitted them to do in great state. With the extinction of the Royal House of Aragon in 1410 seven of the nuns resident at Sijena were members of the royal family.

The privileges of Sijena declined with the extinction of the royal house that had founded it.

With the fall of Malta to Napoleon the King of Spain imposed his own rule over the four Spanish priories. When the Treaty of Amiens threatened to restore their independence he king promptly converted them into the the royal Order of St. John, by a royal decree of January 1802. After the first Carlist War (1833-1839)i the governement of Queen Isabella confiscatedall church property, and so Sijena lost all of its possessions, the monastry itself was sold, and although the buyer allowed the nuns to remain they were forced to subsist on their own dowries. The nuns did eventually manage to regain possession of their house, but not their estates.

The nuns of Sijena continued their traditional way of life until the outbreak of the Civil War, when a group of republicans from Barcelona set fire to the convent destroying all the magnificent tombs and buildings adorned over centuries. An order of French nuns has established a community in the ruins.