Word of the Day: The Order of Christ

THE ORDER OF CHRIST: A military order which sprang out of the famous Order of the Temple (see Knights Templars). As Portugal was the first country in Europe where the Templars settled (in 1128), so it has been the last to preserve any remnant of that order. The Portuguese Templars had contributed to the conquest of Algarve from the Moslems; they were still defending that conquest when their order was suppressed (1312) by Pope Clement V. King Diniz, who then ruled Portugal, regretted the loss of these useful auxiliaries all the more because, in the trial to which the order had been submitted everywhere throughout Christendom, the Templars of Portugal had been declared innocent by the ecclesiastical court of the Bishop of Lisbon. To fill their place, the king instituted a new order, under the name of Christi Militia (1317). He then obtained for this order the approbation of Pope John XXII, who, by a Bull (1319), gave these knights the rule of the Knights of Calatrava (see Calatrava, Military Order of) and put them under the control of the Cistercian Abbot of Alcobaca. Further, by another Bull (1323), the same pope authorized King Diniz to turn over to the new Order of Christ the Portuguese estates of the suppressed Templars, and, as many of the latter hastened to become Knights of Christ, it may fairly be said that the foundation of Dom Diniz was both in its personnel and in its territorial position a continuation in Portugal of the Order of the Temple. Seated first at Castro Marino, it was later (1357) definitively established in the monastery of Thomar, near Santarem.