History
Catholic military orders appeared following the First Crusade in response to the Islamic conquest of the former Byzantine Christian Holy Land. The foundation of the Templars in 1118 provided the first in a series of tightly organized military forces which protected the Christian lands in Outremer, as well as fighting invading Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula as well as Muslim invaders and pagan tribes in Eastern Europe.
The first secularized order was the Order of Saint George founded in 1326 by the King Charles I of Hungary, on which he made all the nobles of the Kingdom to swear loyalty to his persona. The next secular order which is known to appear was the Order of the "Knights of the Band", founded by the King Alfonso XI of Castile in 1332. Both orders existed only for about a century.
Read more about this topic: Military Order
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“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
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“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)