El patrimonio de la lengua de Castilla y León de la Orden de Malta o «todo lo que adquiera el religioso es para su religión»

Abstract

Between the Golden Age of the Order of the Knights of Malta in the frontier war of the sixteenth century and its disintegration at the hands of Napoleon at the end of the eighteenth, there was a qualitative evolution in the Hospitallers. Unlike other areas of the Iberian Peninsula where the order was based, like Navarra, Aragón and Cataluña, the Castilian-Leonese patrimony of the order of St, John has not yet been studied in depth. By focussing on the Great Priory, which was based at the Campo de San Juan in La Mancha, we may assess the economic and social extent of lands and vassals, goods and incomes, administration and organs of justice and government. As a result, we will see how the royal beneficiaries of these states were the Infantes, who gained the status of prior, and local oligarchies including the ecclesiastical nobility of the Knights Hospitaller with their political and economic role in the kingdom, until the incorporation into the Crown of the «Branches and Assemblies of Spain» by Carlos IV.