A Portuguese military religious order, established by the bull Ad ea ex quibus (14 March 1319) of Pope John XXII after long negotiations concerning the assets of the Order of the Temple in Portugal after its dissolution.
King Dinis of Portugal (1279-1325) initially opposed the arrest of the Templars and the confiscation of their patrimony, and after the dissolution of the order, he prevented the annexation of its properties in Portugal by the Hospitallers. Probably influenced by the solution achieved in Aragon through the creation of the Order of Montesa, Dinis petitioned the papacy for the foundation of a new Portuguese order (1318), to be based at Castro Marim in the southernmost part of the country, with the aim of protecting the kingdom and fighting the enemies of the Christian faith. Once the papal letter of foundation was made public (April 1319) and translated into Portuguese by a royal decree (May 1319), the establishment of the Order of Christ was celebrated in November 1319. As the new order adopted the rule of the Castilian Order of Calatrava, its first master was chosen from the Portuguese Order of Avis.
The new order took over the Temple’s assets in the kingdom of Portugal and also received many of its former brethren into its ranks. It adopted the Templar cross (with minor modifications) as its insignia and ensured the conservation of the archives of the Templars in Portugal. The new brethren of Christ even reoccupied the former Templar headquarters in Tomar, having abandoned Castro Marim by the middle of the fourteenth century.
The main novelty of the new military order lay in the loss of international ties and also in its strict subordination to the interests and service of the king, who was responsible for the systematic organization of its resources and of personnel, which were approved by royal statutes of 1321. According to the papal bull of 1319, the master was obliged to pay personal homage to the monarch before taking possession of the assets of the order. The master and commanders had the duty of giving aid and counsel to the monarch and had to attend parliaments. The Crown’s competences were further extended by statutes of 1326, which also diminished the autonomy of the master, since the mandates of the commanders were made for life.
The approval of the Crown became crucial in much of the daily business of the order, such as the alienation and transfer of its assets, the regulation of the behavior of the brethren, the modification of their numbers, and even the dismissal of the commanders. Such control over the order’s internal affairs, which was without evident parallel in the other military orders, cemented the destiny of the Order of Christ to that of the Crown, which selected the masters from men it regarded as trustworthy, and called upon them to participate in its military campaigns and to fulfill obligations at the royal court. On occasions when the masters lost the political support of the king, they were forced to renounce their office, as happened in the cases of Joao Lourenço(1326) and Rodrigo Anes (1357). Around 1372, the result of this close relationship with the Crown was the election of a master who was a mere twelve years old, but was closely related to the queen. This same relationship undoubtedly helped to turn the order into a more aristocratic institution. This tendency can be observed toward the end of the fourteenth century in the noble surnames of some knights (Avelar, Botelho, Ferreira, Rebelo, Vale, Vilela), while surnames that indicate a more modest ancestry, such as Bezero (Calf), Campos (Fields), Leite (Milk), and Vinho (Wine), became less common. This process paved the way for the introduction of the main noble families (Azevedo, Castro, Coutinho, Cunha, Sousa, Vasconcelos) into the membership of the order, although this matter is far from being clarified, as little research has been undertaken on it.
The same period saw a weakening of the religious character of the institution. Besides frequent infringements of the vow of chastity in the fourteenth century, a progressive reduction of the vow of poverty can also be observed. The brethren were allowed to dispose of one-third of the movable assets in their custody at the time of their death (1372). This quota was later increased to one-half in 1426, when they were allowed to bequeath two-thirds of any real estate acquired through inheritance or purchase. These arrangements were completed by the statutes of 1449, which normalized the personal wealth of the knights and brought their religious obligations closer to those of the laity. By the middle of the fifteenth century, very few would recognize the former monk-knights from the days of the reconquest of the land from the Muslims beneath the rich vestments and golden ornaments now used by the brethren of Christ.
The plans of the Portuguese Crown to take the holy war to Africa, which started with the conquest of Ceuta (1415), helped to combine service of the king with the war against the infidels, thus promoting a renewal of the original purposes of the order. Among the reasons invoked for handing over the order’s administration to Prince Henry the Navigator (1420) were the previous misuse of its resources and the need to rechannel them to fight the Moors and spread the Christian faith. Henry soon identified himself with those designs and came to plan several attacks against Granada and Morocco, always justifying them as being in the service of God, the king, and the kingdom. At the same time, he expressed the wish to profess in the Order of Christ, but never did, although he had petitioned for an exemption from the vow of poverty (1443), which would allow him to keep and eventually bequeath his patrimony.
In spite of these expectations, the brethen only became more involved in overseas projects at the end of the fifteenth century, when the governor of the order was made king of Portugal and was able to use its men and resources for the Crown’s policies. The papacy soon recognized the king’s control over the order (1551), thus combining the profession of the brethren with royal service, a situation that lasted until the order was finally extinguished in the first half of the nineteenth century.