The Military Orders

The Temple established houses and estates in Galicia during the twelfth century, within the wider world of pilgrimage, royal patronage and agricultural rents. Medieval documents and the research of Almudena Bouzón Custodio identify possessions around Faro, Amoeiro, Coia, Canabal and other centres. A commandery was an administrative household managing dispersed rights; it was not necessarily a castle guarding every nearby road.

An agreement made by Celanova in 1142 mentions the seniores caballarie de Iherusalem and a hospital at Portella de Samuel. Historians have differed over whether this early reference concerns the Temple or the Hospital of St John. The wording alone should not become unquestioned proof of the first Templar foundation in Galicia. Keeping the two orders distinct is essential for understanding Cartelle and Castrelo de Miño.

Santa María de Cartelle belonged to a far-reaching Hospitaller estate. Adrián Arcaz Pozo’s study of St John in Galicia, using the Quiroga property survey of 1517, lists Cartelle’s coto among the commandery’s holdings. Quiroga administered scattered rights well beyond its headquarters in the Sil valley. This is a documented institutional connection, rather than a conclusion drawn from the church’s shape.

The distinction matters because popular accounts sometimes call the parish Templar while attaching it to Quiroga. The survey identifies the Hospital of St John. It cannot establish earlier Templar ownership. Cartelle’s surviving Baroque church belongs to a later building history; its three naves do not identify a medieval order. The property survey offers the stronger historical route into the parish: jurisdiction, rents and patronage recorded by an institution.

On 6 December 1172 Fernando II of León granted Santa María de Castrelo de Miño to the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. Bouzón Custodio’s doctoral research identifies the church named Castrelo de Veiga in the records with present-day Castrelo de Miño. Its Hospitaller history therefore predates the Temple’s suppression by 140 years.

Rights changed through repeated royal acts. A charter of 10 March 1281, studied by Arcaz Pozo, included Castrelo in Alfonso X’s planned exchange with the Hospital. Its terms listed vineyards, fields, mills, fisheries and ecclesiastical revenues. The language of lordship and patronage describes a bundle of rights over land and people, rather than a permanent garrison protecting every traveller.

Beade and Ribadavia bring the wine economy into sharper focus. St John’s church, hospital and prior’s house in Ribadavia were associated with the commandery that became centred on Beade. Surveys and medieval foros record wine presses, cellars and leased estates. Noble households, tenants and religious landlords met here through cultivation, rent collection and disputes. Castrelo’s place in this network should be traced through dated records, since the commanderies’ titles and dependencies changed over time.

Joseph ibn Ferruziel, also known as Cidellus or “the Little Cid”, was a Jewish physician and counsellor associated with Alfonso VI. Contemporary Hebrew poetry offers a firmer way into his world than later family trees: Yehuda Halevi dedicated praise to him, and the celebrated Romance jarcha addresses Cidiello by name. Court service, patronage and multilingual writing meet in the same career.

Later genealogies identify the Cid chronicle’s “Felez Ferruz” with a supposed father of Joseph and connect the Ferruziel to the Benveniste through Meshulam. These proposed links are not established by the scholarly sources used here. Ferruziel illustrates an earlier setting for Jewish service at Christian courts; he is not evidence of a documented descent to a Galician family or a personal connection with the later military orders.

The Benveniste-Cavallería story belongs chiefly to the Crown of Aragon. The specialist entry in Encyclopaedia Judaica describes thirteenth-century members as homines templi, men associated with the Temple. Later generations served other institutions: Judah Benveniste farmed church revenues at Zaragoza and those of the Hospital of St John, while Vidal de la Cavallería was involved in minting rights in 1372. These were different people and periods; the Temple had already been dissolved in 1312.

The comparison shows that military and ecclesiastical estates could employ Jewish administrators, without making such work universal or exclusive to one community. It does not document Benveniste management of Cartelle or Castrelo. In the Ribeiro, the clearer local example is Abrahám de León, acting for Diego Pérez Sarmiento in a surviving lease: a named official, principal, property and obligation, rather than a connection inferred from proximity.

The arrests ordered by Philip IV in France on 13 October 1307 began a crisis that ended with Clement V’s suppression of the Temple at the Council of Vienne in 1312. The bull Ad providam directed much of the former estate to the Hospital of St John, but implementation differed between kingdoms. Portugal created the Order of Christ in 1319; the Crown of Aragon established Montesa in 1317. Neither case was a simple overnight transfer of all property to the Hospitallers.

In Castile and Galicia, former Templar rights passed through the crown, noble houses and ecclesiastical institutions over decades. Bouzón Custodio’s study follows a precise example: on 26 September 1371 Enrique II granted former Templar property to the dean and chapter of Santiago. The administrative unit called the Tença do Temple appears in the cathedral records later, in 1393. Subsequent disputes with the Count of Lemos show that a royal grant did not necessarily secure peaceful possession.

Castrelo’s St John connection dated from 1172, independently of this redistribution. Its distinct origin explains why a single narrative of “Templars dissolved, Hospitallers inherited, hidalgos took over” cannot account for all the local churches and estates. Each property has its own chain of rights, transfers and disputes.

At Pazos de Arenteiro, the medieval Holy Sepulchre community was incorporated into St John in 1542. García Tato and Otero Piñeyro Maseda reconstruct its churches, parish rights and rents, explicitly rejecting the old attribution of Astureses to the Templars. The Holy Sepulchre and the Hospital were separate institutions before this incorporation.

A later archival example connects the commanderies to the landed families studied here. In 1625 Jerónimo Feijóo, a regidor of Allariz, authorised his son Antonio Feijóo de Ulloa to bid for three years of Quiroga’s rents. The official inventory of the Ourense archive records this power of attorney. It documents a proposed revenue lease, rather than proving that the bid succeeded or that either man was a knight of the order. Such contracts explain a practical meeting point between institutions and households.

Castrelo’s municipal arms still recall St John. Churches and carved crosses preserve institutional memory, while charters and rent accounts explain the work behind it. Seen together, they reveal a history of agricultural income, parish authority and negotiated rights across the Ribeiro.