King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

10
MILITARY ORDERS
Stars
caught
in my
branches
make day
of the dark
who had been reared at the court of
Alfonso the Emperor: the king told him
the situation and he volunteered, the abbot
assenting. It must have seemed a short
cut to martyrdom. The donation was
signed in Almazan: the gift being made to
God and the Blessed Virgin Mary and the
Congregation of Citeaux and the abbot
Raimundo and his freyles. The date is
Era 1196: the boundaries begin at Las
Navas de Tolosa and end in the Sierra de
Orgaz, including a region about twenty -
eight leagues long and as many wide, com-
prising a good bit of the Sierra Morena.
In after years, when the other Orders
were in existence, and Santiago was estab-
lished at Ucles, and Calatrava claimed
the obedience of Alcantara, the spheres of
influence were not easy to define, but,
roughly speaking, the domain of Calatrava
reached from the Mountains of Toledo to
the Sierra Nevada and included, with
La Mancha, the upper waters of the
Guadiana and the Guadalquivir. Though
a Castilian foundation, its power looked
eastward, on the whole: the first two
HISPANIC NOTES