Military Orders have represented some of the most unique and influential organisations in the areas where they settled. They came about as the result of two main factors: the institutionalisation of knighthood and the crystallisation of the crusades as a kind of holy war. 
These sites are the result of an era in which the Church exercised dominating power over Europe. These institutions became the spearhead of Medieval Christianity, with an ongoing duty toward attending the sick and the poor, in combination with monastic life.
Two basic essential elements are common to all the orders: monastic life and knighthood. The Military Orders were made up of two types of members with differing natures and duties: the knights, or militants, in charge of the defence of the territory and, later, the governing and administration of the Order’s assets. And secondly, depending on the former group, were the priests or monks, who were responsible for holding religious services and the administration of the spiritual issues of the community in general.
The difference between the Order of Calatrava (a Benedictine-Cistercian order), which is an adaptation of a community of monks to the military life of knights, and the Order of Santiago (Augustinians) is that the latter is a group of knights who act in the service of God and the Church through a religious institution. In other words, these are knights who are subject to religious discipline, and therefore have greater freedom. Hence, the secular knights were allowed to get married and have a family. All the knights of the different orders had to behave with discipline and obedience and give up unnecessary luxuries. They had to live in austerity and dress simply. Their clothing had to fulfil the three basic needs of a soldier: freedom of movement, ease of gestures and decision in the attack. Everything else was irrelevant.
LThe domains of the Military Orders in La Mancha included a total of over 27,000 km2 by the mid-13th Century, over which there was a network of 50 castles and upwards of 150 settlements grouped into a series of around thirty “encomiendas” (administrative districts). The military potential of the orders is estimated to have reached around 400 knights, in addition to 400 squires and 800 privates divided among the different orders: the Order of Santiago, with 200 knights, that of Calatrava with 150, and that of San Juan with 50 knights.
The highest authority of each order was the Maestre, or Master, who was responsible for managing spiritual and earthly issues. The Prior was the highest specifically religious authority on issues of a clerical nature, particularly those concerning their respective convents. They handled the spiritual matters of the knights and were superior to all the chaplains and priests of the Order. They answered directly to the Pope. The Military Orders managed to gain exemption from the ordinary jurisdiction of the diocese where they were located for the churches included in their territories, which became the subject of many disputes. Relations between the authority of the priory and that of the bishop developed among agreements, controversy and disputes over which party was entitled to apply their respective jurisdictions, such as the authority to pay canonical visits to the parishes and the right to collect certain ecclesiastical taxes like tithes.
During the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, a new organisation was created as the territories of the Masters were incorporated into the Crown, which formed the Royal Council of the Military Orders in 1489 to directly intervene in the administrative and internal matters of the Orders, such as approval of personal leave, proof of nobility, granting of habits and districts, etc. In 1540, Pope Paul III promulgated a papal bull that authorised the mitigation of the canonical vows to which all the knights of the orders were subjected: the vow of chastity became a vow of matrimonial chastity, that of poverty permitted the use and disposal of the knights’ own property and that of obedience – to both the King and the Catholic faith – remained unchanged.
In the 19th Century, laws were enacted that negatively affected the Military Orders. Throughout that century, they were broken up on several occasions, but their canonical nature with regard to the Holy See remained untouched. In light of the laws regarding confiscation of the Church’s and Military Orders’ properties, Pope Pius IX agreed to economic compensation from the Spanish State and Church and the creation in 1875 of the “Priorato Nullius” of the Military Orders with seats in Ciudad Real, which was thus segregated from the archbishopric of Toledo. The first Bishop-Prior arrived to find a city lacking an appropriate residence for the Bishop or a seminary, and a priory church in urgent need of renovation. Therefore, the Bishop’s Palace was built in Calle Caballeros, and the seminary, which was housed at first in a building that was located on the site of the current Provincial Council offices, soon had new worthy premises as well. In the early 20th Century, renovation work on the cathedral began.
