These institutions appear to have completely answered the objects of their creation. In the earlier history of the Peninsula, we find the Christian chivalry always ready to bear the brunt of battle against the Moors. Set apart for this peculiar duty, their services in the sanctuary only tended to prepare them for their sterner duties in the field of battle, where the zeal of the Christian soldier may be supposed to have been somewhat sharpened by the prospect of the rich temporal acquisitions, which the success of his arms was sure to secure to his fraternity. For the superstitious princes of those times, in addition to the wealth lavished so liberally on all monastic institutions, granted the military orders almost unlimited rights over the conquests achieved by their own valor. In the sixteenth century, we find the order of St. James, which had shot up to a pre-eminence above the rest, possessed of eighty-four commanderies, and two hundred inferior benefices. This same order could bring into the field, according to Garibay, four hundred belted knights, and one thousand lances, which, with the usual complement of a lance in that day, formed a very considerable force. The rents of the mastership of St. James amounted, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, to sixty thousand ducats, those of Alcantara to forty-five thousand, and those of Calatrava to forty thousand. There was scarcely a district of the Peninsula which was not covered with their castles, towns, and convents. Their rich commanderies gradually became objects of cupidity to men of the highest rank, and more especially the grand-masterships, which, from their extensive patronage, and the authority they conferred over an organized militia pledged to implicit obedience, and knit together by the strong tie of common interest, raised their possessors almost to the level of royalty itself. Hence the elections to these important dignities came to be a fruitful source of intrigue, and frequently of violent collision. The monarchs, who had anciently reserved the right of testifying their approbation of an election by presenting the standard of the order to the new dignitary, began personally to interfere in the deliberations of the chapter. While the pope, to whom a contested point was not unfrequently referred, assumed at length the prerogative of granting the masterships in administration on a vacancy, and even that of nomination itself, which, if disputed, he enforced by his spiritual thunders. [40]