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Castilian court. Before he could complete that project, however, he was distracted
by the need to prosecute his claim to the French throne in the campaign
that ended with the triumph of English arms at Crécy and Calais. In
the meantime, he had almost certainly learned of the plans of his rival, Jehan,
duke of Normandy (son of King Philippe VI), to found what was
meant to be a confraternity of two hundred knights dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin and St. George. The latter project, possibly modeled on the
princely confraternal Order of St. Catherine recently founded in the
Dauphiny of Viennois, served as the principal model for all of the later
foundations. On his return to England, Edward founded, in place of the
new Round Table that was to have been established there with three hundred
knights, a more modest confraternity of twenty-six knights supporting
twenty-six priests and (in theory) twenty-six poor veteran knights, dedicated
to St. George alone—the traditional patron of English arms.
Although its formal name, the Order of St. George, was taken in the traditional
confraternal fashion from that of its patron saint, its secondary
name, the Order, Society, or Company of the Garter, was taken from its
badge, which probably represented the belt of knighthood and was probably
inspired by the badge of the Order of the Band. Two years later Jehan
of Normandy, having succeeded his father as King Jehan II of France, finally
established his own projected confraternity. This took essentially the
same form as its English rival, but was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin alone
under the new title Our Lady of the Noble House. Like the Castilian and
English orders, however, its name in ordinary usage, the Company of the
Star, was taken from its badge. In the following year, Loysi (or Lodovico),
king consort of peninsular Sicily or Naples, founded another order even
more closely modeled on that of his French cousin, the Company (or Order)
of the Holy Spirit of Right Desire, commonly called from its badge the
Order of the Knot.
Thus, by 1352 the full confraternal model had become the norm for
monarchical orders, although the identification of the order with its badge
rather than its patron or its seat prevailed. By the same date, the monarchical
order itself had become an adjunct of the courts of the leading monarchs
of Latin Christendom, though it remained exceptional among royal
courts in general, and unknown in Germanophone lands. The practice of
maintaining such an order was adopted in the royal court of Cyprus in
1359 (when Pierre I made the Order of the Sword he had founded earlier
a royal order) and in that of the Aragonese domain at some time between
1370 and 1380 (when Pere “the Ceremonious” founded the rather obscure
but apparently deviant Enterprise of St. George).
In the meantime, however, the practice had spread to the court of several
princes of less than regal rank. Amé VI de Savoie, count of Savoy and
Orders of Knighthood, Secular 393