On Friday 22 November at 7:00 p.m. the books “Santa María de Montesa” and “La Orden de Montesa y San Jorge de Alfama” will be presented at Museo Parroquial de Montesa.

In the act will be, Josep Cerdà Ballester, Doctor in History and councillor of Culture and Heritage of Montesa City Council; Enric Guinot, full university Professor of Medieval History Department of Universitat de València; Yolanda Gil, Professor of History of Art Department of Universitat de València; Maite Simón, Manager of Edition of Publication of Universitat de València.

The Santa María de Montesa and San Jorge de Alfama Order was the last military order founded in the medieval in the Iberian Peninsula, result of the process of dissolution of Knights Templar between 1307 and 1312. The work “Santa María de Montesa” collects the contributions of larg majority Montesian operational researchers that represents undoubtedly the different lines of research of the las years but also they are a reflection of the generational replacement, with the incorporation of new sights about the institution, its organisation and some of the main members throughout five hundred years. This choral work, structured around five axis (“Orígenes y contexto”, “Montesa en tiempos de sus maestres”, “Montesa administrada por la Corona”, “Los montesianos” and “Más allá de Montesa moderna”), offers to the interested reader an updated panoramic of knowledge about the Valencian military order par excellence.

With the fundation of the Military Order of Santa María de Montesa, on 10 June 1317, a new military order was born in the Valencian Kingdom that assumes the goods of the Knights Templar and of the Hospital and in 1400 it is expanded to the San Jorge de Alfama Order, whose symbol is the cross. The book “La Orden de Montesa y San Jorge de Alfama” collects a group of studies with the guiding thread of montesian memory: the landscapes where history happens -castles, palaces, churches, schools...-, the artistic objects which the Knights of the Order surrounded -altarpieces, fresco paintings, sepulchres...-, the books that they published and treasured, the documents that they composed and guarded, even the languages that they speaked... The volume is only a pale reflection of some of the questions that, in the study of the goods of the Order of Montesa, still remain to be investigated and an incitement to undertake that work.