Order of Santiago, Christian military-religious order of knights founded about 1160 in Spain for the purpose of fighting Spanish Muslims and of protecting pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. James in Santiago de Compostela (a series of routes that became known as the Camino de Santiago; Spanish: “Way of St. James”). Originally called the Order of Cáceres, after the city in which it was founded, the order assumed the Santiago name in 1171.
In 1174 King Alfonso VIII of Castile gave the knights the town of Uclés, where their central monastery was established. By 1493 the Order of Santiago had nearly 700,000 members and an annual income of 60,000 ducats, and in that year the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand II and Isabella I) took possession of the order in an effort to consolidate their own power.