It is somewhat remarkable that the same century which saw the foundation of the orders of the Hospital and Temple also witnessed one which, although bound by the rule of St. Augustin, and subjected to the ordinary vows of obedience, property in common, and inability to return to the world, yet allowed to its members the option of selecting either marriage or celibacy, and even of contracting second marriages. This was the Spanish Order of St. James of the Sword. What we have seen of the want of respect paid by the Spanish church to asceticism may lessen surprise at the founding of an order based upon such regulations, yet it is difficult to understand how so great a violation of established principles could be sanctioned by Alexander III., who confirmed the order in 1175,[899] or by Innocent III. and Honorius III., who formally approved its privileges.[900] Perhaps these military vassals of the pope, to whom they were bound in implicit obedience as their head, were too important a source of power and influence to be lightly rejected. Perhaps, also, Honorius III. may have quieted his conscience when, in confirming their charters in 1223, he commanded that their principal care and watchfulness should be devoted to seeing that those who were married preserved conjugal fidelity, and that those who elected a single life maintained inviolable chastity. The example was one of evil import in the Peninsula. The Council of Valladolid in 1322 felt itself obliged to denounce under severe penalties the practice of dowering children with the possessions of the community, in which the military orders followed the precedent set them by the church.[901] During the universal license of the fifteenth century, when ascetic vows became a mockery, and the profligacy of those who took them exposed all such observances to contempt, the military orders formed no exception to the general shamelessness. In 1429 the council of Tortosa deplored the destruction and waste of the temporal possessions of the religious knights from the general concubinage in which they indulged, and to effect a cure it promulgated regulations of peculiar severity, threatening with a liberal hand the penalties of excommunication and degradation.[902] These proved as powerless as usual, and not long after a more sensible remedy was adopted by Eugenius IV. when he released the ancient and renowned Order of Calatrava from the obligation of celibacy, for reasons which would have led him to extend the privilege of marriage to the whole church, had the purity of ecclesiastics been truly the object of the rule. He recounts with sorrow the disorderly lives of the knights, and, quoting the text which says that it is better to marry than to burn, he grants the privilege of marriage because he deems it preferable to live with a wife than with a mistress.[903] How could he avoid applying his own reasoning to the church in general?