Ferdinand the Catholic administered the first blow in 1482 by assuming the grand mastership of all the Spanish military orders, with the exception of the Order of Monteza. Although this seizure was, canonically speaking, an infraction of the rights of the Church, the act was legalized some decades later, when the Pope put the military orders permanently under the Spanish crown. The Portuguese orders followed suit in 1551, when the mastership was vested in the Crown of Portugal. The only remaining independent order was that of Monteza which, however, shared the same fate in 1587. Thus all the military orders of the Iberian Peninsula lost their independence in the sixteenth century. During the same century the religious nature of the orders greatly changed. True, the knights still took the monastic vows, but these vows came to have a rather indulgent interpretation. The vow of obedience meant, of course, obedience to the Crown. The vow of poverty was in most instances altered into a vow to lead an upright life (_conversio morum_). And the vow of chastity was changed into that of matrimonial chastity (_castitas conjugalis_). The knights were allowed to marry once, but the vow implied that if they committed a sin of impurity, they sinned not only against marriage but also against their vow. In the Order of Alcantara the vow of chastity was replaced by a vow to defend the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin.[23] Although the kings had taken over the title, office and privileges of grand master, the orders still enjoyed a sort of semi-autonomy, inasmuch as their possessions still belonged theoretically to the orders as such. But the ideas of the French Revolution in Portugal and the Napoleonic occupation of Spain delivered the final blow to the rapidly expiring military orders. They were completely secularized, and their properties confiscated. The Restoration almost succeeded in degrading the once proud knights of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara and Monteza to the role of “carpet knights” and court ornaments. However, not quite. There is still some difference between the military orders and the mere orders of merit of the Spanish State as, for instance, that of the Order of Isabel la Catolica. The organization of the Spanish military orders still maintains a number of elements that bestow on them a distinctly ecclesiastical flavor. (While describing the present status of the Iberian military orders we have limited ourselves to the Spanish; the Portuguese Order of Avis was suppressed by King Pedro in 1834 and the present condition of the Order of Christ will be spoken of later).