Like most other knights, when these knights of the Holy Sepulchre had completed their service in the Holy Land they went back home to Europe. And like all other knights—with the exception only of those of Saint John—after the fall of Acre they left the Orient for good. Back in Europe some knights of the Holy Sepulchre may have retired into monasteries, as many a battle-weary knight did, perhaps to fulfill a vow. Small groups of knights belonging to the same district may have founded convents. As a matter of fact, mention is made of several religious communities of the Holy Sepulchre in Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and elsewhere. But it is here that the critics insist that such communities were not formed by knights, like those of the Templars and the Knights of Saint John, but by canons and even by canonesses. These communities were probably independent of one another, like Benedictine abbeys, but it could be expected that they would be designated as belonging to the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. It would follow also that, conformable to the customs of the time and under the influence of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre who naturally would take an interest in those convents, the epithet “military” was added to the term “order.” Such seems precisely to have happened, for one of the first, or at least one of the most famous of these institutions, established at Saragosa in 1276 and occupied by women, came to bear the sonorous title: “Real Monastero de Canonesas Comendadores de la Orden Militar del Santo Sepulcro”—The Royal Monastery of the Canonesses-Commanders of the Military Order of the Holy Sepulchre. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries the monasteries and convents of the Holy Sepulchre seemed to have passed through a crisis. Pope Innocent VIII issued the bull _Cum sollerti meditatione_ on March 28, 1489, whereby all the members of the order and its possessions were incorporated in the Order of Saint John, and the latter’s grand master still bears the title of the Master of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. But many of those concerned objected; they stayed the execution of the decree until the pope died, and remonstrated with his successor, Alexander VI. Alexander, in a bull of Aug. 13, 1496, declared himself grand master of the order, but by then it was an empty title, because the order soon dissolved into several groups. Emperor Maximilian obtained from Alexander in 1497 the independence of the houses of the Holy Sepulchre and made the prior of Miechow the master general; the king of Spain was the recipient of the same favor from Leo X in 1512; and the Duke of Nevers became the head of the French group. In this way the Order of the Holy Sepulchre came to be divided into three national branches, each closely connected with the ruling dynasty.