The Distinguished Order of the Golden Fleece is a Catholic order of chivalry founded in 1430 in Bruges by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to celebrate his marriage to Isabella of Portugal. Today, two branches of the order exist: the Spanish Fleece and the Austrian Fleece. The current grand masters are King Felipe VI of Spain, head of the House of Bourbon-Anjou and Karl von Habsburg, head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. The Grand Chaplain of the Austrian branch is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna.
The separation of the two existing branches took place as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession of 1701–1714. The grand master of the order, Charles II of Spain (a Habsburg), had died childless in 1700, and so the right to succeed to the throne of Spain (and incidentally to become the Sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece) initiated a continental conflict. On one hand, Charles, brother of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I, claimed the Spanish crown as an agnatic member of the House of Habsburg, which had inherited the Burgundian titles and had held the Spanish throne for almost two centuries. However, the late king of Spain had named Philip of Bourbon, his sister's grandchild, as his successor in his will. After the conclusion of the war in 1714, the European powers recognized Philip of Bourbon as King of Spain, but the old Burgundian Habsburg territories became the Austrian Netherlands (1714–1797), and with them went the Treasure of the Order and its archive. The two dynasties, the Bourbons of Spain and the Habsburgs of Austria, have ever since continued heading the separate orders of the Golden Fleece.
The Golden Fleece, particularly the Spanish branch, became one of the most prestigious and historic orders of chivalry in the world. De Bourgoing wrote in 1789 that "the number of knights of the Golden Fleece is very limited in Spain, and this is the order, which of all those in Europe, has best preserved its ancient splendour". Each collar is solid gold and is estimated to be worth around €50,000 as of 2018, making it the most expensive chivalrous order. Current knights of the Spanish order include Emperor Emeritus Akihito of Japan, former Tsar Simeon of Bulgaria, and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, among 13 others. Knights of the Austrian branch include King Philippe of Belgium, his father former King Albert II, and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, among 22 others.
Contents
Origin
The Order of the Golden Fleece was established on 10 January 1430, by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (on the occasion of his wedding to Isabella of Portugal), in celebration of the prosperous and wealthy domains united in his person that ran from Flanders to Switzerland. The jester and dwarf Madame d'Or performed at the creation of the order of the Golden Fleece in Bruges. It is restricted to a limited number of knights, initially 24 but increased to 30 in 1433, and 50 in 1516, plus the sovereign. The order's first king of arms was Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy. It received further privileges unusual to any order of knighthood: the sovereign undertook to consult the order before going to war; all disputes between the knights were to be settled by the order; at each chapter the deeds of each knight were held in review, and punishments and admonitions were dealt out to offenders, and to this the sovereign was expressly subject; the knights could claim as of right to be tried by their fellows on charges of rebellion, heresy and treason, and Charles V conferred on the order exclusive jurisdiction over all crimes committed by the knights; the arrest of the offender had to be by warrant signed by at least six knights, and during the process of charge and trial he remained not in prison but in the gentle custody of his fellow knights. The order, conceived in an ecclesiastical spirit in which mass and obsequies were prominent and the knights were seated in choirstalls like canons, was explicitly denied to heretics, and so became an exclusively Catholic honour during the Reformation. The officers of the order were the chancellor, the treasurer, the registrar, and the king of arms (herald, toison d'or).
The Duke's stated reason for founding this institution had been given in a proclamation issued following his marriage, in which he wrote that he had done so "for the reverence of God and the maintenance of our Christian Faith, and to honor and exalt the noble order of knighthood, and also ... to do honor to old knights; ... so that those who are at present still capable and strong of body and do each day the deeds pertaining to chivalry shall have cause to continue from good to better; and ... so that those knights and gentlemen who shall see worn the order ... should honor those who wear it, and be encouraged to employ themselves in noble deeds ...".
The Order of the Golden Fleece was defended from possible accusations of prideful pomp by the Burgundian court poet Michault Taillevent, who asserted that it was instituted:
Translated into English:
Spanish order
With the absorption of the Burgundian lands into the Spanish Habsburg empire, the sovereignty of the order passed to the Habsburg kings of Spain, where it remained until the death of the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, Charles II, in 1700. He was succeeded as king by Philip V, a Bourbon. The dispute between Philip and the Habsburg pretender to the Spanish throne, the Archduke Charles, led to the War of the Spanish Succession, and also resulted in the division of the order into Spanish and Austrian branches. In either case the sovereign, as Duke of Burgundy, writes the letter of appointment in French.
The controversial conferral of the Fleece on Napoleon and his brother Joseph, while Spain was occupied by French troops, angered the exiled king of France, Louis XVIII, and caused him to return his collar in protest. These, and other awards by Joseph, were revoked by King Ferdinand VII on the restoration of Bourbon rule in 1813. Napoleon created by order of 15 August 1809 the Order of the Three Golden Fleeces, in view of his sovereignty over Austria, Spain and Burgundy. This was opposed by Joseph I of Spain and appointments to the new order were never made.
In 1812, the acting government of Spain conferred the Fleece upon the Duke of Wellington, an act confirmed by Ferdinand on his resumption of power, with the approval of Pope Pius VII. Wellington therefore became the first Protestant to be honoured with the Golden Fleece. It has subsequently also been conferred upon non-Christians, such as Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand.
There was another crisis in 1833 when Isabella II became Queen of Spain in defiance of Salic Law that did not allow women to become heads of state. Her right to confer the Fleece was challenged by Spanish Carlists.
Sovereignty remained with the head of the Spanish House of Bourbon during the republican (1931–1939) and Francoist (1939–1975) periods, and is held today by the present king of Spain, Felipe VI. There is confusion towards the conferral of the Fleece on Francisco Franco in 1972. The order was illegally offered by Infante Jaime to him on the occasion of his son's wedding to the dictator's granddaughter, Carmen. Franco kindly refused the order on the basis of legitimacy, stating that the Golden Fleece could only be granted by the reigning king of Spain. Moreover, the right of conferral was in any case a prerogative of Jaime's younger brother, Infante Juan, as designated heir to the throne of Spain by his father Alfonso XIII.
Grand masters of the order
Charles I (1516–1556)
Philip II (1556–1598)
Philip III (1598–1621)
Philip IV (1621–1665)
Charles II (1665–1700)
Philip V (1700–1724)
Louis I (1724–1724)
Philip V (1724–1746)
Ferdinand VI (1746–1759)
Charles III (1759–1788)
Charles IV (1788–1808)
Ferdinand VII (1808–1833)
Isabella II (1833–1870)
Amadeo I (1870–1873)
Alfonso XII (1874–1885)
Alfonso XIII (1886–1941)
Juan, Count of Barcelona (1941–1977)
Juan Carlos I (1977–2014)
Felipe VI (2014–present)
Living members
Below is a list of the living knights and dames, in chronological order and, in the first sets of brackets, the years when they were inducted into the order:
Juan Carlos I of Spain (1941), as crown prince; king (1975–2014)
Felipe VI of Spain (1981), as crown prince; king (2014–present)
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden (1983), as king (1983–present)
Akihito of Japan (1985), as crown prince; emperor (1989–2019)
Beatrix of the Netherlands (1985), as queen (1980–2013)
Margrethe II of Denmark (1985), as queen (1972–2024)
Albert II of Belgium (1994), as king (1993–2013)
Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (2004), as prime minister of Bulgaria (2001–2005); tsar (1943–1946)
Henri of Luxembourg (2007), as grand duke (2000–2025)
Javier Solana (2010), a Spanish politician
Víctor García de la Concha (2010), as director of the Royal Spanish Academy (1998–2010); director of the Cervantes Institute (2012–2017)
Nicolas Sarkozy (2011), as president of France and co-prince of Andorra (2007–2012)
Enrique V. Iglesias (2014), an economist of Spain and Uruguay
Leonor of Spain (2015, presented 2018), as crown princess (2014–present)
Austrian order
The problem of female inheritance was avoided on the accession of Maria Theresa in 1740, as sovereignty of the order passed not to herself but to her husband, Francis.
The entire treasure of the order, which also includes the "Ainkhürn sword" of the last duke of Burgundy and the centuries-old oath cross, which is said to contain a splinter of the True Cross, is located in the Vienna Treasury and, like the archive and the old insignia, is the property of the Habsburg branch.
Upon the collapse of the Austrian monarchy after the First World War, King Albert I of Belgium requested that the sovereignty and treasure of the order be transferred to him as the ruler of the former Habsburg lands of Burgundy. This claim was seriously considered by the victorious Allies at Versailles but was eventually rejected due to the intervention of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who took possession of the property of the order on behalf of the dethroned emperor, Charles I of Austria.
Nazi Germany classified the order as hostile to the state and tried to confiscate the entire treasure of the order including the archive. Hitler categorically rejected the centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and let live" in relation to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages, and also wanted to seize significant works of art that are unique worldwide. Hitler intended to decide on the use of the assets after they had been confiscated. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, Max von Hohenberg, Habsburg representative in the affairs of the order, was immediately sent to a concentration camp.
After the Second World War in 1953, the Republic of Austria continued to confirm to the House of Habsburg the right to the order on its territory, in particular that the order has its own legal personality. As a result, the order itself remains the owner of the treasure and the archive. The treasure includes the oath cross from 1401/02, the golden collar of office for the herald (1517), collars of the order (approx. 1560), vestments and historical relics.
Sovereignty of the Austrian branch remains with the head of the House of Habsburg, which was handed over on 20 November 2000 by Otto von Habsburg to his elder son, Karl von Habsburg.
Grand masters of the order
Emperor Charles VI (1711–1740)
Emperor Francis I (1740–1765)
Emperor Joseph II (1765–1790)
Emperor Leopold II (1790–1792)
Emperor Francis II (1792–1835)
Emperor Ferdinand I (1835–1848)
Emperor Franz Joseph I (1848–1916)
Emperor Charles I (1916–1922)
Archduke Otto von Habsburg (1922–2011)
Archduke Karl von Habsburg (2011–present)
Living members
Below a list of the names of the known living knights, followed in parentheses by the date, when known, of their induction into the order:
Franz, Duke of Bavaria (1960)
Archduke Karl of Austria (1961) – sovereign (grand master) of the order since 2000
Archduke Andreas Salvator of Austria, Prince of Tuscany
Archduke Carl Salvator of Austria, Prince of Tuscany
Prince Lorenz of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este
Archduke Michael of Austria
Archduke Michael Salvator of Austria, Prince of Tuscany
Archduke Georg of Austria
Archduke Carl Christian of Austria
King Albert II of Belgium
Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein
Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza
Archduke Joseph of Austria (born 1960)
The Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg
Mariano Hugo, Prince of Windisch-Graetz
Baron Johann Friedrich of Solemacher-Antweiler
Kubrat, Prince of Panagyurishte (2002)
Philippe of Belgium (2008)
Officers
Chancellor: Count Alexander von Pachta-Reyhofen (since 2005)
Grand chaplain: Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna (since 1992)
Chaplain: Count Gregor Henckel-Donnersmarck (since 2007)
Treasurer: Baron Wulf Gordian von Hauser (since 1992)
Registrar: Count Karl-Philipp von Clam-Martinic (since 2007)
King of Arms: Baron Georg von Frölichsthal (since 2022)
Chapters of the order
Source: Livre du toison d'or, online, fols. 4r-66r
Privileges
Knights of the order enjoy a variety of privileges. Some privileges are shared, while others differ due to split of the order in 1700 and they henceforth developed their own characteristics. The Spanish order has developed into a state order of merit, while the Austrian order has remained a Catholic order of knighthood with a strong bond of brotherhood.
Heraldry
Jean-Baptiste Christyn (1630–1690) records and codifies the heraldic privilege of golden helmets during his time as Chancellor of Brabant (1687–1690). He was considered a leading authority on heraldic law in the Habsburg Netherlands by contemporaries, and discusses it in his work Jurisprudentia heroica (part 2, page 19).
The privilege of the golden helmets was based on the practices observed at the chapters of the order.
Form of address
The bond of knights within the brotherhood was enforced with the privilege to address each other in writing and when greeting one and another in person with "Mon Cousin."
Holy Mass and altar
Pope Pius X reestablished in 1913 the privilege that Knights of the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece have the right to deem a location as worthy for holding a Holy Mass. The celebration of a Holy Mass on non-sacred ground, e.g. at home, is usually only possible with the permission of the local bishop. Knights may do so without asking for permission.
A derivative privilege from the above-mentioned right is the possibility to possess and use a personal, portable altar. This enables a knight to raise an altar wherever he deems it suitable in order to hold a Holy Mass. This privilege stems from the medieval and annulled right to hold the Holy Mass at the sick-bed of a knight.