Concesión del Toisón de Oro a herejes, damas y hasta enemigos de la Iglesia

A propósito del Toisón de Oro, este texto en inglés trata de la historia de la rama española del Toisón en los últimos tres siglos. Al heredarla los Borbones –tras hacerse con la Corona española- los Habsburgo austriacos crearon otra rama, que se extinguió con el imperio.

Destacan dos sucesos. Uno de ellos la concesión por vez primera a no católicos. El agraciado fue el Duque de Wellington. El Rey pidió opinión la Papa, quien la concedió distinguiendo ente Orden canónica y “orden civil”, con buen criterio:

Ferdinand in confirming the nomination of Wellington made the first non-Catholic knight, an appointment soon followed by that of the Russian Minister Dmitri Pavlovitch Tatischev. Not wishing to contravene the terms of the Papal Bulls which had at various times endowed the Order, he wrote in 1817 to the Pope asking permission to admit non-Catholic princes, explaining that as the premier Order of his Kingdom he wished to include the leading non-Catholic European sovereigns among the Companions. The Papal response, dated December 28th, 1817, said (in part):

…. And have seen that those non-Catholics who have been declared elected do not form part of the fifty-one Knights who compose the Chapter or Executive of the Order; that they may solely use the insignia of the Order as the actual knights do only as far as external acts are concerned and that always it must be insured that the number of fifty-one which constitutes the Order according to the Papal Bulls, must all be Catholic Knights. Accordingly, Your Majesty may not consider those non-Catholics elected to be members of the Order or Canonical Body that has been sanctioned by the Holy See, although they use the insignia, and you must consequently separate any such concessions or acts entirely from any connection with the aforesaid Body, we also recognize that Your Majesty does not have need of any intervention by our Apostolic authority …..”

El segundo ha sido la concesión a plebeyos y a damas:

The King has conferred the Order on four non-royal Spaniards – his former military tutor Torcuato Fernández Miranda (whom he created a Duke and gave the Fleece in 1977), the recently retired head of his household, the Marquess of Mondéjar (who also received it in 1977 and is the only living non-royal knight), the late D. Jose-Maria Peman y Pemartin and, in 1993, on the Duke of Alburquerque (who died in 1994). He has also conferred it on several reigning sovereigns, including the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and King Albert II of the Belgians, although against all precedent both had received the Habsburg Order from the Archduke Otto. The present King has further amended the original constitution of the Order by the admission of three ladies, without promulgating a formal amendment to the statutes, namely Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margarethe II of Denmark and, in 1988, Queen Elisabeth II of Great Britain.