The Order of San Jorge de Alfama was a small Catalan-Aragonese order founded in 1201 to guard a stretch of desolate coast against Muslim raiders and pirates. Chronically poor, it was united with the Order of Montesa in 1400, carrying the red cross of St George into that larger order.
The Order of San Jorge de Alfama was among the smallest of the Iberian military orders — a Catalan brotherhood founded to garrison one hard, exposed piece of coast under the banner of St George. It never grew large or rich, and its story is one of poverty and endurance rather than conquest.
Its lasting importance is heraldic and institutional: when it merged with the Order of Montesa in 1400, it carried the red cross of St George into that order, where the saint’s cross has been associated with Valencia and Catalonia ever since.
In 1201 King Peter II of Aragon granted the desolate site of Alfama, between the Ebro delta and Tarragona, to a small brotherhood of knights under the patronage of St George. Their task was to hold the coast against the Muslim raiders and pirates who threatened Aragonese shipping.
The place was so barren and dangerous that the order struggled to survive there at all. It never attracted the endowments of the great orders, and its brothers lived close to the edge of viability.
By the end of the 14th century the order was too weak to continue alone. In 1400, by a bull of the Avignon pope Benedict XIII, it was united with the Order of Montesa, the Aragonese heir of the Templars.
Montesa took on Alfama’s red cross of St George — in time combining it with its own — so that the little coastal order lived on inside the larger one. The cross of St George remained the badge of the Aragonese military establishment.