Just five years after the Council of Troyes had given them a formal rule, the Templars had been granted a third part of an entire kingdom. This was quite a coup. It also set a course for their future. First, it meant that for the next two centuries the Templars would have a part in the Reconquista. Second, it demonstrated the spirit of ostentatious generosity toward crusading and crusaders that was growing across Europe—without which the whole concept of the military orders would have failed.
