The Royal Military Order of Saint George…

The Royal Military Order of Saint George for the Defense of the Faith and the Immaculate Conception had been established by Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, in 1726 to provide for a means of honoring the nobility and recognizing distinguished civil military service.

The tradition of loyalty to Saint George, the patron saint of chivalry, has been long established in Germany and the various Bavarian Princes who had made pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulcher where they were invested as knights in the fifteenth century had all made a promise to Saint George

The decision to found the order may have been in part the consequence of the failed attempt by the Wittelsbachs to acquire the Grand Magistery of the Constantinian Order of Saint George, which by decision of the Holy See in 1701 had been recognized as pertaining to the Farnese.

Karl-Albrecht, Maximilian’s son, gives the new Order its title of Order of the Holy Knight and Martyr Saint George and the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary and its statutes on March 28, 1729, as a Military Order of Chivalry for Roman Catholic noblemen.

Its status as a Catholic order had been confirmed in a Papal Bull of 15 March, 1728, specifically comparing the Order with the Teutonic Order, which had likewise been transformed from a crusading order to an exclusive chivalric religious institution for the nobility.