Order of the Golden Fleece

The Order of the Golden Fleece was a chivalric order founded in 1430 by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella of Portugal, and it quickly became one of the most prestigious and exclusive orders of knighthood in Christian Europe. Membership was deliberately kept small, originally limited to twenty-four knights beside the sovereign and later expanded somewhat, drawing from the highest ranks of European nobility and serving both as a mark of honour and as a political instrument binding powerful lords to the Burgundian, and later Habsburg, ruling house. The order passed to the House of Habsburg through the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1477, and after the division of the Habsburg inheritance between its Spanish and Austrian branches in the early eighteenth century, a prolonged dispute over the grand mastership led to the order effectively splitting into separate Spanish and Austrian branches, each continuing to appoint its own knights. Both branches survive today as dynastic honours, making the Order of the Golden Fleece one of the oldest chivalric orders still actively conferred.