Order of the Brazen Cross

Overview

The Holy Military Order of the Brazen Cross or simply the Order of the Brazen Cross is a religious military order in service to the Reformist Church and tributary to the kings of Rafia (since 1209).
It is a divergent order from the old Order of the Flaming Heart (founded 958), when after the Reformationist Schism of 1253 this last one stayed on the side of the Pontiff and the Brazen Cross Knights, then known as Secessionist Knights of the Cross, took the side of the northern abbots, forming thence the Order of the Flaming Cross, later renamed to it's current designation.

History

Until 1253

The Order of the Flaming Heart was founded in Hera in the year 958 A.P.H. during the Second Holy War as an order of militant knights of the faith and monks-at-arms to combat the pagan infidels of the North (Nordic pantheonists). They fought in many battles (including Mardel Bridge, Salbine, Varelon Ridge, among others) and continued to serve the South's traditional pantheonist faith and it's pontiff until the Reformationist Schism of 1253, when it split into factions.

The Schism

The Order of the Flaming Heart had been mostly united under the same faith, although starting roughly in the 1190s, this began to change. The faith in divergent, minor deities (saints) and the abandonment of all belief in the secondary, though main ones in favour of centralized belief in a unitary diety, Deus (or The God), began to gain on many members of the order, which caused division among it's members.
The Carta Magnum Oficium et Fides Deistis Bull was signed by the Pontiff, Magnus VII in 1226, with aims to combat the divergent faiths. This bull, in summary, described the way any believers in this new faith in saints and who relinquished any belief for any established Gods were to henceforth be considered a "traitor and nothing more". The punishment for holding these beliefs ranged from imprisonment, torture to even death. The efficiency of this act is heavily debated by historians, though the consensus rests in the probable fact that it accomplished very little in the way of stopping conversion rates to the divergent faiths in the long-term, although some moderate signs of success were observed in the shorter term.
In 1253, the division reached it's climax, when Attila of Guerry marched on the seat of the Pontiff in Heaveren and attempted to dethrone him, with faint success, then promptly exiting Heaveren with his army and moving to Rafia, where he proclaimed the Reformist Church of the Holy Lord. With the church split, so did the order split as well, with most of it's members moving to Rafia and embracing the Reformist faith, while the rest stayed in the south and stuck by the Pontiff. The reformist knights came to be known as the "Secessionist Knights of the Cross", after their belief in St. Basil, who had been crucified by the church, though they later renamed themselves "The Holy Military Order of Glorious Saint Basil and of His Flaming Cross" or "Order of the Flaming Cross" for short.
They swore fealty to the Council of the Northern Abbots, and after they came to serve the queen of Rafia, Ellhyanore the Bloody, so did the order bend their knee to do the same.