The tradition of loyalty to the patron saint of chivalry, Saint George, was long established in Germany, and various Bavarian Princes who in the fifteenth century had made pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulcher and were there invested as knights had each made a promise to Saint George. Maximilian's son, the Elector Karl-Albrecht, gave 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 established its statutes on March 28, 1729 as a Military Order of Chivalry for Roman Catholic noblemen.