CHAP. I.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

13

northern Germany—feud that degenerated to thatdegree that it embraced nearly every individual,and added new distractions to the whole regionfrom Swabia to beyond the Vistula and Alps, anddown the Adriatic. Still these amazing outragesbore with them the promise of healing, and seemedtoo violent to last long. And in proportion asnations became fervent Christians, they lookedeastwards.

Hope was in the East, and the world desirous ofhope. Many devout or repentant Germans, tiredof such turbulent scenes, set out to make whatthey perhaps did not know St. Jerome and St.Austin had made several centuries earlier—a pil-grimage to the tomb of the Founder of their Divinecreed; and though some of those scolloped travel-lers had died on the road to or at Jerusalem, andsome of them on their way back, yet some of themalso returned home, and lived to enliven it withspirit-stirring stories of adventure or holy unction.One of those pilgrims, who never reached Palestine,but died in Asia Minor, had been the very firstsovereign in Europe who made a law against fiefsbeing given to the clergy Avithout their laysuperior’s permission; so that it is not quite justto suppose all the religious palmers were foolishlyservile to the monks or priests. Knights were