CHAP. IV.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

225

engaged to receive some scraps of bye-laws instead,on pretence of their forming the substance of thefounder’s rule, and putting them together andascribing all the merit to another than Gerard,whom they did not mention at all. Some ignorant,and perhaps not ill-intentioned persons, procuredan analogous bull; which, however, the Pontiffgave rather doubtfully, so that Paoli, on inspectionof the original, suspects it, from the context, to bein part falsified by a paragraph anciently foistedin, not agreeing with what precedes, though withink of a similar colour and identity of writing,and probably in the drawing up of the documentformally for his Holiness to sign ; 1 by which meansthe imposture was got up, and superseded thetruth during several ages; and now these documen-tary proofs overthrow the entire production; but allis of little importance at present. The very dressof the knights is not mentioned in those scraps, ashaving been determined long before. Nor were thefemales separated as nuns (which became the caseafterwards), but joined the knights at table and inthe church, and by the couch of sickness, and at-tended on strangers of their own sex . 4

That Gerard died at the age of forty-four is no ways

1 P. A. Paoli : 213 and 214.

2 P. A. Paoli : 216.

VOL. I.

Q