268 THE HISTOEY OF THE OEDEE OE [book i.

authorize clerical avarice or haughtiness; and Ray-mond was revered generally as a virtuous man, andfearing God. Nor did his knights fail to set an ex-ample in Spain; which soon created its own knight-hood in imitation. 1 If not his direct, the Spanishorders were his collateral descendants; and who cantell but they may yet rejoin their common parent,before falling into the ocean to which they all tend?Would it not be finer (and safer likewise) for themto unite and approach their ultimate delta in onebroad stream? Perhaps, conjoint strength pro-tracting their existence, they might erect anotheropulent Flanders in Lord knows what distant partof the world! Calatrava was formed in 1158; andfrom it the two others in some sort derived, that ofSaint Jago in 1175, Alcantara in 1212, 2 all threewith the Norman characteristics of singular braveryand religion. It is not of them alone, but of allhuman institutions it is true, that in a succeedingperiod they somewhat decline from the purity andfervour of the first. Nor does impartial historyaffirm that any of the six military orders were everremarkable for degeneracy. Was it not rather fortheir riches they have been attacked? 3

1 Vertot: i. 157.—Bosio : par. 1, lib. iii., anno 1159.

2 Id.: 163.—Hallam: Middle Ages, i. 279.—Mariana, etc.

3 Vertot: i. 164.