CHAP. V.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

297

reduced to eat inferior or black bread; but tbe sickgot it 'white, and of pure wheat. 1 He signs himselfJobert , in that MS. from the Vatican. Could hehave used so ill-chosen a phrase as seigneurs , almosta sneer, if applied to mendicants? But they werecrusaders—his own equals or superiors. 2

The great historian of the order says he died in1179, from pure sorrow at seeing what ruin wasimpending over the Holy Land. 3 Vertot wouldhave it he fell prisoner and was starved to death. 4Idoveden is Vertot’s authority. But, in truth,neither opinion agrees with the sure documents;for one of them shows his successor reigning; inOctober of 1177. So, Hoveden certainly mi stook,and assigned to Sir Robert, what really befel theGrand Master of the Templars. 5 During that inter-regnum of three years, from 1170 to 1173, underCastus, and Du Moulin, as locum-tenentes, differentevents took place; and in 1174, Almeric and Nou-reddin both died. 6 7 The former, by his first wife,a Courtenay, left a boy, then about thirteen, and a

1 Appendix, Yum. xxiii. 2 P. A. Paoli : 260.

3 Bosio: book i. 4 Yertot: ii. 233.

5 Cod. Dipl. Geros, i.338.—Yum. clxx.

6 Cod. Dipl. Geros, i.—Yum. cc., cci., cii. Two of those threedocuments show Almeric’s death, and his son crowned.

7 Michaud: Hist., ii. 242.