CHAP. VI.]

ST. JOHN OP JERUSALEM.

147

of your liberties, or against your religion; and itis better for you to prefer my friendship to a mostdesolating war, in which you cannot but be con-quered, and will have to undergo the horrid penalty;for neither your own strength, nor foreign succourscan possibly avail you, nor the stoutness of yourwalls, which I will overturn from the very foun-dations. And if you choose me for your lord, Iswear by the God of heaven and earth to useneither fraud nor stratagem, and by the fourevangelists, and the multitude of prophets (thegreatest of them all being Mahomet, most worthyof adoration), and besides by my own father, andgrandfather, and this my living, sacred, august,imperial head .” 1

Yet not one of his oaths did the natives ofRhodes believe, but to them surrender seemed farworse than death. Their fear was of torture, andwhat should befall their children and females; butno disunion, not even religious, for the two patri-archs, both the Greek and the Latin , 2 were on mostfriendly terms with each other, at least in thisurgent extremity.

The commissaries chosen to examine the knights

1 Cod. Dipl. Geros., Rum. clxii., ii.—Appendix, cxcii.

2 The Latin’s name was Colossense.—St. Paul according tosome (who are in error) meant Rhodians.—Seh. Paoli: Osser-vazioni, ii. 569.

L 2