rims, were freed from the
obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to interdicts even if
these were laid upon the whole country, while it was expressly
asserted that no patriarch or prelate should dare to pass any sentence
of excommunication against them. In other words, a society was called
into existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an
irreconcilable conflict of claims was the inevitable consequence. Nor
can we be surprised to find the clergy complaining that the knights,
not content with the immunities secured to themselves, gave shelter to
persons who, not belonging to their order but lying under sentence of
excommunication, sought to place themselves under their protection.

But if the Knights of the Hospital had thus their feuds with the
clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the
Templars. With different interests and different aims, the one sought
to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled
about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious
action, or withheld its aid when that aid was indispensable for the
very safety of the State. Thus we have the triple discord of the King
and his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and the
military orders in conflict with the barons and the clergy alike. Of a
state so circumstanced the words are emphatically true that a house
divided against itself shall not stand.

THE THIRD CRUSADE

A.D. 1189-1194

HENRY VON SYBEL

Although after the failure of the Second Crusade the
interest felt by the western nations in the kingdom of
Jerusalem, established by the first crusaders in 1099, had
greatly diminished, still the news of the loss of the Holy
City--which was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria,
in 1187--fell like a thunderbolt on men's minds. Once more
the flame which had kindled the mystic war of God blazed
high. "What a disgrace, what an affliction," cried Pope
Urban III, "that the jewel which the second Urban won for
Christendom should be lost by the third!" He vehemently
exhorted the Church and all her faithful to join the war,
worked day and night, prayed, sighed, and so wore himself
out with grief and anger that he sickened and died in a few
weeks. His successor, Gregory VIII, and afterward Pope
Clement III, were inspired by the same feeling and exerted
themselves for th