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CHAPTER V.
TAKING THE CROSS.

CENTURY anda half had elapsed since Peter the
Hermit roused Christendom to rescue the Holy
Sepulchre, and since Godfrey and the Baldwins
established the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem ; and
in the interval, many valiant warriors— including
Richard Coeur de Lion, and Fhilip Augustus, and
Frederick Barbarossa—had gone forth to fight in its
defence; and the orders of military monks—the
Knights of the Temple, the Knigbts of St. John, the
Knights of St. Katherine of Sinai, and the Teutonic
Knights, had risen to keep watch over the safety of
the Holy Sepulchre. But the kingdom of Jerusalem,
constantly exposed to rude shocks, far from prosper-
ing, was always in danger of ruin; and in 1244 the
Holy City, its capital, was taken and sacked by a wild
race, Without a country, known as the Karismians,
who, at the sultan’s instance, slaughtered the inhab-
itants, opened the tombs, burnt the bodies of heroes,
scattered the relics of saints and martyrs .to the
wind, and perpetrated such enormities as Jerusalem,
in her varying fortunes, had never before witnessed.
When this event occurred, the Christians of the