n, as it was become insupportable. The pope then concluded his
observations, by relating to the company, the fable of the Belly and
the Members,--which the charges laid at his door suggested to him, and
which John of Salisbury gives at length in Adrian's words; a fable, by
the way, which assuredly has lost none of its point since those times,
but remains as pregnant with wisdom for the nineteenth, as for the
twelfth century.

Pope Anastasius IV. had conferred on the Knights Hospitallers of
Jerusalem the privilege of exemption from tithes on their property, in
consideration of its exclusive destination to the relief of pilgrims
and of the poor. This privilege soon gave rise to a quarrel between
the knights and the clergy of Jerusalem,---who naturally took it ill,
that so important a source of revenue, as the tithes on the
possessions of the order of St. John no doubt constituted, should thus
be stopped. The patriarch reproached the grand master with abusing his
privilege, and, at last, grew so embittered, that he drew up a charge
against him, of acts of aggression on the rights of the oriental
church,--for example: "That the Hospitallers allowed all such persons
to attend their church as were excommunicated by the bishops, and did
not even refuse such outcasts the holy sacrament and extreme unction
when dying, as well as Christian burial when dead; that when, for some
great crime, silence was imposed on the churches of a town or
district, the knights were always the first to ring their bells, and
call the people, on whom the interdict was laid, to Mass, for no other
purpose, than to get the offerings and fees, which otherwise would
accrue to the parish church; that the priests of St. John did not, on
their ordination, present themselves, according to ancient custom,
before the bishop of the diocese, to ask his permission to do duty
therein; that the bishop was never advised of the lawful or unlawful
suspension of a priest; lastly, that the knights of St. John
absolutely refused to pay tithes on their property." From these
general charges the patriarch next descended to particular ones of
affronts to himself,--for instance: "That, as the hospital of St. John
stood opposite the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the knights had
erected their buildings on a scale of magnificence superior to the
latter church, purely out of a feeling to insult the patriarch;
moreover, that, when the patriarch ascended according to traditional
us