lation of how Gozon de Dieu-Donne, subsequently
Grand Master, slew the great Serpent of Rhodes; also some account of
Jean Parisot de la Valette, forty-eighth Grand Master, who commanded at
the Siege of Malta, in which the arms of Soliman the Magnificent were
defeated after a siege lasting one hundred and thirteen days.

Amongst all those principalities and powers against which Dragut contended
during the whole of his strenuous existence, there was no one among them
which he held in so much detestation as the famous Knights of Saint John,
known in the sixteenth century as the Knights of Malta. This militant
religious organisation had its origin in Jerusalem in peculiar and
interesting circumstances. After the death of Mahomet, his followers,
burning with zeal, put forward the tenets of their religion by means of
fire and sword; during the years which followed the Hegira, 622 A.D., the
arms of the Moslems were everywhere successful, and amongst other places
conquered by them was Palestine. So great was the renown acquired by the
Emperor Charlemagne that his fame passed even into Asia, and Eginard states
that the Caliph Haroun Raschid permitted the French nation to maintain a
house in Jerusalem for the reception of pilgrims visiting the holy places,
and that, further, the Prince permitted the Patriarch of Jerusalem to send
to the Christian Emperor, on his behalf, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and
those of the Church of Calvary, together with a standard which was the sign
of the power and authority delegated by the Moslem ruler to his mighty
contemporary. In the middle of the eleventh century Italian merchants
coming from Amalfi, who had experienced the hard lot of the Christian
pilgrims in reaching the Holy City, secured from the Caliph Moustafa-Billah
a concession of land, on which they built a chapel known as St. Mary of the
Latins, to distinguish it from the Greek church already established at
Jerusalem, and also constructed a hospice in which to receive the pilgrims,
whether in sickness or in health, known as the Hospice of St. John.

In 1093 the untiring efforts of Peter the Hermit, with the support of Pope
Urbain II., brought about the first Crusade, and in 1099 we first hear of
Gerard, the founder of the Order of St. John. Gerard was a French monk who,
seeing the good work done by the Hospice of St. John, had attached himself
to it, and had at this time been working in the cause of charity, and
devoting hims