Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE HOSPICES Mention of the Knights Hospitallers brings us by an easy stage to pilgrimages; it was the original purpose of this order to keep open the route to the Holy Places and to assist the sick and needy pilgrims on their journey. Some pious merchants of Amain obtained permission to found a refuge for destitute pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, about the middle of the eleventh century. At first the brethren of St. John were content with nursing the sick and relieving the hungry in the Jerusalem Hospice, and in this work of mercy earned the toleration of Saladin when he once more captured Jerusalem from the Christians. But at this time they had already taken to the sword and had become very active and trenchant members of the Church Militant. Rich in glowing romance and stirring adventure is the story of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the many expeditions to regain possession of the Holy Land. We aremore concerned with the ordinary Englishman. While the Crusade ensured the absence for a season of a goodly number of turbulent lords and truculent retainers, he was at liberty to visit the shrines of his own country. At Glastonbury was the chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea and the sacred Thorn, as venerable as anything in Christendom. Hardly less ancient was the shrine of the first martyr, St. Alban ; while at Durham he might kneel in reverence before the relics of the great St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede. St. Ethelbert of Hereford and St. Edmund at Bury St. Edmunds would equally invite the suffrages of their clients. Pilgrimages played their part, and a very important one too, in the making of England. They gave the ordinary man an opportunity to travel. A subject race of stolid peasantry, who otherwise would never have left the confines of ...