Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/186

160 gradually reduced. Constituted originally as a religious establishment, it owed its earliest organization wholly to his fiat, and during the first two centuries of its existence appears never to have disputed his authority. Indeed, it was to the fostering approval of so many successive pontiffs that it was indebted for the first development of that power into which it subsequently expanded. As by the expression of his approval the successor of St. Peter gave to his protégés a support which carried them triumphantly through all the difficulties of their position, so there is but little doubt that the exercise of the same power on his part in an antagonistic direction would have been equally successful in crushing them. Time, however, gradually brought great changes in their relative position. Many rude shocks diminished the extent of the Pope’s authority, whilst each succeeding generation augmented the influence of the military friars. Step by step they gradually shook off the dictatorial yoke of papal domination until eventually his sovereign authority became little more than nominal, and the Grand-Master ruled over the island in which his fraternity was domiciled with absolute power.

The rules of the institution do not appear to have contemplated the exercise of autocratic sway by its chief over the members of his Order; being, on the contrary, framed so as to mark the extreme jealousy with which his authority was to be limited. Even after the possession of the island of Malta had established him in the rank of a sovereign prince, and entitled him to maintain envoys in all the principal courts of Europe, his power over the members of his own fraternity was so limited as to render his position often very difficult to support. The doctrine laid down in the rules appears to have been that the sovereignty was vested in the Order generally, and not in the Grand-Master personally; in fact, he only ranked as the first amongst his equals, or, to quote the language used in the statutes, primes infer pares. The principle of the Habeas Corpus, so justly prized by Englishmen as the sheet anchor of their liberties, was carried out to its fullest extent in these statutes; it being illegal for the Grand-Master to detain a member in custody for a period of more than twenty-four hours without bringing him to trial. Nor did the vow of obedience taken by a candidate at his profession give his superior that power over