Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/348

318 peasantry during the two long and perilous sieges, when their privations and sufferings were very great. The enormous increase in the population of the island during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may also be taken in proof of the beneficence of the government. The tradition remains of one admirable regulation made by the fraternity. A certain portion of the grain harvest was taken from each farmer, and stored in the granaries of the fortress. Should a siege take place, this amount of grain sufficed to feed the population who flocked into the town. Should the year pass without such misfortune, it was returned intact to the owner, and a corresponding portion of the new crop taken in its stead. The farmer, therefore, under ordinary circumstances, might consider that he merely stored a portion of his harvest in the public granaries for a twelvemonth, at the expiration of which time he received it back uninjured. By this simple means the fortress was kept permanently provisioned. There can be no question of the religious tolerance of the knights. Living as they did in the midst of a population mostly professing the Greek faith, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for them to have kept the inhabitants loyal, had they not in every way remained on good terms with the Greek priesthood. It is one of the few cases in which members of the Roman and Greek faith were cooped up within such narrow limits, and yet maintained such great friendship.

The Order coined its own money from the earliest time of its settlement in Rhodes. It is impossible now to compile a complete list of the various coins thus issued. Enough, however, remain to illustrate the subject. The silver coins consisted of crowns, ducats, and forms. The earlier ones carried on one side a cross, on the other a kneeling knight. Later on they bore the arms of the Grand-Master. Thus we find coins of Elyon de Villanova representing him kneeling before a cross; on the other side a “fleur de lisee" cross. On one side the legend Fr. Elions De Vilanora M. R., on the other Ospital S. Ion Icros: Rodi. Coins struck by D’Amboise bore on the one side the arms of that Grand-Master with the legend F. Emericus Damboise Magn. Mag. R., and on the other the lamb of St. John, with the words Agn. Dei Qui