Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/426

394 Many additions were made to the fortifications and armament of St. Angelo. The ramparts surrounding the Bourg, now begin- fling to grow from a poor little village into a considerable town, were strengthened by the addition of detached works. The fortifications of the Città Notabile were restored and increased, and its protection intrusted to an ample garrison. At Tripoli similar precautions were taken. A vessel having arrived from England laden with artillery, the present of Henry VIII. to the Order, which has been already mentioned, a portion of its cargo was despatched thither to add to the armament of that exposed station.

A chapter-general was at this time convened in which were decreed several reforms rendered highly necessary by the degeneracy of the fraternity. A material change had been for a long time past gradually developing itself in the feelings and aspirations of those who sought to assume the badge of the White Cross. The religious element, which had for so long predominated in the constitution of the brethren and in the lives of the members, had almost entirely died out. True, there was the same outward observance of the ceremonies of their creed. Each postulant still took the three monastic vows. He was still told to consider himself a poor soldier of Jesus Christ, and to dedicate his life to the defence of his faith and the relief of the poor. These exhortations, however, had gradually come to be regarded in the light of a mere form. The knights of St. John had, on so many a battle-field and behind so many a well-defended rampart, earned for themselves a glorious reputation, that the badge of their founder, the White Cross of Gerard—originally assumed as a token of Christian humility, and an emblem of the eight cardinal virtues—was now coveted as a decoration which marked its wearer as a member of one of the proudest and most celebrated institutions of the age. Worldly aspirations and worldly dignities had long since taken the place of those celestial rewards which in earlier times had been the object of the postulants’ ambition. It is true, that whenever an attack was made either on their religion or their home, the knights of St. John were still ready to shed the last drop of their blood in defence of both, but the religious enthusiasm which had nerved so many of their predecessors during the desperate struggles of the twelfth