Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/584

550 to be expected that they would, or even could, act up to the strict letter of the vow they had taken. The statutes of the later times do not, therefore, attempt to forbid a dereliction of chastity; they content themselves with checking all open display of immorality. “It has been very rightly ordained that no member of our brotherhood, of whatever position or rank he may be, shall be permitted to support, maintain, or consort with women of loose character either in their own houses or abroad. If any one, abandoning his honour and reputation, shall be so barefaced as to act in opposition to this regulation, and shall render himself publicly infamous, after having been three times warned by his superior to desist from this vice, we decree, after the expiration of forty days from the date of his first warning, he shall, if a commander, be deprived of his commandery, and if a simple brother of the convent, he shall lose his seniority. If any member of our Order shall be so barefaced as to recognize and publicly to adopt as his own a child who may be born to him from an illegitimate connection (such as is not recognized by law), and attempt to bestow on him the name of his family, we decree that he shall never hold either office, benefice, or dignity in our Order. We further decree that all associates of loose women who may be ranked as incestuous, sacrilegious, and adulterers shall be declared incapable of possessing any property or of holding any office or dignity in our Order. And we designate as an associate of loose women not only those who are notorious evil livers and have had judgment passed on them as such, but also any one who, without sense of shame or fear of God, and forgetting his profession, shall entertain and support a woman of doubtful character, notorious for her bad life and evil conversation, or who shall reside with her constantly.”

These statutes were so ambiguously worded, and left so many loopholes for evasion, that it is not surprising they should gradually have become a dead letter. The presence of a large number of women of light character within the convent became a public scandal at a very early period, and many Grand-Masters, even during the residence of the Order at Rhodes, sought by the most rigorous measures to mitigate the evil. Their efforts were, however, fruitless, and as the fraternity lost more and more of the