Note 108 — BOOK XVIII. (continued 2)

Le Père Hélyot, in his Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, vol. i. p. 263, expresses himself thus, when speaking of the order of St. Lazarus:—“What is very remarkable is, that they could only elect as grand-master, a leprous knight of the hospital of Jerusalem, which lasted up to the time of Innocent IV., that is to say, about the year 1253, when, having been obliged to abandon Syria, they addressed the pontiff, and represented to him, that always having had, from their foundation, a leprous knight for grand-master, they found themselves in the impossibility of electing one, because the infidels had killed all the leprous knights of their hospital at Jerusalem. For this reason, they prayed the pontiff to allow them to elect, for the future, as grand-master, a knight who had not been attacked by leprosy, and who might be in good health; and the pope referred them to the bishop of Trascate, that he might accord them this permission, after having examined if that could be done according to the will of God. This is reported by Pope Pius IV., in his bull of the year 1565, so extended and so favourable to the order of St. Lazarus, by which he renews all the privileges and all the gifts that his predecessors had granted to it, and gives it fresh ones. Here is what he says of the election these knights ought to make of a leprous grand-master:—Et Innocentius IV., per eum accepto, quod licet de antiquâ approbatâ et hactenùs pacificè observatâ consuetudine obtentum esset, ut miles leprosus domûs Sancti-Lazari Hierosolymitani in ejus magistrum assumeretur; verùm quia ferè omnes milites leprosi dictæ domûs ab inimicis fidei miserabiliter interfecti fuerant, et hujusmodi consuetudo nequiebat commodè observari: idcircò tunc episcopo Tusculano per quasdam commiserat, ut, si sibi secundùm Deum visum foret expedire fratribus ipsis licentiam, aliquem militem sanum et fratribus prædictæ domûs Sancti-Lazari in ejus magistrum (non obstante consuetudine hujusmodi de cætero eligendi) auctoritate apostolicâ concederet.