tithes—" the churches of the city were put under interdict, the brothers, ringing all their bells, and making a great clamouring, called the people to their own chapels, and received the oblations themselves ; and as for their priests, they took them without any reference whatever to the bishops." Obviously, therefore, the quarrel was entirely an ecclesiastical squabble, due to the desire of the Church to aggrandize and preserve its power. The knights, ecclesia in ecclesia, a church within a church, would not recognise in any way the authority of the patriarch. For this they had a special charter from the pope. But they would not pay tithes, and they were constantly acquiring new territories. We may have very little doubt that it was the question of tithes on the knights' lands which caused all the quarrel. But it is very remarkable to note the way in which the historian speaks of interdicts and excommunications. In the West an interdict was a great and solemn thing. In England only one interdict, at the memory of which the people shuddered for many years to come, was ever laid upon the country, while, though English kings have been excommunicated, it has happened rarely. In Palestine the custom of debarring offenders, whether towns or individuals, from the privileges of the Church, is spoken of as quite a common practice. The thing, evidently, was often happening. The patriarch was handy with his interdicts, and it must have galled him to the very soul to find that the people cared nothing for them, because they could get their con solations of the Church just as well, from the knights. One cannot, however, defend the manner in which the knights vexed the heart of the patriarch in other ways. For whenever he went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the knights, who had a great building opposite (in what is now called the Muristàn), began to ring all their bells at once, and made so great a noise that he could not be heard. And once, though one can hardly believe this, they went to the doors of the church and