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M.Besant E.Walter
Jerusalem, the city of Herod and Saladin
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M.Besant E.Walter
Jerusalem, the city of Herod and Saladin
page 362
what he had to say. . . . The ladies of Jerusalem took cauldrons and placed them before Mount Calvary, and having filled them with cold water, put their daughters in them up to the neck, and cut off their tresses, and threw them away. Monks, priests, and nuns went barefooted round the walls of the city, bearing in procession the said Cross before them. The priests bore on their heads the Corpus Domini, but' our Lord Jesus Christ would not listen to any prayer that they made, by reason of the stinking luxury and adultery in the city which prevented any prayer from mounting up to God. . . . When Balian came to Saladin, he said that the Christians would give up the city if their fives were saved. Saladin replied that he spoke too late ; but he added, ' Sir Balian, for the love of God and of yourself, I will take pity on them in a manner, and, to save my oath (that he would only take them by force), they shall give themselves up to me as if they were taken by force, and I will leave them their property to do as they please, but their bodies shall be my prisoners, and he who can ransom himself shall do so, and he who cannot shall be my prisoner.' ' Sire,' said Balian, 'what shall be the price of the ransom?' Saladin replied that the price should be for poor and rich alike, for a man thirty byzants, for every woman and every child, ten. And whoever could not pay this sum was to be a slave. . . .
" Balian went back with these hard terms, and during the night prevailed upon the Master of the Knights Hospitallers to give up, for the ransom of the poor, all that was left of the treasure of King Henry of England. And the next day he obtained of Saladin a. reduction of the ransom by one half.
" Then said Balian to Saladin, ' Sire, you have fixed the ransom of the rich ; fix now that of the. poor, for there are twenty thousand who cannot pay the ransom of a single man. For the love of God put in a little con
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