A.D . 1185. LETTER OF POPE LUCIUS. 47 time when peril or even extermination is dreaded as impending over the Christian people ; that by the arm of your royal mightiness, protection may be granted to the members of Him who has in His mercy allowed you to reach such a height of glory and pre-eminence, and has rendered you an invincible wall of defence against those who wished to impugn His name. In the first place, be it known to your serene highness how that the land of Jerusalem has been here buffeted by frequent and vexatious disputes on these matters, the special inheritance of Him who was crucified, and the place in which the mysteries were foretold of our salvation, and brought to a completion by the carrying out of that event, and of which He who comprehended all things in His death, by a peculiar privilege made it the scene ; and how being now trampled under foot, and hemmed in by the pressure of a perfidious and most abominable race, it stands nodding to its downfall ; and how, which God forbid, the Christian religion must thereby sustain irreparable loss. For Saladin, the most inhuman persecutor of that holy and fearful name, has now risen to such a pitch in the spirit of his fury, and is to such a degree putting forth all the might of his wickedness for the destruction of the people of the faithful, that, unless the vehement onset of his wickedness is checked as though by barriers placed in his path, he may entertain an assured hope and belief that Jordan will flow before his face, and that the land that was consecrated by the shedding of the vivifying blood, will be polluted by the contact of his most abominable superstitions, and the country which your glorious and noble predecessors, amid many labours and perils, rescued from the dominion of the unbelieving heathens, will once more be subjected to the accursed dominion of this most nefarious tyrant. In consequence, therefore, of the urgency of the necessity, and of the sorrows thus imminent, we have deemed it advisable, by these Apostolic letters, to entreat your mightiness, or rather with a palpitating heart to call upon you with the loudest voice, showing regard for the honor of Him who has set you upon high, and, in comparison with the name of the mighty ones who are on earth, has bestowed upon you a glorious name, in the earnestness of your pious zeal, to give your attention to the desolate state of the before-named land, and, to the end that, in those parts, the confusion of Him may be put an end to, who, in your behalf, submitted to be held in