A.D . 1187. EFFOBTS FOB THE EE8CUE OF JERUSALEM. hour : and this we order to he observed from the Advent of our Lord until the Nativity of our Lord. Also, on the fourth day of the week, and on Saturdays, all persons without distinction, who are in good health are, to abstain from eating flesh. We and our brethren do also forbid to ourselves and to our households the use of flesh on the second day of the week as well, unless it shall so happen that illness or some great calamity or other evident cause shall seem to prevent the same ; trusting that by so doing God will pardon us and leave His blessing behind Him.12 This therefore we do enact to be observed, and whosoever shall be guilty of transgressing the same, is to be considered as a breaker of the fast in Lent. Given at Ferrara, on the fourth day before the calends of November." Upon this, the princes of the earth, hearing the mandates and exhortations of the Supreme Pontiff, exerted themselves with all their might for the liberation of the land of Jerusalem ; and accordingly, Frederic, the emperor of the Romans, and the archbishops, bishops, dukes, earls, and barons of his empirei assumed the sign of the cross. In like manner, after their example, great numbers of the chief men of all the nations of Christendom prepared to succour the land of Jerusalem. There was a certain clerk named master Berther, a native of Orleans, who aroused the spirits of many to assume the cross by repeating the following lines : 1 3 " In the strains of Jeremiah the ways of Sion mourn indeed, that no longer is there one upon the solemn day to visit the Holy Sepulchre, or to recall the fulfilment of that prophecy ; the prophecy in which the poet writes that from Sion the law shall go forth. Never shall the law perish there or have an avenger,74 where Christ drank of the cup of passion. The wood of the cross, the banner 7 2 Sic in original. Probably the real presence in the Eucharist is referred to. '* This Leonine dirge begins as follows :— " Juxta threnos Jeremise Vere Sion lugent viae j Quod solemni non sit die Qui sepulchrum visitet, Vel casum resuscitet Hujus prophétise." The enthusiasm of the composer seems to have considered a meaning as comparatively unnecessary in his lines. 7 4 The meaning of these lines is involved in obscurity.