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KXIGHT COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE. 395
voured grass ; the starving fought together like dogs
for the little bread baked at the ovens ; they gnawed
the bones that had already been gnawed by the dogs
and noblemen, ashamed to beg, were known to steal
bread.*****
Sickness, also, caused by the rains and the intense
heat, decimated the Christian forces. The wounded
German soldiers, whom none of the others under-
stood, could not make known their sickness nor their
necessities. Certain German nobles from the cities
of Bremen and Lubec, who had arrived at Acre by
sea, moved by the miseries of their countrymen,
took the sails of their ships, and made them a large
tent, in which for a time they placed the wounded
Germans, and tended them with great kindness.
Forty nobles of the same nation united with them,
and established a kind of hospital in the midst of
the camp ;
and this noble and charitable association,
like the Knights of the Temple and of St. John of
Jerusalem, soon and insensibly became a new Hos-
pitaller and Military Order. This was in the year
1191. In 1192, Pope Celestin III., at the request of
the Emperor Henry VI., solemnly approved of the
Order, by his bull of the 23d of February. He pre-
scribed, as regulations for the new Knights, those of
St. Augustine ; and for special statutes, in all that
regarded the poor and the sick, those of the Hos-
pitallers of St. John ;
in regard to military discipline,
;