For a thousand years nothing of importance was added to human knowledge, and mental confusion reigned supreme. At the end of this period all the original teachings of Christ were forgotten, and after passing through the hands and tongues of fanatics or deluded and ignorant men, Christianity was left with the semblance of a monotheistic basis on which had been crudely built up certain doctrines borrowed from Egyptian and Grecian sources, among which may be mentioned the Trinity, Immaculate Conception, Resurrection and Ascension, as well as certain practices like that of the Lord's Supper, plainly borrowed from pagan customs. There was in all this so much to challenge belief, and so much at first unacceptable to minds not trained to believe it, that, in order to be effective their propaganda had to be carried on with the sword. Moreover to the Christian mystic, anxious to unify himself with the hidden, unknown deity the idea of Moslem unbelievers in possession of the high places which they regarded with such reverence, was simply intolerable and repugnant beyond description. Hence the Crusades undertaken in order to regain the Sepulchre; in which by Papal decree the Monks joined the Knights, and under command of emperors and the greatest generals of their day, made temporary conquest of the Holy Land, founding the kingdom of Jerusalem. The immediate outcome of the general movement was that alliance, made wise and even necessary, when theology and chivalry joined hands, from which resulted the foundation of such orders as those mentioned at the beginning of this paper. These allies of which they were composed, all took the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and for a time kept them, until the possession of power and the acquisition of wealth brought their inevitably accompanying temptations. Each of these orders and many of the others passed through the successive stages of poverty, with meekness and constant benefaction, succeeded sooner or later by temporal aggrandizement, selfishness, greed, and rapacity, with all the crimes in the calendar, and the inevitable ultimate downfall. Of them all the Hospital Knights bore by all means the least smirched record, on which account, partly, as well as because of their most prominent purpose, i. e., their work among the sick, wounded and distressed, I deem their careers worthy of more particular study. For this purpose we may quickly dismiss the Teutonic knights from present consideration, simply reminding you that they were really the founders of modern Prussia. They had their own origin in the commendable public spirit of the merchants of Lübeck and Bremen, who during the siege of Acre made tents out of the sails of their ships, in which their wounded countrymen might be nursed and attended. Most of their active service against the Saracens was in Spain.