The divisions and dissensions of that unhappy time no doubt contributed in a great degree to the rapid extension of the Turkish conquests. First and foremost, and that which lay at the root of all the rest, was the disastrous schism which ensued on the death of Gregory XI., when a pope and an anti-pope claimed the obedience of the nations. Christendom, thus divided against itself, had no time to give to the danger that threatened it from without; the western powers, engaged in contesting the pretensions of two rival claimants of the papal chair, were unable to unite against the common foe. The Christian world was, in fact, bereft of its directing head: the popes had ever been the life and soul of the crusades against the infidel; and when their voice was dumb, or gave, or at least seemed to give, an uncertain sound, who could prepare himself for the battle? As regarded the order of the Knights Hospitallers, the evil was unmitigated. Our purpose in the present sketch being less to offer a continuous history of the order of St. John than to recount their struggles with the Moslems, we must pass rapidly over the period during which Heredia, the prior of Castile, was grand master, and redeemed his previous disloyal conduct by a government of remarkable disinterestedness and devotion. Brave he was even to daring. At the siege of Patras he mounted the breach, sword in hand, careless whether his knights followed him or no, and flinging himself with all the ardour of a young soldier into the midst of the Turks, encountered the governor in single combat and laid him dead at the foot of the wall he had been defending. At Corinth, which was the next point of attack, he fell into an ambush and was taken prisoner. The order offered the restitution of Patras, together with a large sum of money, for his ransom, and three of the grand priors even engaged to remain as hostages in his place until the conditions were fulfilled: but though the Turks consented, Heredia magnanimously rejected the proposal. “Leave me, my dear brothers,” he said, “leave me, worn out as I am with years and toil, to die in my chains, and reserve yourselves who are young and active for the service of God and His Church.” As for the money, he would not hear of its being paid out of the treasury of the order; it should come from his own family, whom his ambition had enriched. One would have thought that the infidels would have been moved to generosity by so much nobility of soul; but all the effect it had upon them was, that they condemned him to a severer confinement, in which he was detained for more than three years. On his release, he made ample reparation for his previous avarice by devoting the wealth he had accumulated to the foundation of new commanderies and other means of defence against the untiring enemy of the Christian name; but all his efforts and self-sacrifices were paralysed and rendered of little avail by the divisions that prevailed.