The above letter was read before a general council of the church, which had been assembled at Lyons by pope Innocent IV., and it was resolved that a new crusade should be preached. It was provided that those who assumed the cross should assemble at particular places to receive the pope’s blessing; that there should be a truce for four years between all christian princes; that during all that time there should be no tournaments, feasts, nor public rejoicings; that all the faithful in Christ should be exhorted to contribute, out of their fortunes and estates, to the defence of the Holy Land; and that ecclesiastics should pay towards it the tenth, and cardinals the twentieth, of all their revenues, for the term of three years successively. The ancient enthusiasm, however, in favour of distant expeditions to the East had died away; the addresses and exhortations of the clergy now fell on unwilling ears, and the Templars and Hospitallers, for several years, received only some small assistance in men and money. The emperor Frederick, who still bore the empty title of king of Jerusalem, made no attempt to save the wreck of his feeble kingdom. His bride, the fair and youthful Violante, queen of the Latin kingdom, had been dead several years, killed by his coldness and neglect; and the emperor bestowed no thought upon his eastern subjects and the Holy Land, except to abuse those by whom that land had been so gallantly defended. In a letter to Richard earl of Cornwall, the brother of Henry the Third, king of England, Frederick accuses the Templars of making war upon the sultan of Egypt, in defiance of a treaty entered into with that monarch, of compelling him to call in the Carizmians to his assistance; and he compares the union of the Templars with the infidel sultan, for purposes of defence, to an attempt to extinguish a fire by pouring upon it a quantity of oil. “The proud religion of the Temple,” says he, in continuation, “nurtured amid the luxuries of the barons of the land, waxeth wanton. It hath been made manifest to us, by certain religious persons lately arrived from parts beyond sea, that the aforesaid sultans and their trains were received with pompous alacrity within the gates of the houses of the Temple, and that the Templars suffered them to perform within them their superstitious rites and ceremonies, with invocation of Mahomet, and to indulge in secular delights.”[121] In the midst of all these terrible disasters, a general chapter of Knights Templars was assembled in the Pilgrim’s Castle, and the veteran warrior, Brother WILLIAM DE SONNAC, was chosen (A. D. 1247) Grand Master of the Order.[121] Circular mandates were, at the same time, sent to the western preceptories, summoning all the brethren to Palestine, and directing the immediate transmission of all the money in the different treasuries to the head-quarters of the Order at Acre. These calls were promptly attended to, and the pope praises both the