improbable, that the priests of the orthodox Church preferred to surrender such spoil to those of their own cloth rather than to the rough soldier or the rougher Venetian sailor.  On the other hand, the highest priestly dignitaries in the army—­men, even, who refused to take of the earthly spoil—­were eager to obtain possession of this sacred booty, and unscrupulous as to the means by which they obtained it.  The holy Cross was carefully divided by the bishops for distribution among the barons.

Gunther gives us a specimen of the means to which Abbot Martin, who had had the German crusaders placed under his charge, had recourse.  The abbot had learned that many relics had been hidden by the Greeks in a particular church.  This building was attacked in the general pillage.  He, as a priest, searched carefully for the relics, while the soldiers were looking for more commonplace booty.  The abbot found an old priest, with the long hair and beard common then, as now, to orthodox ecclesiastics, and roughly addressed him, “Show me your relics, or you are a dead man.”

The old priest, seeing that he was addressed by one of his own profession, and frightened probably by the threat, thought, says Gunther, that it was better to give up the relics to him than to the profane and blood-stained hands of the soldiers.  He opened an iron safe, and the abbot, in his delight at the sight, buried his hands in the precious store.  He and his chaplain filled their surplices, and ran with all haste to the harbor to conceal their prize.  That they were successful in keeping it during the stormy days which followed could only be attributed to the virtue of the relics themselves.

The way in which Dalmatius de Sergy obtained the head of St. Clement is an illustration of the crusader’s belief that the acquisition of a relic and its transport to the West would be allowed as a compensation for the fulfilment of the crusader’s vow.  That knight was grievously afflicted that he could not go to the Holy Land, and earnestly prayed God to show him how he could execute some other task equivalent to that which he had sworn, but failed, to accomplish.  His first thought was to take relics to his own country.  He consulted the two cardinals who were then in Constantinople, who approved his idea, but charged him not to buy these relics, because their purchase and sale were forbidden.  He accordingly determined to steal them, if such a word may be applied to an act which was clearly regarded as praiseworthy.  The knight, in order to discover something of especial value, remained in Constantinople until Palm Sunday in the following year.  A French priest pointed out to him a church in which the head of St. Clement was preserved.  He went there in the company of a Cistercian monk and asked to see the relics.  While one kept the persons in charge speaking with him, the other stole a portion of the relic.