. . .Knights, but even indorses their daily lives, public and private, which would not bear for one moment the conventional test of our modern civilization. It would seem as though the virtue and honor of Maltese wives and daughters counted for nothing, in this wholesale opinion of the period covered by the sovereignty of the order, and that the natives of that day ignored all sense of self-respect in their estimate of the value of pecuniary prosperity as compared with the sacredness of domestic purity. Women were bartered for like merchandise; personal attractions formed the criterion of their market value, while there was not even the pretense on the part of the Knights of keeping their priestly vows as celibates, by which every member of the fraternity of St. John was supposed to be bound. Women came voluntarily and openly from Italy, France, Spain, and England to trade upon their charms, added to whose [Pg 55]number were those of their sex captured from the harems of the M. . . Read More