CHAP. of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned at Venice as the security for a debt.49 Thirst, hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils; but wealth is relative; and a prince, who would be rich in a private station, may be exposed by the encrease of his wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of poverty.

The holy crown of thorns.

But in this abject distress, the emperor and empire were stil! possessed of an ideal treasure, which drew its fantastic value from the superstition of the Christian world. The merit of the true cross was somewhat impaired by its frequent division; and a long captivity among the infidels might shed some suspicion on the fragments that were produced in the East and West. But another relic of the Passion was preserved in the Imperial chapel of Constantinople; and the crown of thorns which had been placed on the head of Christ was equally precious and authentic. It had formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors to deposit, as a security, the mummies of their parents; and both their honour and religion were bound for the redemption of the pledge. In the same manner, and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania borrowed the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty-four pieces of gold,50 on the credit of the holy crown: they failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their impatient creditors, on condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute property, if it were not redeemed within a short and definite term. The barons apprised their sovereign of the hard treaty and impending loss; and as the empire could not afford a ransom of seven thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin was anxious to snatch the prize from the Venetians, and to vest it with more honour and emolument in the hands of the most Christian king. Yet the negociation was attended with some delicacy. In the purchase of relics, the saint would have

49 Sanut. Secret. Fidel. Crucis, 1. ii. p. iv. c. 18. p. 73.

50 Under the words, Perparus, Perpera, Hyperperum, Ducange is short and vague: Monetæ genus. From a corrupt passage of Guntherus (Hist. C. P. c. 8. p. 10), I guess, that the Perpera was the nummus aureus, the fourth part of a mark of silver, or about ten shillings sterling in value. In lead, it would be too contemptible.

51 For the translation of the holy crown, &c. from Constantinople to Pa ris, see Ducange (Hist. de C. P. 1. iv. c. 11...14. 24. 35 ) and Fleury (Hist. Eccles. tom. xvii. p. 201...204).

LXI.

started at the guilt of simony; but if the mode of expression CHAP. were changed, he might lawfully repay the debt, accept the gift, and acknowledge the obligation. His ambassadors, two Dominicans, were dispatched to Venice, to redeem and receive the holy crown, which had escaped the dangers of the sea and the gallies of Vataces. On opening a wooden box, they recognised the seals of the doge and barons, which were applied on a shrine of silver: and within this shrine, the monument of the Passion was inclosed in a golden vase. The reluctant Venetians yielded to justice and power: the emperor Frederic granted a free and honourable passage; the court of France advanced as far as Troyes in Champagne, to meet with devotion this inestimable relic: it was borne in triumph through Paris by the king himself, barefoot, and in his shirt; and a free gift of ten thousand marks of silver reconciled Baldwin to his loss. The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor to offer with the same generosity the remaining furniture of his chapel; 52 a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the baby-linen of the Son of God; the lance, the spunge, and the chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of St. John the baptist. For the reception of these spiritual treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on a stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth of such remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by an holy prickle of the holy crown:53 the prodigy is attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general antidote against religious credulity."

52 Melanges tires d'une grande Bibliotheque, tom. xliii. p. 201...205. The Lutrin of Boileau exhibits the inside, the soul and manners of the Sainte Chapelle; and many facts relative to the institution are collected and explained by his commentators, Brossette and de St. Marc.

53 It was performed A. D. 1656, March 24, on the niece of Pascal; and that superior genius, with Arnauld, Nicole, &c. were on the spot to believe and attest a miracle which confounded the Jesuits, and saved Port Royal (Oeuvres de Racine, tom vi. p. 176...187 in his eloquent History of Port Royal).

54 Voltaire (Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 37. Oeuvres, tom. ix. p. 178, 179.)

CHAP.

LXI.

Progress
of the
Greeks,
A. D.

1237....
1261.

The Latins of Constantinople 55 were on all sides encompassed and pressed: their sole hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in the division of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope they were deprived by the superior arms and policy of Vataces emperor of Nice. From the Propontis to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and prosperous under his reign: and the events of every campaign extended his influence in Europe. The strong cities of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace, were rescued from the Bulgarians; and their kingdom was circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the southern banks of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West, should presume to dispute or share the honours of the purple; and the humble Demetrius changed the colour of his buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot. His own subjects were exasperated by his baseness and incapacity: they implored the protection of their supreme lord. After some resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire of Nice; and Vataces reigned without a competitor from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic gulf. The princes of Europe revered his merit and power; and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should seem that the pope would have abandoned without reluctance the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death of Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the restoration of the Greeks. In the next chapter, I shall explain their domestic revolutions; in this place, it will be Palcolo sufficient to observe, that the young prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague Michael Paemperor, læologus, who displayed the virtues and vices that belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin had flattered himself, that he might recover some provinces or

Michael

gus, the

Greek

A. D.

1259, Dec. 1.

strives to invalidate the fact: but Hume (Essays, vol. ii. p. 483, 484), with more skill and success, siczes the battery, and turns the cannon against his

enemies.

55 The gradual losses of the Latins may be traced in the third, fourth, and fifth books of the compilation of Ducange: but of the Greek conquests he has dropped mary circumstances, which may be recovered from the large history of George Acropolita, and the three first books of Nicephorus Gregoras, two writers of the Byzantine series, who have had the good fortune to meet with learned editors, Leo Allatius at Rome, and John Boivin in the Academy of Inscriptions of Paris,

cities by an impotent negociation. His ambassadors were CHAP. dismissed from Nice with mockery and contempt. At every LXI. place which they named, Palæologus alleged some special reason, which rendered it dear and valuable in his eyes: : in the one he was born; in another he had been first promoted to military command; and in a third he had enjoyed, and hoped long to enjoy, the pleasures of the chace. "And what "then do you propose to give us?" said the astonished deputies. "Nothing," replied the Greek, "not a foot of land. "If your master be desirous of peace, let him pay me as ah "annual tribute, the sum which he receives from the trade "and customs of Constantinople. On these terms, I may "allow him to reign. If he refuses, it is war. I am not ig"norant of the art of war, and I trust the event to God and

my sword."56 An expedition against the despot of Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most active and powerful vassal of their expiring monarchy. The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the first of their naval wars, the command of the sea and the commerce of the East. Pride and interest attached the Venetians to the defence of Constantinople: their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of her enemies, and the alliance of the Genoese with the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation of the Latin church.57

1

Greeks,

Intent on this great object, the emperor Michael visited Constantinople rein person and strengthened the troops and fortifications of covered Thrace. The remains of the Latins were driven from their by the last possessions: he assaulted without success the suburb of A. D. Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who, 1261, proved unwilling, or unable, to open the gates of the metropolis. The next spring, his favourite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some

56 George Acropolita, c. 78. p. 89, 90. edit. Paris.

57 The Greeks, ashamed of any foreign aid, disguise the alliance and succour of the Genoese; but the fact is proved by the testimony of J. Villani (Chron. l. vi. c. 71. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xiii. p. 202, 203.) and William de Nangis (Annales de St. Louis, p. 248. in the Louvre Joinville), two impartial foreigners; and Urban IV. threatened to deprive Genoa of her archbishop.

July 25.

LXI.

58

CHAP. infantry, on a secret expedition. His instructions enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but not to risk any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against the city. The adjacent territory between the Propontis and the Black Sea, was cultivated by an hardy race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in arms, uncertain in their allegiance, but inclined by language, religion, and present advantage, to the party of the Greeks. They were styled the volunteers," and by their free service, the army of Alexius, with the regulars of Thrace and the Coman auxiliaries, was augmented to the number of five-and-twenty thousand men. By the ardour of the volunteers, and by his own ambition, the Cæsar was sti mulated to disobey the precise orders of his master, in the just confidence that success would plead his pardon and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the volunteers: and they represented the present moment as the most propitious to surprise and conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony, had sailed away with thirty gallies and the best of the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia, a town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty leagues; and the remaining Latins 'were without strength or suspicion. They were informed that Alexius had passed the Hellespont; but their appre hensions were lulled by the smallness of his original num. bers; and their imprudence had not watched the subsequent encrease of his army. If he left his main body to second and support his operations, he might advance unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment. While some applied scaling-ladders to the lowest part of the walls, they were secure of an old Greek, who would introduce their compa nions through a subterraneous passage into his house; they could soon on the inside break an entrance through the

58 Some precautions must be used in reconciling the discordant numbers; the 800 soldiers of Nicetas, the 25,000 of Spandugino (apud Ducange, l. v.c. 24); the Greeks and Scythians of Acropolita, and the numerous army of Michael, in the Epistles of Pope Urban IV (i. 129).

59 Oεhnμatapios. They are described and named by Pachymer (l. ii. c. 14).

60 It is needless to seek these Comans in the desarts of Tartary, or even of Moldavia. A part of the hord had submitted to John Vataces, and was probably settled as a nursery of soldiers on some waste lands of Thrace (Cantacuzen, l. i. c. 2).