Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/150

 in greater splendour; the pageants of palace, hippodrome, and church, became daily more magnificent; worse than all, the money, owing to the depopulation of the agricultural districts and the increased difficulty of finding mercenaries, had already entered on its rapid course of deterioration. These evils were too great to be remedied; yet Isaac Comnenus in his short reign of two years bravely attempted to meet and defeat them.

Immense sums had been lavished on favourites. Isaac resumed these grants. Immense sums had been given to monasteries, which were now what the monasteries of France became in the eighteenth century, homes where the cadets of rich families lived in ease and luxury. Isaac took all this money back and granted a pension to each monastery proportioned to the number of monks. Crowds of courtiers had received nominal rank in the army and drew real pay: Isaac deprived them all. In the midst of his reforms he was called away to defeat an invasion of Hungarians, and on his return, being seized with a dangerous illness, and believing himself to be dying, he named a successor and retired to a monastery.

Much of Isaac's good work was undone by the weakness and avarice of the man who succeeded him, Constantine X., of the family of Ducas. He allowed the mountainous country of Armenia to be overrun by the Turks, and by this folly opened the whole of Asia Minor to the Mohammedan arms and religion.

A great earthquake alarmed the East during this reign; walls of cities, public buildings, and churches were overthrown. Among the buildings was the ancient temple