Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/437

 OF THE RCBIAX E^MPTRE 415 announced by the bishop of Soissons, in the name of his col- leagues : " Ye have swom to obey the prince whom we should choose : by our unanimous sufFi*age, Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainault. is now your sovereiffn, and the emperor of the East ". He was saluted with loud ap])lause, and the proclama- tion was re-echoed throughout the city by the joy of the Latins and the trembling adulation of the Greeks. Boniface was the first to kiss the hand of his rival, and to raise him on the buck- ler ; and Baldwin was transported to the cathedral and solemnly invested with the pui-ple buskuis. At the end of three weeks he Avas crowned by the legate, in the vacancy of a patriarch ; but the Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter of St. Sophia, seated Thomas Morosini on the ecclesiastical throne, and employed every art to perpetuate, in their own nation, the honours and benefices of the Greek church.'* Without delay, the successor of Constantine instructed Palestine, France, and Rome of this memorable revolution. To Palestine he sent, as a trophy, the gates of Constantinople and the chain of the harbour ; ^ and adopted from the Assise of Jerusalem the laws or customs best adapted to a French colony and conquest in the East.^ In his epistles, the natives of France are encouraged to swell that colony and to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city and a fertile land, which will reward the labours both of the priest and the soldier. He congratulates the Roman pontiff on the restoi-ation of his authority in the East ; invites him to ex- tinguish the Greek schism by his presence in a general council ; and implores his blessing and forgiveness for the disobedient pilgrims. Pnidence and dignity are blended in the answer of Innocent." In the subversion of the Byzantine empire, he arraigns the vices of man and adores the providence of God ; the conquerors will be absolved or condemned by their future ■* They exacted an oath from Thomas Morosini to appoint no canons of St. Sophia, the lawful electors, except Venetians who had lived ten years at V^enice, &c. But the foreign clergy were envious, the pope disapproved this national monopoly, and of the si.x Latin patriarchs of Constantinople only the first and last were Venetians. ^ Nicetas, p. 383. ^[The Assises of Jerusalem, at least the .ssiseof the Haute Cour, was probably not codified so early as 1204. But it had been introduced into the Peloponnesus before 1275.] ■"The Epistles of Innocent III. are a rich fund for the ecclesiastical and ci%'il in- stitution of the Latin empire of Constantinople ; and the most important of these epistles (of which the collection in 2 vols, in folio, is published by Stephen Baluze) are inserted in his Gesta, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, torn. iii. p. i, c. 94-105. [Migne, Patrol. Lat., vols. 214, 215, 216.]