Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/495

 OF THE EOMAX EMPIRE 473 of excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate schis- matics ; the censures of the church were executed by the sword of Michael ; on the failure of persuasion, he tried the arguments of prison and exile, of whipping and mutilation : those touch- stones, says an historian, of cowards and the brave. Two Greeks still reigned in .Etolia. Epirus, and Thessaly, with the appella- tion of despots ; they had yielded to the sovereign of Constanti- nople ; but they rejected the chains of the Roman pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under their pro- tection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in hostile synods, and retorted the name of heretic with the galling ad- dition of apostate ; the prince of Trebizond was tempted to assume the forfeit title of emperor ; and even the Latins of Negropont, Thebes, Athens, and the Morea forgot the merits of the convert, to join, with open or clandestine aid, the enemies of Palseologus. His favourite generals, of his own blood and family, successively deserted or betrayed the sacrilegious trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins, conspired against him ; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria, negotiated his ruin with the sultan of Egypt ; and in the public eye their treason was consecrated as the most sublime virtue.'*^ To the pope's nuncios, who urged the consummation of the work, Palaeologus exposed a naked recital of all that he had done and suffered for their sake. They were assured that the guilty sectaries, of both sexes and everj' rank, had been deprived of their honours, their fortunes, and their liberty : a spread- ing list of confiscation and punishment, which involved many persons, the dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favour. They were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal blood chained in the four comers, and shaking their fetters in an agonv of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards released, the one by submission, the other by death ; but the obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of their eyes ; and the Greeks, the least adverse to the union, deplore that cruel and inauspicious tragedy.*^ Persecutors must expect the hatred of those whom ■*^This frank and authentic confession of Michael's distress is exhibited in bar- barous Latin by Ogerins, who signs himself Protonotarius Interpretum. and tran- scribed by Wading from the Mss. of the Vatican (a.d. 1278, No. 3). His Annals of the Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii volumes in folio (Rome, 1741), I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper of a bookseller. ^See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the chapters i, 11, 16, 18, 24-27. He is the more credible, as he speaks of this persecution with less anger than sorrow.