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 92 DESTEUCTION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE the pope how difficult it would be to induce his people to accomplish the proposed task. His needs, however, were great, and the summons of the pope was urgent. Accord- ingly, in 1369, he ventured on the dangerous step of leaving Constantinople. He was received with every honour in the elder Kome, and made a profession of faith which satisfied the four cardinals who had been deputed to receive it. An encyclical notified the great news to all Christian princes. The pope allowed John to negotiate with English mer- cenaries then in Italy for service, granted him religious privileges, loaded him with presents, and requested the rulers of the states through which he had to pass on his homeward journey to receive him with the respect due to his rank. Urban at the same time addressed a letter to the Greek clergy urging them to accept the Union. John, however, found little or no material help. He left Eome in debt, and on his return to Venice, where, on his Eomeward journey, he had been received in great state and promised four galleys, he was detained until he paid his debts. The emperor urged his son Andronicus, who had been appointed regent during the absence of his father, to find the means of releasing him. The son declared that as the treasury was empty and the clergy would not help, he was unable to obtain ransom. His younger son, Manuel, contrived, however, to find in Salonica sufficient money for his father's release. Both Urban and his successor, Gregory the Eleventh, displayed a great desire to aid the empire to stem the tide of Moslem progress. Gregory in 1371 urged the kings of France and England to join with the Genoese to save the remnant of Christians in the Holy Land from the Saracens. All their efforts were fruitless. The Turkish invasion had meantime become more serious than the Saracenic conquests, as the invaders had now penetrated by land and sea respectively as far as Albania and Dalmatia. The pope once more urged Louis of Hungary, the successors of the crusading nobles who still held territory in Greece and along a portion of the coast of