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 DECAY OF THE EMPIEE 181 citizens as idle, delighting in spectacular shows, and asking only to be amused. I know of no evidence which supports any such conclusion and believe that, on the contrary, such evidence as exists is against it. The population of the city, nobles and people alike, were religious — given over to super- stition, according to our modern view — but they were not luxurious or mere pleasure-seekers. Their superstition corresponded with that of their fellow Christians in the West. * I believe,' says La Brocquiere, who visited Con- stantinople in 1433, ' that God has spared the city more for the holy relics it contains than anything else.' 1 But the same writer adds the qualification that * the Greeks have not the like devotion that we have for relics.' Nor is this religious or superstitious spirit the necessary companion of either luxury or effeminacy. The effeminacy and the luxury associated with Constantinople, in so far as they existed, belong to the period before the Latin conquest. When any displays are recorded after the recapture of the city — as, for example, at coronations — they are merely the traditional ceremonies which survived as such observances do in the coronation of our own sovereigns or at great historical courts like the Austrian and papal. The trials and sufferings, the long struggles against external and internal enemies which had gone on for nearly two centuries, had divested nobles and people alike of any love for idle ceremonies or mere diversions. The miracle plays which the people crowded to see in Hagia Sophia do not show that they had degenerated. The writer just quoted saw a representation of the three youths cast by Nebuchadnezzar into the. burning fiery furnace, 2 which, while it may have served to increase the congregation's trust in God, can hardly be regarded as a frivolous amusement. The hippodrome was no longer used by the people for the shows which had pleased their ancestors at an early period. La Brocquiere, indeed, records that he saw the emperor's brother and a score of nobles amusing themselves on horseback within its walls, but they were training them- 1 La Brocquiere, p. 341. 2 Ibid. p. 340.