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Rh the empire before the Latin conquest. The country had been everywhere impoverished and the population diminished by successive raids of Crusaders or pretenders.

Nor were the external difficulties of the restored empire less alarming. When Michael the Eighth entered the recaptured city he found anarchy throughout his European territory and neighbouring states eager to enlarge their boundaries at his expense. The Bulgarians were a formidable power, whose dominions were not divided from his own by any natural boundary. The Serbians had utilised the period of the Latin occupation to gather strength and were rising once again to importance. The crusading families who had obtained fiefs in Greece and the southern portion of Macedonia still retained their independence. Genoese and Venetians, while struggling against each other for the favour of the emperor, were each on the alert to obtain territory as well as trading privileges at his expense.

One of the most serious evils inflicted on the empire by the Latin occupation was the fierce antagonism it had created in the Orthodox Church towards that of the elder Rome. We have seen that Innocent had foreseen this result, but even he, great statesman though he was, could hardly have anticipated that the hatred aroused would be of so long a duration. When the city had been captured a Latin patriarch had been appointed, the union of the Churches had been forced upon clergy and people, and the Church, which had always considered itself the equal if not the superior of Rome, was relegated to a position of inferiority. All attempts at reunion were henceforward regarded not merely from the point of view of religion, but from that of patriotism. Union was part of the heritage of bondage. Union meant voluntary submission to the foreign Church which had been able to impose its rule during two generations. Union, therefore, in the minds of a majority of both clergy and laity had to be resisted as a badge of slavery.

Though the Latin empire had perished, there still remained a Latin emperor or pretender, and he and his descendants, with the support of successive popes and aided by