Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/202

 1S4 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. them by useless restrictions or by those attempts to protect the public which have so often prevented trade. The taking of interest was allowed, and hence a great deal of the capital which had belonged to the Mahometans on their eastern fron- tier, by whom the taking of interest was strictly forbidden, flowed into the empire. Luxury was permitted. Few at- tempts w^ere made to fix the prices of the merchandise sold. Duties on goods imported and exported were light in com- parison with what they have been in other countries. Even as early as the time of Theophilus it had been formally de- clared that, as commerce was a benefit to the public, any in- terference with it was an offence against the public as well as against the person injured. The great commerce which entered the capital brought Commerce "^^th it mucli of the liberality which is due to the eJaufy of ^'^' iutcrcourse with foreign nations. Arab traders practice. were allowed to live within the city, and foreigners from the West were scandalized to see that the Saracens were permitted to build a new mosque and to practise in a Chris- tian city the rites of Mahometanism. "It would have been even right to have razed the city to the ground," says a chronicler of the Latin conquest, "for, if we believe report, it was polluted by new mosques, which its perfidious emperor allowed to be built that he might strengthen the league with the Turks." ' Manuel wished to remove an anathema from the catechism against the Mahometan conception of God.^ Italian mer- chants, Armenians, Chaldeans, and others not in union with the Orthodox Church were yet allowed the exercise of their religion. Not only had the Italian colonists their own churches, but the chief of their communities had ofiicial seats allotted to them in the Great Church. Even the Jews, who liave always in the East been the object of the aversion of the Orthodox Christians, were on the whole fairly well treated. When we remember that we are dealing with the J Geoffrey of Vinsauf, " Cliron. of Crusades," p. 94. 2 Nicetas, "]Iaii.'" book vii.