Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/7



No historical subject has attracted more attention in France and Germany during the last twenty years than the Latin conquest of Constantinople. No other historical question has had devoted to it during the same period the labors of an equal number of illustrious historical students. A literary controversy has been waged, and is still waging, about several of the important questions which have arisen in connection with the subject.

The larger question of the history of Constantinople and of the Eastern Empire in the Middle Ages has likewise, during the last quarter of a century, occupied the attention of a considerable number of Continental scholars, whose labors have added much to our stock of knowledge on the subject. Among the most important of their contributions a few may be here noticed. Muralt's "Chronography of Byzantine History," between 1057 and 1453, is an immense aid to all students of the period treated of. It is hardly possible to mention any statement respecting any event, however trifling, within the period dealt with, for which all the authorities are not cited. Heyd's "History of Trade in the Levant during the Middle Ages" is also a monument of careful research."