;

most singular circumstance of their manners is their disregard of conjugal honour and of female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and daughters; among friends, they are lent and borrowed without shame nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce, and its inevitable consequences.* Informed as we are of the customs of old England, and assured of the virtue of our mothers, we may smile at the credulity, or resent the injustice, of the Greek, who must have confounded a modest salutet with a criminal embrace. But his credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson; to distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.‡

After his return, and the victory of Timour, Manuel reigned many years in prosperity and peace. As long as the sons of Bajazet solicited his friendship and spared his dominions, he was satisfied with the national religion; and his leisure was employed in composing twenty theological dialogues for its defence. The appearance of the Byzantine ambassadors at the council of Constance§ announces the

* If the double sense of the verb Ków (osculor, and in utero gero) be equivocal, the context and pious horror of Chalcocondylas can leave no doubt of his meaning and mistake (p. 49).

Erasmus (Epist. Fausto Andrelino) has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing strangers on their arrival and departure; from whence, however, he draws no scandalous inferences.

Perhaps we may apply this remark to the community of wives among the old Britons, as it is supposed by Cæsar and Dion (Dion Cassius, 1. 62, tom. ii. p. 1007), with Reimar's judicious annotation. The Arreoy of Otaheite, so certain at first, is become less visible and scandalous, in proportion as we have studied the manners of that gentle and amorous people. [The rule of belief here prescribed by Gibbon has been often applied throughout this series of original notes. If a Greek could so misrepresent a country which he had personally surveyed, we may estimate the credulity with which his nation listened to hearsay reports on unvisited lands. Among the mistakes of Chalcocondylas, not the least remarkable, is that of our language having "no affinity to the idioms of the continent." From this incompetence to form a correct notion of English, when heard from the lips of its known vernacular speakers, we may infer how superficially, yet peremptorily, that of the Varangians was judged. See vol. vi. p. 278. -ED.] § See Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, tom. ii. p. 576, and for the ecclesiastical history of the times, the

1

INDIFFERENCE OF MANUEL

[CH. LXVI. restoration of the Turkish power, as well as of the Latin Church; the conquest of the sultans, Mahomet and Amurath, reconciled the emperor to the Vatican; and the siege of Constantinople almost tempted him to acquiesce in the double procession of the Holy Ghost. When Martin the Fifth ascended, without a rival, the chair of St. Peter, a friendly intercourse of letters and embassies was revived between the East and West. Ambition on one side, and distress on the other, dictated the same decent language of charity and peace; the artful Greek expressed a desire of marrying his six sons to Italian princesses; and the Roman, not less artful, dispatched the daughter of the marquis of Montferrat, with a company of noble virgins, to soften by their charms the obstinacy of the schismatics. Yet under this mask of zeal, a discerning eye will perceive that all was hollow and insincere in the court and church of Constantinople. According to the vicissitudes of danger and repose, the emperor advanced or retreated; alternately instructed and disavowed his ministers; and escaped from an impor tunate pressure by urging the duty of inquiry, the obligation of collecting the sense of his patriarchs and bishops, and the impossibility of convening them at a time when the Turkish arms were at the gates of his capital. From a review of the public transactions, it will appear that the Greeks insisted on three successive measures, a succour, a council, and a final reunion, while the Latins eluded the second, and only promised the first, as a consequential and voluntary reward of the third. But we have an opportunity of unfolding the most secret intentions of Manuel, as he explained them in a private conversation, without artifice or disguise. In his declining age, the emperor had associated John Palæologus, the second of the name, and the eldest of his sons, on whom he devolved the greatest part of the authority and weight of government. One day, in the presence only of the historian Phranza,* his favourite chamberlain, he opened to his col Annals of Spondanus, the Bibliothèque of Dupin, tom. xii., and volumes xxi. and xxii. of the History, or rather the Continuation, of Fleury.

* From his early youth, George Phranza, or Phranzes, was employed in the service of the state and palace; and Hanckius (De Script. Byzant. p. 1, c. 40) has collected his life from his own writings. He was no more than four-and-twenty years of age at the death of Manuel, who recommended him in the strongest terms to his successor :

*

league and successor the true principle of his negotiations with the pope. "Our last resource," said Manuel," against the Turks is their fear of our union with the Latins, of the warlike nations of the West, who may arm for our relief, and for their destruction. As often as you are threatened by the miscreants, present this danger before their eyes. Propose a council; consult on the means; but ever delay and avoid the convocation of an assembly, which cannot tend either to our spiritual or temporal emolument. The Latins are proud; the Greeks are obstinate; neither party will recede or retract; and the attempt of a perfect union will confirm the schism, alienate the Churches, and leave us, without hope or defence, at the mercy of the Barbarians.” Impatient of this salutary lesson, the royal youth arose from his seat, and departed in silence; and the wise monarch (continues Phranza), casting his eyes on me, thus resumed his discourse: "My son deems himself a great and heroic prince; but, alas! our miserable age does not afford scope for heroism or greatness. His daring spirit might have suited the happier times of our ancestors; but the present state requires not an emperor, but a cautious steward of the last relics of our fortunes. Well do I remember the lofty expectations which he built on our alliance with Mustapha; and much do I fear that his rash courage will urge the ruin of our house, and that even religion may precipitate our downfall." Yet the experience and authority of Manuel preserved the peace, and eluded the council, till, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, and in the habit of a monk, he terminated his career, dividing his precious moveables among his children and the poor, his physicians and his favourite servants. Of his six sons,† Andronicus, the second, was invested with the Imprimis vero hunc Phranzen tibi commendo, qui ministravit mihi fideliter et diligenter. (Phranzes, 1. 2, c. 1.) Yet the emperor Johu was cold, and he preferred the service of the despots of Peloponnesus. * See Phranzes, 1. 2, c. 13. While so many manuscripts of the Greek original are extant in the libraries of Rome, Milan, the Escurial, &c. it is a matter of shame and reproach, that we should be reduced to the Latin version, or abstract, of James Pontanus, ad calcem Theophylact. Symocatta (Ingolstadt, 1604), so deficient in accuracy and elegance. (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 615-620.) [Since Gibbon's time, the original Greek of Phranzes has been twice published, at Vienna, in 1796, by Alter, and since by Imman. Bekker, in the Bonn edition of the Byzantine writers, 1838.--ED.]

+ See Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 243–248.

ZEAL OF

[CH. LXVI. principality of Thessalonica, and died of a leprosy soon after the sale of that city to the Venetians, and its final conquest by the Turks. Some fortunate incidents had restored Peloponnesus, or the Morea, to the empire; and in his more prosperous days, Manuel had fortified the narrow isthmus of six miles* with a stone wall and one hundred and fiftythree towers. The wall was overthrown by the first blast of the Ottomans; the fertile peninsula might have been sufficient for the four younger brothers, Theodore and Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas; but they wasted in domestic contests the remains of their strength; and the least successful of the rivals were reduced to a life of dependence in the Byzantine palace.

The eldest of the sons of Manuel, John Palæologus the Second, was acknowledged, after his father's death, as the sole emperor of the Greeks. He immediately proceeded to repudiate his wife, and to contract a new marriage with the princess of Trebizond;† beauty was, in his eyes, the first qualification of an empress; and the clergy had yielded to

* The exact measure of the Hexamilion, from sea to sea, was three thousand eight hundred orgygiæ, or toises, of six Greek feet (Phranzes, 1. 1, c. 38), which would produce a Greek mile, still smaller than that of six hundred and sixty French toises, which is assigned by D'Anville as still in use in Turkey. Five miles are commonly reckoned for the breadth of the isthmus. See the Travels of Spon, Wheeler, and Chandler. [All the oldest authorities, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, and Mela Pomponius, agree in the breadth of the isthmus being forty stadia, five thousand paces, or five miles. Chalcocondylas (p. 98, edit. Par.) says forty-two stadia. The name of Hexamilion is of later date. Dr. Clarke and Mr. Dodwell considered it to be sufficient authority for making the distance from sea to sea six miles. This seems to indicate an enlargement of the space. of the Peloponnesus warrant the opinion, that it was in ancient times The name and early traditions an island, and this is rendered still more probable by the level tract along which in Strabo's time (1. 8), was the Diolkos, or tram-way, for dragging ships overland, between Schoenus and Lechæum. The above measurements refer to the winding course of this road and of the wall erected by Justinian (see vol. iv. p. 339) and repaired by Manuel, for Finlay (Med. Greece, p. 280) makes the distance, in a straight line, only about three miles and a half. The subsidence of the waters, which produced such changes, may have expanded this narrow neck of land by an additional mile. vol. i. p. 275.-ED.] See note on the Baltic, ch. 9,

+ [La Brocquière's lively description of this princess and of her visit to the cathedral of St. Sophia, will gratify the reader. "She looked young and fair," he says: "in one word, I should not have had a fault

*

his firm assurance that, unless he might be indulged in a divorce, he would retire to a cloister, and leave the throne to his brother Constantine. The first, and in truth the only, victory of Palæologus was over a Jew, whom, after a long and learned dispute, he converted to the Christian faith; and this momentous conquest is carefully recorded in the history of the times. But he soon resumed the design of uniting the East and West; and, regardless of his father's advice, listened, as it should seem, with sincerity to the proposal of meeting the pope in a general council beyond the Adriatic. This dangerous project was encouraged by Martin the Fifth, and coldly entertained by his successor Eugenius, till, after a tedious negotiation, the emperor received a summons from a Latin assembly of a new character, the independent prelates of Basil, who styled themselves the representatives and judges of the Catholic Church.

The Roman pontiff had fought and conquered in the cause of ecclesiastical freedom; but the victorious clergy were soon exposed to the tyranny of their deliverer; and his sacred character was invulnerable to those arms which they found so keen and effectual against the civil magistrate. Their great charter, the right of election, was annihilated by appeals, evaded by trusts or commendams, disappointed by reversionary grants, and superseded by previous and arbitrary reservations. A public auction was instituted in the court of Rome; the cardinals and favourites were enriched with the spoils of nations; and every country might complain that the most important and valuable benefices were accumulated on the heads of aliens and absentees. During their residence at Avignon, the ambition of the popes subsided in the meaner passions of avarice‡ and to find with her, had she not been painted, and of this she assuredly had not any need." The whole scene is graphically pourtrayed. Early Travels in Palestine, Bohn, p. 338, 339.-ED.]

*The first objection of the Jew is on the death of Christ; if it were voluntary, Christ was a suicide; which the emperor parries with a mystery. They then dispute on the conception of the virgin, the sense of the prophecies, &c. (Phranzes, 1. 2, c. 12, a whole chapter.)

In the treatise Delle Materie Beneficiare of Fra-Paolo (in the fourth volume of the last and best edition of his works), the papal system is deeply studied and freely described. Should Rome and her religion be annihilated, this golden volume may still survive, a philo, sophical history, and a salutary warning.

Pope John XXII. (in 1334) left behind him, at Avignon, eighteen