OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 409 poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the meanwhile his desolate churches were pro- sacruege and faned by the licentiousness and party-zeal of the Latins. After stripping the gems and pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking-cups ; their tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures of Christ and the saints ; and they trampled under foot the most venerable objects of the Christian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia the ample veil of the sanctuary was rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe ; and the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among the captors. ^"^^ Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and gilt carvings, which they tore doAvn from the doors and pulpit ; and, if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they were stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement streamed with their impure blood. A prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch ; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the royal dead secure from violation ; in the church of the Apostles the tombs of the emperors were rifled ; and it is said that after six cen- turies the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs of decay or putrefaction. In the streets the French and Flemings clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing head-dresses of linen ; and the coarse intemperance of their feasts 1*^^ insulted the splendid sobriety of the East. To expose the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they affected to display a pen, an ink-horn, and a sheet of paper, without dis- cerning that the instruments of science and valour were alike feeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks. Their reputation and their language encouraged them, how- Destruction of the fft&tuoB ever, to despise the ignorance, and to overlook the progress, of the Latins. 1^'^ In the love of the arts the national difference was still more obvious and real ; the Greeks preserved with 108 [For the plunder of the church, see the Chronicle of Novgorod, in Hopfs Chroniques Gr6co-Romanes.] 1** If I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas's receipts, their favourite dishes were boiled buttocks of beef, salt pork and pease, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour herbs (p. 382). UONicetaS uses very harsh expressions. Trap' aypaiiy.aroi<; PapPdpoi^, Kai Tf'Aeoc oi'oA(/;aj3rJTo<? (Fragment, apud Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. torn. vi. p. 414). This re- proach, it is true, applies most strongly to their ignorance of Greek, and of Homer. In their own language, the Latins of the xiith and xiiith centuries were not destitute of literature. See Harris's Philological Inquiries, p. iii. c. 9, 10, 11.
