OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

85

peace. As long as the sous of Bajazet solicited chap.his friendship and spared his dominions, he was LXVLsatisfied with the national religion: and his lei-

... r , Indiffer-

sure was employed m composing twenty theolo-e»ce ofgical dialogues for its defence. The appearance waTdTuieof the Byzantine ambassadors at the council of^ a “ n i’ 402Constance 8 announces the restoration of the 1417 *..Turkish power, as well as of the Latin church ;the conquest of the sultans, Mahomet and Amu-rath, reconciled the emperor to the Vatican ; andthe siege of Constantinople almost tempted himto acquiesce in the double procession of the HolyGhost. When Martin the fifth ascended, with-out a rival, the chair of St. Peter, a friendly in-tercourse of letters and embassies was revivedbetween the East and West. Ambition on oue Hiinego _side, and distress on the other, dictated the same ciation ».

7 A. D. 1417*

decent language of charity and peace : the artful 1425.Greek expressed a desire of marrying his sixsons to Italian princesses; and the Roman, uotless artful, dispatched the daughter of the mar-quis of Montferrat, with a company of noble vir-gins, to soften by their charms the obstinacy ofthe schismatics. Yet under this mask of zeal, adiscerning eye will perceive that all was hollowand insincere in the court and church of Con-stantinople . According to the vicissitudes ofdanger and repose, the emperor advanced or re-treated ; alternately instructed and disavowedhis ministers ; and escaped from an importunate

* See Lenfant, Hist, du Concile de Constance, tom. ii, p. 576; andfor the ecclesiastical history of the times, the Annals ofSpondamis, theBibliotheqiie of Dupin, tom. xii, and volumes xxi and xxii of the His-tory, or rather the Continuation, of Fleury.