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LAST SEEYICE IN ST. SOPHIA 331 cardinal, the crowd of ecclesiastics representing both the Eastern and Western Churches ; emperor and nobles, the last remnant of the once gorgeous and brave Byzantine aristocracy; priests and soldiers intermingled, Constanti- nopolitans, Venetians and Genoese, all were present, all realising the peril before them, and feeling that in view of the impending danger the rivalries which had occupied them for years were too small to be worthy of thought. The emperor and his followers partook together of ' the undefiled and divine mysteries,' and said farewell to the patriarch. The ceremony was in reality a liturgy of death. The empire was in its agony and it was fitting that the service for its departing spirit should be thus publicly said in its most beautiful church and before its last brave emperor. If the scene so vividly described by Mr. Bryce of the coro- nation of Charles the Great and the birth of an empire is among the most picturesque in history, that of the last Chris- tian service in St. Sophia is surely among the most tragic. 1 The solemn ceremony concluded, all went to take up their respective stations. The Greeks, says Leonard, who is by no means a witness partial to them, went to their posts strengthened in their manly resolve to put aside all private interests and acted together for the common safety steadily and cheerfully. Italians and Greeks returned to their stations at the Defenders landward walls for the defence of the Outer Wall and with the behind Inner Wall behind them. In order to prevent any of their them ' number withdrawing from the fight the gates leading from the city into the Peribolos, where they stood, were closed and locked, They thus voluntarily cut themselves off from all chance of retreat. It was done, says Cambini the Florentine, writing while the siege was within the memory of persons still living, so that in taking from the defenders any means of retreat they should resolve to conquer or die. 2 1 Phrantzes, 279 ; The Moscovite, p. 1113. The ceremony is also mentioned in the Georgian Chronicle. 2 Libro d' Andrea Cambini Florentino delta Origine de Turchi et imjperio delli Ottomanni. Edition of 1529, p. 25.