Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/228

210 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. been done for the father of the young Alexis, who was with them. The court was filled with eunuchs, comedians, clowns, mu- sicians, and mistresses. Nicetas incidentally mentions that the mistresses sat at the imperial tables with the empress.' The shortest road to success or to employment in the State was through the influence of these court favorites. In the Church alone were learning and character aids to promotion, but even Subservience ^^ ^^^^ Church tlic influence of the court was so of the Church, gj^eatly supcrior to that of the patriarch that the prelate of holy life, respectable character and attainments, w^as too often postponed to the favorite of a court mistress, buffoon, or eunuch. Indeed, one of the worst results of the Asiatic influences which had overwhelmed the court was the subserviency into which, as an institution, the Church had fallen. The bishops of the Elder Rome had succeeded in becoming lords of the AYest in all that related to things spiritual as completely, perhaps even more completely, than the emperors had succeeded in retaining their power as lords in things temporal. In the New Rome the emperors had been more powerful. From the moment when Constantino had declared Christianity to be the religion of the empire he and his successors had never relaxed their hold over the rule of the Church. The Churcli had become much more than in the West the reflection of the State. But the abuses which had infected the one had stricken also the other. Just as the emperor clianged his ministers when he liked, so also he endeavored to change the rulers of the Church. He never succeeded to the same extent, but the success to which he attained shows how subservient the Church had become. Nicetas mentions, for example, that Isaac Angelos in his short reign dismissed four patriarchs in succession : the first under the pretext that he had allowed certain ladies to leave a monastery whom Andronicos had forced to become nuns; the second, although named by him, because he was old and feeble; the third, although the emperor had named him, on > Nicetas, " Isaac," Book IIL