Under the new régime Galata proceeded to reorganise herself as the _Magnifica Communità di Pera_. The head of this Magnificent Community was a _magnifico_, prior of the Brotherhood of St. Anne, who was aided by a sub-prior and twelve councillors. Their deliberations chiefly concerned the churches, since in civil affairs they were naturally subject to the Porte. The Rue Voïvoda, the Wall Street of Galata, perpetuates the title of the Turkish functionary who was the superior temporal power of the Magnificent Community. The churches diminished in number, however, as the Latin population dwindled, and by 1682 their administration had passed into the hands of religious orders, or of the Patriarchal Vicar. This dignitary represented that member of the papal court whose title of Patriarch of Constantinople was the last shadow of the Latin occupation. The Patriarchal Vicar has now been succeeded by an Apostolic Delegate. On the other hand, the ambassadors of the Catholic powers, and particularly of France, gradually assumed protection of the Latin colony—which was no longer distinctively Genoese or Venetian. The Magnificent Community, accordingly, ceased to have corporate existence. But the Latin “nation” still forms one of the constituent elements of the Ottoman empire. And while the population of Galata is now more Greek, even more Turkish and Hebrew, than European, it is only within a generation or two that French has begun to supersede Italian as the _lingua franca_ of the town, and it still retains an indefinable Italian air.