In their erection ladies of considerable importance in the history of Constantinople had a part. The first was built by Anna Dalassena, the mother of Alexius I. Comnenus; the last was restored by his mother-in-law, Mary Ducæna, a Bulgarian princess famous for her beauty; the second was an erection of the Empress of John I. Comnenus, the daughter of Geysa I., King of Hungary. These churches represent the age when Constantinople was stirred by the march of the earlier Crusades through the territory of the Empire, when Peter the Hermit and Godfrey de Bouillon encamped their followers within sight of the city walls, to be dazzled by the splendours of the Palace of Blachernæ, and cajoled by the diplomacy of Alexius I. Comnenus. They also recall the time when Henrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, brought his fleet and the troops of the Fourth Crusade to the Golden Horn, and founded the short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople. It was on the terraced ground beside the Church of Pantepoptes that the Emperor Alexius Murtzuplus pitched his vermilion tents and drew up his reserve forces. There he stood to see the walls on the shore below attacked by the Venetian ships and carried by Frankish knights. From that position he fled at the approach of a body of the enemy’s horsemen, and under his unstricken vermilion tent Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, soon to succeed him as Latin Emperor of Constantinople, spent the night of that memorable day. The monastery of the Church of the Pantocrator became the headquarters of the Venetians during the Latin occupation of the city. In the relations of Western and Eastern Christians to each other during the period of the Crusades there is nothing of which we can feel proud. The former were barbarous, the latter were decadent; neither of them worthy to recover the San Graal in search of which so much heroism and devotion were displayed for two centuries. But it is well to remember that the encounter of the East and the West during those expeditions contributed not a little to the “infiltration,” as it has happily been phrased, “of ideas, knowledge, and art from the Grecised Empire into Western Europe.” It brought the influence of an older and riper civilisation to bear upon the younger life that had come into the world, and aided that life to evolve a new and better order of things. The Venetian occupants of the monastery of Pantocrator, for instance, could learn much from the admirable organisation of the hospital maintained by that House for the benefit of the poor. The hospital contained fifty beds, of which ten formed a ward for surgical cases, eight a ward for acute diseases, ten for ordinary maladies, and twelve a ward for women. A fifth ward contained ten beds for the reception of applicants for admittance into the other wards of the hospital, until the physicians should decide upon the gravity of the cases. Each ward was in charge of two doctors, three medical assistants, and four servitors.