The earlier patriarchs after the conquest seem to have been disturbed in their office by scandals, intrigues, difficulties of every kind. Before long the Sultan demanded payment on each new election, and it is represented that it was only by bribes that the election proceeded at all. Simony appears to have been rife. It was but slowly and under persecution that the Church was purged from these sins and became again fully worthy of the reverence of the whole Greek people. The encouragement of learning in the present century, the high character of the patriarchs, the times of danger through which they have passed, have left the Church the true centre of the national life which still remains. Nor has the widespread influence of the patriarchate failed to preserve some relics of the power of the ancient Empire. During the seventeenth century, while the Morea was in the hands of the Venetians, the Patriarch of Constantinople still nominated the bishops, revenues still reached him from the monasteries; and his excommunications were still valid in the lands which did not own the Sultan as lord. The Patriarch still claims ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Balkan lands, though the Porte has appointed a Bulgarian exarch, in accord with the wishes of the government, to act as head of the Orthodox in that principality, and Roumania has also freed herself; Serbia still struggles to be free: but it can hardly be doubted that should the lands ever be reunited, they would all gladly return to the obedience of the Patriarchate. But this by anticipation: Mohammed set himself to found a new city. Land was freely granted to rich families from other cities: it is said that five thousand families, Greeks and Turks, were soon induced to settle in what had been the richest city in the world. Four thousand Servians were planted outside the walls to recolonize the villages that the war had destroyed. As the conquest spread Greeks and Albanians were forcibly deported to the capital. The Christians of Constantinople alone were freed from the tribute of their children. Before he died Mohammed saw the city again populous and in prosperity. He founded a new city on the ruins of the old: the new population, half Christians, but predominantly Turks, gave new life; and the new life was made to centre round the new buildings which Christian art inspired the Moslems to build. Gradually the city became not only Oriental, but Mohammedan. It is thus we see it to-day. Of the buildings let us speak later. Now let us see the work that was done by Mohammed the Conqueror and his successors.