dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor. They were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards released; the one by submission, the other by death: but the obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of their eyes; and the Greeks, the least adverse to the union, deplored that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. 35 Persecutors must expect the hatred of those whom they oppress; but they commonly find some consolation in the testimony of their conscience, the applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success of their undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself, to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel champions by whom he was detested and despised. While his violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was arraigned, and his sincerity suspected; till at length Pope Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek emperor from the pale of a church, into which he was striving to reduce a schismatic people. No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the union was dissolved, and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were purified; the penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after weeping the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his father the burial of a prince and a Christian. 36 339 (return) [ According to Fallmarayer he had always maintained this title.—M.] 34 (return) [ This frank and authentic confession of Michael’s distress is exhibited in barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs himself Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from the MSS. of the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio, (Rome, 1741,) I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper of a bookseller.] 35 (return) [ See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the chapters 1, 11, 16, 18, 24—27. He is the more credible, as he speaks of this persecution with less anger than sorrow.] 36 (return) [ Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1—ii. 17. The speech of Andronicus the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious record, which proves that if the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the emperor was not less the slave of superstition and the clergy.]