[Footnote 248: Except the omission of a prayer for the emperor, the charges against Arsenius were of different nature: he was accused of having allowed the sultan of Iconium to bathe in vessels signed with the cross, and to have admitted him to the church, though unbaptized, during the service. It was pleaded, in favor of Arsenius, among other proofs of the sultan's Christianity, that he had offered to eat ham. Pachymer, l. iv. c. 4, p. 265. It was after his exile that he was involved in a charge of conspiracy.--M.] [Footnote 25: Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius, (l. iv. c. 1--16:) he was one of the commissaries who visited him in the desert island. The last testament of the unforgiving patriarch is still extant, (Dupin, BibliothËque EcclÈsiastique, tom. x. p. 95.)] [Footnote 259: Pachymer calls him Germanus.--M.] [Footnote 26: Pachymer (l. vii. c. 22) relates this miraculous trial like a philosopher, and treats with similar contempt a plot of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old saint, (l. vii. c. 13.) He compensates this incredulity by an image that weeps, another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the miraculous cures of a deaf and a mute patient, (l. xi. c. 32.)] [Footnote 27: The story of the Arsenites is spread through the thirteen books of Pachymer. Their union and triumph are reserved for Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vii. c. 9,) who neither loves nor esteems these sectaries.] The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the pretence, of the crime of PalÊologus; and he was impatient to confirm the succession, by sharing with his eldest son the honors of the purple. Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the Elder, was proclaimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the fifteenth year of his age; and, from the first Êra of a prolix and inglorious reign, he held that august title nine years as the colleague, and fifty as the successor, of his father. Michael himself, had he died in a private station, would have been thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults of his temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labor for his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from the Franks several of the noblest islands of the Archipelago, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his brother Constantine was sent to command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the eastern side of the Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Thinners, was repossessed by the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned by the patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to interpose his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations verified the prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of Constantinople would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of Michael were achieved by his lieutenants; his sword rusted in the palace; and, in the transactions