do not appear in Gradenigo.[225] But Tiraboschi conceives, on the other hand, that the latter has inserted some on insufficient grounds. Christine of Pisa is mentioned, I think, by neither; she was the daughter of an Italian astronomer, but lived at the court of Charles V. of France, and was the most accomplished literary lady of that age.[226] [221] Ragionamento istorico-critico opra la litteratura Greco-Italiana. Brescia, 1759. [222] P. 37. These are very corruptly given, through the fault of a transcriber; for Papias has translated them into tolerable Latin verse. [223] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 144. [224] Meiners, iii. 11. [225] Pp. 155, 217, &c. Add to these authorities, Muratori, dissert. 44; Brucker, iii. 644, 647; Tiraboschi, v. 393. [226] Tiraboschi, v. 388, vouches for Christine’s knowledge of Greek. She was a good poetess in French, and altogether a very remarkable person. |Corruption of Greek language itself.| 13. The intercourse between Greece and the west of Europe, occasioned by commerce and by the crusades, had little or no influence upon literature. For, besides the general indifference to it in those classes of society which were thus brought into some degree of contact with the Eastern Empire, we must remember that, although Greek, even to the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., was a living language in that city, spoken by the superior ranks of both sexes with tolerable purity, it had degenerated among the common people, and almost universally among the inhabitants of the provinces and islands, into that corrupt form, or rather new language, which we call Romaic.[227] The progress of this innovation went on by steps very similar to those by which the Latin was transformed in the West, though it was not so rapid or complete. A manuscript of the twelfth century, quoted by Du Cange from the royal library at Paris, appears to be the oldest written specimen of the modern Greek that has been produced; but the oral change had been gradually going forward for several preceding centuries.[228]