It has often been stated that the fall of the Empire was due to, or at least largely contributed to by, the demoralisation of the Court, the nobles, and the citizens. This view had its origin largely, though not exclusively, in the religious animosity of Latin Churchmen. The Court has been described as given over to gorgeous displays, to meaningless ceremonies, to luxury, and to effeminacy; the nobles as partakers in such displays and themselves effeminate; the citizens as idle, delighting in spectacular shows, and asking only to be amused. I know of no evidence which supports any such conclusion and believe that, on the contrary, such evidence as exists is against it. The population of the city, nobles and people alike, were religious--given over to superstition, according to our modern view--but they were not luxurious or mere pleasure-seekers. Their superstition corresponded with that of their fellow Christians in the West. ‘I believe,’ says La Brocquière, who visited Constantinople in 1433, ‘that God has spared the city more for the holy relics it contains than anything else.’[164] But the same writer adds the qualification that ‘the Greeks have not the like devotion that we have for relics.’ Nor is this religious or superstitious spirit the necessary companion of either luxury or effeminacy. The effeminacy and the luxury associated with Constantinople, in so far as they existed, belong to the period before the Latin conquest. When any displays are recorded after the recapture of the city--as, for example, at coronations--they are merely the traditional ceremonies which survived as such observances do in the coronation of our own sovereigns or at great historical courts like the Austrian and papal. The trials and sufferings, the long struggles against external and internal enemies which had gone on for nearly two centuries, had divested nobles and people alike of any love for idle ceremonies or mere diversions. The miracle plays which the people crowded to see in Hagia Sophia do not show that they had degenerated. The writer just quoted saw a representation of the three youths cast by Nebuchadnezzar into the burning fiery furnace,[165] which, while it may have served to increase the congregation’s trust in God, can hardly be regarded as a frivolous amusement.