Though the senate met rarely, its support was never altogether dispensed with. The emperors did not claim to reign by divine right, nor was any such pretext put forward on their behalf. The succession passed in the usual manner and the emperor reigned with almost autocratic powers so long as the nobles and the patriarch and ecclesiastics were content. In the period with which we are concerned the nobles sometimes preferred to associate a younger man with the occupant of the throne. Such association was usually, though not always, in accordance with the desire of the reigning emperor, and had the conspicuous advantage of allowing the elder to train his younger associate in statecraft. In some cases, as in those of young Andronicus and of John during the reign of his father, Manuel, it was imposed upon the emperor in order to bring about a change of policy. No form of popular representation existed. The mass of the people had nothing to do with the laws except to obey them. So long as their lives and their property were protected and the laws fairly administered they were content. [Sidenote: Administration of law.] So far as can be judged from the silence as well as from the writings of the Byzantine writers, there was little fault to find with the administration of law. When cases of the miscarriage of justice are mentioned they are generally brought forward to show the scandal they had produced or in some other connection which suggests that such cases were exceptional. It was not only that the keen subtlety of a long succession of Greek-speaking lawyers had preserved the traditions of their great ancestors of the time of Justinian and had guarded law in admirable forms, but the still better traditions of an honest administration of law had continued, and this with the result--simple as it may appear to Western readers; strange as it would have sounded to a Turkish subject at any time since the capture of Constantinople--that people believed that the decisions of the law courts were fairly given. [Sidenote: Interest in religious questions.] The inhabitants of the capital retained until the last days of its history as a Christian city their intense interest in religious questions. It is of less importance to qualify such interest as superstitious or fanatical than to try to understand it. That theological questions possessed a dominating influence over the people of Constantinople is one of the facts of history, and represents an important element in the education of the modern Western world.