Ragusan trade with the Greeks continued down to the fall of the last Greek despotates in the Morea. In June 1451, only two months before the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the Republic received a Golden Bull from the Emperor Constantine Palæologus, decreeing that the Ragusans in the capital might build themselves a church and an official residence for the consul whom they elected; if a Greek claimed a debt of a Ragusan he was to appeal to the latter’s consul, while in the inverse case the Ragusan would appeal to the local authorities; Ragusan merchants might import and export goods free of duty save for a 2½ per cent. tax on the sale of imports; there was to be no limit to the number of Ragusans residing at Constantinople; if a Ragusan left the city owing money to natives, none of his compatriots might be arrested in his place. The same year two Silver Bulls of a similar character were issued to the Ragusans by Thomas Palæologus, Despot of Achaia, at Misithia, and by his brother Demetrius, Despot of the Peloponnesus, at Chiarenza. The treaties were negotiated by Volzo Bobali, who in 1451 made a journey through the remnants of the Greek Empire to improve commercial relations with his own city; but they were merely the renewal of old-established connections, for since the fourteenth century Ragusan traders had brought the famed silks of Chiarenza to Ancona[439] and Italy. In the treaty with Ancona of 1372 allusion is made to the Ragusan trade in spices, sugar, and silks from Tartary and “Gazaria,” which shows the wide extent of the city’s sea-borne trade.