Lastly, to our knowledge of the Florentine period Professor Lampros has contributed three letters[154] of the Athenian priest and copyist Kalophrenas, which show that the attempts of the council of Florence for the union of the eastern and western churches found an echo in Florentine Athens. Professor Lampros was puzzled to explain the allusion to τοῦ ἀφεντὸς τοῦ μπαὴλου in one of the letters. He thinks it alludes to the Venetian bailie at Chalkis, who however had no jurisdiction at Athens at that period. If however, as he supposes, the correspondence dates from 1441 the phrase presents no difficulty. In that year Antonio II Acciajuoli had died, leaving an infant son, Franco, then absent at the Turkish court, and Nerio II, the former duke, returned to Athens. We may therefore suppose that “the prince’s baily” was the official who governed Athens till Nerio II came back. Professor Lampros has also published a letter[155] of Franco, the last duke of Athens, to Francesco Sforza of Milan, dated 1460, from Thebes, which Mohammed II had allowed him to retain after the capture of Athens in 1456. In this letter, written not long before his murder, Franco offers his services as a _condottiere_ to the duke of Milan. This was not his only negotiation with western potentates, for only a few days before the loss of Athens an ambassador of his was at the Neapolitan court[156]. One mistake has escaped the notice of Professor Lampros, as of his predecessors. The date of the second visit of Cyriacus of Ancona to Athens, when he found Nerio II on the Akropolis, must have been 1444 and not 1447, because the antiquary’s letter from Chios is dated _Kyriaceo die iv. Kal. Ap._ Now, March 29 fell on a Sunday in 1444, and we know from another letter of Cyriacus to the emperor John VI, written before June 1444, that he left Chalkis for Chios on _v. Kal. Mart._ of that year. THE TURKISH CAPTURE OF ATHENS The authorities differ as to the exact date of the capture of Athens by the Turks. A contemporary note in Manuscript No. 103 of the Liturgical Section of the National Library at Athens, quoted by Kampouroglos[157], fixes it at “May 4, 1456, Friday”; but in that year _June_ 4, not May 4, was a Friday, which agrees with the date of June 1456, given by Phrantzes[158], the _Chronicon Breve_[159], and the _Historia Patriarchica_[160]. But the best evidence in favour of June is the following document of 1458, to which allusion was made by Gaddi[161] in the seventeenth century, but which has never been published. I owe the copy to the courtesy of the Director of the “Archivio di Stato” at Florence. Item dictis anno et indictione [1458 Ind. 7] et die xxvj octobris.