The fourteenth century was, indeed, the golden age of Salonika in art and letters. The erection of the churches of the Twelve Apostles and St Catherine continued the tradition of the much earlier churches of St George, St Sophia, and St Demetrios. The clergy followed in the footsteps of the learned Eustathios, and the beauty, wit, and reading of a Thessalonian lady, Eudokia Palaiologina, turned the head of a son of Andronikos II, when governor of Salonika, “that garden of the Muses and the Graces,” as one of the literary archbishops of the fourteenth century called it. The intellectual activity of the place led to intense theological discussion, and at this period the “Orthodox” city _par excellence_ was agitated by the heresy of the “Hesychasts,” or Quietists, who believed that complete repose would enable them to see a divine light flickering round their empty stomachs, while the so-called “Zealots,” or friends of the people, with the cross as their banner, practised in Salonika the doctrines of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade in mediæval England. The exploitation of the poor by the rich and the tax-collectors, and the example of the recent revolution at Genoa, caused this republican movement, which led to the massacre of the nobles in 1346 by hurling them from the castle walls into the midst of an armed mob below. The “Zealots,” like the Iconoclast Emperors, have suffered from the fact that they have been described by their enemies, and notably by Cantacuzene[444], to whose aristocratic party they were opposed. Yet even an archbishop publicly advocated so drastic a measure as the suppression of some of the monasteries, in order to provide funds for the better defence of the city; nor was there anything very alarming in their preference for direct taxation. Thus, Salonika was from 1342 to 1349, under their auspices, practically an independent republic, till they succumbed to the allied forces of the aristocracy and the monks.