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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1788 Excerpt:...prosperity or distress; as the scale of the wnporpeBe! rise and fal1 of the Barbarian dynasties. When the Turks of the nedict Xii. houfe 0f Seljuk pervaded Asia and threatened Constantinople, we have seen at the council of Placentia, the suppliant ambassadors of Alexius, imploring the protection of the common father of the Christians. No sooner had the arms of the French pilgrims removed the sultan from Nice to Iconium, than the Greek princes resumed, or avowed, their genuine hatred and contempt for the schismatics of the West, which precipitated the first downfal of their empire. The date of the Mogul invasion is marked in the soft and charitable language of John Vataces. After the recovery of Constantinople, the throne of the first Palæologus was encompassed by foreign and domestic enemies: as long as the swcrd of Charles was suspended over his head, he basely courted the favour of the Roman pontiff; and sacrificed union. sacrificed to the present danger, his faith, his virtue, and the affec-Chap. tion of his subjects. On the decease of Michael, the prince and-.---/ people asserted the independence of their church and the purity of their creed: the elder Andronicus neither feared nor loved the Latins; in his last distress, pride was the safeguard of superstition, nor could he decently retract in his age the firm and orthodox declarations of his youth. His grandson, the younger Andronicus, was less a slave in his temper and situation; and the conquest of Bithynia by the Turks, admonished him to seek a temporal and spiritual alliance with the western princes. After a separation and silence of fifty years, a secret agent, the monk Barlaam, was dispatched to pope Benedict the twelfth; and his artful instructions appear to have been drawn by the master-ha...