The Church of the Pammacaristos served as the cathedral of the patriarchs of Constantinople for one hundred and thirty-live years after 1456, when deprived of the Church of the Holy Apostles.
These churches put the period of the Pabeologi before us in also a pleasing aspect. The mosaics which adorn the narthex and exo-narthex of the Church of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora imply, that love for the beautiful and skill to express it had not fled the city which reared S. Sophia. The proportions of S. Theodosia are exceedingly fine, and the chapel attached to the Pammacaristos is, at least externally, remarkably attractive.
Historian Nicephoros Gregoras
Nor had intellectual life and scholarship altogether ceased. The historian Nicephoros Gregoras was a monk in the monastery of S. Saviour-in-the-Chora, and wrote his work in the retirement of his cell. The historians Pachymeres, Cantacuzene, Phrantzes, Ducas, were not the products of an ignorant age. The Greek scholars who took refuge in the West, and contributed to its intellectual revival, represented a society which, with all its faults, had not lost its interest in the literature of ancient Hellas, or in general knowledge.
Indeed, in studying the period of the Palaeologi, one continually meets a spirit akin to that which produced the Renaissance in Western Europe. And, notwithstanding the vanity of indulging in dreams of what might have been but never has been, the mind obstinately asks, What if that upward movement had not been checked by a great political catastrophe? What if it had been accompanied by moral reform and military prowess?
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