At Constantinople is the palace of the emperor, very handsome and well built; and therein is a fair place for joustings, or for other plays and sports. And it is made with stages, and hath steps about, that every man may see well, and not intercept the view of those behind. And under these stages are stables well vaulted for the emperor's horses; and all the pillars are of marble. And within the church of St. Sophia, an emperor once would have buried the body of his father when he was dead; and, as they made the grave, they found a body in the earth, and upon the body lay a fine plate of gold, on which was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, letters that said thus, "Jesus Christ shall be born of the Virgin Mary, and I believe in him." And the date when it was laid in the earth was two thousand years before our Lord was born. The plate of gold is still preserved in the treasury of the church. And they say that it was Hermogenes, the wise man.
Although the men of Greece are Christians, yet they vary from our faith; for they say that the Holy Ghost may not come of the Son, but only of the Father. And they are not obedient to the Church of Rome, nor to the pope; for they say that their patriarch hath as much power over the sea as the pope hath on this side the sea. And therefore pope John XXII. sent letters to them, how Christian faith should be all one, and that they should be obedient to the pope, who is God's vicar on earth, to whom God gave his full power to bind and to assoil, and therefore they should be obedient to him. But they sent back divers answers, amongst others saying thus: "We believe well that thy power is great upon thy subjects. We may not suffer thy great pride. We are not in purpose to fulfil thy great covetousness. The Lord be with thee; for our Lord is with us.—Farewell." And no other answer might he have of them. They make their sacrament of the altar of unleavened bread, because our Lord made it of such bread when he made his Maundy[290]. And on Shere-Thursday they make their unleavened bread, in token of the Maundy, and dry it in the sun, and keep it all the year, and give it to sick men instead of God's body. And they make but one unction when they christen children. They anoint not the sick. And they say that there is no purgatory, and that the souls shall have neither joy nor pain till the day of doom. They say, moreover, that fornication is not a deadly sin, but a thing that is according to nature; and that men and women should wed but once; and whosoever weddeth oftener than once, their children are bastards, and begotten in sin. Their priests also are wedded. They say, also, that usury is no deadly sin; and they sell benefices of holy church; and so do men in other places, (God amend it when his will is!) and that is a great scandal; for now is simony king crowned in holy church: God amend it for his mercy! And they say that in Lent men shall not fast, or sing mass, except on the Saturday and on the Sunday. And they fast not on the Saturdays, except it be Christmas Eve, or Easter Eve. They suffer not the Latins to sing at their altars; and if they do by any chance, they immediately wash the altar with holy water. And they say, that there should be but one mass said at one altar upon one day. They say also that our Lord never ate, but that he made sign of eating. They say, moreover, that we sin deadly in shaving our beards; for the beard is token of a man, and the gift of our Lord. And they say that we sin deadly in eating of animals that were forbidden in the Old Testament and by the old law, as swine, hares, and other beasts that chew not their cud. And they say that we sin in eating flesh on the days before Ash Wednesday, and in eating flesh on the Wednesday, and eggs and cheese on the Fridays. And they curse all those who abstain from eating flesh on the Saturday. The emperor of Constantinople appoints the patriarch, the archbishops, and the bishops, and gives the dignities and the benefices of churches, and deprives those who deserve it, when he finds any cause; and so is he lord both temporal and spiritual in his country[291].
