Note 87 — Chapter X · THE RESTORATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE [1204-1391 A.D.]

[We may here omit, as more properly belonging to religious history, the procession of patriarchs whom Andronicus raised to power and who fairly cudgelled one another with excommunications. Veccus was deposed for Joseph, who yielded to Gregorius, against whom the Arsenites conspired; he fell, and Athanasius lasted four years, leaving wholesale excommunication in a jar, which was not found for four years, and caused immense confusion and terror until Athanasius said he had revoked it some years before as secretly as he had invoked it. He was then restored for a time, till he was forced out for Nephon, who set a better table than the emperor. Glycys followed, and then Gerasimus, who was chosen because he was old and deaf, but he died in a year. His successor was Isaiah, whose failure to be compliant brought on many of the troubles of the later civil wars.]