British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 897

CHAPTER XXII.
the pilgrim Theodoric relates that, in addition to the Latin Christians, there also ministered in the Holy Sepulchre representatives of the Eastern Churches "differing in language and their manner of conducting divine service". The Latin praedominium continued even after the expulsion of the Latins by Saladin in 1187 and it was not indeed seriously challenged (in circumstances which will be explained later) until the conquest of Palestine by the Ottoman Sultan Selim 1 in 1517.

43. Towards the end of 1217 St. Francis of Assisi sent a number of his monks to the Holy Land and the adjacent countries and shortly afterwards obtained for the Franciscans from the Egyptian Sultan Malek el Kamel permission to remain unmolested in the countries of the Levant and to visit the Holy Sepulchre without hindrance. On the final departure of the Crusaders from the Holy Land in 1291 the Franciscans remained to guard the Christian shrines : agreements were concluded with the Sultan Bibars II in 1309 and with the Sultan Melek-en-Naser in 1333 which recognised their rights of occupation :10d worship, and in 1342 Pope Clement VI confirmed them as the official guardians of the Holy Places on behalf of the whole of Catholic Christendom.

44. In the meantime the fortunes of the Byzantine Empire had been steadily declining. A new and formidable adversary had appeared : the Ottoman Turks, whose importance in history dates from the foundation by Osman (1288-1326) of what snbsequently developed into the Ottoman Empire. Osman. who had proclaimed himself independent of his Seljuk overlords and established a sultanate of bis own, quickly enlarged bis dominions, in part at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, with which he was constantly at war. Bis successors enlarged Osman's conquests both in Europe and Asia Minor, and twice within a century besieged Constantinople. which was at last to fall in the third and final siege by Mahomet II in 1453. With the fall of Constantinople the Byzantine Empire came to an end after an existence of over eleven hundred years.

45. Fourteen years before the fall of Constantinople one last effort had been made (in 1439) for the reunion of the Christian East and West. It will be recalled from the summary above that three hundred and sixty six years earlier (in 1073) the Byzantine Emperor at the time (Michael VII) had appealed to Pope Gregory VII asking for the aid of the Christian West and promis.ng the reunion of the Eastern with the Western Church. Now, three and a half centuries later, the position of the Byzantine Empire was far more desperate, and the Emperor John VII Palaiologos appealed to Rome with new proposals for reunion. The Pope

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