which is painful and shameful to speak of, was inflicted upon the
daughters, while the filthy activity was adorned by the obscene songs
of the unfortunate mothers. Finally reverence for all that was
called Christian was handed over to the brothel. When the female sex
was not spared (an action which might be excused since it is at least
in accord with nature), they became worse than animals, breaking all
human laws by turning on men. Their lust overflowed to the point
that the execrable and profoundly intolerable crime of sodomy, which
they committed against men of middle or low station, they also
committed against a certain bishop, killing him. How can this urgent
lust, worse than any insanity anywhere, which perpetually flees
wisdom and modesty, and is enkindled more powerfully the more it is
quenched, control itself among human beings, whom it befouls with
couplings unheard of among beasts, actions to which Christians may
not give name. And although, according to their own judgment, these
wretches may have many women, that is not enough, but they must stain
their dignity at the hog-trough of such filth by using men also. It
is not surprising that God could not tolerate their ripe wantoness,
and turned it into grief, and the earth, in its ancient way, cast out
the excrement of such destructive inhabitants." Therefore, after he
had expressed his great fears about the siege of Constantinople,
which would follow the crossing of the Arm of Saint George by his
enemies, he added, among other remarks, the following: "This great
city is most deserving of every kind of help if for no other reason
than to prevent the six apostles whose bodies are buried here from
being burned by unbelievers, or buried in the swirling sea." And
certainly nothing is more true. For that city, not only superior for
its monuments of the saints, but also famed for the merit and renown
of its founder, and particularly for the divine revelation which
transformed it from a very old little town into a miraculous city and