At Constantinople is the palace of the emperor, right fair and
well-dight: and therein is a fair place for joustings, or for
other plays and desports. And it is made with stages, and hath
degrees about, that every man may well see, and none grieve other.
And under these stages be stables well vaulted for the emperor's
horses; and all the pillars be of marble.

And within the Church of Saint Sophia, an emperor sometime 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; and thereon was written, in Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin, letters that said thus; JESU CHRISTUS NASCETUR DE
VIRGINE MARIA, ET EGO CREDO IN EUM; that is to say, 'Jesu Christ
shall be born of the Virgin Mary, and I trow in him.' And the date
when it was laid in the earth, was two thousand year before our
Lord was born. And yet is the plate of gold in the treasury of the
church. And men say, that it was Hermogenes the wise man.

And if all it so be, that men of Greece be Christian yet they vary
from our faith. For they say, that the Holy Ghost may not come of
the Son; but all only of the Father. And they are not obedient to
the Church of Rome, ne to the Pope. And 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, that is God's Vicar on earth, to whom God
gave his plein power for to bind and to assoil, and therefore they
should be obedient to him.

And they sent again diverse answers; and among others they said