On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court

If the study of ecclesiastical rites captures anyone, he may learn from this what the face of the Greek Church was in the tenth century after the birth of Christ: the procedure for choosing Patriarchs, the nature of their relationship with their Emperors, the roles and structure of the Greek churches, the institutions of celebrating divine worship, its ministers, the order of feast days, and the sacred processions, [conducted] on which days, to which more famous temples or monasteries. But if the contemplation of civil affairs delights someone more, a vast field opens up here for him, equally worthy of viewing and pleasant. The Augusti Emperors are created, they celebrate weddings, and they see to it that their newly born children are purified by the sacred bath in the church; they confer dignities, they go out to suburban palaces to live in the country, to gather grapes, and likewise to the public granaries to inspect the stored provisions; they receive, in one way the daily greetings of the nobles, in another the fixed and more solemn ones; they make speeches in the silences, they watch the madness of the Circus, they hear the acclamations and demands of the factions, they give prizes to victorious charioteers, they scatter gifts, they watch the pyrrhichae war dances and Gothic games, they celebrate vows, winter festivals, the birthdays of the empire and their own marriage, they exhibit divine feasts, they go to war, they act in the camps, they return to the city triumphing and trample the necks of conquered kings; they distribute pay to the soldiers, they equip and send out fleets, they admit the legates of foreign princes, they send out their own, they display all their pomp and luxury, while poverty passes by here and there, and finally, they depart to the majority i.e., they die and are brought into their monuments. You may walk through those sepulchral monuments of theirs with this very book as a guide, and inspect the urn of anyone with the inscribed names, in which there are some things that you would seek in vain in Ducange's Byzantine Families. You may also penetrate with this same guide into the very storehouses of the precious and significant items of the oriental empire, and examine the wardrobe chests and other furnishings. Better here than anywhere else, you may see the ranks of the nobles, both of the palace and the military, as well as the urban magistrates and other minor ones, and the numerous and various groups stationed in the long porticoes Ed. L. III assigned to the guard of the sacred body. I pass over the rest, since it is abundantly evident from what has been said above that there is such variety, charm, and dignity in the matters expounded in this work,