The library at Blachernae was set in a marble loggia beneath a row of palace rooms. Stone benches lined the inner wall, with low tables between them heaped with codices, loose quires, and rolls tied in faded cord. At the far end, beside gaming boards cut into the slabs, two servants were dragging a chest away from a leak that had stained the floor.
George Sphrantzes had taken off his gloves and was turning the leaves carefully, though grit clung to everything. Constantine stood at one table, shifting piles, checking bindings, and prying open warped boards with both thumbs. Most were church books: service books, homilies, Psalters, saints' lives, and collections of verse. One gave off the sharp smell of mouse droppings when he opened it.
He found Diodorus first, where it had been laid flat beneath two commentaries. George lifted it out, blew the dust from the board, and turned it toward him.
"Bibliotheca Historica."
Constantine checked the title and the gatherings. The copy was worn, but complete enough. "Set it aside," he said. "We can print from it."
George had already taken down another volume from the chest. "Vios Alexandrou tou Makedonos," he said. "This was my favourite book when I was a boy. I remember the Amazons best."
"The campaigns I will grant him," Constantine said. "The Amazons less readily."
George opened the book where a leaf had once been turned down. "You think? Men wrote it plainly enough."
"They wrote of his flight into heaven plainly enough, too."
George smiled. "That is surely a myth."
Constantine turned a couple of leaves, then nodded toward the bench. "Set Alexander with the others. No one will settle the question now."
George reached back into the same chest and drew out a copy of Digenis Akritas. One corner of the boards had split, and the sewing had been redone in a rougher hand. Constantine looked at it for a moment, then nodded.
"Set this aside as well. A better copy would be welcome if we can find one, but this is enough for a first printing. Digenis will find readers too, though not so many as Alexander."
George looked at him over the top of the book. "You take the city, and at once you begin reckoning which books will sell first. You are a merchant under the purple after all."
Constantine gave a faint shrug. "There are worse faults in a ruler."
George's mouth shifted. "So you do not deny it."
"No," Constantine said. "I would rather be useful in more than one trade." He took Digenis from him and laid it on the keep pile at the bench.
A longer chest stood under the outer arch, its lid warped enough that one servant had to hold it open while the other searched inside. Constantine bent and lifted out a Homer, Iliad and Odyssey together, written in a large hand with gold in the headings and the opening lines of each book. The spine had gone stiff, but when he opened it the gold still caught what little light reached the loggia.
"I am surprised this is still here," he said. "No one thought to scrape the gold."
George leaned in beside him. "Someone knew what it was. Or no one wanted to carry a book that size down a ladder."
Constantine eased it shut and set it flat again. "Either way, it stays."
After three tables and two chests, it was clear there would be no great hidden trove here. There were good things in the loggia, but few of them; the rest were service books, commentaries, thin school texts, damaged poems, and paper bundles that would need drying before anyone dared unfold them. He had expected more from an imperial palace, even this one, with its braced columns and wet vaults. He was setting aside a mildew-stained menologion when Helena came in from the court.
She wore plain dark wool and no jewel, only a narrow veil pinned back from her hair. George bowed first. Constantine set the book down and kissed her cheek.
"Have you found what you wanted?" she asked.
"Some things," he said. "Not enough."
Her eyes moved over the piles on the tables, then to George. "I never thought I would find you searching shelves like a librarian. My son has changed more in these last years than in all the years before them. At times, I think I am looking at another man."
George smiled. "He learned quickly because he had to."
Helena looked back at Constantine. "So it seems."
Constantine wiped his fingertips on a cloth one of the servants had left near the chest. "Tomorrow George and I go to Chora. I am told there is a better collection there."
"There is," Helena said. "John Chortasmenos has kept it so. He is a good man and loyal to this house. Though he is bishop of Selymbria, he still spends most of his time among the shelves."
"I have heard as much."
"You will like him," she said. "He cares more for the library than for his bishopric."
George gave a low breath that might have been agreement. Behind them, one of the servants shut the long chest, and the warped lid knocked twice against the frame.
Constantine waited until George had turned away to a side table and begun checking a stack of commentaries. Then he stepped closer and lowered his voice.
"Will you stay here a little longer," he asked, "or is your mind fixed?"
Helena did not answer at once. She looked past him toward the cracked rooms above the loggia and the patch of pale sky between the arches. "I will return to the monastery," she said. "I was not made to end my years in palace rooms."
"You do not need to go back so quickly."
She turned her eyes to him. "It is not a question of need."
Her hand touched his sleeve lightly. "My son, I took my vows years ago. What remains of my life belongs to God. The city changing hands does not alter that."
The seam of his glove bit into the raw place in his palm, but he said nothing. She gave him a small nod, then turned and went back into the court, the hem of her robe brushing dust from the stone.
George came back with another armful of books and set them down on the bench. He glanced once toward the court and said nothing. Constantine wrapped the Homer in cloth, told the servants which chests were to be moved first, and left the Diodorus, Alexander, and Digenis in a separate stack on the stone.
The next morning, they rode south from Blachernae with a small escort, through lanes that still smelled of wet ash and lime. Men were hauling charred beams from a courtyard near the wall, while two boys with baskets gathered broken roof tile into heaps beside a drain. At the Monastery of the Savior in Chora, the gate stood open, its stone cleaner than most in the city, and John Chortasmenos was waiting in the outer court with another man beside him.
Chortasmenos bowed. He was a spare man with careful hands and a dark smear of ink along one thumb. Beside him stood George Kourtesios Scholarios, younger, fuller in the beard, with street dust worked pale into the hem of his robe.
"Majesty," Chortasmenos said.
He turned slightly. "This is George Kourtesios Scholarios. He keeps a household school in the city and helps me with the library."
Scholarios bowed in turn. "I knew your brother John in the years before he died. We studied together for the council he still thought might come."
Constantine looked at him for a moment. "He was a good emperor."
George Sphrantzes, half a length behind, leaned forward in his saddle.
"And you are civil judge as well."
Scholarios inclined his head. "I am."
"Good," Constantine said. "That saves us a summons. We will need you soon enough."
Chortasmenos cut in with a tactful hurry. "Majesty, before you see the library, let me say this: the books from your presses are a marvel. I have never held their like before. The page is clean, the letters are so even, and one copy answers another exactly. This truly is a new age for books."
Constantine swung down from the saddle, and a groom came forward for the reins. "That is why I am here," he said. "What has been kept by hand can now be preserved in greater number."
They went in through the narthex. Gold tesserae still caught the light in the vaults above, and faces in the mosaics looked down through old lamp smoke. The floor had been swept recently, and the joins in the plaster showed where repairs had been made.
"This is in far better order than Blachernae," Constantine said.
"Thanks to the donations of the faithful," Chortasmenos replied.
The library lay in an upper room of the north annex, with shutters open to a pale strip of day and shelves built more closely than those at the palace. Theodore Metochites had filled it once, and Chortasmenos had spent years keeping it from decay. The air smelled of dry leather, paste, and dust rather than mildew. On a worktable lay cloth pads, horn markers, a bone folder, thread, and a small knife for lifting pastedowns.
"Much of this came from Metochites' collection," Chortasmenos said as they entered. "What survived, I rebound or cleaned where I could."
He showed them first a few books of his own: philological notes, a historical compilation, and philosophical leaves with corrections packed tightly into the margins. Constantine turned them carefully while George read the titles from the opening pages.
"You have filled half a shelf yourself," Constantine said.
Chortasmenos answered with a dry movement of the mouth. "I never learned how to stay in one field, Majesty."
"And I am told you restore books as well."
"I do what I can. If no one dries them, resews them, and mends the boards, they soon come apart."
He turned away and came back with a volume wrapped in linen. When he set it on the table and drew back the cloth, the table seemed to brighten. The boards were sound, the sewing had been renewed, and a fresh contents list had been added at the front. Painted plants stood clear between the blocks of text, their roots and stems washed in green and red.
"The Dioscurides made for Anicia Juliana," Chortasmenos said. "I restored it myself and added scholia. A copy is kept at the hospital."
Constantine bent lower over the page. The paint had survived better than he expected; he could still make out the shape of the leaves, the clustering roots, the cut of the stem. "This should be printed."
Chortasmenos looked up at once. "The images as well?"
"The text alone is not enough." Constantine touched the margin lightly, then withdrew his hand. "We are already cutting simple blocks for images. This would need finer work, but it can be done."
Chortasmenos's eyes sharpened. "You mean to print the plant itself, not only the words. Fascinating."
"Yes," Constantine said. "Not as richly as this but clearly enough that a physician will not mistake one herb for another."
They went on from shelf to shelf. First came Ptolemy's Geography, then the Mathematical Syntaxis, then Isaac Argyros' treatises and tables, then Nicomachus, and at last a worn copy of Diophantus with corners darkened by long handling. Constantine weighed one codex in both hands before giving it back.
"The city needs a school for mathematics, astronomy, reckoning, and the rest of what keeps officers, surveyors, and clerks from making a mess of their work," he said.
Scholarios looked up from the far table. "You mean to reopen the Pandidakterion?"
"Not in name only," Constantine said. "A real school. We began on a smaller scale in Glarentza. Here it will be larger."
Scholarios set both palms on the table edge. "That would be good news, Majesty, but there is little taste for study in the city when men are busy staying alive. I have only a handful of students now, and even they come irregularly."
"That will change," Constantine said. "When there are posts to fill, students will come."
Chortasmenos nodded once. "Then the city may have students again."
He turned as if to take down a set of theological commentaries from the next shelf, but Constantine stopped him.
"Have you anything on mechanisms?" he asked. "Siege engines, weights, devices of practical use?"
Chortasmenos's brow drew together. "Mechanisms. No, Majesty, I do not think we have anything of that sort here. The collection is mostly theology, history, the classical poets —"
He stopped. His eyes moved to the back of the room.
"Wait." He took a step, then another. "There is something. I moved them out of the way years ago, to make room for the patristics."
He knelt by a lower chest at the back wall, lifting the lid. He reached above it to a higher shelf and brought down a worn leather case, blowing the dust from the top of it.
"Hero of Alexandria," he said, bringing it to the table. "I had forgotten. Three of his books. Pneumatica, Automata, Mechanica."
Constantine's hand went out before Chortasmenos had finished setting the case down. He checked himself, took the first codex more carefully, and opened it. The pages crackled under his fingers.
"These must be studied at once," Constantine said. He looked up from the page. "I would have copies made for the new imperial library."
"A new library, Your Majesty?" Chortasmenos said.
Constantine set the codex down again with more care than speed. "I mean to build an imperial library once more, to accompany the new university," he said, looking from Chortasmenos to Scholarios.
"Larger than what stood before, with room for thousands of books. Not for show. A place that feeds the schools, the hospitals, the courts, the printers."
He turned to Scholarios. "And I mean to build a law school with it. If you are willing to help set it in order, say so."
Scholarios did not answer at once. He looked down at the books on the table, then toward the open shutters, and back to Constantine. "Yes, Majesty," he said. "I will help."
"And you," Constantine said, turning to Chortasmenos, "if you will lend your hand to the library itself."
Chortasmenos rested his fingers on the leather case. "It would be an honor, Majesty."
George Sphrantzes had already drawn a sheet of paper toward him. A clerk from the monastery brought wax and a writing board, and the receipt was written there at the table while Constantine kept one hand on the Hero codices. When George pressed the imperial seal into the red wax, Constantine gathered up the case himself, and on the stair the books shifted softly inside it.
Historical notes:
In 1437, the Spanish traveller Pero Tafur visited Constantinople and described an area at the entrance to the Palace of Blachernae that seems to have functioned as a library. He wrote that below certain chambers there was "an open loggia of marble with stone benches round it, and stone slabs like tables, raised on pillars in front of them … [where] many books and ancient writings and histories" were kept; gaming boards were also provided. Although he did not explicitly call it an "imperial library," his description strongly suggests that the imperial court still maintained a collection of books within the palace complex.
John Chortasmenos (c. 1370–1439), Bishop of Selymbria by 1431, was an ardent bibliophile and the author of philological, historical, and philosophical works. At least twenty-four surviving manuscripts are known to have belonged to his library. Among the most notable is the Juliana Anicia Codex of Dioscorides, which he had restored and rebound, while also adding a table of contents and extensive scholia. His collection also included the Arithmetica of Diophantus, excerpts from Ptolemy's Handy Tables, treatises by Isaac Argyros, geography texts, excerpts from the Almagest, transcriptions of Argyros' astronomical works, and Nicomachus' Introductio arithmetica.
As for the books of Hero, Giovanni Aurispa sold some manuscripts connected to that corpus in Venice in 1423, so having Constantine find examples of such material still in Constantinople remains within the bounds of plausibility.
The Monastery of Christ in Chora, close to Blachernae, was another important intellectual site. Theodore Metochites is said to have donated his large personal library there, housed in the upper floor of the church's north annex. Chora was one of the most artistically important monasteries of late Byzantium, and its mosaics and frescoes—especially those from the fourteenth-century restoration under Metochites—were regarded among the finest in the empire. At the same time, it functioned more as a monastic and intellectual center than as a major public or imperial institution.
Gennadius, George Kourtesios Scholarius (c. 1400–1472), was in the 1430s a civil court judge, philosopher, and prominent Aristotelian. He was also an antagonist of Plethon and maintained a household school in Constantinople. Though he later became the first patriarch under the Ottomans and a major anti-unionist figure, at this point in his life he was not yet so hardline. Before the Council of Florence, he could still be described as in favour of union, provided it could be achieved on doctrinal grounds. Here I am therefore visualising him as sharper and more cautious than openly anti-unionist. He was also a pupil of Mark of Ephesus.