Mikhail found Eric scanning the books on the shelves.
"Interested in these books? Constantinople has eighty public libraries and thirty Monastery libraries. Every learned and wise Emperor the Empire has had has sent envoys across the world to collect books—the works of the greatest scholars.
These envoys scoured the libraries and book markets of Baghdad, Samarkand, Damascus, Tashkent, Bukhara, Cairo, and Alexander, searching for books. Any books that could not be bought, he ordered copied. Emperor Constantine VII once paid the hefty price of One Thousand Gold Coins to have a single Arabian manuscript translated," Mikhail said with a smile.
"I had thought only Heretics and Western Christians were enthusiastic about such things. The Greeks have always been uncommonly confident in their own scholarship," Eric quipped.
