orphanage her father founded, she stated that "there could be seen a Latin being trained, and a Scythian studying Hellenic, and a Roman handling Hellenic texts and an illiterate Hellene speaking Hellenic correctly". In this case we reach a point where the Byzantines are Romans on the political level but Hellenic by descent. Eustathius of Thessalonica disambiguates the distinction in his account of the sack of Thessaloniki in 1185 by referring to the invaders with the generic term "Latins", encompassing all adherents to the Roman Catholic Church, and the "Hellenes" as the dominant population of the empire. After the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders, Greek nationalism accentuated. Niketas Choniates insisted on using the name "Hellenes", stressing the outrages of the "Latins" against the "Hellenes" in the Peloponnese and how the Alfeios River might carry the news to the barbarians in Sicily, the Normans. Nikephoros Blemmydes referred to the Byzantine emperors as Hellenes, and Theodore Alanias wrote in a letter to his brother that "the homeland may have been captured, but Hellas still exists within every wise man". The second Emperor of Nicaea, John III Doukas Vatatzes, wrote in a letter to Pope Gregory IX about the wisdom that "rains upon the Hellenic nation". He maintained that the transfer of the imperial authority from Rome to Constantinople was national and not geographic, and therefore did not belong to the Latins occupying Constantinople: Constantine's heritage was passed on to the Hellenes, so he argued, and they alone were its inheritors and successors. His son, Theodore II Laskaris, was eager to project the name of the Greeks with true nationalistic zeal. He made it a point that "the Hellenic race looms over all other languages" and that "every kind of philosophy and form of knowledge is a discovery of Hellenes […]. What do you, O Italian, have to display?" The evolution of the name was slow and did not replace the "Roman" name completely. Nikephoros Gregoras named his historical work Roman History. Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, a great supporter of Greek education, in his own memoirs always refers to the Byzantines as "Romans", yet, in a letter sent by the Mamluk sultan, An-Nasir Hasan, referred to him as "Emperor of the Hellenes, Bulgars, Sassanians, Vlachs, Russians, Alanians" but not of the "Romans". Over the next century, George Gemistos Plethon pointed out to Constantine XI Palaiologos that the people he leads are "Hellenes,