The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 and the end of the Byzantine empire did not change significantly the conditions in which the Greek language was used. Tendencies previously existing were only strengthened. ‘Serious’ literature continued to be written exclusively in the learned tongue, or as near an approximation to it as authors could attain. Literature in the spoken tongue, or in a language with many features of the spoken tongue, was almost confined to poetry. This poetry was not folk poetry. It may have been orally composed in some cases, but in general it was not. Its authors, and also its readers or hearers, often belonged to the most prosperous and cultured elements of society. But it did not enjoy the prestige which a composition in the literary tongue would have enjoyed, and therefore men were careless of its linguistic form. In any case there was no standard of correct usage other than that of the grammarians, which was wholly inappropriate to literature in the vernacular. Just as some of Petrarch's contemporaries – and sometimes Petrarch himself – esteemed his boring and derivative Latin epic Africa above the Italian poems of the Canzoniere, so Greek society – for all the pleasure which we know it took in vernacular poetry – felt that it did not merit the care in copying and transmission that were given to works in the learned tongue.