On 29 May 1453, a priest was praying in Hagia Sophia for deliverance from the Turks, when the Emperor Constantine burst into the cathedral. The Emperor informed the priest that the city was lost, then declared his desire to die fighting rather than flee. He had come to the cathedral to pray for the chance of seeing Constantinople in Christian hands again one day. When the Emperor returned on 10 June 2003, he remembered the priest as a coward.