With over 14,000 copies sold, this album was released for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2004 exhibit "Byzantium: Faith and Power." It features Byzantine music from 1261 to 1557, including two laments, one in Green, and one in Latin and Old French, for the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Vocal ensemble Cappella Romana combines passion with scholarship in it's exploration of early and contemporary music of the Christian East and West. It's name refers to the medieval Greek concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), which embraced Rome and Western Europe as well as the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople ("New Rome") and it's Slavic commonwealth.