 The long resistance of the city, as well as the exodus of its Greek Orthodox population to still Byzantine-controlled lands and the rapid Islamization that followed the conquest (the phenomenon of crypto-Christianity notwithstanding) quickly diminished the Greek Orthodox element in the population.Already in 1354, when Gregory Palamas visited the city, he found the local Christian population much depleted, and in a partial census of Nicaea itself dating to 1454/5, only seven Christian households are recorded.Although the entire region of Bithynia suffered a sharp decline in the numbers of its Christian element during and after the Ottoman conquest, throughout the early Ottoman period the Patriarchate retained active all of its Byzantine-era metropolises—apart from Nicaea also Nicomedia, Chalcedon and Prussa—a number totally disproportionate to the demographic realities on the ground.