The Fall of Constantinople
Hospitality and sympathy, but no help - the Byzantine Emperor learns a bitter lesson about western diplomacy.
1453
King Henry VI 1422-1461, 1470-1471
Hospitality and sympathy, but no help - the Byzantine Emperor learns a bitter lesson about western diplomacy.
1453
King Henry VI 1422-1461, 1470-1471
Byzantium became the capital of the Roman Empire in 330, and was renamed Constantinople after the Emperor, Constantine. Its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 was one of the great catastrophes of civilisation, yet England and the other powers of Europe stood and watched.
FROM 1399 to 1403, the Roman Emperor Manuel II toured Europe, drumming up support for the defence of Constantinople from the growing threat of the Turks. He even visited London, where Henry IV treated him to a Christmas joust.
Ironically, it was those same European powers whose Crusaders had brought Constantinople to this pass, plundering it and murdering its people in 1204, and leaving its defences in ruins.* All the same, the Greeks grudgingly signed an agreement in 1439 accepting the Pope’s supreme authority, in expectation of his military support;* yet when Sultan Mehmed II besieged the city in 1453, no great ships came out of the west, just a few brave Italian merchants.
Mehmed entered the city on Tuesday 29th May. His men broke into the magnificent Church of the Holy Wisdom* and massacred a cowering huddle of civilians; Mehmed followed, and raised prayers of thanksgiving to his god. The sixth-century basilica has never been officially used for Christian worship since.*
Now the Pope summoned a Crusade; but Europe’s kings looked the other way.
The Latin Occupation of Constantinople lasted from 1204 to 1261, during which time the Emperor and his Greek Orthodox clergy were exiled to Nicaea. See also The Holy Table of St Sophia.
One Greek bishop, St Mark of Ephesus, refused to sign. The senior clergy of the See of Kiev, exiled in Moscow following the sack of their city by the Golden Horde in 1240, went further: when Constantinople sent them a new Bishop to bring them into line, for the first time they elected their own instead, as their successors in Moscow do to this day. The agreement with Rome was later repudiated by all the Orthodox Churches, including Constantinople. See Filioque.
The full name of the church is ‘the Temple of the Holy Wisdom of God.’ In Christian teaching, God’s wisdom is not an abstract idea but actually a living, divine Person, the same person as Jesus Christ. The church is often known by its Greek name, ‘Hagía Sophía’; in some places, such as Velikiy Novgorod, the name St Sophia is used for churches dedicated to Holy Wisdom. Its patronal feast is 25th December.
It was used once unofficially, when a Cretan priest named Fr Lefteris Noufrakis stole into the cathedral on January 19th, 1919, in the confusion afforded by the end of the Great War. See ‘The Last Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia’ at OrthoChristian.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Emperor Manuel II visit London?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The Byzantine Emperor toured Europe’s capitals. He wanted their support. He was disappointed.