Five hundred and fifty-four years ago on this day the Roman
Empire was at last extinguished. By then the Empire was, of course,
Greek not Roman; Christian not pagan; and no longer strong but
pitifully weak. Dispossessed of all its Anatolian and Asian
province, and most of its European, all that remained was the great
city of Constantinople, much of which was reduced by privation,
disease, and depopulation to overgrown ruins. The Turks under a
great conqueror, Mehmet II, besieged the city beginning in April,
the day after Easter. They outnumbered the defenders at least 10 to
1; possibly the fell Janissaries
alone outnumbered the defenders. A pious, brave and noble
man, by grim irony named Constantine, was the last Byzantine
Emperor: he led his small force of Greek and Italian soldiers with
stoic dignity and courage. He died on the very walls of the city
with which he shared a name.
A series of omens shook the city in its last days: a lunar
eclipse; thick fog for days, a phenomenon unheard of in those
lands; an eerie red glow around the dome of Hagia Sophia. Some
historians now attribute these latter phenomena to local affects of
a massive volcano in the Pacific Ocean; but the pious and mystical
Byzantines naturally interpreted it as the withdrawal of the
protection of divine providence from the Second Rome.
A mass was said at Holy Wisdom on Monday, May 28; at last, in
this final hour, Catholic and Orthodox joined together in worship
of the Risen Lord. Greeks who had sworn oaths never to darken the
doors of a church contaminated by Romish heretics heard liturgy
next to Italians who had declared the Orthodox more loathsome than
the infidel Turk. There, in that last agony of the Roman Empire,
Christendom was unified, and the Church breathed with both her
lungs. There, in the person of the ragged remnants of
Constantinople’s defenders, the sons of the Church Universal joined
in true fellowship. There, in this greatest of tragedies, and only
at the bitter end, was a true Christian brotherhood of Greece and
Rome.
The lineaments of the Emperor’s final speech are known to us.
John Julius Norwich gives us perhaps the most moving construal:
He spoke first to his Greek subjects, telling them that
there were four great causes for which a man should be ready to
die: his faith, his country, his family and his sovereign. They
must now be prepared to give their lives for all four. He for his
part would willingly sacrifice his own for his faith, his city and
his people. They were a great and noble people, the descendents of
the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, and he had no doubt that
they would prove themselves worthy of their forefathers in the
defense of their city, in which the infidel Sultan wished to seat
his false prophet on the throne of Jesus Christ. Turning to the
Italians, he thanked them for all that they had done and assured
them of his love and trust in the dangers that lay ahead. They and
the Greeks were now one people, united in God; with his help they
would be victorious. Finally he walked slowly round the room,
speaking to each man in turn and begging forgiveness if he ever
caused him any offense.
It was the last speech of an empire of orators; the last
theological counsel of an empire of theologians; the last
exhortation of an empire of soldiers — the last day of Rome and
final public words of the Roman Emperor.
Sapping attempts on the city walls by Ottoman engineers had
repeatedly failed in the teeth of Greek cunning and intrepidity;
and finally the Sultan resorted to simply hurling his forces
against them, wave after wave beginning with the least capable
mercenaries and ending with the terrible Janissaries. The
slaughter, there on the walls, was beyond reckoning, and yet the
Christians held out for five further hours; but then, when the
valiant Genoese general Giovanni Giustiniani fell with a gruesome
wound, the defense finally broke. A group of Turkish irregulars had
discovered an insecurely locked, or perhaps a treacherously
unlocked door, plunged through it, and managed to raise the
Sultan’s standard on a high tower. This, along with the loss of the
great Genoese warrior, brought despair and final defeat. The
Emperor and his closest surviving lieutenants flung themselves into
the ever-growing mass of Turks, and died there. Constantinople was
now broken. Constantine son of Helena had founded it; Constantine
son of Helena perished in its final defense. The earth stood still
and the heavens wept.
The slaughter and rapine that awaited the surviving citizens of
the city need not be dwelt on at length. It was unspeakable.
Children raped on Christian altars; women and elderly impaled;
blood running on the streets; St. Sophia a great bloodbath, then a
mosque. Legend holds that several priests vanished into the very
walls of the church, to return when Constantinople is liberated
from the yoke of the Mohammedan. Untold Greeks were captured and
clasped in fetters, the maidens and attractive boys destined for
Turkish harems, the strong boys for the barracks of the
Janissaries, to repeat the conquest of other Christians in other
lands; and the Orthodox Church itself was seized into a captivity
under which much of it toils to this day. The slave markets of the
world showed a rapid depreciation in their miserable commodity for
months to come. Though he has promised three days of looting (to
entice those among his army of lesser piety), the Sultan now called
a halt to it after one, so terrible was the pillage; few
complained. The city was vanquished and violated. He established
the Greeks under the standard dhimma contract, Islam’s
system of official subjugation and humiliation: a kind of Jim Crow
for infidels. Eventually order was restored, and before long the
city was thriving again, after a fashion, under Turkish suzerainty.
Human resilience is a remarkable thing. But the Roman Empire was no
more. The morning of May 29, 1453, shone with the last sunrise over
Greek Rome.
