THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, and what it really meant
Modern day Turkey, or Türkiye as it is now known, has always been important as the crossroads of East and West. Istanbul, its capital until 1923, lies on the Bosphorus Strait, which is less than one kilometre wide at its narrowest. Like other narrow straits of water between two or more continents, it is a highly desirable piece of real estate. Control of such a narrow passage confers power over those who wish to use it.
Istanbul used to be called Constantinople, and its geographical position attracted the same fierce interest in the fifteenth century and before. Because of this, the defences of Constantinople became formidable. The thickness of the city walls was legendary. A heavy chain blocked the entrance to the Golden Horn—an iron barrier to invaders—parts of which survive today in Istanbul’s military museum. Nevertheless, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman army on 29th May 1453, the chain did not save them. Ingenious and relentless, Sultan Mehmet II hauled his ships on greased wooden rollers overland and launched into the harbour beyond the chain. Constantine XI, emperor of the city, became aware that he was facing an adversary who would not be stopped.
Emperor Constantine died a hero, forever enshrined in legend as defending his city at the gates and to the death in the uniform of a foot soldier. His passing marked the end of the Eastern Roman empire, and with it a line of Byzantine emperors stretching back into antiquity. But the invasion was more than just a historical turning point. It meant the loss of people’s homes and security. It threatened their freedom and their lives.
For centuries Constantinople was one of the principal centres of the Christian world, while Rome exerted its own authority through the Pope. It was named for Constantine the Great around AD 330, and he was the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity, helping bring an end to the bitter persecution of Christians throughout the Roman Empire. But although the city was Roman in its imperial inheritance, it became predominantly Greek in language and culture, and differences between the Greek speaking East and the Latin speaking West gradually became clear.
The Greeks were celebrated for their philosophy; the Romans for their pragmatism. Both built great cities, but the Romans carried their roads, aqueducts and engineering across an empire. The two cultures were never entirely separate: Greek and Roman influences had long existed together. But once Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, differences in language, religious practices and authority divided the Eastern and Western churches. These disagreements lay at the root of what we call the Great Schism, and centuries later they helped undermine efforts to save Constantinople from the Ottoman army.
The Schism involved disputes over doctrine, worship and the authority of the Pope. The arguments were lengthy, and spanned nearly a thousand years—a long time to argue for. The disagreements were about how Christianity should be understood and who had the right to speak for it. However, the distrust between the Eastern and Western churches was not just theological. Constantinople had been sacked before. In 1204 it was pillaged by Western Christian crusaders and the Venetians. Nobody, it seemed, was a real ally.
Nevertheless, when the Turkish Ottoman army threatened, Constantine appealed to the Christian powers of the West for help. He had nowhere else to go. But as history demonstrates, he did not receive the back up that he needed to save his city and his people. One could almost say that it boiled down to this: if you want our support, it must be on our terms. Some help came but it was insufficient. Western rulers had other wars and interests to consider, and religious disagreement was only part of the problem. It was a tragic day in the annals of Byzantine and Greek history, and a day that is still remembered by many. Although it happened over five hundred years ago, it is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
The fall of Constantinople destroyed the imperial power that had supported the Eastern Orthodox Church for centuries. The Orthodox church survived but the city became the Ottoman muslim capital of Istanbul, and its fate changed forever. Meanwhile, in the West, the Catholic church became more prominent within the Christian world. Later, the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism would fracture Western Christendom forever.
How might the world have been different if the city of Constantinople had not fallen, and the Greek Byzantine Empire had survived? It is hard to say, but the legacy of the Greeks was not forgotten. Greek scholars and manuscripts from Constantinople’s libraries helped nourish the budding European Renaissance. The empire had fallen, but the thinking it preserved continued to shape the world, inspiring generations of scholars to challenge old beliefs and find new answers to old questions, such as, what is mankind’s place in the great order of things? Before too long, science would start to answer them.
Read about The Fall of Constantinople in The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer
