The Immortal Emperor

by Donald M Nicol

  A most charming legend of Constantine's death is contained in another of the many laments for the fall of the city. It tells how the wretched Emperor Constantine, when the Turks broke in at the Gate of St Romanos, was guarding the walls with some of his nobles.

  On his right was a church of the Virgin. He saw a Queen coming towards it with a number of eunuchs. They went in and the Emperor and his nobles hurried to see who this Queen might be and went into the church. [They saw her] opening the sanctuary gate and going inside. She sat on the bishop's throne and looked very mournful. Then she opened her holy mouth and addressed the Emperor: 'This unhappy city was dedicated to me and many a time have I saved it from divine wrath. Now too I have entreated My Son and My God. But, alas, he has decreed that this time you should be consigned to the hands of your enemies because the sins of your people have inflamed the anger of God. So leave your imperial crown here for me to look after until such time as God will permit another to come and take it.' When the Emperor heard this he became very sad. He took his crown and the sceptre which was in his hand and laid them on the altar; and he stood in tears and said : 'My Lady, since for my sins I have been bereft of my imperial majesty, I resign also my soul into your hands along with my crown.' The Lady of the Angels replied: 'May the Lord God rest your soul in peace in the company of His Saints.' The Emperor made obeisance and went to kiss her knee; and she vanished and her eunuchs, who were her Angels, vanished with her. But neither the crown nor the sceptre were found where they had been left; for the Lady, the Mother of God, took them with her to keep until such time as there would be mercy for the wretched race of Christians. This was reported later by some who had been there and witnessed the miracle. The Emperor with his nobles then went forth stripped of his majesty to look on the enemy from the walls. They joined forces and gave battle to some Turks whom they encountered and were defeated. The Turks cut them down; and they took the head of the pitiful Emperor to the Sultan who had great joy of it.46

  This legend provided a divine and comforting explanation of the reason why Constantine's crown and sceptre were never found. The fact that he never had an imperial crown to lose is immaterial in the world of legend. Others say that he threw away his regalia to be lost in the press of battle so that he would not be identified as the Emperor, either alive or dead. The Lady of the Angels, however, left him with his sword; and some strange tales are told about it. In the nineteenth century an Italian ambassador in Constantinople called Tecco amassed a private collection of arms and weaponry which in due course he presented to the Armeria Regia or Royal Armoury in his native city of Turin. Among the items was a sword engraved with Christian figures and symbols and bearing a dedication in Greek to an Emperor Constantine. In 1857 the French scholar Victor Langlois examined it and published descriptions of it in three different journals. He pronounced that it was beyond question the sword of the last Byzantine Emperor. He claimed that it had come from the tomb of the Sultan Mehmed H.

  The mystery deepens when one learns that Alexander Paspatis, the first modern Greek historian of the fall of Constantinople, believed that such a sword, bearing almost the same Greek inscription, had been presented to the Emperor Constantine by Cardinal Isidore in 145z. Unfortunately, Paspatis gives no reference for the source of this information. But he reports that the sword was preserved in Constantinople in his own day. His book was published in 189o. Langlois reported the sword as being in Turin in 1857. Perhaps the sword in Turin was a copy of that said to have been in Constantinople more than forty years later. Certainly, no other expert in the field seems to have shared the confidence of M. Langlois in his identification of the Turin sword as that of Constantine Palaiologos.47

  In 1886 a delegation from the Greek community in Constantinople presented a ceremonial sword to Prince Constantine, heir to the throne of the Hellenes, on the occasion of his coming of age. The description of this sword, its decoration and the inscription on it suggest that it was a copy or a facsimile of that in Turin, though its donors may have alleged that it had once belonged to Constantine Palaiologos. An Athenian newspaper of the time, reporting its presentation to the prince, provides a rough line drawing of the sword with one half of its inscription and expresses the view that, while it appears to be of Byzantine style, there is no proof that it ever belonged to the last Emperor.4B An entertaining story survived in the folklore of Constantinople about another sword of Constantine Palaiologos. During the siege of the city, God sent an angel to deliver a wooden sword to the Emperor. The angel's intermediary was a holy hermit called Agapios, who hurried to the palace to fulfil his divine mission. 'My lord', he said to the Emperor, `here is a sword sent from God to exterminate your enemies the Turks.' When Constantine saw that it was made of wood he was angry and exclaimed: `What am I going to do with a wooden sword when I already have the wonderful sword of the glorious David, father of Solomon, which is forty cubits long?' He chased the monk away, and he, in high dudgeon, went to present his sword to the Sultan Mehmed who gladly accepted it. It was thanks to this wooden sword that Mehmed succeeded in capturing Constantinople. The monk Agapios was so upset by Constantine's impious scepticism that he became a Muslim.4s

  Since there is so much uncertainty about the manner and the place of Constantine's death and the fate of his decapitated corpse, it might seem useless to hunt for the site of his grave. Theodore Spandounes or Spandugnino, in his lengthy treatise on The Origins of the Turks, completed in 1538, observes that: `The Turkish historians say that Mehmed organised a search for the holy Emperor's corpse and, having found it, wept over it and honoured it and accompanied it to its tomb. The Christians, however, deny that it was ever found or recognised because nowhere in Constantinople is his grave to be seen. 'b0 Makarios Melissenos, the pseudo-Phrantzes, is alone among the Greek historians in saying that Constantine was given a Christian burial. This is most improbable. The Sultan would surely not have allowed the tomb of the last Byzantine Emperor to become a shrine or place of pilgrimage, a reminder of past glories for the Christians in the city. The tale that his remains were buried in St Sophia as reported by Makarios Melissenos can also be dismissed as fantasy.51

  Yet the myth persisted that Constantine's grave was somewhere to be found. The traveller Evliya Chelebi, writing about 166o, believed that the Christians had buried their Emperor in the monastery of Peribleptos, or, as the Turks called it, Sulu Monastir.52 Peribleptos remained in the hands of the Orthodox until 1643 and it certainly contained the tomb of an Emperor, though of a much earlier date than Constantine. In the nineteenth century a Turkish historian claimed that the last Emperor had been killed near Vefa Meidan where there was a spring of holy water. His body was buried in the monastery of the Zoodochos Pigi, the life-giving spring, in a wooded spot at Baloukli. While the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, Constantios of Sinai, reported in 1844 that the mosque of Gul Camii, formerly the church of St Theodosia, whose feast is on z9 May, housed a Christian tomb which many Turkish imams and Christian visitors believed to be that of the Emperor Constantine. These tales were no doubt encouraged if not invented by the local guides in the city, eager to make a quick profit out of gullible foreigners. Tourists in the nineteenth century were also told that the Turkish government provided oil for a lamp to burn over the Emperor's grave at Vefa Meidan. This story, for which there is no evidence but hearsay, was propagated by the proprietor of the nearby coffee shop. The tomb, of which there is now no trace, was probably that of a dervish, or of the Turkish soldier Arapis (or Azapis) who, according to Ottoman legend, was executed by the Sultan for having killed rather than captured the Emperor alive in 1453• Another legend told that it was the tomb of the giant Hasan, the first of the janissaries to scale the walls of the city. At all events, the alleged tomb near Vefa Meidan seems to have remained unhonoured and unknown until the nineteenth century. Yet another tradition was that Constantine was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles which had been the burial place of many of his imperial predecessors and served as the patriarc
hate of Constantinople for a few years after the conquest. His mortal remains were said to have been moved to the church of St Theodosia (Giil Camii) when the mosque of the Conqueror was built on the site of the Holy Apostles by the Greek architect Christodoulos.53

  It was the opinion of the learned Dr Paspatis in his history of the Turkish capture of Constantinople that Constantine's corpse was never found or identified and that the tale of its beheading was a myth invented by Isidore of Kiev. The Emperor must have been buried in a common grave along with his comrades-in-arms and his enemies; though the district in which he so nobly fell was still in 189o unapproachable because of its foul smell.54 It is idle to speculate further. Had the humiliated Christians of the fifteenth century known where their Emperor was buried, they would surely have passed the secret on to their descendants. Theodore Spandounes, who boasted descent from the family of Cantacuzene and who knew Constantinople well, spoke the truth. In the sixteenth century at least Constantine's grave was nowhere to be found. Even the popular Greek songs about the death of the noble and heroic Emperor Constantine gave no hint of where he was buried.

  He died fighting all alone, mounted on his white-footed horse. He killed ten pashas and sixty janissaries before his lance was broken and his sword snapped and there was no one there to help him. He raised his eyes to heaven and cried: `Lord Almighty, creator of the world, have pity on your people, have pity on Constantinople.' A Turk struck him on the head and the poor Constantine fell from his horse and lay stretched upon the ground in all the dust and blood. They severed his head and stuck it on the end of a lance; and they buried his corpse beneath the laurel tree.55

  The last word may be given to the Grand Logothete Hierax, writing some fifty years after Spandounes: `The fatherland that he loved so dearly became the grave of the Emperor Constantine and all his nobles.'56

  6

  THE IMMORTAL EMPEROR

  Constantine had been married twice. His first wife MaddalenaTheodora Tocco had died in 1429. His second wife Caterina Gattilusio died in 144z. Neither had borne him any children. All the efforts of George Sphrantzes and others to find him a third wife had failed. He therefore died unmarried and without issue. The facts are confirmed by documentary evidence. In December 1494 his nephew Andrew Palaiologos, son of the Despot Thomas of the Morea, formally ceded his rights to the Byzantine throne to King Charles VIII of France. In the document which he drafted Andrew makes specific mention of the fact that his uncle Constantine had died childless and without an heir to his imperial title (Constantini Palaeologi sui patrui sine liberis defuncti).' The myth none the less persisted that Constantine left a widowed Empress and a son or daughters. It may have been propagated by the Slavonic versions of the Diary of Nestor Iskinder. Yet it had already been suggested in the letter that Aeneas Sylvius wrote to Pope Nicholas V in July 1453; and it was enshrined in the account of the capture of the city which the same Aeneas incorporated into his Cosmographia. He related how the Sultan Mehmed, at the drunken celebration of his triumph, had the wife of the Emperor Constantine, his daughters and the leading matrons of the court brought to his presence, defiled and then murdered.' Elsewhere Aeneas writes of Constantine's son escaping to Pera (Galata).' A French chronicler, Matthieu de Coucy, who died in 1461, alleges that the Sultan ravished Constantine's widow in the church of St Sophia and then shut her up in his seraglio. Leo Allatius, however, denied that Constantine died as a married man and his accuracy in this respect was commended by DuCange some years later." The fate of Constantine's fictitious wife and children is told in its most dramatic and tragic form by the Grand Logothete Hierax; and from him, as already mentioned, it passed into the Greek Chronicle of the Sultans and to the erudite Professor Martin Crusius of Tubingen.

  It passed also into modern Greek folklore. One story, told as late as 19oo, was that the alleged Empress was six months pregnant by Constantine when he was killed. A male child was born to her while the Sultan was away on his campaigns in the north. The Empress had the boy christened and called him Panagi. When the Sultan returned he asked her what name she had given to the boy and she said Khan. She brought him up on her own since the Sultan was so often away. She found wise teachers and holy priests to instruct him in Greek letters and the Christian faith. He went regularly to church when he was young, but when he grew up he took to attending the mosque and became better versed in the Koran than in the Gospel. In due course he became Sultan and then he turned all his malice against our religion. None the less, the Sultans who succeeded him were of Christian stock.' Another legend told that when the Turks captured Constantinople, the widow of the Emperor who had been killed shut herself in her palace. Mehmed tried to break down the doors but failed. In the end he had to agree to three concessions which she demanded. There should be a street in the city reserved for the use of Hellenes alone; the corpses of dead Christians should be carried to their funerals with their faces visible and not covered over according to Turkish custom; all coins minted by the Sultans should bear the name of Constantine or of Constantinople.'

  Some modern scholars have stated that Constantine was betrothed if not married to Anna Palaiologina, daughter of the Grand Duke Loukas Notaras, who was foully murdered by the Sultan after the conquest. The statement has little authority. Anna herself never claimed that she had been the betrothed of the Emperor. She certainly never married and is known to have been living in Italy before 1453•' Lastly, some Turkish chroniclers invented a tale that the Emperor Constantine had been engaged to a daughter of the King of France. The king equipped a fleet of 6oo ships worthy of his daughter's rank and sent them to plunder the coasts of Africa and Syria. Some of the booty that they collected was to form her dowry. Twenty of these ships carried the princess on to Constantinople. But the Turks, who were then besieging the city, apprehended them all and seized their booty. The princess from France became the wife not of the Christian Emperor Constantine but of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed, by whom in due course she became the mother of the later Sultan Yildirim Bayezid.a

  We are now in the realm of myth and legend, of fancy, of naive hopes and false prophecies. After that fateful Tuesday in May 1453 the first reactions of the shattered Christians were despair and shock. They expressed their feelings in laments and dirges for the fall of their city. Constantinople and the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom came to be personified as symbols of lost grandeur and glory and as objects to be addressed in rhetorical style as though their misfortunes were personal. One of the earliest exercises in this new literary form was the Monodia composed by John Eugenikos.s He was not alone in attributing the disaster to the sins of the city's inhabitants and to the union of Florence which had sacrificed the purity of the Orthodox faith on the altar of expediency. He called on the name of Constantine the Great, the equal of the Apostles. But he ignored the last Emperor Constantine whom he had once admired. Andronikos Kallistos (c. 1400-80), a prominent scholar of the Byzantine diaspora in Italy, wrote a long and elaborate Monodia. He mourns the destruction of the city which had been `the common hearth of all the Hellenes, the benevolent mother, nurse and haven of rest for all, the provider of every good thing'; and in the most exaggerated rhetorical language he laments the loss of the most holy Emperor Constantine, a ruler more perceptive than Themistocles, more fluent than Nestor, wiser than Cyrus, more just than Rhadamanthys and braver than Hercules.'°

  The Laments dwelt on the past. Andronikos Kallistos could see no hope for the future. He pretended that he would rather die than go on living without the city and the empire. Gennadios Scholarios and others found some morbid consolation in the prophecy that the world would end at the close of the seventh millennium, for then there was not long to wait." Nestor Iskinder thought that the foundation of Constantinople and its loss by Emperors with the name of Constantine was not just a remarkable coincidence. It was the accomplishment of the city's destiny. So had Old Rome been founded by Romulus and ended with Romulus Augustulus. It was all over. Byzantium had run its course.12 Some, however, began t
o look ahead to a day when the humiliated Christians might again enjoy the past glories of Constantinople. Chalkokondyles expressed the hope that there would come a time when a Greek emperor would once more rule over a sizeable dominion inhabited by the remnants of his people.13 More credulous Greeks in the late fifteenth century and after made themselves believe that the last Emperor, Constantine Palaiologos, would come back to rescue them. He was not really dead. He was merely asleep and waiting a call from heaven. Men comforted themselves with the thought that many ancient prophecies about their city had been fulfilled, but there were many more yet to be realised.

  A Lament of a different kind is the long poem on the Capture of the City wrongly attributed to the Rhodian poet Emmanuel Georgillas. It was composed in 1453 and is thus the first of the monodies on the subject which were to exercise the pens of many versifiers and prose writers in succeeding years and to pass into popular Greek folklore. The poet mourns the conquest and destruction of the holy city. But his main purpose is to spur the princes of western Christendom to liberate it from its slavery to the Turks. He calls on the pope, the Venetians, the Genoese, the King of France, the Duke of Burgundy and even the English to join forces in a crusade for the deliverance of Constantinople. His poem begins, however, with a lament for the bad luck which had always dogged the path of the last Emperor, Constantine Dragases, right from the beginning of his career in the Morea. His first mistake was to destroy the castle of Clarentza with its churches and monasteries and the houses and property of its archons. Whoever advised him to do this was wrong; and it was from this crime that the rest of his ill fortune stemmed. When nominated as Despot of Mistra and the Morea, he built the great and wonderful wall of Hexamilion in the space of thirty days. But he achieved it at the cost of so much distress and suffering for the local landlords and their people that it caused nothing but misery; and when the Turks demolished it, it was the rich city of Corinth which paid the price and then the city of Patras, making disaster out of Constantine's success.