Sea of Faith

by Stephen O'Shea

  he was a Constantine, born of a Helena, as had been the first emperor of Constantinople: Constantine the Great's mother was St. Helen, credited with unearthing the True Cross—as well as many other relics—on a trip to Palestine in the fourth century. Constantine XI's mother was Helena Dragases, the daughter of a Serbian prince.

  Under the guidance of a Bulgarian renegade: Baltaoglu Suleyman Bey. Not much is known of his early life, and he may have been a renegade under compulsion—that is, brought to Constantinople as a prisoner of war. He distinguished himself in an attack on the Genoese-controlled island of Lesbos. He was the Ottoman Empire's first admiral. David Nicolle, Constantinople 1453: The End of Byzantium (Oxford: Osprey, 2000), 21.

  the headland of Constantinople: Now called Seraglio Point.

  In the first week of April the Ottoman armies and their allies appeared: The events of the siege are well known, thanks to a wealth of primary sources. Foremost on the Christian side are the eyewitness chronicle of a Greek courtier, George Phrantzes; a Venetian surgeon, Nicolo Barbaro; and a Lesbosian archbishop, Leonard of Chios. There are other eyewitness accounts, as well as reconstructions done in the decades after the siege, most notably by Michael Ducas and Laonicus Chalcocondylas. On the Turkish side, the account of Tursun Bey, an eyewitness in the besieging army, was the most germane for our purposes, especially with regard to the Rumeli Hisari. Anthologies of primary sources consulted include J. R. Melville Jones, ed., The Siege of Constantinople: Seven Contemporary Accounts (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1973), and Alain Servanite, ed., Le Voyage a Istanbul: Byiance, Constantinople, Istanbul du Moyen Age au XX 6 siecle (Paris: Complexe, 2003). For the reconstruction of the siege, there is no shortage of excellent specialized histories. I have relied principally but not exclusively on Runciman, Fall of Constantinople; Nicolle, Constantinople 1463; the indispensable Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror; Roger Crowley, 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West (New York: Hyperion, 2005); and Nanami Shiono, The Fall of Constantinople (New York: Vertical, 2005). In addition to these works, every historian of the Byzantines and the Ottomans has had a crack at describing that momentous spring—their contributions are given where ap-popriate in these notes. I should add that, as always, the events on which a consensus exists are not flagged; those that are specific to one author, or that have been the cause of disagreement among scholars, are.

  George Phrantzes: (1401-77), also Sphrantzes. His chronicle covers the years 1413-77. At the time of the siege he was grand logothete (chancellor) and personal secretary to the basileus.

  two small Byzantine forts outside the walls: Studios, on the Marmara, and Therapia, on the Bosporus.

  as every visitor past and present has realized: Du Loir, an aide-de-camp of a seventeenth-century French embassy to Kostantiniyye, wrote of the Golden Horn: "one would think it a waterway fashioned more by Art than by Nature." Quoted in Robert Mantran, Istanbul au siecle de Soliman le Magnifique (Paris: Hachette, 1965), 52.

  line of fortifications that ran from the Marmara to the Horn: Especially useful for this overview was Stephen Turnbull, The Walls of Constantinople, AD 324—1463 (Oxford: Osprey, 2004).

  a huge mausoleum for a modern-day Turkish prime minister: Adnan Menderes, who was the first prime minister (1950—60) not to be of the People's Republican Party that Ataturk had founded. He was overthrown by a military coup in i960, tried for betraying the constitution, and hanged in 1961. The mausoleum was erected in 1990.

  a basileus of the crusading era: The great Alexius I Comnenus, whose life works were recorded by his daughter Anna in the Alexiad.

  a large stone plaque was affixed in 1953: Orhan Pamuk, in his memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City, trans. Maureen Freely (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), says the quincentenary was celebrated with a certain ambivalence: "Even in my own time, Turks committed to the idea of a westernized republic were wary of making too much of the conquest. Neither President Celal Bayar nor Prime Minister Adnan Menderes attended the 500th anniversary ceremony in 1953; although it had been many years in the planning, it was decided at the last moment that to do so might offend the Greeks and Turkey's western allies. The Cold War had just begun, and Turkey, a member of NATO, did not wish to remind the world about the conquest. It was, however, three years later that the Turkish state deliberately provoked what you might call 'conquest fever' by allowing mobs to rampage through the city, plundering the property of Greeks and other minorities. A number of churches were destroyed during the riots and a number of priests were murdered, so there are many echoes of the cruelties western historians describe in accounts of the 'fall' of Constantinople. In fact, both the Turkish and Greek states have been guilty of treating their respective minorities as hostages to geopolitics, and that is why more Greeks have left Istanbul over the past fifty years than in the fifty years following 1453" (I72-73)-265 Porphyrogenitus: "Born into the Purple," that is, born of a reigning basileus and empress. This name was given to several grandees of Byzantium, the most famous being Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the tenth-century scholar-basileus whom we have encountered sending a botanical treatise to the Umayyad court in Córdoba,.

  a shrine was known to be there in Byzantine times: John Freely, Istanbul (London: A&C Black, 2000), 274. Freely, in this excellent Blue Guide, states that the shrine is the third holiest in all of Islam, after Mecca and Jersualem. The old Companion has given his name, Eyup, to the neighborhood at the head of the Golden Horn.

  trundling barrels filled with stones: Within the first week the outer walls of the Lycus were destroyed. In addition to barrels, the defenders would have erected makeshift stockades, piled up sandbags, and thrown any sort of obstacle to blunt the attack.

  a huge grain ship dispatched by the pope: Nicholas V, the "first of the Renaissance popes." See J.N.D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 245. He was unable to rally Christendom to crusade both before and after the siege of Constantinople. His main contribution was to welcome the scholarly Greek diaspora and found the Vatican Library.

  he simply condemned the Bulgarian to a bastinado: A Turkish chronicle has him spared this punishment and leading the attack on the Blachernae in the final assault.

  thereby inaugurating the era of the mortar: Nicolle, Constantinople 1453, 57.

  bickering between the Genoese and the Venetians: The arguing over who should lead and contribute to the attack wasted precious days. It was only on April 28, a full six days after the Turks had arrived in the Golden Horn, that the attack was made. It was led by Giacomo Coco—he and many others died in the attempt, for which the Turks had had ample time to prepare.

  Venice was proceeding cautiously: Venice, ever mindful of its own interests, had designs on Morea and wished to extract concessions from the extenuated Byzantines. The commander of the relief fleet left Venice only on May 7, and his force was to rendezvous with more ships from Crete off Euboea. By the time they had cleared all the logistical and diplomatic hurdles placed in their way by the Venetian Senate, it was too late.

  a Latin volunteer named Johannes Grant: He was an engineer who had arrived with Giustiniani and was under the command of Lucas Notaras. See Runciman, Fall of Constantinople, 84, 118, 120.

  they returned to the city they now knew to be doomed: A vote was taken by the crew members, while they were still in the safety of the Aegean, over whether to return. Only one sailor voted against the idea. Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horiion: A History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 38.

  Halil Pasha argued for lifting the siege: Runciman, as usual, delivers a stirring account: "The Vizier, Halil Pasha, relying on his record of long and distinguished public service, rose to his feet and demanded that the siege be abandoned. He had never approved of the campaign, and events had shown him to be right. The Turks had made no headway; instead, they had suffered some humiliating setbacks. At any time the princes of the West would come to the city's rescue. Venice had already dispatched a great
fleet. Genoa, however unwillingly, would be forced to do likewise. Let the Sultan offer terms that would be acceptable to the Emperor and retire before worse disasters occurred. The venerable Vizier commanded respect. Many of his hearers, remembering how ineffectual the Turkish warships had shown themselves in battles against the Christians, must have shuddered at the thought of great Italian navies bearing down on them. The Sultan, after all, was only a boy of twenty-one. Was he imperilling his great heritage with the impetuous recklessness of youth?" Fall of Constantinople, 124-25. Halil was executed shortly after the siege.

  the elements combined to give it an eerie send-off: In 1993 Kevin Pang, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hypothesized that an enormous volcanic eruption in early 1453 at Kuwae in the Pacific Ocean—an explosion the equivalent of two million Hiroshimas that lifted forty cubic kilometers of debris into the atmosphere—significantly altered the earth's climate that year and was, in all probability, the cause of the strange natural phenomena observed at Constantinople. For a summary of his claims, go to http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/93/re-lease_ 1993_1543.html. More conventional studies of portents include Louis Massignon, "Textes premonitioires et commentaires mystiques relatifs a la prise de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1953," Oriens 6 (1953), 10—17; and B. Lellouch and S. Yerasimos, Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Paris: Harmattan, 1999). A particularly spooky evocation is the chapter entitled "Omens and Portents" in Crowley, 1453, 173-86.

  the city's holiest icon: On a recent visit to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, an Arab-Christian guide from Antakya (Antioch) insisted that a magnificent eleventh-century icon in the otherwise modest church—Panagia Pammakristos (All-Blessed Mother of God)—was the icon carried in this unfortunate procession.

  "Go on my falcons . . .": Crowley, 1453, 212.

  an Anatolian colossus named Hasan: Crowley, 1453, 212.

  a missile pierced the armor of Giustiniani Longo: It is unclear whether it was a bullet, and whether it shattered his breastplate or entered through the armhole. In any event, it was fatal. Runciman's wry comment on the sources: "Phrantzes says that he was wounded in the foot and Chalcocondylas in the hand, but Leonard by an arrow in the armpit and Critobulus by a ball that pierced his breastplate. It was probably a serious wound somewhere in his body. Barbaro, in his dislike of all Genoese, never mentions the wound at all, merely saying that he deserted his post. Otherwise, there is remarkable agreement between all sources." Fall of Constantinople, 224n.

  The basileus pleaded with him to remain at his post: "My brother, fight bravely. Do not forsake us in our distress. The salvation of the City depends on you. Return to your post. Where are you going?" Nicolle, Constantinople 1453, 77.

  At the vulnerable right angle of fortifications, a postern gate had apparently been left open: The Kerkoporta Postern, now a gap between the Theodosian and Blachernae walls adorned by a tree and facing an extramural soccer pitch.

  In all likelihood, he and his faithful courtiers rushed to the breach of the Lycus, and died there: It is uncertain what exactly happened to Constantine. Later legend has him shouting out that he is the basileus, inviting death. Other stories have his body being recognized and his head cut off and presented to Mehmet, who dispatched it to other Islamic capitals. There are stories of his head being buried in the Ayasofya; and there was once a tomb in Istanbul that used to be shown off as his. Most likely, he was thrown into a mass grave. He was fifty-four.

  The sultan sharply ordered one man to desist from prying a marble slab from the floor: Crowley, 1453, 233. Fatih is thought to have struck the man with his sword.

  "The spider served as the gatekeeper . . .": Tursun Bey, an eyewitness, cited in Servanite, Le Voyage a Istanbul, 135. Chosroes is the Greek version of Khusrau, a traditional regal name in Persia (Mehmet is not referring to the Chosroes who fought Heraclius), as is Afrasiyab. In Fir-dausi's Shahnameh (The Epic of Kings), a tenth-century monument of Persian literature (six thousand lines) recounting legendary events from a distant past, both kings—they were father and son—are among the protagonists. Hence Mehmet is referring to the great Firdausi and his Persian lore. In some accounts, such as Runciman's and Norwich's, Khusrau is translated as "Caesar," which, however beguiling, does not make much poetic sense, as it would entail mixing two entirely different traditions.

  the eponymous Byzas: The story of the founding goes as follows: Byzas, a hero of the Attic city of Megara, travels to Delphi, where the oracle tells him that he must establish a colony "opposite the Land of the Blind." He travels to the Bosporus, realizes Chalcedon (founded 678 B.C.E.) must be that unfortunate land, and in 658 B.C.E. builds on the opposite shore the city named after him.

  under the Ottomans most land belonged to the sultan: In contrast to western feudalism, most landholding was not hereditary. Lifelong leases were granted by the sultan.

  Gennadios: Also Gennadius. As well as playing a pivotal role in establishing an Orthodox Church under the Islamic dispensation, he was a formidable scholar, most notably in bringing Aristotelian thought (and consequently that of Thomas Aquinas) to bear on Orthodox doctrine. Paradoxically, although derisively known as "the Latinist" by rival churchmen, he had been instrumental prior to the siege in resisting the proposed union of Greek and Latin churches.

  another great church: The Church of the Holy Apostles. Second only to the Hagia Sophia in size, the church was the burial ground of Byzantine emperors. By 1453, however, it was largely a ruin, and its neighborhood became distinctly Turkish and Muslim. After only a year or so Gennadios moved the patriarchate to St. Mary Pammakaristos (the All-Blessed), where it remained for 138 years. The Church of the Holy Apostles was demolished to build the Fatih Mosque, the conqueror's religious complex and the first great Ottoman mosque of the city. Pammakaristos was taken from the Christians in 1586 by Sultan Murad III and became the Fethiye Camii (Mosque of Victory), so named for the conquest of Georgia by the Ottomans. Suleyman Kirimtayif, Converted Byiantine Churches in Istanbul: Their Transformation into Mosques and Masjids (Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2001), 63-64.

  out of bounds to imams in search of ready-made mosques: In time, however, Fatih's philo-hellene tendencies would disappear among his descendants and churches would be converted to mosques. Successive sultans appropriated Christian churches for their own purposes, and the ravages of time did the rest. St. Mary of the Mongols is the only preconquest church still in use as a Christian sanctuary. Further, as the first generations of genuine convivencia were forgotten, showy Christian buildings in the city became inadvisable. Discreet new churches were built in Christian areas, and the old Byzantine structures were left to the Ottoman rulers. That being said, by the nineteenth century the westerners resident in the city had few constraints in erecting elaborate churches in Galata. Runciman, in Fall of Constaninople, has a short, interesting appendix on the matter, "The Churches of Constantinople After the Conquest," 199—204.

  a Greek sycophant of talent: Michael Kritovoulos, whose work nonetheless is a valuable source for our knowledge of Mehmet.

  "from all parts of Asia and Europe . . .": Kritovoulos, quoted in Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453—1924 (London: Penguin, 1997), 8.

  (The Venetians attempted to bribe Fatih's Jewish physician into poisoning him in 1471): Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 291-92.

  "If you wish to stand in high honor on the Sultan's threshold . . .": Quoted in Mansel, Constantinople, 24.

  "You may well weep like a woman . . .": In Stanley Lane-Poole's The Moors in Spain (1887), the famous and probably apocryphal incident gets the full treatment: " 'Allahu akbar!' he said, 'God is most great,' as he burst into tears. His mother Ayesha stood beside him: 'You may well weep like a woman,' she said, 'for what you could not defend like a man.' The spot whence Boabdil took his sad farewell look at his city from which he was banished for ever, bears to this day the name of el ultimo sospiro del Mow, 'the last sigh of the Moor.' "

/>   Arap Camii: It was built by the Dominicans in the early fourteenth century and is clearly recognizable as a Latin church.

  For the rulers of Spain, the past had become an embarrassment: The past of convivencia, that is. The idea of a mystical continuity from the Visigoths to the fifteenth-century Spanish monarchs became an accepted narrative at the court. "The epic past was self-consciously reestablished," writes one historian, "accompanied by the wild enthusiasm of the reunited nation. Perhaps that was the only time in world history that an idealized past was programmatically restored and not just dreamed of." Stephen Gilman, "The Problem of the Spanish Renaissance," Folio 10 (1977), 49, quoted in J. N. Hillgarth, "Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality," History and Theory 24 (1985), reproduced in Hillgarth, Spain and the Mediterranean in the Later Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 29.

  "They say Ferdinand is a wise monarch . . .": Quoted in Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horiion: A History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 99.

  menagerie of nationalities: Mansel, in Constantinople, 7, states that the capital contained seventy-two and a half nationalities ("Gypsies were considered half a nationality").

  Joseph Nasi: Mansel, Constantinople, 124—26. Among his myriad business activities, Nasi supplied the wine to Sultan Selim the Sot.

  believed to be of Anatolian Christian stock: Some say European stock. As far as I can determine, no one knows for certain.

  a legacy of overwrought European travel writing: Western prurience toward Ottoman harems and sexual mores forms one of the strongest critiques of Orientalism as an artistic—and popular—movement. One of the greatest erotic best-sellers of nineteenth-century Britain was, for example, The Lustful Turk. This ground, already well trodden by modern scholarship, is lightly and entertainingly covered in Fatema Mernissi's refreshing Scheheraiade Goes West (New York: Washington Square, 2001), a memoir of a feminist Moroccan intellectual on a book tour in the west. Mernissi, who was born in a harem, writes: "We can break the West into two camps as far as smiles are concerned: the Americans and the Europeans. The American men, upon hearing the word 'harem,' smiled with unadulterated and straightforward embarrassment. Whatever the word means for Americans hinges on something linked to shame. The Europeans, in contrast, responded with smiles that varied from polite reserve in the North to merry exuberance in the South, with subtleties fluctuating according to the distance of the journalists' origin from the Mediterranean. French, Spanish, and Italian men had a flirtatious, amused light in their eyes. Scandinavians and Germans, with the exception of the Danes, had astonishment in theirs—astonishment tinged with shock. 'Were you really born in a harem?' they would ask, looking intently at me with a mixture of apprehension and puzzlement" (n-12).