The Immortal Emperor

by Donald M Nicol

  A report on the fall of the city written by one Niccolo Tignosi da Foligno before November 1453 relates how the Emperor, who was called `Dragas', was seen to be captured by an Ottoman who cut off his head.22 This detail was elaborated by the Venetian Filippo da Rimini in a letter to Francesco Barbaro, procurator of St Mark's, written from Corfu at the end of the year or early in 1454• In a very tendentious, rhetorical and pro-Venetian account, Filippo records that the Emperor's head was found and taken to the Sultan who, moved by the grisly spectacle, said to those around him: `This was all I lacked to demonstrate the glory that we have won.' This incident is repeated verbatim in the highly derivative account by Giacomo Langhusci inserted in the Chronicle of the Venetian Zorzi Dolfin, which is no earlier than April 1454.23 A German version written by Heinrich de Soemern, who was probably an official at the papal Curia, had it that three heads on three lances were brought for the Sultan's inspection. One was of the Emperor, one of a Turk who had fought with the Christians and the third was of an old and bearded monk, which they said belonged to Cardinal Isidore, though this at least was false, since Isidore had escaped.24

  The Sultan clearly wanted to be sure that the Emperor Constantine was either dead or a captive, for if he had escaped he might, as some of his courtiers had proposed, live to fight another day and stir up the sympathy of western Christendom to greater effect. The point is made in one of the more literary narrations of the events, written not long after they happened. Nicola Sagundino, or Secundinus, was a Venetian from Negroponte (Euboia). He had been taken prisoner by the Turks when they captured Thessalonica in 143o. He served as an interpreter at the Council of Ferrara-Florence and was later sent on various diplomatic missions for the Republic of Venice. On 25 January 1454 he delivered an oration to King Alfonso V of Aragon at Naples. In it he made special mention of the fate of the Emperor Constantine because, as he said, it deserved to be recorded and remembered for all time. In the last hours of the defence of Constantinople the Genoese commander Giustiniani Longo was twice wounded. He told the Emperor that all was lost and that he should retreat. A passage to safety by ship could be found for him. Constantine would have none of it and reproved Giustiniani for his cowardice. For if his Empire fell he could no longer live. He would prefer to die with it. He went to where the enemy appeared to be thickest, to find that they had already occupied a breach in the wall. To be captured alive would be unworthy of a Christian prince. He asked some of his few companions to do him the favour of killing him. None of them was bold enough. The Emperor therefore cast aside his regalia so that the Turks would not recognise him and, no more distinguishable than a private soldier, charged into the fray with drawn sword in hand. He was struck down by a Turk and fell dead in the ruins of his city and his empire, `a prince worthy of immortality'. After the conquest the Sultan, who wanted the Emperor as a prisoner, was told it was too late. He ordered a search to be made for the body. It was found in the piles of corpses and rubble and the Sultan commanded that its head be severed, stuck on a stake and paraded around the camp. Later he instructed ambassadors to take the head, along with forty youths and twenty maidens chosen from the booty, to the Sultan of Egypt.25

  Similar accounts are given by other fifteenth-century writers. Ubertino Pusculo from Brescia was in Constantinople as a scholar studying Greek in 1453• He was held as a prisoner by the Turks until a Florentine merchant paid his ransom. He was then captured by pirates who took him to Rhodes. Finally, by way of Crete, he got to Rome; and there, about 1455-7, he wrote a poem about the fall of Constantinople. It is a prolix and laboured composition in Latin hexameters. Pusculo's story is that the Emperor Constantine, exhausted by hours of fighting, had snatched some sleep. He was awakened by the clamour around him and went out from his tent sword in hand. He killed three of the janissaries before he was laid low by one of them who severed his head from its shoulders with a great sword, took it to the Sultan and was richly rewarded for his pains.26 A Polish historian, Jan Dlugosz, writing in Latin before 1480, tells how the Emperor Constantine was decapitated while fighting for his country. His head was fixed on a lance and paraded as an exhibit before being presented to the Sultan.27

  The evidence that Constantine was killed in the fighting is almost unanimous and it seems very probable that his corpse was found and decapitated. Only three sources claim that he escaped from the city. Samile, or Samuel, a Greek bishop who had been captured by the Turks, paid his ransom and fled to Transylvania, wrote to the Burgomeister of Hermanstat (Sibiu) on 6 August 1453. His letter is in German and reports that `our Emperor' (Constantine) with some others managed to get away by boat.2e An Armenian poet called Abraham of Ankara wrote a Lament on the fall of Constantinople in which he says that the Emperor and the nobles of his court escaped by sea.29 Finally, Nicola della Tuccia, in his Chronicle of Viterbo, gives a highly inaccurate account of events in which he records that the Emperor escaped in a small boat with eighteen companions.3o

  Plate 5 The Emperor John VIII Palaiologos

  Plate 6 Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos

  Plate 7 The Sultan Mehmed II

  Plate 8 Gold seal of Constantine XI

  Plate 9 Silver coin of Constantine XI

  Plate io Constantine's signature as Emperor of the Romans

  Plate it The sleeping emperor

  Plate iz Dedication to the future Emperor of Constantinople, x838

  Plate 13 Constantine I with his mother Helena and Constantine XI with his mother Helena

  Plate 14 Constantine XI and Death

  Plate z5 Constantine XI in his tomb

  Plate i6 Monumental brass of Theodore Paleologus in Landulph, Cornwall

  Plate 17 Gravestone of Ferdinand Paleologus, Barbados

  These versions may be discounted. All other sources agree that Constantine died at his post. One western account, however, accuses him of cowardice and desertion. It is curious that the charge seems to have originated with Aeneas Sylvius, the later Pope Pius II who, in his earlier reports of the Emperor's death, made no such accusation. The source of his information is not known, but once again he may have got it from the Serbians. In his Cosmographia, which he composed in 1456-7, Aeneas Sylvius writes that in the confusion following the withdrawal of Giustiniani, `the Emperor did not fight as befitted a king but took to his heels and fell in the throng in the narrow gateway and died trampled underfoot. When his corpse was found the head was severed, stuck on a spear and taken round the city and the camp to be mocked by all.'31 This slur on the Emperor was picked up by Christopher Richerius, or Richer, in his History of the Turks which he dedicated to Francois Ier of France in 1540. He charges Constantine with shameful dereliction of his imperial duty by running away, though he met his death in the crush of cowards doing the same. Richerius's account, translated from Latin into Italian, was incorporated into his Universal History of the Turks by Francesco Sansovino in 1654.32

  If Aeneas Sylvius heard this tale from the Serbians, it may be surmised that it originated among the Turks with whom they had been fighting. It bears a similarity to the accounts given by Tursun Beg and Ibn Kemal, that Constantine and his suite abandoned the fight and fled towards the sea or to the Castle of the Seven Towers and the Golden Gate, where the Emperor was killed and decapitated. Only one other source identifies this part of the city as the site of Constantine's death. It is the Russian version attributed ;to Nestor Iskinder and it is so fanciful in some other respects that one cannot be sure of its reliability on this point.33 The Greek tradition, however, is fairly consistent in naming the Gate of St Romanos as the place where the Emperor was killed. Of the minor Greek sources, forty-two of the so-called Short Chronicles record the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Only five of them report the death of the Emperor and only one that he was decapitated.34 One chronicler notes that he was not Emperor at all but only Despot, since he had never been crowned.35 The other three are very alike in their versions, to the effect that Constantine was killed with all his officers at the breach in the wall by
the Gate of St Romanos and won for himself a crown of martyrdom, scorning the options that were open to him of surrender to the infidel or escape.36 None of the Short Chronicles mentions the Golden Gate as the site of Constantine's death.

  The last Byzantine historians, on whose testimony most later accounts have been based, understandably give no hint that the Emperor might have lost heart and deserted his post at the walls. But they are not unanimous about the facts or the site of his heroic death or martyrdom. Doukas, writing after 146i, gives the following account, some of which is not to be found in other sources :

  The Emperor in despair stood, sword and shield in hand, and cried out: 'Is there no Christian here to take my head from me?' For he was abandoned and on his own. Then one of the Turks struck him in the face and wounded him. He in turn struck back. But another gave him a mortal blow from behind and he fell to the ground. They left him for dead as a common soldier, for they did not know that he was the Emperor. Later the Sultan asked Loukas Notaras, who had survived, what had happened to the Emperor and he said that he did not know, because he himself had been at the Imperial Gate when the Turks encountered the Emperor at the Gate of Charisios. Two young men from the army then came forward and one of them said to the Sultan : 'My lord, I killed him. In my haste to go plundering with my colleagues I left him for dead.' The other said, 'I was the first to strike him.' The Sultan then sent both of them with orders to bring him the Emperor's head. They rushed off to find it, cut it off and brought it to the Sultan, who turned to the Grand Duke and said: 'Tell me the truth. Is this the head of your Emperor?' He looked at it closely and replied: 'It is his. It is the head of my Emperor.' Others examined it and identified it. Then they fixed it on the column of the Augustaion and it hung there until evening. Later its skin was peeled off and stuffed with straw and [the Sultan] sent it around as a trophy and a symbol of his triumph to the ruler of the Persians and the Arabs and to the other Turks.37

  Kritoboulos of Imbros, who dedicated his History to the Sultan Mehmed, none the less admired the Emperor's courage.

  The Emperor Constantine [he writes] died fighting gallantly with all who were around him in the crush at the Gate of Justin [Kerkoporta?] ... When he saw that all was lost, he is said to have exclaimed his last words: 'The city is taken and there is no reason for me to live any longer.' So saying, he hurled himself into the midst of his enemies and was cut down. He was a fine man and guardian of the common good, but unfortunate all his life and most unfortunate at its close.38

  Laonikos Chalkokondyles, who had been in Constantine's service since 1449 and finished his History some time after 1480, gives this account:

  After Giustiniani had been wounded and withdrew, the Emperor said to [Demetrios] Cantacuzene and those around him: 'Let us attack these barbarians.' Cantacuzene was killed; Constantine, driven back and forced to retire, was wounded in the shoulder and died... One of the janissaries later brought the Emperor's head to the Sultan and was rewarded ... But as to the manner of his death none could tell, though it happened by the gate [of St Romanos] together with many of his men. He died like any commoner, having reigned for three years and three months.39

  Makarios Melissenos, compiler of the extended version of the memoirs of George Sphrantzes, writing in the sixteenth century, relates that Constantine inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy before he was killed somewhere near the Gate of St Romanos:

  As soon as the city was captured, the Sultan's first concern was to discover whether the Emperor was alive or dead. Some came and reported that he had escaped, some that he had gone into hiding, and others that he had died fighting. Wanting to be certain of the truth, the Sultan ordered that the heaps of Christian and Muslim corpses be searched. They washed the heads of many of them but the Emperor could not be identified. By chance, however, his corpse was found. It was recognised by the imperial eagles engraved, as was the custom with an Emperor's armour, on its greaves and boots. The Sultan was delighted and commanded some Christians to bury the body with due honour.90

  This is the only account to report that Constantine was given Christian burial.

  Other sixteenth-century chroniclers add more in the way of fantasy than of fact. The anonymous author of the so-called Ekthesis Chronike, composed in the middle of the century, presents the following relatively sober account:

  Some Turks fell upon the Emperor in the district of St Romanos. He not wanting to be enslaved by them, fought back. They cut off his head and the heads of his company, not realising that he was the Emperor. Later there was a great hunt for his body, for the Sultan feared that he might still be alive and might get away to bring back with him an army from the Franks. But his head was found and identified by Mamalis and the other archons and the Sultan's mind was set at rest.41

  The metrical chronicle of Hierax, the Grand Logothete, written about 1580, invents an obviously fictitious tale of the tragic demise of Constantine's wife and children. Hierax alleges that, in his hour of despair, the Emperor confessed his sins together with his wife and family and then had them all executed before his eyes so that they would not be captured, before riding off with his companions to meet his own death. He was chopped in half. The Greek Chronicle of the Turkish Sultans, which is otherwise based on the accounts of Chalkokondyles, Leonardo of Chios, Sansovino and the sixteenth-century Pseudo-Dorotheos, picked up this story. It was also recorded by the patriarchal notary Theodosios Zygo- malas in a letter to Martin Crusius, the erudite professor of Tubingen, though neither gentleman could discover the name of the Empress. This is not surprising since Constantine had no wife at the time of his death and had never had any children.42

  One of the longest and strangest accounts is the Old Slavonic report on the fall of Constantinople, which exists in two versions. One of them is attributed to a certain Nestor Iskinder who appears to have kept a diary at the time. There are also Russian, Rumanian and Bulgarian redactions. Nestor tells of a single combat between Constantine and a Turkish general, the Beglerbey of the East, in which the Emperor had the upper hand. He goes on to describe how Constantine fought bravely at the breach in the wall during the last Turkish assault and how the janissaries, like wild beasts, hunted everywhere for him to take his head. Before he died, however, the Emperor went to the Great Church and threw himself on the ground to beg God's mercy and the remission of his sins; and when he had taken his leave of the Patriarch, all the clergy and the Empress, he went forth crying: `Whoever wishes to die for the church of God and the Orthodox faith, come with me.' Mounting his Arab steed he made straight for the Golden Gate, slaughtering many Turks along his way. But he was not able to get through the Gate because of the piles of corpses. There he was cut down and killed.

  The Empress at once took the veil; and the officers and nobles who survived escorted her and her many ladies to the ships of Giustiniani and then to their families in the islands and the Morea ... Mehmed instituted a search for the Emperor and the Empress... After he had visited the Great Church and forbidden any further destruction therein, he went to the imperial palace, and there a Serbian brought to him the Emperor's head. The Sultan made some of the Greek officers and nobles identify it under oath and he then sent the head to the Patriarch for him to encase it in gold and silver and preserve it; and the Patriarch put it in a gilded case and placed it under the altar of the Great Church. Others, however, have been heard to say that some of the survivors of those who had been with him at the Golden Gate that same night stole the Emperor's head and took it to Galata to be kept there. The Sultan searched in vain for the Empress until he was told that the Grand Duke, the Grand Domestic and others had put her on a boat. He had them all tortured and killed. Thus were the prophecies fulfilled ...43

  Apart from the obvious inconsistencies in this account, as to whether Constantine died at the Gate of St Romanos or at the Golden Gate, there are several fabrications. There was no Patriarch of Constantinople at the time to receive and honour the Emperor's head or give him his blessing; there was no Empress, w
ife of Constantine, to be rescued by boat; and the Great Church of St Sophia, beneath whose altar the imperial relic is alleged to have been buried, was closed to Christians immediately after the conquest. The Diary of Nestor Iskinder may originally have been a straightforward record of events. But it accumulated fictitious and legendary accretions with the passage of the years.

  The abundance of conflicting testimony makes it impossible to be certain about the place and the manner of Constantine's death. The Greek tradition maintained that he was killed as a hero, or a martyr, fighting at or near the Gate of St Romanos; while the Turkish and Slav traditions set the scene by the Golden Gate, whether or not he met his death as he was trying to run away. Naturally no Greek historian would take kindly to the suggestion that the last Byzantine Emperor met his death while trying to escape. On the other hand, the honour and glory of the Turks were not enhanced by the admission that the Emperor had been killed and decapitated without being recognised; that his regalia had been lost or stolen; and that his head was never brought to the Sultan, as Tursun Beg and Ibn Kemal imply. The Greek tradition is reinforced by the fact that the authors of the earliest contemporary accounts, Leonardo of Chios and Nicolo Barbaro, were inclined to belittle the bravery of the Greeks. On the whole it is perhaps best to accept one or other version of what the last Byzantine historians have to say about Constantine's death. It is certainly kinder to the memory of one who was without doubt a courageous man of action, 'a prince worthy of immortality', as Sagundino called him.44 He died, as a later lament over Constantinople puts it, `having enjoyed none of the fruits of his high office, save that of being known as the Emperor who perished in the general destruction of the Empire of the Romans'. 45