John V Palaiologos, however, sought to realize plans for western military cooperation against the Turks by making a personal conversion to Catholicism. His travels to Hungary and Italy in 1366–9 culminated in his submission to Roman authority. While this remained his own decision and did not involve the Byzantine Church, he hoped it would secure military assistance. But the fact that on his way home the Venetians arrested him for debts revealed the precarious situation in Byzantium. His son Manuel was forced to ransom him, and before John V could return the island of Tenedos had to be handed over to Venice in lieu of money owed. Although the promised military intervention took shape under Serbian leadership, the Turks defeated this Christian force at the Marica in 1371 and the emperor abandoned his pro-western policy. Several leading Byzantine intellectuals nonetheless converted to Roman Catholicism and continued to urge the reunion of the churches as the only way of defeating the ever-tightening Ottomanencirclement of Constantinople. One of them, DemetriosKydones, wrote a treatise proposing terms for winning Latin help in 1389, but it was ignored. Divisions within the elite thus contributed to weakening Byzantium while the Turks concentrated on expanding into Europe.
In 1422, the capital survived a major siege, but eight years later Thessalonike was captured, enabling the Turks to surround Constantinople from the West as well as the East. In these parlous circumstances, John VIII Palaiologos began another attempt to reunite the churches and thus win a serious commitment to western military aid supported by the papacy. In 1438, he led a high-level delegation – including Patriarch Joseph II, the two chief spokesmen Mark Eugenikos of Ephesos and Bessarion of Nicaea, sixteen metropolitans, officials and monks, making up a party of over seven hundred – to Ferrara to meet the papal party. Patriarch Joseph was so incensed at the demand that he, like all officials, kiss the pope’s foot that he refused to leave the ship until the issue was resolved. As a result, Pope Eugenius IV accorded him only a private reception rather than a grand public ceremony. The Council opened officially on 9 April after twenty days of debate over where the thrones for the leading figures should be placed. After many delays and inconclusive meetings, an outbreak of plague and shortage of money forced the parties in January 1439 to move to Florence, where the Medici family supported the Council.
While detailed records of the long debates that preceded the agreement were kept, the most interesting account of the Council was written by Sylvester Syropoulos, a patriarchal official. His memoirs record impressions of the unofficial discussions which accompanied the negotiations: how the Byzantine participants argued among themselves (for there were major disagreements between John VIII and Mark Eugenikos) and picked topics for discussion which would not reveal these rifts (such as the existence of Purgatory); how it became ever clearer that if the Greeks knew no Latin, they could not debate with the western theologians, who countered every eastern text with an argument of their own, often drawn from unfamiliar writings.
The filioque addition to the creed remained a major barrier, both as an extra clause in the wording of the creed as agreed at the First and Fourth Oecumenical Councils, and as a statement of orthodox theology. After many months of Latin pressure, agreement was reached on the grounds that all saints are inspired by the same Holy Spirit, whether they are western or eastern, and their faith must therefore be the same in substance even if it is expressed differently in Latin and Greek. Disagreement over papal primacy proved more fundamental, however. While the words of the creed might be accepted, the power claimed by Rome meant subjection, which the Church of Constantinople found much harder to bear. After centuries of elaboration and reinforcement through Rome’s judicial position in the West, popes had asserted superior authority over all churches based on their founder St Peter. They considered that patriarchs in Byzantium should submit to Rome before the union of churches could be celebrated. This not only implied inferiority, it also denied the tradition of the five leading sees meeting in Council as the highest authority in Christendom. While New Rome/Constantinople recognized Old Rome’s higher place of honour, the eastern theory of the pentarchy was hard to reconcile with Rome’s claim to overall primacy.
Under pressure from John VIII, the eastern clerics were persuaded nonetheless to agree a form of words which permitted the Union to be drafted. Remaining issues, like the use of leavened or unleavened bread, the marriage of lower ranks of orthodox clergy, and fasting and genuflecting habits were identified as local customs, which could be accepted. When the Act of Union was finally read in Latin and Greek in Florence on 6 July 1439, and acclaimed by all present, the churches were formally united in one faith. John VIII was commemorated in miniatures, bronzes and a medallion by Pisanello, which show him wearing the large peaked hat then fashionable. The process of negotiating the Union took nearly three years; the imperial party only returned to Constantinople in February 1440.
As a consequence, the princes of central Europe – Hunyadi of Transylvania, Vladislav I of Hungary and George Branković of Serbia – led a crusade into the Balkans which defeated the Turks in 1443/4. Murad II agreed to a ten-year truce, which might have been effective had not some of the western crusaders broken the terms at Varna. In November 1444, they attacked the city and were defeated. Constantinople was now abandoned to its fate; the ‘crusade of Varna’ was to prove the last. Although Hunyadi remained committed to the policy of assisting Byzantium, and Branković, who had not participated in the attack, remained a Christian ally, Constantinople’s essential weakness was symbolized when John VIII Palaiologos was forced to congratulate the sultan on his victory.
Only Mark Eugenikos of Ephesos and one other metropolitan had refused to sign the Union, and Eugenikos became the spokesman of resistance to it. Claiming that he had signed under duress, Syropoulos later joined the majority of Greeks who felt that both their beliefs and their traditions had been abandoned. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V sent Isidore of Kiev, who had converted and become a cardinal of the Catholic Church, to preach the Union in the beleaguered Byzantine capital. He arrived with a body of two hundred archers recruited at his own expense, which initially cheered the inhabitants. The Greek historian Doukas, reported, ‘Of the greater portion of the sacerdotal and monastic orders, abbots, archimandrites, nuns… not one among them assented to the Union. Even the emperor only pretended to do so.’ Nuns, he said, were particularly hostile and they implored Gennadios Scholarios of the Pantokrator monastery in Constantinople to support them. He finally wrote his tract in opposition to the Union and nailed it to his door: ‘Wretched Romans, how you have been deceived… Together with the city which will soon be destroyed, you have lost your piety.’ As these monks and nuns spread news of the resistance, the people called on the Mother of God to protect them against the Turks as she had done in the past against Chosroes and the Avars and the Arabs. They also implored her to ‘Keep far away from us the worship of the Azymites.’
On 12 December 1452, the Union was celebrated in desperation in Hagia Sophia, with the Turks encamped outside the walls of Constantinople. Although Isidore of Kiev reported to the pope that the liturgy was a triumph, Gennadios and other monks failed to participate, and the Union was not widely accepted in Byzantium. Nonetheless, Isidore himself fought on the walls in 1453, was wounded and taken prisoner. By disguising himself, he managed to escape to Crete and constantly mourned the loss of the city. Bessarion, the other major proponent of the Union, also continued to support efforts to regain Constantinople after the fall. As cardinals who served as papal legates, they were considered traitors by the orthodox. Both, however, encouraged humanist scholarship, wrote numerous works of theology and contributed to the growth of Greek libraries in the West. Bessarion’s legacy to Venice in 1468 ensured that his collection would remain intact as the core of the Marciana Library, while Isidore enriched the Vatican library with writings of his own and scholia in numerous manuscripts.
Among those opposed to the Union, Gennadios was also taken prisoner in 1453 but was discovered in the slave market, ran
somed and installed as patriarch by Mehmed the Conqueror. His fierce loyalty to what was the original and true Christian theology reflects contemporary opinion voiced by Loukas Notaras, an adviser to the last three emperors: ‘Better the Turkish turban than the papal tiara.’ Byzantium could not accept the theory of papal primacy and the subordination of Constantinople to Rome. The Byzantines, however few, remained faithfully committed to what they understood to be orthodox. They preferred to maintain their own theology under Ottoman rule than to suffer union with the Church of Rome and western rule. This was surely an echo of the sacrilege of 1204.
28
The Siege of 1453
On the twenty-ninth of May, our Lord God decided that He was willing for the city to fall on this day… in order to fulfil all the ancient prophecies… All these three had come to pass seeing that the Turks had passed into Greece, there was an Emperor called Constantine, son of Helen, and the moon had given a sign in the sky.
Nicolò Barbaro, Diary of the Siege of Constantinople
In 1354, a major shift in the balance of power between Byzantium and the Ottomans occurred, when an earthquake destroyed the entire coastline of Thrace. The fortifications of the cities on the European side of the Hellespont collapsed, forcing the population to flee and allowing Orhan’s son Süleyman to cross the Dardanelles with many Turkish troops and families. Meeting no resistance, he began a campaign to secure the permanent occupation of the western provinces of Byzantium from his new base at Kallipolis (literally, beautiful city; modern Gallipoli). Turkish expansion into the Balkans against the Serbs was matched by threats to Constantinople from Thrace. Sultan Murad I (1362–89) captured Adrianople (Edirne), which became the Ottomans’ western capital. In 1371, at the battle of the Marica, he defeated the Serbian king Stefan Uroš IV and proceeded to capture Sofia and Thessalonike, thus incorporating Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia into the Ottoman state. By 1387 Theodore Palaiologos, despot of the Morea, recognized Murad’s authority, although he resisted the Turks’ attempts to capture Mistras.
In less than twenty-five years, the sultan had surrounded Constantinople and was able to exercise a pincer movement on it from both east and west, by land and sea. Yet the city held out for another eighty years, partly because Murad I had made all the Byzantine rulers his vassals and could therefore count on their support. In 1372/3, he obliged John V Palaiologos to assist with his military campaigns against the remaining Christians in Asia Minor. As the historian Chalkokondyles put it:
John entered into an alliance with Murad, who had recently crossed over to Europe… As homage to Murad, John and his sons also had to follow him wherever he campaigned.
The same author reported that this pattern of treatment was also imposed on Dragaš, the Serbian leader, and Bogdan, who had been put in charge of territory near the River Axios. In this way, the sultan accumulated troops and vassals. Some Serbs and Bosnians, however, continued to resist and mounted a combined challenge to Murad I. In 1389, the Turks met this force at Kosovo Polje, where the sultan was assassinated. Historians are divided over which side actually won the battle, but the result was increased Turkish control over the Balkans.
The history of Byzantium in its last century was written from contrasting viewpoints by Doukas, on the Byzantine side, and Chalkokondyles on the Ottoman. Both wrote after the conquest of Constantinople. What Doukas considers humiliation of the emperor, Chalkokondyles passes over as the normal treatment of a vassal by his lord. Both, however, emphasize the almost suicidal rivalry of John V’s many sons, who tried in turn to take power during his long reign (1341–91). The eldest, Andronikos IV and his son John VII, the second, Manuel II, and the third, Theodore, all participated in revolts, using Genoese, Venetian and Turkish allies. The emperor had tried to prevent this by appointing them to rule over the scattered remnants of Byzantium, which gradually became autonomous units: the Morea, with its capital at Mistras; Thessalonike, centre of its remaining Balkan territory; and Selymbria, fortified by John VI Kantakouzenos as his base in Thrace during the 1340s. These little kingdoms, or appanages in which each son could act as an independent ruler, suggest a quasi-feudal system similar to Western Europe, where numerous small kingdoms and duchies vied for territorial dominance. But whereas in the West the nominal kings of France, England, Castile and Germany were trying to extend their authority, the Palaiologoi were dividing the once-united empire of Byzantium into smaller units. In contrast to the centralizing forces that were empowering the states of western Christendom, the opposite centripetal pressure was reducing imperial resources and territory in the East.
Murad’s death at Kosovo Polje in 1389 intensified Ottoman pressure on Constantinople. His successor, Bayezid I (1389–1402), constructed the fortress of Anadolu Hisar on the eastern shore of the Bosphoros to prevent the Byzantines from bringing in naval reinforcements. When Manuel II was crowned emperor in the city in 1391, he knew he would face an almost immediate siege, and by 1394 the Turks had effectively invested the city by sea and land. News of this stranglehold finally galvanized the Christians in Europe to organize military aid in the form of an international force, led by King Sigismund of Hungary and Marshal Boucicaut of France. The western crusade advanced as far as the Ottoman fortress on the Danube at Nikopolis (modern Nikopol in Bulgaria), and was considered such a serious challenge to the Turks that Sultan Bayezid left the siege to meet it. In 1396, the crusade was crushed with few prisoners taken alive. Among the survivors, Sigismund and Boucicaut were both captured and later ransomed. The French marshal refused to abandon the Christians in the east and persuaded King Charles VI of France to send a small force to relieve Constantinople. In 1399, it successfully broke the Turkish blockade of the city and Boucicaut joined Manuel II in military actions.
At this point, the marshal suggested that the emperor should leave his nephew John VII in charge of the defence and make a tour of western monarchs to raise further military support for Constantinople. John VII had been crowned by his father Andronikos IV and had plotted with the Turks to winsole power against Manuel II’sclaims. But after a period as Sultan Bayezid’s hostage, John was now entrusted with the defence of the capital, while Manuel and the marshal slipped through the blockade in December 1399. Manuel embarked on what proved a lengthy tour of Europe, wonderfully evoked in his letters to the brothers Demetrios and Manuel Chrysoloras, to Euthymios, later Patriarch of Constantinople, and Manuel Pothos.
Since he had visited Venice before, he reserved his most elaborate reports for the other major capitals: Paris, where he was welcomed with lavish ceremonies by Charles VI in the summer of 1400, and London, where he celebrated the following Christmas with Henry IV at the palace of Eltham. From Paris, Manuel described the ‘nobility of soul, the friendship and constant zeal for the faith’ displayed by the king, his kinsmen and officials. He stayed in the palace of the Louvre, where he noticed a fine tapestry and composed an account of its beauty. He hoped that he would shortly be able to return to Constantinople with military aid. Charles VI also invited him to celebrate the eighth day of the feast of Saint Denis at the famous monastery north of Paris. Some criticized this, saying that the Greeks were not in communion with Rome, but the king insisted and Manuel was reminded that his attempts to obtain aid would be dependent on the union of the Latin and Greek churches.
In the winter of 1400/1401, he visited London where he appreciated the hospitality of Henry IV, who
has made himself a virtual haven for us in the midst of a twofold tempest, that of the season and that of fortune… His conversation is quite charming; he pleases us in every way… He is providing us with military assistance, with soldiers, archers, money and ships to transport the army where it is needed.
Adam of Usk, who observed the embassy, wrote of the Byzantines:
This emperor always walked with his men, dressed alike and in one colour, namely white, in long robes cut like tabards… No razor touched head or beard of his chaplains. These Greeks were most devout in their church services, whic
h were joined in as well by soldiers as by priests, for they chanted them without distinction in their native tongue. I thought within myself, what a grievous thing it was that this great Christian prince from the farther east should perforce be driven by unbelievers to visit the distant lands of the west to seek aid against them.
While Manuel II was in the West trying to persuade the rulers of France and England to send troops to defend his capital, an unexpected ally emerged in Asia Minor. Timur (Tamerlane), the Mongol leader, known as ‘the Sword of Islam’, had devastated Georgia in 1399/1400, and ransacked and burned the great cities of Aleppo, Damascus and Baghdad. He now turned west to attack Sultan Bayezid with his highly disciplined troops, organized in typical Mongol fashion in units of 100 and dedicated to jihad. They engaged the Turks outside Ankara on 28 July 1402. Not only were the Ottomans defeated, but the sultan and his son Musa were both taken prisoner. Bayezid later died in captivity. While Timur’s success shocked and terrified them, the western rulers Henry III of Castile, Charles VI of France and Henry IV of England sent their congratulations to the victor of Ankara who had destroyed their enemy Bayezid. From Constantinople, the regent John VII Palaiologos promised tribute if Timur would continue to protect Byzantium from the Turks. For the Christians enclosed in Constantinople, the Mongols had performed a great service, but there was still anxiety about what Timur would do next. After destroying the Knights Hospitallers in Smyrna, however, he then returned to the east where he entertained the much greater ambition of conquering China. There he would realize the title that became his epitaph, ‘Conqueror of the World’.
After the defeat of 1402, Manuel returned to Constantinople while the four sons of Bayezid immediately began a struggle for supreme power, which was resolved in 1413 when Mehmed I triumphed over his brothers and resumed the campaign against Byzantium. Manuel commissioned a copy of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus, with a fine group portrait of the imperial family, which he sent to the monastery of Saint Denis as a way of thanking Charles VI (plate 40). But no military aid came to Constantinople as it faced another serious Ottoman siege in 1422. In that year, Manuel suffered a stroke and John VIII took over control of Byzantium, now reduced to the capital city without hinterland, no longer Queen of any empire. In 1453 Mehmed I’s grandson would ride into Constantinople as the Conqueror.
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire Page 37