Friday 30 May 2014
This is on account of the destruction of the last relic of antiquity, the Byzantine Empire, by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II.
The Byzantine Empire is a modern term referring to the Eastern Roman Empire that survived the fall of its western counterpart by nearly a millenium.
But after the death of Justinian in the seventh century, and certainly by the reforms of Heraclius, the empire ceased to have any classical Latin connexion. The old Roman Empire was Latin and pagan, the Byzantine Empire was Greek and Orthodox, thus the term Byzantine was coined to differentiate the two.
For centuries Byzantium and its wonderful capital of Constantinople held the line against the forces of Persia, the Arab Caliphates, and finally against the Turks. It remained the largest and richest city in Europe for generation after generation, a flourishing metropolis of wealth and culture.
But it was an empire in perpetual retraction. Enterprising emperors might restore a province, but it would soon be lost again. And always it would shrink.
After Manzikert the Turks began filtering into Anatolia, the heart of the empire, and gradually it became more and more Turkish in character.
As Byzantine infighting eroded the empire's ability to resist, and the ambitious Serbs and Bulgars of the Balkans, not to mention the energetic Italian republics of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, continuously preyed upon the remaining possessions, the empire by the thirteenth century was dying.
By the fifteenth century the empire's authority over Epirus, Trebizond, and the Morea evaporated, leaving the heirs of the Caesars with nothing beyond the city of Constantinople itself.
At last the Turks tired of the phantom living on, and battered down the walls to capture the city for the crescent.
The fall of Constantinople was a shocking event for contemporary Europeans, who perceived in it the end of an era. The last vestiges of the Roman Empire were at last extinguished and the Greek Christian east was buried by Islam.
In Russia, the faithful Orthodox Russians began identifying themselves as the "third Rome," and their Tsars claimed to be the heirs of the Greek Emperors on the Bosphorus. This would fuel the rivalry between the Turks and the Russians for the Balkans and the Black Sea in later centuries.
Western Europe received an influx of Greek scholars, especially Italy, and some date the beginning of the Renaissance to this development.
And henceforth Hungary was to be on the front lines. Not long after the fall of Constantinople the Germans were to plunge themselves into virtual civil war with the fiery proclamations of Martin Luther, who claimed the victories of the Turks were evidence of the dissatisfaction of God.
These bloody religious wars that tore Germany apart, coupled with the dynastic contest between the Valois in France and the Habsburgs in Spain and Austria, paralysed the efforts of Germany to aid Hungary.
Therefore, in 1526, the Hungarian Kingdom was destroyed by the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and in 1529 the Turks arrived before the walls of Vienna for the first time.
For the next two centuries the Turks were to contest Spain on the seas of the Mediterranean, and to batter against the defences of Austria, the last bastion of Europe, on land. Either way the Habsburgs were on the frontlines in both theatres, and their salvation of Europe from the Turks has been regarded as their historic mission both by themselves and by later historians.
Despite the zealous crusading spirit of numerous Popes and the determined efforts of much more powerful Russian autocrats in more recent history, Constantinople was never regained for the cross, and remains the largest and most important city in Turkey today.
Pictured is Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror, advancing towards the city of Constantinople with his army.
- Kaiser
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