The Siege and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453

Historiography, Topography, and Military Studies

Marios Philippides, Walter K. Hanak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367602345
• eBook ISBN: 9781317016083
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

This major study is a comprehensive scholarly work on a key moment in the history of Europe, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The result of years of research, it presents all available sources along with critical evaluations of these narratives. The authors have consulted texts in all relevant languages, both those that remain only in manuscript and others that have been printed, often in careless and inferior editions. Attention is also given to 'folk history' as it evolved over centuries, producing prominent myths and folktales in Greek, medieval Russian, Italian, and Turkish folklore. Part I, The Pen, addresses the complex questions introduced by this myriad of original literature and secondary sources.

PART I
THE PEN

Chapter 1

Scholarship and the Siege of 1453

I. General Remarks

During the nineteenth century, “new” sources describing the siege, fall and sack of Constantinople in 1453 were discovered. The texts that had been forgotten or misplaced since the days of the Renaissance were edited and published in scholarly journals. A significant number of important documents saw the light of print for the first time:

1. The report of Angelo Giovanni Lomellino, the Genoese podestà of Pera/Galatas, the Genoese suburb across Constantinople on the northern shore of the Golden Horn. This important epistula dealing with the siege, sack, and the fate of Pera was composed on June 23, 1453, while Lomellino still felt the effects of the disaster and was still in deep grief and a state of depression.¹

2. The valuable diary of the Venetian physician Nicolò Barbaro, who was on board a Venetian galley in defense of the harbor and who recorded all events, including numerous operations on the western land fortifications. He provides informative lists of Venetian combatants, casualties, refugees, and prisoners who fell into the hands of the Turks and were subsequently ransomed or perished in captivity.²

3. A section in Zorzi Dolfin’s Cronaca delle famiglie nobili di Venezia, evidently copied from Languschi’s opusculum and entitled Excidio e presa di Constantinopoli nell’ anno 1453.³

4. Adamo di Montaldo’s De Constantinopolitano Excidio ad nobilissimum iuvenem Melladucam Cicadam, a rhetorical piece composed in the humanistic flowery style favored by intellectuals of the period. It also deals with events, but the work is not chronologically contemporaneous with the siege and sack. It appears to have been written in the early 1470s.⁴

5. The Greek “biography” of Sultan Mehmed II by the Greek historian Kritoboulos, who had contacts with the patriarchate of Constantinople in the years that followed the sack and described these dealings in a manuscript discovered by Philipp A. Déthier in Istanbul.⁵

6. The Slavonic eyewitness account by Nestor-Iskander (İskender), which in its original form was a diary comparable to that of Barbaro whom it complements in a number of respects, but unlike Barbaro’s narrative it deals exclusively with the land operations of the siege and not with the Venetian galleys in the harbor of the Golden Horn.⁶

These accounts have invited detailed scholarly analyses of the events that they presented and promised a better understanding of the complicated military operations associated with the end of the medieval Greek “empire” of the Palaiologoi.⁷ Interest created by the discovery of such texts stimulated further research in topography and rudimentary archaeological investigation. Scholars began to visit Constantinople in person in order to evaluate the military situation of 1453 in its proper geographical context. The elder A. D. Mordtmann, for instance, made good use of his familiarity with the Constantinopolitan topography, and his work remains an immensely enhanced study of the siege.⁸ The Greek physician A. G. Paspates, who had been reared and educated in the United States, further enriched his research.⁹ The scholarly community soon realized the value of topographical investigation, as it had already done in the case of classical studies, and important basic research was soon initiated.¹⁰

The eighteenth century had not observed comparable activities in its approach to the siege but had concentrated, uncritically in some instances, on available sources. The case of Edward Gibbon is notorious. His sources were limited and he himself had never visited Constantinople. A number of useful accounts were discovered after Gibbon had finished his work.¹¹ There were also sources available to Gibbon, which he simply ignored or failed to utilize. In general, however, the eighteenth century witnessed the discovery and subsequent publication of some precious sources on the siege of 1453: Tetaldi’s French version¹² and Ubertino Pusculo’s Latin poem of Vergilian hexameters.¹³ It should be noted, nevertheless, that Gibbon’s account of the siege was and still is immensely popular, despite limitations, which to a large degree may be attributed to the prevailing standards of scholarship in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, Gibbon should not be found at fault for his failure to recognize the importance of topography or for neglecting chronicles in manuscript form that were buried in widely scattered libraries and collections. Although his work contains numerous shortcomings, various scholars and readers first became familiar with the siege through his popular book. In addition, Gibbon maintained a critical eye on the information available to him and in certain cases he proved a more careful historian than his successors in the following two centuries. Gibbon, for instance, is seldom given credit for suspecting that behind the Greek narrative attributed to the pen of George Sphrantzes (Gibbon’s “Phranza”) lurks an ecclesiastical elaborator.¹⁴ Gibbon, in fact, anticipated the modern demonstration that Sphrantzes’ Chronicon Maius is actually a paraphrase into Greek of Bishop Leonardo’s Latin text, which was carried out by a notorious forger of Palaiologan documents, the prelate Makarios Melissourgos-Melissenos, one century or more after the death of Sphrantzes.

Thus the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were primarily an age of discovery and recovery. The “new” accounts underscored the need for textual evaluation, for Quellenforschung, and for a detailed investigation of the siege. The monumental fall of Constantinople had heralded the end of the Greek version of the Roman Empire. Perhaps it even marked the end of the Middle Ages, according to the reckoning of a few historians who boldly and confidently viewed history as a continuous process accented by abrupt, albeit well-defined and discernible, breaks in chronology.¹⁵ While more sophisticated modern approaches frown upon such views, the least that can be said concerning this matter is that the year 1453 marks the most important date in the two millennia of Greek recorded history. After all, it amounted to a prelude of a long subjugation to an Islamic master. The citizens of the tiny reconstituted Greek nation of the nineteenth century demanded a reliable record of the siege and of the critical period that had witnessed the heroic death of the last Greek emperor of Constantinople, Constantine XI Dragaš Palaiologos. The fall of the imperial city had brought about the permanent occupation of Constantinople. This critical period also ushered in the so-called Dark Age of the infamous Turkish domination. Both the citizens of modern Hellas and numerous European scholars felt an acute need for the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Maps
• Illustrations
• Part I – the Pen
• Part Two – the Sword
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index