Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Constantine XI (1449-1453) and the capture of Constantinople

Page 10

In 1456 Muhammed conquered Athens from the Franks; shortly after all Greece with the Peloponnesus submitted to him. The ancient Parthenon, in the Middle Ages the church of the Holy Virgin, was, on the sultan's order, turned into a mosque. In 1461 the far-off Trebizond, capital of the once independent Empire, passed into the hands of the Turks. At the same time they took possession of the remnants of the Despotat of Epirus. The orthodox Byzantine Empire ceased to exist, and on its site the Muhammedan Ottoman (Othman) Empire was established and grew. Its capital was transferred from Hadrianople to Constantinople, which was called by the Turks Istamboul (Stamboul).

Ducas, imitating the lamentation of Nicetas Acominatus after the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, bewailed the event of 1453. He began his lamentation:

O, city, city, head of all cities! O, city, city, center of the four quarters of the world! O, city, city, pride of the Christians and ruin of the barbarians! O, city, city, second paradise planted in the West, including all sorts of plants bending under the burden of spiritual fruits! Where is thy beauty, O, paradise? Where is the blessed strength of spirit and body of thy spiritual Graces? Where are the bodies of the Apostles of my Lord? Where are the relics of the saints, where are the relics of the martyrs? Where is the corpse of the great Constantine and other Emperors

Another contemporary, the Polish historian Jan Diugosz, wrote in his History of Poland:

This Constantinopolitan defeat, both miserable and deplorable, was the enormous victory of the Turks, the extreme ruin of the Greeks, the infamy of the Latins; through it the Catholic faith was wounded, religion confused, the name of Christ reviled and oppressed. One of the two eyes of Christianity was plucked out; one of the two hands was amputated, since the libraries were burnt down and the doctrines of Greek literature destroyed, without which no one considers himself a learned man.

A far-off Georgian chronicler remarked piously, On the day when the Turks took Constantinople, the sun was darkened.

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