ABSTRACT
Early on the morning of May 29, 1453, the Ottoman troops of Sultan Mehmed II broke through the ancient double fortifications and an organized three-day sack of the hapless city began. While some modern scholars believe that the sultan terminated the sack at the end of the first day, violating a promise that he made to his troops,1 there is the testimony of eyewitnesses who insist that the sack continued beyond the first day. Thus Leonardo, who was a prisoner of the Turks, just for a short interval before being ransomed probably on the first day, states that the sack lasted three days:2 Triduo igitur decursam civitatem depopulatamque…relinquunt, “in three days of pillage they left the city without its population.” His testimony is confirmed by other credible witnesses and by the official report of Angelo Giovanni Lomellino, the Genoese podestà of Pera, to the authorities in Genoa:3 Posuerunt dictum locum [sc. Constantinopolim] ad saccum, per dies tres, “they subjected the aforementioned place [sc. Constantinople] to a three day sack.” Scholarios, who became the first patriarch of the captive Greeks after the sack, also states that on the next day, May 30, the Turks were still enslaving individuals:4 kai;aujtivka me;n th;n tw'n ejcqrw'n sundiefeuvgomen rJuvmhn [sc. on May 29], th'/de;ejpiouvsh/ [sc. on May 30] sunhliskovmeqa. Similarly, Benvenuto of Ancona, another eyewitness to the events, speaks of a sack that went on beyond the first day:5 Item quod per duos dies dedit
1 H. ‹nalcik, “The Policy of Mehmed II toward the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine Buildings of the City,” DOP 23/24 (1969/1970): 231-249 [= ch. 5 in H. ‹nalcik, The Ottoman Empire: Conquest, Organization and Economy (London, 1978)]; at this point ‹nalcik appears to follow FC, p. 148. 2 PG 159: 42. 3 It was first edited and published by de Sacy, pp. 74-79; it was subsequently edited by Belgrano, no. 149, pp. 229-233; and again it was published by Iorga, “Notes et extraits,” pp. 105-108. It has been translated into English by Melville Jones, The Siege of Constantinople 1453, pp. 131-135. More recently, an edition with improved text and Italian translation appeared in CC 1: 42-51. 4 Oeuvres complètes de Gennade Scholarios, eds. L. Petit, X. A. Sidéridès, and M. Jugie, 1 (Paris, 1929): 227-288: the eulogy on the death of his nephew entitled jEpitavfio" tw'/makarivw/Qeodwvrw/ tw'/Sofianw'/, ejn th'/iJera'/monh'/tou'Batopedivou tafevnti, o}n ei\pen ejx uJpogeivou oJqei'o" aujtou' Gennavdio" monaco;" ejpi;tw'/tavfw/, Septembrivou khV, À"˛xe ve[tou", esp. p. 279. 5 Pertusi, “The Anconitan Colony,” pp. 199-218. An English translation of this document appears
civitatem et singula ad predam sakmannis, “item: for two days he allowed the city and its buildings to be sacked by his looters.” The events of the long siege (April 3-May 29) created a vivid impression in the literature of the period, both in the east and the west. This fascination with the death throes of the medieval Greek state extended well into the sixteenth century, when “sources” containing genuine or fabricated memories of the events surrounding the siege were still being published in Europe. In fact, it was the sixteenth century that witnessed the first printed collections of eyewitness accounts of the siege of 1453.6 The fabricated, elaborated, or even forged accounts that appeared further testify to the unprecedented popularity of primary source materials, which were still actively sought and unearthed by hook or by crook. Nineteenth-century scholars continued this tradition and turned their attention to the publication of primary source materials, whether in archival or in literary form, that they discovered in numerous libraries of Europe and Ottoman Turkey. Printed editions of individual accounts and impressive collections of various narratives were then published. Thus the nineteenth century “discovered,” among others, Kritoboulos and the valuable journal of Nicolò Barbaro. The most significant collection of early pertinent materials was completed by Déthier and Hopf,7 and it brought to the attention of the scholarly world an account of the siege by an individual whose name, it was assumed, was Christoforo Richerio, whose Italian text the two editors reproduced from Francesco Sansovino’s earlier book,8 as was correctly observed by Paspates in the late nineteenth century.9 In their eagerness to preserve and print all available sources, scholars of that century occasionally displayed an uncritical eye but, in general, one can only be impressed by such Herculean labors that provided the foundations for further serious scholarly investigations of the siege. However, the scholarly evaluation of sources with meticulous application of textual criticism through Quellenforschung was largely left to 6 One of the most influential collections, as we have seen, is Francesco Sansovino’s Historia universale dell’origine et imperio de Turchi. On the various editions of this work and on Sansovino’s importance, cf. Zachariadou, To;Croniko;tw`n Touvrkwn Soultavnwn, ch. 3; and E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago and London, 1981), pp. 333-336, 378-383. 7 MHH, 21.1, and 22.1.2. On this, cf. supra, ch. 1: “Scholarship and the Siege of 1453.” 8 Francesco Sansovino’s work, Gl’annali Turcheschi overo vite de principi della casa Ottomana. Ne quali si descrivono di tempo in tempo tutte le guerre fatte dalla natione de Turchi in diverse Provincie del Mondo con molti particolari della Morea et delle case nobili dell'Albania, & dell'Imperio & stato de Greci (Venice, 1573); and his popular Historia universale, which contains the Richerio account, pp. 269-272. In addition to Déthier’s MHH, Iorga also produced a multivolume collection of pertinent archival material: NE 1-6, while Lampros also produced a collection of literary and popular lamentations on the fall: “Monw/divai kai;Qrh`noi ejpi;th`/JAlwvsei th`ı Kwnstantinoupovlewı,” pp. 190-270. In more recent times CC 1, CC 2, and TIePN have become essential to any scholar interested in the siege, but these collections contain only selections and in some cases the selections appear only in Italian translation without the original text. Cf. supra, ch. 1: “Scholarship and the Siege of 1453.” 9 Paspates, Poliorkiva kai; {Alwsi", pp. 28-29: Cristovforoı JRicevrioı. JH a{lwsiı th`ı Kwnstantinoupovlewı, ejn e[tei 1453w/kata;th;n e[kdosin tou`Fragkivskou Sansobivnou ejn th`/ , pp. 63-
the discretion of twentieth-century historians, investigators, and researchers. Consequently, contemporary examination and scrutiny have demonstrated that earlier scholars had rather hastily accepted a number of narratives as authentic.10 Richerio’s account was unknown to Gibbon. It was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that scholarship rediscovered the existence of this narrative, although in fact it had never been lost but had been neglected and forgotten. After the publication of his text, Paspates first used it extensively in his learned study of the siege. He reproduced the following information on this source:11
Christoforo Richerio. La Presa di Costantinopoli, l’anno MCCCCLIII à XXIX di Maggio secondo l’edizione di Francesco Sansovino, nell’istoria universale dell’origine ed imperio de Turchi. Venezia MDLXIV L. III, fol. 63, 66. Christoforo Richerio. The Fall of Constantinople in the year 1453, on May 29, according to the edition of Francesco Sansovino, from his Universal History of the Origin and Empire of the Turks. Venice 1564, Book 3, fol. 63, 66.
