ABSTRACT
The siege of Constantinople in 1453 qualifies as one of the major events of the fifteenth century. Constantinople and its Greek Empire of the Middle Ages had endured over eleven centuries. In fact, it had survived longer than its immediate counterpart in antiquity, the Roman Empire. Europeans had become accustomed to its existence and its function as a bulwark against the Orient and Islam; in particular, it had been taken for granted. After all, Constantinople had weathered over the centuries all sorts of foreign threats and direct assaults and somehow it had always managed to prevail over its oriental foes. Europe, it may be suggested, had become inured to situations that threatened the very existence of Constantinople. Further, in the Palaiologan era, when her emperors had become weak and resources had been depleted, if not extinguished altogether, the Christian powers in the west had seen Constantinople miraculously survived threats while other states in the Balkans submitted to Ottoman power and were reduced to the status of a vassal state. It is possible that the west realized that the siege of 1453 was, in fact, life threatening only when the drama had played out to its conclusion and the first refugees began to arrive in droves in the summer of 1453. So well established was the conviction that Constantinople would survive that news of its fall at first fell upon deaf ears. The west simply could not grasp, let alone comprehend, that the millennial empire had finally expired. The initial reaction in the west to the fall and sack of Constantinople amounted to universal disbelief, which was gradually and slowly transformed into acceptance and public grief. The western world at first proved unable to embrace the fact that Constantinople had been sacked and that the buffer, however slight, that had separated the Christian west from the Islamic east had been eliminated.1 Shock and initial suspicion with regard to the accuracy of initial reports announcing major disasters are characteristic human reflexes. It is only after the full impact of a radically new situation has been realized that such reports begin to find credence. Only then do the new sets of circumstances and implications impress. News of the fall and sack reached Venice on Friday, June 29, 1453 (the very same day on which three Cretan ships from Constantinople arrived in Candia2), in the form of official dispatches from the castellan of Methone (Modon) in the Morea and from the bailo of Chalcis at Negroponte/Euboea.3 Rome learned of the disaster by July 8 from the
1 The best modern analysis of the reaction, with special emphasis on the degree of denial in the west, is provided in SOC, ch. 1, esp. pp. 1-14, which establishes a timetable as the news spread throughout Europe. A useful diagram of the various points of origins from which reports of the fall emanated and fanned out can found in CC 1: xxvi. 2 Cf. supra, ch. 2: “Four Testimonies: A Ghost, a Pope, a Merchant, and a Boy,” n. 62.
