ABSTRACT
The degree to which Alfonso V attempted to confront the Ottoman threat to Europe and his reasons for doing so have for some time been the subject of debate. In a study of Alfonso's 'eastern policy' published in 1902-03 Francesco Cerone depicted the king as a heroic figure who placed the need to resist Ottoman power at the heart of his foreign policy and selflessly launched diplomatic and military initiatives intended to drive the Turks out of Europe and ultimately out of Asia Minor. The Romanian Constantin Marinescu, in a recently recovered study of Alfonso's diplomatic and military activities in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, also stressed the primacy of political and economic interests that shaped his policies toward Christian and Muslim powers there. By the late 1430s, with the Papacy increasingly alarmed at the Ottoman threat to both the Byzantine lands and Eastern Europe, the anti-Turkish crusade became a major western concern.
