The Western reaction

The fall of Constantinople was all the more shocking for western opinion, because paradoxically it was not an event for which the West had prepared itself. For almost a century Constantinople had been surmounting threats to its existence apparently as serious as that which it faced in 1453. The reaction of the West to its fall was far from straightforward, which is understandable, given its complicated relationship with Byzantium. Constantinople was a landmark of the Latin Middle Ages. It was still regarded as an important centre of Christianity, above all as a repository of relics, which had been miraculously replenished since 1204. Byzantium was also a client of the West, but a reluctant and unreliable one. Without Western support its very existence was in doubt. Western powers regarded it as a responsibility, where the advantages marginally outweighed the disadvantages. Constantinople was the hub of a commercial network, upon which Italian trade depended. It was therefore in the interest of the Venetians and the Genoese to preserve its independence, but this was counterbalanced by the uncertainties associated with the continuing existence of Byzantium, whether in the form of the harassment of Italian merchants by Byzantine officials or as a result of the ingrained instability of Byzantine politics. The interest of the papacy in Constantinople was not as blatantly materialistic as that of the Venetians and Genoese. It was more a matter of reasserting its authority. The papacy understood that a regularisation of its relations with the Orthodox Church would constitute an important step in the rebuilding of its authority, which had come under the scrutiny of the so-called Conciliar Movement. The reunion of the two Churches negotiated at the council of Ferrara Florence in 1439 was an undoubted triumph for Pope Eugenius IV. However, it proved difficult to implement in the face of the growing resentment that it produced at Byzantium. The defeat of the Hungarian crusade at Varna in November 1444 appeared to confirm the conviction of Byzantine opponents of reunion that the papacy was incapable of providing any effective aid. Even the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos seemed to be veering towards this point of view. He made no effort to have the reunion of Churches proclaimed officially in Constantinople, which only reinforced the reputation the Byzantines had among Westerners for duplicity. It would have been easy for Eugenius IV to abandon Byzantium to its fate, but this would have been to write off an important part of his programme for the restoration of papal authority, which rested, in part, on reviving old claims to hegemony over the Eastern Churches. Despite Byzantine reluctance, the papacy had a vested interest in protecting Constantinople against both the Turks and the Byzantines themselves. Its fall, as indeed turned out to be the case, would be a stain on the papacy’s reputation, but to prevent this it was necessary to persuade the Byzantines of its imminence. By 1451, when the pro-unionist patriarch of Constantinople fled to Rome, it had become imperative that the papacy should discipline its recalcitrant client, in order to prevent the complete collapse of the Union of Churches. The Turkish threat was of less immediate concern, but the papacy was happy to use the alarm this produced at the Byzantine court as a way of imposing order on the Church of Constantinople. Pope Nicholas V’s solution was to send the Greek Cardinal Isidore to Constantinople as papal legate, with the task of restoring order. The cardinal arrived at the end of October 1452. He made it clear to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI that the quid pro quo for aid from the West was the official proclamation of the Union of Churches in the Church of St Sophia, which duly took place on 12 December. The papacy’s preparations for the despatch of an expedition to Constantinople were perhaps not quite as urgent as they should have been, because there was a belief that the mere threat of Western intervention would be sufficient to deter the Ottomans. ¹