CHAPTER IX
ACCESSION OF CONSTANTINE DRAGASES; PATRIARCH GREGORY DEPOSED; RENEWED ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN AID FROM THE WEST; EMPEROR MEETS WITH LITTLE SUCCESS; ARRIVAL OF CARDINAL ISIDORE; RECONCILIATION SERVICE DECEMBER 12, 1452, IN HAGIA SOPHIA; DISSENSIONS REGARDING IT.
The emperor John left no son, and the succession had therefore to pass to one of his three brothers, Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas. Constantine, the eldest, was at the time of the emperor’s death at Sparta, but Demetrius claimed that as his elder brother was not born in the purple, while he had inherited that honour, the crown ought to be placed on his head. The dowager empress, the widow of Manuel, the clergy, senate, the troops and people generally, declared in favour of Constantine.[185]
While the matter was still under debate, Thomas, who had learned at Gallipoli the death of his brother, arrived in the capital and immediately supported the nomination of Constantine. An embassy was sent to the Morea and on January 6, 1449, placed the crown on the head of Constantine Dragases, the last Christian emperor of Constantinople.[186]
On March 12, he arrived in the capital and his brother Thomas, who had been appointed despot, went after some days to the Morea. There he was shortly afterwards joined by Demetrius who had withdrawn his opposition and accepted the situation.
The party opposed to the Union had now become sufficiently strong to call together a Synod, which met in the autumn of 1450. The three patriarchs of the East were present, and under their guidance the assembly declared the patriarch Gregory to be an enemy of the Orthodox Church and deposed him. In his stead they appointed Athanasius.
During the interval between the death of John and that of Murad, on February 3, 1451, the Christian cause looked more hopeful. Scanderbeg had maintained himself successfully in the field, Murad had been compelled a second time to raise the siege of Croya. In four separate battles the Turkish armies had been defeated. In the siege of Sventigrad they lost thirty thousand men, and, though the brave Albanian failed in capturing the city and had to raise the siege, his campaign was a triumph.
It seems to have been generally recognised that young Mahomet, the successor of Murad, had even before his accession determined to lay siege to the city. The emperor, therefore, once more renewed the efforts of his predecessors to obtain foreign aid. Once more the insuperable obstacle to the Union of the Churches, the rigid refusal of clergy and people, came to the fore. Constantine, like his predecessors, tried and failed to coerce the Church. Athanasius, the new patriarch, declared himself ready to maintain the Orthodox faith and declined to recognise the acts of the Council of Florence. When Constantine asked aid from Rome, he found that the deposed Gregory had taken refuge there, and while the patriotism of the latter led him to seek the pontiff’s help against the Turks, his Catholicism compelled the pope to espouse his cause. Nicholas the Fifth summoned the emperor, as the price of his support, to replace Gregory and to take the measures necessary for formally completing the Union agreed to at Florence. Constantine was willing to do what he could, but knew the temper of his subjects. He knew himself to be distrusted by them for what they regarded as his Romanising tendencies. When Mahomet was at Magnesia, where the news of the death of his father reached him, the Christians around regarded the new emperor unfavourably on account of his predilection for the Union, and spoke of him as a usurper. Constantine, who was on the look out for a wife[187] and had employed Phrantzes on various expeditions to find one, had been compelled, on account of the opposition of his subjects to any further relationship with the Latins, to abandon his intention of marrying the daughter of Foscari, the doge of Venice. He had thus given offence to a powerful state, and, though he had offered all sorts of concessions, Venice would only promise to send ten galleys to the help of the city.
The emperor temporised. He begged the pope to send ships and also learned and capable ecclesiastics who could aid him to make the Union acceptable to the clergy. In reply Nicholas promised to send a fleet, although he was powerless to persuade other Christian princes to follow his example. In answer to his second request he deputed Cardinal Isidore, Metropolitan of Russia, whom we have seen at the Council of Florence, to be his legate.
In November 1452, a great Genoese ship with the cardinal accompanied by Leonard, archbishop of Chios, arrived at the city and was received by the emperor with every honour. Isidore at once pressed for a formal recognition of Union. The emperor and some of the nobles assented, but the majority of the priests, monks, and nuns refused. Ducas says that no nun consented and that the emperor only pretended to do so. It is not unlikely that he is right. Mahomet had declared war. Preparations for the siege of Constantinople were already being made, and not only the emperor but many priests, deacons, and laymen of high rank were ready to accept everything that Isidore proposed, provided only that the city could obtain additional defenders. It was in this spirit that they consented to be present on December 12, 1452, in the Great Church in order to celebrate the Union and by so doing obtain aid in their time of mortal anguish.[188] The service was destined to be memorable. The party which would not accept the Union took offence at the reconciliation service. While the emperor and a host of dignitaries were present in Hagia Sophia a crowd went to the monk Gennadius, better known as George Scholarius, and asked what they should do.
The man whom they went to consult was not a mere monk who had won the popular ear. He was a scholar with a European reputation, the most distinguished advocate in the long contest between the rival systems of Aristotle and Plato which marks the transition from mediaeval to modern thought. He was the last of the great polemical writers of the Orthodox Church whose works were studied in the West as well as in the East. His great rival in the controversy was Pletho, a celebrated Platonic scholar. Both these writers had accompanied John Palaeologus to the Councils of Ferrara and Florence.[189]
The reply of Gennadius, who was now a monk in the monastery of Pantocrator (a little over a mile distant from the Great Church), whither they had gone to consult him, was distinct enough. He handed from his cell a paper asking why they put their trust in Italians instead of in God. In losing their faith he declared that they would lose their city. In embracing the new religion they would have to submit to be slaves.
Something like a riot followed, and drunken zealots ran through the streets declaring that they would have no Union with the Azymites—that is, with those who celebrate with unleavened bread.
Meantime the congregation in the Great Church, after listening to a sermon from the cardinal, formally gave their consent to the Union on condition that the decrees of Florence should be again examined and, if need be, revised. A Mass was celebrated in which Roman and Greek priests took part; the names of Nicholas the Fifth and the restored Patriarch Gregory were joined in the prayers, and both the cardinal and the patriarch shared in the celebration in token that the old schism was at an end and that the great reconciliation had been accomplished.
The reconciliation was, however, a delusion and a sham. Many who accepted it, says Ducas, gave utterance to the thought, ‘Wait until we have got rid of Mahomet, and then it will be seen whether we are really united with these Azymites.’ Notaras, the grand duke and subject of highest rank in the city, was reported to have declared that he would rather see the phakiola of the Turk than the veil of the Latin priest. Those who conformed did so under compulsion. They agreed with the mob in regarding the Latin priests as the representatives of a foreign tyranny. The most devout among the citizens were the most opposed to a change of belief in order to obtain a temporal advantage. Without going so far as Lamartine, who says ‘L’Église avait tué la patrie,’ we may safely admit that it had greatly divided the people in presence of their great enemy.
We have now arrived at a period within a few months of the final siege of the city and have to limit our attention to the struggle which is about to take place over against its walls, to the incidents of this epoch-marking event, and to the dramatis personae of the contest.