The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks

by Edwin Pears

Asiatic influence was more powerful in Constantinople than in Greece. The explanation of this fact is to be found in the remoteness of Athens from the capital; in the greater intellectual life of Constantinople; in the presence of many leaders of thought from the cities in Asia Minor under Asiatic influence, and in the traditional Roman sentiment derived from the influence of Latin rulers, literature, and tradition. The iconoclastic movement towards the end of the eighth century was a genuine attempt to get rid of pagan practices. It failed because of the base character of some of its imperial supporters, because of the opposition of the less cultured western church, and because the Empress Irene, a native of Athens and brought up among the traditions of paganism which still lived on in what was then a remote part of the empire, placed herself at the head of the Hellenic party and with her strong will was able to prevent any reformation being accomplished.

But paganism in Greece and Asia Minor lived on long after the time of Irene. The Hellenistic influence struggled hard against the Asiatic or what was not unfitly called the Roman party. When we come to the last century of the empire’s history, we find its influence triumphant, and this to such an extent that we see Plethon and his school, as the representatives of a phase of Greek thought, dreaming of the restoration of paganism. I conclude, therefore, that Greek influence helped to perpetuate paganism or at least a paganistic tendency.

Greek influence deprived the Church of the religious enthusiasm which the study of the Old Testament has often inspired. It must always be remembered that the Greeks had the New Testament in a language they could understand. Every one recognises that a large part of the intellectual movement in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was due to the translation of the sacred Scriptures into the vernacular. But there has been no period in the history of the Greek race since the compilation of the Christian record in which the Greeks have not had the advantage of a familiarity with the Gospels and the writings of St. Paul. They knew the New Testament well. Its Greek was colloquial. But they were less familiar with the Old Testament. Although frequent allusions are made to the stories in the older book by many writers during the later centuries of the Church’s history, the Septuagint was written in a language less understood by the people. Indications that the Old Testament influenced men’s conduct are lacking, and point either to a want of familiarity with it, or to some other cause which made its influence less than that which it has had on other peoples. The passionate zeal of our own Puritans, with their application of Jewish history to English politics; the political principles of the defenders of civil liberty in America; the fierce enthusiasm of the Scotch Covenanters, of the Dutch Protestants, and of the Boers, were all derived from the Old rather than from the New Testament. The influence of the more ancient book might have been great upon the Asiatic party if its writings had been as familiar as those of the New Testament. As it was, though its influence was undoubtedly felt, that derived from the New Testament became more powerful as the centuries went on, ultimately triumphed, and led to results which assist us to furnish an answer to the questions under examination.

What, then, was the general effect of the double stream of influence on the members of the Orthodox Church? The familiarity of the subjects of the empire with the text of the New Testament combined with the intellectual genius of the Greek race led them to take a delight in the study of the philosophical questions which the New Testament, and especially the writings of St. Paul, suggest. To take a keen interest in any metaphysical study is for any people a gain, and it is none the less so when the subject is theology. Now the interest of the population in theological questions was at all times absorbing.

When these questions were settled by the Church, the Asiatic influence made itself felt and produced a conservatism, a stubborn refusal to change or abandon any position, which the more fickle-minded or philosophical Greek could never have displayed. Each of the two tendencies exerted its influence upon the conduct of the Orthodox Church. Speaking generally, we may say that all its members were devotedly attached to their faith—or perhaps it would be more exact to say, to their creeds. Of political questions in the modern sense they knew little. In their ignorance of foreign nations, questions of external policy hardly interested them, but the intellectual life of the country—mostly confined to the great cities, to Nicaea, Salonica, Smyrna, and above all the capital—was fully awake to theological questions. While ready to discuss, they maintained every dogma and every article with a persistence which increased as the years rolled on. They took a keen interest in any question whenever any heretic appeared who attempted to throw doubt on what the Church had decided. They were ready to die for their faith.

The writers of the Greek Church show by abundant examples that they and the people believed in the existence of a God who lives and rules the world and the conduct of individuals. Their very superstitions afford sufficient evidence of such a belief. He was an avenging God. Black Death and Plague are described as the instruments of His vengeance. Omens and signs in a variety of forms were the means by which He, or some of the Hierarchy of Heaven, intimated to the faithful what was about to happen. The absence of omens was a sign of His displeasure or His abandonment of their cause.

The men who discussed the religious questions which arose during the later as well as the earlier centuries of the empire regarded them as tremendous realities. The discussions were not mere exchange of opinions or formulating of phrases: not mere academical disputations, among the learned of the time, of metaphysical abstractions, but were often careful attempts to solve the insoluble. The results were of supreme importance. If you believed aright, you would be saved. If you disbelieved or believed wrongfully, you would be damned in the next world and, as far as the believers could accomplish it, in this also. Unless the eagerness, the passion, the deadly Asiatic earnestness of the religious discussions or wranglings be realised, no true conception can be formed of fourteenth and fifteenth century life in Constantinople.

Contemporary writers supply abundant and indisputable evidence that, from the patriarch downwards, the members of the Greek Church attached overwhelming importance to the correctness of their orthodoxy. The utmost care about correct definitions was taken by the Church to check paganism. The miscreant was a worse offender than the man who disregarded the ordinary laws of morality. Souls were to be saved by right belief. As in the Western Church, whosoever would be saved, it was necessary before all things that he should accept the right formulas. But the Eastern gave greater prominence to the formulas than even the Western. While the Roman Church attached most importance to its Catholicity and to the necessity of propagating the faith, the Greek Church always prided itself rather on its Orthodoxy. If the question were whether the empire was Christian, and if the test of being a Christian nation were the jealous guardianship of every dogma in the precise manner that it had been formulated by the Councils of the Church, then the Orthodox Church, to which the inhabitants of the capital and empire belonged, would take a very high rank among Christian nations.

It is not possible to doubt that the keen interest taken in the discussion of religious questions quickened the intellectual development of the population, and in this respect the influence of the Church was purely beneficial. To suggest, as did the historians of the eighteenth century, that the Greeks were at once profoundly theological and profoundly vile is not only to ask that an indictment should be framed against a whole people, but is contrary to general experience and to fact. In spite of the occasional conjunction of theology and immorality in the same individual, the nation which takes a lively interest in the former is not likely to be addicted to the latter.

A strong and, I think, an unanswerable case might be made out to show that the religion of the Orthodox Church beneficially influenced the conduct of men and women in their individual capacity and in their relations one with another. All believed in the doctrine of eternal punishment and in the divine gifts granted to the Church by which punishment might be avoided. In their constant efforts to take advantage of the graces at the disposal of the Church, and in their endeavours to attain the ideal of Christian philosophy, men and women were led by their religion to be more moral, more honest, and more kindly one to another, than they would otherwise have been. The denunciations of those who had been guilty of unclean conduct, and the constant praise of almsgiving, lead to the conclusion that the Church had so far exercised influence for good. It had given the citizens of the empire a higher standard of family and social life. The very stubbornness which the Asiatic tendency supplied, and which led all to resist every attempt to change the formulas of the faith, came in itself to stand the population in good stead after 1453. Their wranglings on religious questions helped to form a public opinion which prevented any considerable number of Christians from abandoning their religion. We may safely conclude, therefore, that the Orthodox Church had aided in developing intellectual life, in raising and maintaining a high tone of morality, and in so attaching its members to their religion that when the time of trial came they remained faithful. It had done more. While accomplishing these objects it had raised a whole series of heterogeneous races to a higher level of civilisation and had largely contributed to make the empire the foremost and best educated state in Europe. It had checked the Greek tendency to attachment merely to the city or province and had made patriotism and brotherhood words of wider signification than they possessed in Greece.