Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

TAMERLANE AND BAJAZET.—The two powerful monarchs, Tamerlane and Bajazet, now measured their strength in combat with one another. Trembling ambassadors of the Greek emperor, and of certain Seljukian princes, had waited on Tamerlane in Gengia at the foot of the Caucasus. On the 16th of June, 1402, the two armies—four hundred thousand Turks, and eight hundred thousand Mongols, if one may credit the reports—met at Ancyra. The Ottomans were defeated, and Bajazet was taken prisoner. Led into the presence of Tamerlane, he found the Mongol quietly playing chess with his son. Asia Minor submitted to the conqueror, who penetrated as far as Smyrna. An old man, he was looking towards China as another field for invasion, when he died (1405). Bajazet died soon after his defeat.

TURKISH CONQUESTS: THE GREEKS AND LATINS.—The grandson of Bajazet, Murad II. (1421-1451), took up anew his projects of conquest. The empire of Tamerlane quickly fell to pieces. His course had been like that of a hurricane, terrible in its work of destruction, but soon at an end. The Byzantine dominion was soon confined to Constantinople and small districts adjacent. On all sides the Ottoman power was supreme. The Greek emperor, John VII. (Palaeologus), now endeavored, in imitation of previous attempts, to bring about a union of the Greek and Latin churches, and thus remove a principal obstacle to the obtaining of military help from the West. He went to Italy, attended by the patriarch and many bishops. After long debates and conferences on the abstruse points of doctrinal difference, a verbal agreement was reached between the two parties (1439). But the result was received with so much disfavor and indignation in Constantinople, that the effort to bring the sundered churches together came to naught. The Pope, however, stirred up the Christian princes to engage in war against the Turk. The defeat of Vladislav, king of Hungary, and of Hunyady, at Varna (1444), caused by the rash onset of the king upon the janizaries, was succeeded by another Turkish victory at Kosovo, four years later.

FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.—Murad II. was succeeded by his ambitious and unmerciful son, Mohammed II. (1451-1481), who determined that Constantinople should be his capital. The city had seven thousand defenders, comprising two thousand Genoese and Venetians, who were commanded by an able man, the Genoese Justiniani. The Emperor Constantine XII. worshiped according to the Roman rites; while his court observed the Greek forms, and spurned a union with the hated Latin Christians, whose help the emperor was to the end anxious to obtain. The city was stoutly defended for fifty-three days; and when it could be held no longer against the furious assault of the Turks, the gallant Constantine, casting aside his golden armor, fell, bravely fighting with the defenders on the ramparts (May 29, 1453). Constantinople became the capital of the Turks. The crescent supplanted the cross, and the Church of St. Sophia was turned into a mosque.

TURKISH GOVERNMENT.—The Sultan, or padischah, among the Turks is absolute master, and proprietor of the soil. There is no order of nobles, and there are no higher classes except the priests (imams) and the religious orders (dervishes). In the seraglio of the Sultan, with its palaces and gardens, the harem is separated from the other apartments. The grand vizier presides over the council of ministers (divan). The provinces are governed by pashas with large powers. Beneath them is a gradation of inferior rulers in the subdivisions of the provinces. The mufti with his subordinate associates is a high authority on questions of religion and law.

TURKISH LITERATURE.—The literature of the Ottoman Turks is in merit below the literature of other Mohammedan peoples. It lacks originality, being based on Persian and partly on Arabic models.

CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—We have seen great changes gradually taking place in the Middle Ages. One is the centralizing of political authority by the subjection of the local rulers, or lords, to the will of the king. Another is the enfranchisement of the serfs, and the growing power and self-respect of a middle class. The invention of gunpowder took away the superiority of the mail-clad and mounted warrior. The peasant on the battle-field was a match for the knight.

CLERGYY AND LAITY.—There was a change from the time when the clergy were the sole possessors of knowledge, and the exclusive guides of opinion. In the lay part of society, there was an awaking of intellectual activity and a spirit of self-assertion.

A brief sketch of important ecclesiastical changes, some of which have been adverted to, will be here in place.

POPES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.—From Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., or from near the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the highest authority was claimed and exercised by the popes. Frederick Barbarossa, the greatest of the German emperors, held the stirrup of Hadrian IV., and humbled himself before Alexander III. Innocent III. compared the authority of popes, in contrast with that of kings, to the sun in relation to the moon. He excommunicated Philip Augustus of France, John of England, and other monarchs. He claimed the right to refuse to crown the emperor if he should judge him not worthy of the imperial office. The papacy continued to exert these lofty prerogatives until Boniface VIII. He asserted that "the two swords," the symbols of both secular and spiritual rule, were given to St. Peter and to his successors: the temporal authority must therefore be subject to the spiritual. The body of canon law was framed in accordance with these views. It embraced the right of the Pope to depose kings and princes. To the sovereign pontiff was accorded the right to dispense from Church laws. With the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the different countries, the Pope, as the supreme tribunal in all matters affecting the clergy and covered by the canon law, gained a vast increase of judicial prerogatives.

THE BABYLONIAN EXILE: THE GREAT SCHISM.—During the residence of the popes at Avignon, there was great complaint on account of the dependence of the papacy on France, as well as on account of the heavy taxes levied for the support of the pontifical court, and of the immorality which at times prevailed in it. Gregory XI., to the joy of all good men, returned to Rome (1376). But at his death, two years later, a majority of the cardinals elected an Italian, Urban VI., in his place. The adherents of the French party made a protest, and chose the Cardinal of Geneva, under the name of Clement VII. England, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Holland, and almost all Italy, acknowledged Urban. France, Spain, Scotland, Savoy, and Lorraine obeyed Clement. This great schism of the West created sorrow and alarm among well-disposed Christian people. It tended strongly to diminish the reverence felt for the papal office, and to weaken its influence.