Chapter XXVIII: Appendix: IV (1)

THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON GREEKS AND MOSLEMS RESPECTIVELY

In reading the contemporary authors of the period between the Latin and the Moslem conquests the following questions suggest themselves: What was the influence of the Orthodox Church upon the people of the capital and of the empire? What was its value as a national ethical force? and how did its influence as such a force compare with that of Islam?

Before attempting a reply to these questions certain facts must be noted. It must be remembered that the empire was composed of many races and languages. In the Balkan peninsula alone there were always at least half a dozen races with as many different forms of speech. In Asia Minor the component elements of the population were even still more numerous. The Church largely aided the State in the endeavour to keep these divergent elements under the rule of the empire. Her special task was to change the various races into Christians. But even when this task was completed to the extent of causing them all to profess Christianity they retained their racial characteristics and traditions. These characteristics, though widely various, may be classified in two categories. In other words, it may be said that among all the different populations of the empire there were two streams of tendency: the Hellenic and the Asiatic. The tendency and influence of each were markedly present in the church from the first days of the empire and continued until 1453. Greek influence left an indelible impress upon the Orthodox Church. But while it influenced the other races of the empire, the Greeks themselves fell to some extent under the Asiatic influence. Greek tendency was always to make of Christianity a philosophy rather than a religion. The opposite tendency, which I have called Asiatic and which corresponds fairly well to what Matthew Arnold called Hebraic, had less enduring results upon the population but was nevertheless constantly present. The two tendencies were constantly striving one against the other within the Church.

Greek influence (1) largely aided in the formation of a philosophical body of theology, (2) helped to perpetuate paganism and develop a paganistic tendency, and (3) deprived the Church of the religious enthusiasm which the Asiatic tendency might have provided and has often inspired. The service of the Greeks in reference to the formation of a body of theological philosophy is too completely recognised to require any notice. Greek influence helped to perpetuate paganism in various ways. It was naturally always most powerful in the Balkan peninsula, its chief centres being Athens and Salonica, but had great weight also in the western cities of Asia Minor. Greek polytheists in pre-Christian times were not opposed to the recognition of other gods than those worshipped by themselves. How this rational toleration, which was as utterly opposed to the exclusive spirit of Asiatic Christianity as to that of Islam itself, tended to perpetuate paganism will be best understood by recalling the early history of the later Roman empire. The population under the rule of New Rome had for the most part adopted the profession of Christianity because it was the religion of the State. Most people found little difficulty in conforming to the demands of the emperor and became Christians. Under such circumstances Christianity did not conquer paganism: it absorbed without destroying it. Just as in Central Asia many tribes who have come under the power of Russia have been ordered to elect whether they would declare themselves Christians or Moslems, so in the days of the early Christian emperors, and especially under the laws of Theodosius the choice was between a profession of the Court creed or remaining in some form of paganism where its professors would be subject to various disabilities and persecutions. The conformity which resulted was curious. The people became nominally Christians, but they brought with them into the Church most of their old superstitions. Their ancient deities were not discarded but were either secretly worshipped or came to be regarded as Christian saints: their festal days became the commemoration days of Christian events. I do not forget that something of the same kind went on in the Western Church and that the missionaries, finding themselves unable to persuade their converts to abandon their old observances, deftly adopted them into the Christian Church. But all that was done in this direction in the West was small in comparison with what went on in the East. St. George took the place of Apollo. St. Nicholas replaced Poseidon. The highest hill in every neighbourhood on the mainland and in every island of the Marmora and the Aegean had fittingly been crowned with a temple dedicated to the God of Day. The great dragon, Night, had been overcome by Helios. To this day it is almost universally true that all the peaks in question have an Orthodox church which has taken the place of the temple of Apollo and is dedicated to his successor, St. George.[606] In like manner the temples built in fishing villages to Poseidon have almost invariably been dedicated to St. Nicholas. The episcopal staff of a Greek bishop has the two serpents’ heads associated with Aesculapius. The distribution of holy bread at funerals, the processions to shrines, to sacred groves, to Hagiasmas or holy wells, and numerous other customs of the Orthodox Church, are survivals or rudimentary forms of paganism.[607]

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.

It is when we pass from the influence of the Church on the conduct of the individual, to ask what was the value of its ethical teaching in regard to national life, whether it ever set before the nation a lofty national ideal, or whether it ever caused a wave of religious enthusiasm which influenced the nation as a whole, that we find the Orthodox Church during the later centuries of its history greatly lacking. Religion was to guide the conduct of the individual and to save him from eternal punishment. There was little or no conception of it as an aid to national righteousness. There was no inspiration for national action, such as a study of the Old Testament has often supplied. There was never any great religious fervour for the accomplishment of an object because it was believed to be the divine will. I am not thinking of such religious enthusiasm as led to the abolition of the slave trade or of slavery, to the temperance movement or to that for the diminution of crime and the reform of criminals or for the bettering the condition of the labouring classes and the like. These are social developments belonging to later years, which may be credited, in part at least, to the account of Christianity. It is in the contemporary religious movements of other portions of the Christian world that the measure of the national religious life of the empire must be taken. The series of Crusades enables a comparison of this kind to be fairly made, though other standards of comparison suggest themselves. The empire under the rule of Constantinople had a greater interest in checking the progress of the Moslems in Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor than had the Western nations. But in the whole course of Byzantine history, though the empire steadily resisted the Mahometan armies, there was no display of religious enthusiasm to lend its aid at any time comparable with that which was shown in the West. An Eastern Peter the Hermit could not have aroused the members of the Orthodox Church. No Godfrey de Bouillon could have found statesmen in the East to have espoused his cause. If leaders had been forthcoming, followers would have been wanting. Though the statesmen of the West were influenced by many motives to join in the Crusades, they, too, were largely under the sway of religious fervour. The nations of which they were the leaders did display such fervour for the accomplishment of objects which were believed to be in conformity with the divine will. As for the great mass of crusaders, it cannot be doubted that they took the cross mainly because they believed that they were doing the will of God. Absence of precaution, deficiency of organisation, unreasoning fanatical zeal, unreasonable and senseless haste to come into conflict with the infidel, the army of child crusaders, the sacrifices men made of their property, most of the incidents, indeed, which make up the narratives of the Crusades, show that the Soldiers of the Cross were steeped in religious fervour, and were in a condition of pious exaltation. They were, as they called themselves, an army of God. They were willing to face any danger, and to go to certain death for their Master’s cause.

The Greek was always ready to defend a dogma. He entertained a profound dislike and contempt for Christian heretics who were usually less well informed than he and were generally fanatically in earnest, but he was more tolerant of heresy than the men of the West, who in the Middle Ages bestowed on heretics a fanatical hatred and contempt greater even than that felt towards the infidel, and like that entertained in the present day towards anarchists as enemies of the human race.

No cause ever presented itself to the Greek as capable of arousing such fervour as the soldiers of the West displayed. Religion having become a New Testament philosophy, and the Old Testament inspiration in national life having been lost, there was little care for its propagation. The missionary age of the Orthodox Church in the empire, as soon as the Hellenic influence triumphed over the Asiatic, had passed away. Since the days of Cyril and Methodius, the great apostles of the ninth century, the Church could show few conversions and few serious attempts at conversion. That the Church should be orthodox was apparently enough. There was no attempt to enlarge its area. Christianity appeared to be regarded by one party as the best system of philosophy, and by the other, much as the Jew regarded his religion, as a sacred treasure to be kept for his own use and not to be offered to outside unbelievers. His religion in the later centuries never really moved the Greek to engage in missions. Except in regard to personal conduct, to almsgiving, kindness to his fellow-members of the Orthodox Church, and personal and commercial morality, he was incapable of religious sentiment. Something due to his race, something to his traditions, and something to his theological training, made Christianity, except as a philosophical system, sit lightly upon him and failed to make it a powerful national force. Then, as now, the Greek members of the Orthodox Church could not sympathise with or even comprehend the religious sentiment which has led the men of the West, whether acknowledging the jurisdiction of Rome or not, to undertake great movements, or even war, in defence of an object whose only recommendation was that it had right on its side.

In spite of the fact that in the empire and throughout Asia Minor nationality and religion were, as indeed they are to this day, always confounded or regarded as synonymous terms, Orthodox Christianity was unable to add a powerful religious sentiment to the defence of the empire. As a force inducing them to resist the encroachments of Islam, like that which influenced our fathers against Spain or the Ironsides against Charles, I doubt whether it was ever of much value. We have seen a patriarch writing apparently with great satisfaction that the Church was allowed to retain its liberty under Turkish rule. Throughout the long centuries of struggle against Islam, there were many Christians who transferred themselves to the jurisdiction of the sultans in order that they might live in peace. The individual aspect of Christianity was regarded, not the national.

It is when the influence of the Church upon the spirit of the population of the empire is compared with that of Mahometanism upon the Turkish hordes that its weakness as a dynamic force is most plainly seen. Mahometanism, like Christianity in Western lands and in Russia, is a missionary faith. Islam as a fighter’s religion, with its fatalism, its rewards of the most sensual pleasures that a barbarian is capable of conceiving, and its ennobling teaching that fighting the battles of the faith is fighting for God, has produced the most terrible armies that have ever come out from among any of the races among which its converts have been made. Islam in the twentieth century has spent much of its original force, because doubt as to its divine origin has entered into the hearts of its ablest members. Those among them who have seen or have otherwise learned the results of Christian civilisation instinctively and almost unconsciously judge the two religions by their fruits. Such men either become entirely neglectful of the ceremonious duties which their religion imposes, or, if they profess to have become more intent in their religious convictions than before, perform their ceremonies with a sub-consciousness that their religion is not better than that of the unbelievers. In whichever category they fall they lose their belief in the exclusively divine character of their creed. Nor do the studies in astronomy, medicine, geology, and other modern sciences fail to implant a similar and even a greater amount of scepticism in the Mahometan than they have done in the Christian mind. While visits to foreign countries and scientific studies are undertaken by few, their influence as a leaven is great.

In the centuries preceding the Moslem conquest of Constantinople scepticism was absent among both the Christian and Mahometan masses. The Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, more perhaps than at any other time, were full of the zeal of new converts. They were in a period of conquest which stimulated them. Many, perhaps most of them, believed in their divine mission. They were the chosen people, whose duty it was to give idolaters the choice of conversion to the one true faith or of death, to subdue all nations who accepted either the Old or the New Testament but refused to accept the prophethood of Mahomet, and to treat them as rayahs or cattle. Their spiritual pride caused them to think of those who professed any form of Christianity as being inferior and divinely predestined to occupy a hopelessly lower plane, as having only the privilege that their lives should be spared so long as they paid tribute and accepted subjection. Their central, overpowering belief was that they had a mission from God and the Prophet, and the result of such belief was fearlessness of danger. It was their duty to kill idolaters and subjugate Christians. Whatever happened to them in the fulfilment of this duty was not their business but God’s. He would bring about the predestined victory or the temporary defeat; but in either case it was well with them. If they lived, the plunder of their enemies was their reward; if they died, then heaven and the houris.

When this attitude of mind is compared with that which existed among the members of the Orthodox Church, we see at once great divergences between the two forms of faith as national ethical forces. On the one hand, the student of comparative religions must give that Church credit for having aided the growth of the population in the Christian virtues, for having given them an inspiration enabling them to suffer and to hope, for having preserved learning, developed national intelligence, cultivated exact thought, for having promoted philosophical studies and in various ways guarded the treasures of classic times until the rest of Europe was ready to receive them. On the other hand, such student, while recognising that Mahometanism prevents progress by assigning an inferior position to woman, by inculcating a spirit of fatalism which mischievously affects almost every act of the believer’s life and keeps the Turkish race in poverty, and by presenting a lower ideal of life, will have to admit that its influence as a religious force, with its ever-present sense of a Supreme Power, omnipotent to save or to destroy, was far greater than that of the Orthodox Church, and that the Church failed to supply the stimulus of a national inspiration comparable with that of the hostile creed, or with that furnished by Christianity to the men of the West.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, edited by J. B. Bury, M.A. Whenever Gibbon is quoted in the text of this volume it is from Professor Bury’s edition.

[2] Vol. vii. p. 163, Gibbon’s note.

[3] The principal of these works are:

1. ‘Belagerung und Eroberung Constantinopels im Jahre 1453.’
Von Dr. A. D. Mordtmann (Stuttgart, 1858).

2. ‘Die Eroberungen von Constantinopel im dreizehnten und
fünfzehnten Jahrhundert.’ Von Dr. Johann Heinrich Krause
(Halle, 1870).

3. ‘Les Derniers Jours de Constantinople.’ Par E. A. Vlasto
(Paris, 1883).

4. Πολιορκία καὶ Ἁλωσις τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως. By A. G.
Paspates (Athens, 1890).

5. ‘Constantine, the last Emperor of the Greeks.’ By Chedomil
Mijatovich, formerly Servian Minister at the Court of St.
James (London, 1892).

6. Two valuable papers by Dr. A. Mordtmann (the son of Dr.
A. D. Mordtmann) entitled _Die letzten Tage von Byzanz_,
in the ‘Mitteilungen des deutschen Exkursions-Klubs in
Konstantinopel,’ 1895.

[4] _Giornale dell’ Assedio di Constantinopoli_, di Nicolo Barbaro, P.V., corredato di note e documenti per Enrico Cornet (Vienna, 1856).

[5] Βίος τοῦ Μωαμὲθ βʹ.

[6] Herr Müller’s preface is dated 1869, but I am not aware that it was published before it appeared in _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_, vol. v. The dedicatory epistle to Mahomet was published from another and a somewhat longer version by Tischendorf in 1870 in his _Notitia Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici_ (Leipzig).

[7] ‘Informacion envoyée (en 1453) tant par Francisco de Franco au très révérend père en Dieu Monsgr le Cardinal d’Avignon que par Jehan Blanchin et Jacques Tetaldi marchand Florentin sur la prinse de Constantinoble à laquelle le dit Jacques estoit personellement.’ One version is published in _Chroniques de Charles VII roi de France, par Jean Chartier_, vol. iii., edited by Vallet de Virivalle (Paris, 1858). Another, published by Dethier with several important differences, is stated to be taken from _Thesaurus novus Anecdotorum_ (Paris, 1717). Though his narrative was printed in France early in the eighteenth century, it appears to have been generally unknown and is not alluded to by Gibbon.

[8] _Ubertini Pusculi Brixiensis Constantinopoleos_: in _Analekten der mittel- und neugriechischen Literatur_, by J. A. Ellisen (Leipzig).

[9] _Esquisse Topographique de Constantinople_ (Lille, 1892).

[10] _Byzantine Constantinople: the Walls of the City and adjoining Historical Sites_ (published by John Murray, 1899).

[11] See authorities quoted in Sathas, _Documents Inédits_, i. p. xii.

[12] For example, Sir John Maundeville speaks of ‘Constantinople, where the Emperor of Greece usually dwells,’ _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 130 (Bohn’s edition).

[13] See valuable remarks on the name of the empire in the Preface to Professor Bury’s _Later Roman Empire_, and in the Introduction to _Documents Inédits relatifs à l’Histoire de la Grèce_, by Sathas.

[14] Villehardouin, ch. lxxxvi.

[15] The soldiers are those who received the _soldi_ or pay, as distinguished from the Crusaders, who were supposed to fight only for the cause of the Cross.

[16] La Sainte Chapelle in Paris was built to receive these treasures.

[17] Πύλη τῆς πηγῆς, so called because it led to the Holy Well, is better known as the Silivria Gate. See Professor Van Millingen’s _Byzantine Constantinople_, p. 75.

[18] P. 191. Pachymer, writing fifty years afterwards, adds that they placed ladders against the walls; and Nicephorus Gregoras, writing a century afterwards, speaks of a secret entry by an old subterranean passage for water, through which fifty men passed. Gibbon makes the mistake of saying that the entry was at the Golden Gate. Strategopulus had the Gate of the Fountain--that is, the Silivria Gate--opened for his troops. The Emperor Michael subsequently entered by the Golden Gate; possibly, as Dethier suggests (iii. 605), by the ancient gate of that name in the Constantine Walls, which was still used for ceremonial purposes.

[19] It is unlikely that at this time there were any foreigners among the fighting men other than Frenchmen. The pope’s demands for the defence of the empire do not appear to have been responded to outside France.

[20] _Epist. Inn._ viii. 133.

[21] Pachymer, iii. 10. Greg. iv. 4.

[22] Pach. iii. 19.

[23] Ibid. iv. 1.

[24] Pach. iv. 6. Pachymer took part in these proceedings, and was in fact one of the clerks of the court.

[25] The Holy Gates are in the middle of the Iconostasis or screen which separates the bema or chancel from the nave.

[26] Raynoldus and Vadingus.

[27] Ch. v. 9. It should be remembered that Pachymer had himself joined the Latin Church.

[28] Pach. v. 18.

[29] Pach. vi. 24 and 25.

[30] I have relied mostly for this account of the attempt at Union on Pachymer (I agree with Krumbacher’s high estimate of the value of this author’s history):

‘Pachymeres ragt durch seine Bildung und litterarische Thätigkeit über seine Zeitgenossen empor und kann als der grösste byzantinische Polyhistor des 13. Jahrhunderts bezeichnet werden. In ihm erblickt man deutlich die Licht- und Schattenseiten des Zeitalters der Paläologen. Es fehlt dem Pachymeres nicht an Gelehrsamkeit, Originalität und Witz.’ _Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur_, p. 289. Pachymer was himself a Greek, born in Nicaea but a member of the Latin Church. He deals with the doings of the emperor and the Greek ecclesiastics in a fair spirit. His History is essentially that of his own times and covers the period from 1261 to 1308.

[31] Pach. part 2, ii. 18.

[32] The following table of descent will illustrate the text:

Baldwin II., emperor of Constantinople, fled the city 1261, died 1272.
|
Philip, married Beatrice, daughter of Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily,
| died 1288.
|
Catherine, married in 1301 Charles of Valois, son of Philip III. of France;
| Charles died 1308.
|
+-----------------+-----------------------------------+----------+
| | | |
John, Catherine married Philip of Tarentum, Joanna Elizabeth
died without son of Charles of Sicily. Philip
issue. died 1322: Catherine in 1346.

[33] Pachymer indeed states that the Pope ordered Roger to be given up.

[34] Dr. Koëlle has in my opinion satisfactorily demonstrated that ‘Tatar’ is an incorrect spelling, due mainly to the fact that this form of the word comes to us from the Chinese, who cannot pronounce the letter _r_.

[35] _The Mahommedans_, by J. D. Rees, C.I.E., 1894.

[36] Pach. ii. 25.

[37] ‘Roum’ is still the Turkish form of ‘Rome,’ and exists in the names Erzeroum, Roumelia, &c.

[38] Pach. iv. 27.

[39] _Early Travels in Palestine_, Bohn’s edition, p. 241.

[40] Maundeville in Syria met Christians from Prester John’s country, p. 189. See Col. Yule’s _Marco Polo_, i. 275, a book which is a model of good editing.

[41] When, therefore, Mr. Billinski speaks of the Turks of to-day having ‘millions of confederates in the heart of Russia’ ready to obey the commands of the Mussulman pontiff, he is, I believe, entirely mistaken. The Mahometans under Russian rule are a comparatively insignificant part of her population, and there is no reason to believe that any but a very small portion of them would think it a religious duty to fight against the Czar at the bidding of the Sultan. It should also not be forgotten that the majority of them are Shiahs, who have never shown any disposition to aid the Sunnis, who acknowledge the caliphate of Constantinople. _Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1891, p. 731.

[42] Maundeville in 1322, or a year or two later, discussed Mahometanism with many of its professors, and goes so far as to say, ‘Because they go so nigh our faith, they are easily converted to Christian law.’ _Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 196.

[43] See _ante_, p. 28.

[44] Pach. iv. 3.

[45] _Ibid._ iv. 6.

[46] That this aversion to agriculture, and contentment amid poverty, of the Turkish peasant are not merely the result of Mahometanism, is evidenced by the fact that the Pomaks--that is, the Bulgarians who have accepted Islam--and the Mahometans of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who have emigrated into Asia Minor since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, are noticed everywhere to be distinguished by their comparative energy and by the success they are achieving in various forms of agricultural pursuits.

[47] Pach. vi. 21.

[48] iv. 21.

[49] Gregoras states that the Turkish ships employed by Andronicus plundered all the coasts and the islands (viii. 10). Chalcondylas claims that Othman with eight thousand Turks who occupied the Thracian Chersonesus was entirely defeated.

[50] It is usually impossible to arrive at the correct estimate of the numbers of the invaders, but it may be said once for all that, while they were undoubtedly very large, the figures given by the Greek authors are seldom trustworthy.

[51] Sir John Maundeville, who visited Constantinople in 1322, remarks on the diminution of the empire: ‘For he was emperor of Romania and of Greece, of all Asia the Less, and of the land of Syria, of the land of Persia and Arabia, but he hath lost all but Greece’ (_Early Travels in Palestine_, p. 130).

[52] Cant. ii. 9, 14, 15; Greg. ix. 10, xiii. 3; Ducas, vi.

[53] Ducas, i. 6.

[54] Cant. iv. 3.

[55] Vol. vii. p. 30, edition of Dr. J. B. Bury. The Tartars were still in the Balkan peninsula, and Orchan in 1347, probably just after the marriage of John, sent six thousand Turks to aid Matthew, son of Cantacuzenus, in fighting against the kral of Serbia.

[56] Greg. xxvii. 49.

[57] Cant. iv. 5 and 6.

[58] ἕνεκα ἀσφαλείας πράττειν, iv. 3.

[59] Even Gibbon (vii. 30) says, ‘It was in the last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzenus inflicted the deep and deadly wound which could never be healed by his successors and which is poorly expiated by his theological dialogue against the prophet Mahomet.’ But the Moslems, both from the north and south, had been fighting in Europe fifty years earlier, sometimes on the side of the Greeks, oftener, as with the Catalans, against them.

[60] Heyd’s _History of Commerce in the Levant_.

[61] The Black Death (πανούκλα) was the terrible disease which spread throughout Europe and depopulated most of its large cities between 1346 and 1370. Cantacuzenus, whose son Andronicus fell a victim, gives a vivid and terrible picture of its symptoms, and of its effect upon the population (iv. 8). Dr. Mordtmann, who is not merely distinguished as an archæologist well acquainted with the Byzantine writers, but as a physician of great experience, believes it to have been a black form of smallpox, and not what is usually known as plague, and a well-known specialist in plague, to whose attention I have submitted the account of Cantacuzenus, is disposed to accept the same view.

[62] The walls of Galata, both before and after this enlargement, which doubled the area of the city, may still be traced.

[63] The demand for slaves, and especially for girls for the harems, was always great. Slaves, indeed, usually formed the most valuable part of the booty in a raiding expedition.

[64] Cant. iv. 39.

[65] _Ibid._ iv. 37.

[66] _Ibid._ iv. 37.

[67] The statement that he visited Italy and Germany is made by Ducas (i. 11), but it is remarkable that Cantacuzenus makes no mention of it. Muralt (p. 640) suggests that he left Tenedos in the spring of 1352. But Cantacuzenus, writing of the events of 1254, represents John as having passed a whole year in Tenedos. Possibly this would be a year terminating in January 1355.

[68] Gregoras, xxix. 25.

[69] Rayn. iv. lxiii.

[70] iv. 9.

[71] The History of Nicephorus Gregoras, as written by an enemy, is a useful corrective. Krumbacher in his account of Byzantine literature speaks of Gregoras as ‘die Hauptperson des 14. Jahrhunderts’ (p. 19). His narrative is described by Cantacuzenus as stamped with ignorance, partiality, and falsehood. Its chief accusation against him is not merely false but improbable (iv. 24). In his own History Cantacuzenus declares that he has never departed from the truth either on account of hatred or the desire to say pleasant things (iv. concluding chapter). What he finds most fault with in Gregoras is the statement that, even during the lifetime of Andronicus, Cantacuzenus had become possessed of a burning desire to become emperor, and that he had consulted certain monks at Mount Athos who were supposed to have the power of divination, in order to learn whether he would accomplish his desire. The story, he declares, is absolutely false. It is brought up because he as emperor protected Palamas in his religious controversies where Gregoras took the opposite side.

[72] iv. 9.

[73] iv. 24.

[74] iv. 28.

[75] iv. 17.

[76] Greg. xi. 10.

[77] _Ibid._

[78] The Bogomils still exist in Eastern Rumelia. One may be sceptical as to the doctrines in which, according to their enemies, they believed. Apparently they were quietists, searchers after the Inner Light, who would have nothing to do with the worship of Eikons, were possibly Unitarians, and had a tendency in many directions towards what may be called reformation principles. Their teaching was imbued with the Slavic mysticism which is characteristic to-day of Russian literature.

The Bogomils became first noticeable in Bulgaria in the days of King Peter (927–968). Even a few years earlier they are alluded to as certain ‘Pagan Slavs and Manichaeans.’ Later on the Bogomils are spoken of as Paulicians. In Bosnia they became so powerful that the whole country was described as Bogomil. The pope in 1407 promised help to Sigismund against the ‘Manichaeans and Arians’ in Bosnia, and they were beaten and the kingdom dismembered in 1410–11. The Council of Bâle received a deputation from the Bogomils in 1435 and dealt at the same time with them and with the Hussites. In 1443 they lent valuable aid to Hunyadi against the Turks. Persecuted by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, many of the magnates who had been forced to become Catholics in order to retain their lands turned Mahometans, and their example was largely followed by the smaller landholders. Among the Mahometans of Bosnia there still exist many customs of Christian origin. Mr. Evans, in _Through Bosnia and Herzegovina_, states that there are still many thousands of Bogomils in these countries. Herr Asboth, who has been over the country, declares the statement to be too general, and says that he was never able to find any, although he admits that they recently existed. Subject in Bulgaria to persecution from the Orthodox Church, many of them sought escape about a century ago by joining the Church of Rome. Bogomilism spread from Bosnia into Europe, where it gave rise to the Cathari or Albigenses, who acknowledged the Church of Dragovitza in Macedonia as their mother Church. The best account I know of the Bogomils in Bosnia is in J. de Asboth’s _Official Tour through Bosnia and Herzegovina_, London, 1900.

[79] Vol. vii. p. 87.

[80] Raynaldus, N. xxxii., professes to give the text of his submission. If his text is genuine it shows that John was under the same delusion as Michael had been: namely, that he could force the Orthodox Church to accept what he wanted.

[81] Ducas, xii. Chalcondylas makes a similar statement (i. 45); Canale says that a Genoese doctor restored sight to Andronicus.

[82] Sauli, _Colonia dei Genovesi in Galata_, ii. 260.

[83] Urban the Sixth died in 1389.

[84] Ducas, xiii.

[85] This was in 1097, when, on the invitation of Godfrey de Bouillon, Alexis had reached the city on its water side by taking his boats, in part at least, overland from the Gulf of Moudania to the lake. The object of Godfrey was to prevent the Crusaders being exposed to the demoralisation of plundering a hostile city.

[86] Greg. ix. 2 says the Turks had carried off three hundred thousand Christian captives. The Turks fought well, but were exterminated.

[87] Cant. iv. 16.

[88] Cant. iv. 39.

[89] I reserve my description of the Janissaries for a later chapter.

[90] Ch. xxiii.

[91] Chalc. i. 51, and Phrantzes, i. 11.

[92] Du Cange, _Familiae Dalmaticae_, 230, Venetian edition. The story of this battle is fully described in _Die Serben und Türken im XIV. und XV. Jahrhundert_ of S. Novakovich (Semlin, 1897) and also in Ireček’s _History of the Bulgarians_ (p. 430). Ireček states that as late as the seventeenth century the stone monument of the despot Uglisha’s tomb still existed. Uglisha was one of the three brothers.

[93] Chalc. i. 44 says that the sultan immediately beheaded his son; Ducas, that Countouz was blinded (xii.).

[94] Cossovo-pol, the Plain of Blackbirds, is between Pristina and Prisrend, to the north-east of Uskub. The town of Cossovo is due south of Prisrend, and about thirty miles distant.

[95] Novacovich, p. 335. ‘Gleichwie durch den Krieg an der Maritza das Schicksal Ost-Bulgariens und der serbischen Staaten in Macedonien, ebenso ist durch die Schlacht aus Kossovopolje, den 15. Juni 1389, das Schicksal der nördlichen serbischen Länder und des westlichen Bulgarien entschieden worden, namentlich der Länder des Fürsten Lazar und Buk Brancovic’s.’

[96] Sad-ud-din. See also Halil Ganem’s _Les Sultans Ottomans_, Paris, 1901. Upon the assassination of Murad the custom grew up, which continued till about 1820, of not allowing any Christian belonging to a foreign state to enter the presence of the sultan except with Janissaries holding each arm.

[97] Now called Anatolia-hissar. The word _hissar_ means castle.

[98] The version of Ducas differs from those of Chalcondylas and Phrantzes, the first of whom knows nothing of the arrangement suggested, but states that Manuel left the city for Italy, while Phrantzes declares that John, having lost the favour of Bajazed, fled to his uncle, who entrusted the city to him during his absence (Phr. pp. 61–3.)

[99] Ducas, xx.; Chalc. iv. p. 183. Phrantzes, p. 89, praises Mahomet very highly.

[100] Ducas, xxiii.

[101] Mersaite declared he failed because of the presence of a noble lady, evidently the Holy Virgin, walking upon and guarding the walls.

[102] According to another version he withdrew on account of the famine and plague which prevailed in his army. It is, however, certain that the Turkish revolt in favour of Mustafa took place, and in the following year, 1423, Murad captured the leader, Elias Pasha, and bowstrung both him and the young Mustafa at Nicaea. Before the end of the year he returned to Thrace and took possession of Adrianople.

[103] See _ante_; and also Pachymer, iii. 10 to iv. 25.

[104] ‘The Greek Church has had a fossilised aversion to change; boasting that it follows the doctrines and practices of the Apostolic Church, it believes that it has no need of reform.’ _Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek Church_, by Rev. A. H. Hore, p. 553 (Jas. Parker & Co.: London, 1899).

The expression ‘fossilised aversion’ is perhaps too strong, though I should be prepared to admit that the Eastern _non possumus_ was at least as obstinate as the Western. The Orthodox Church in countries where it is free, as in Greece and Russia, shows signs of growth, and therefore hardly deserves the adjective ‘fossilised.’ Since 1453 in Turkey it has been comatose.

[105] Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, 3rd edition, vol. viii. p. 348.

[106] While the rival representatives were in Constantinople Murad suggested to John that his friendship under the circumstances would be of greater value than that of the pope. Chalc., Syropulus, and Phrantzes.

[107] Phrantzes, pp. 181–6.

[108] Vol. vii. p. 108.

[109] Second Council of Nicaea, in 787.

[110] The copies sent to London and Karlsruhe, as well as the diptych of Rome (the official record) consulted by Niches, signed by the emperor of Constantinople and by thirty-six Latin prelates, contain on this point only the following: ἔτι ὁρίζομεν τὴν ἁγίαν ἀποστολικὴν καθέδραν καὶ τὸν ῥομαϊκὸν διάδοχον εἶναι τοῦ μακαρίου Πέτρου. The pope and forty-two Latin prelates, on the other hand, signed the following: _Item definimus S. Ap. sedem et romanum pontificem in universum orbem tenere primatum et ipsum pontificem romanum successorem esse S. Petri_.

[111] Many of the towers near the Golden Gate bear inscriptions showing that they were repaired during John’s reign. For the inscriptions see Paspates’ Βυζαντιναὶ Μελέται.

[112] Caramania was the Turkish state which remained longest outside Ottoman dominion. At one period it extended from the river Sangarius to Adana. Ordinarily its boundaries did not extend further north than Konia. See Stanley Lane-Poole’s _Mohammedan Dynasties_, p. 134.

[113] The island of Chios had for several years been held by a Commercial Company, mostly if not exclusively of Genoese, each of whose members was, apparently, known by the name of Justiniani.

[114] Gibbon suggests, on the authority of the _Hist. Anonyme de St-Denys_, that the French had murdered their Turkish prisoners on the eve of the engagement, and that the sultan was merely retaliating (Gibbon, vii. 37).

[115] Chalc. ii. 807.

[116] Chap. xv.

[117] The word _timour_ is the same as the ordinary Turkish word for iron, _demir_.

[118] Leunclavius, 250.

[119] Leunclavius, pp. 250–1, Ven. edition, makes the conquest of Damascus in 1399; Chalcondylas and others, in 1402; the Turkish authors quoted by Von Hammer, in 1401. The statement of the hindrance due to locusts I take from Muralt, 772, who quotes as his authority ‘Bizar,’ a name unknown to me.

[120] The Crescent, which Gibbon and other writers assert to have only been employed by the Turks after the capture of Constantinople, had probably been used by them for many centuries previously. It is true that it had been made use of in Constantinople at an early period, and figures on several coins of Constantine, but I doubt whether it was used as the symbol of Constantinople in the later centuries of its history. The Crusades are not incorrectly described as wars between the Cross and the Crescent. The symbol is an ancient one and figures with the star on several coins belonging to about 200 B.C. The Abassid dynasty so used it. Professor Hilprecht considers it a remnant of moon-worship and connects it with the subsequent cult of Ashtaroth, Astarte, or Aphrodite.

[121] Though the Turks were a branch of the Tartar race, the Greek authors by this time had acquired the habit of calling the nation which Othman had formed Turks, and all others from Central Asia Tartars, and it is convenient to follow this nomenclature.

[122] Von Hammer has shown conclusively that the story of an iron cage is a mistake. It arises from the misinterpretation of the Turkish word _Kafés_, which has the two significations given above. Two contemporary authors made the blunder, Phrantzes and Arab Schah. A Bavarian, who was made prisoner at the battle of Nicopolis, named Schildberger, and who was present at the battle of Angora, has given a detailed account of the massacre of the Christians, but he does not mention the cage. (His travels between 1394 and 1427 have been translated and published by the Hakluyt Society, 1879.) Neither do Ducas, Chalcondylas, or Boucicaut, though they state that Bajazed died in irons, which he had to wear every night after his attempt at escape. Six Persian authors who wrote the history of Timour are silent about the cage. The oldest Turkish historian recounts, upon the evidence of an eye-witness, that Bajazed was carried about in a palanquin ‘like a Kafés,’ or in the usual kind of grilled palanquin in which ladies of the harem travelled. Sad-ud-din, one of the most exact of Turkish historians, states that the story of the iron cage given by many Turkish writers is a pure invention.

[123] I have relied for the account of the battle of Angora and the subsequent progress of Timour, mainly upon Von Hammer (vol. ii.), who is at his best in describing this period of Turkish history. The authorities are carefully given by him. Zinkeisen, in his _History of the Turks_, calls attention to the deterioration of the Ottoman armies during the reign of Bajazed, and attributes it to the profligacy of the sultan.

[124] Chalc. iv. p. 170. Ducas says he disappeared in Caramania; Phr. p. 86, that he was bowstrung. There was, according to Chalcondylas, another son of Bajazed, the youngest, also named Isa, who was baptised and died in Constantinople in 1417. This was probably the son given over as hostage to Manuel.

[125] Ducas, xix.

[126] Chalc. iv.; Phr. i. 29; Ducas, 19.

[127] _Official Tour in Bosnia and Herzegovina_, by J. de Asboth.

[128] i. 37.

[129] Ducas, xxiv.

[130] Phr. i. 38.

[131] In reference to this passage across the Dardanelles, Ducas (ch. xxvii.) gives an interesting piece of information as to the size of the Genoese vessels. There were seven large ships. Murad was in the largest, which contained 1,300 Turkish and Frank soldiers. These ships ‘covered the sea like floating cities or islands.’

[132] Ducas mentions expressly that in the same year three Mustafas died, first, the pretender, who claimed to be the son of Bajazed; second, his brother, and, third, the grandson of Atin (ch. xxviii.).

[133] De la Brocquière, whose narrative was finished in 1438, states that, when in Galata, the ambassador of the duke of Milan, the protector of the Genoese, told him that ‘to do mischief to the Venetians he had contributed to make them lose Salonica taken from them by the Turks;’ and he adds, ‘Certainly in this he acted so much the worse, for I have seen the inhabitants of that town deny Jesus Christ and embrace the Mahometan religion.’ _Early Travels_, pp. 335–6.

[134] Halil was the one Turkish leader in 1453 friendly to the Greeks. Even at this early date he showed a similar spirit. Chalc. 136, Venetian edition.

[135] Phr. ii. 13, p. 180.

[136] Possibly Hungary was not mentioned, with the object of leading the Turks to believe that the place of attack would not be nearer than Constantinople.

[137] Callimachus, who describes the battle, took part and was wounded in it.

[138] I have followed here the version of Ducas (xxxii.). It is doubtful, however, whether this expedition into Caramania ought not to be placed a year earlier. See the authorities quoted by Muralt, p. 856.

[139] Chal. vi.; Ducas, xxxii. The latter states that Hunyadi refused either to sign or to swear.

[140] The treaty was made in June. According to Muralt, it was broken in the same month. If so, the account of Ducas is incorrect. Murad was informed by George of Serbia of the renewal of war and again took the government into his own hands ‘at the beginning of summer, when the dog-days were commencing.’ Ducas, xxxii.

[141] _Early Travels_, pp. 346–347.

[142] Lonicerus, p. 18, speaking of the cardinal, does not go so far. He says, ‘qui Pontifici licere juramenta praesertim hostibus Christiani nominis praestata rescindere contendebat.’ Thurocz (quoted by Von Hammer, p. 307, vol. ii.) and Cambini, p. 13, make similar statements.