Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

Of all Manuel II’s sons, Constantine was by far the most able. Charismatic and courageous, he was deeply conscious of Byzantium’s long and glorious history, and he was determined to uphold its dignity. A true son of his father, Constantine considered appeasement to be another form of treachery. The armies of Islam had been beating against the capital’s walls for centuries, and to cower before them as his brother and grandfather had done would only add humiliation to the eventual destruction.

The emperor, however, had no illusion about the odds against him. At forty-three, he had spent more than half his life fighting the Turks, and he knew his enemy well. Three years earlier, during the initial excitement of the Hungarian Crusade, Constantine had taken advantage of the Ottoman distraction to seize Athens and much of northern Greece from the Turks. After the collapse of the Crusade, Constantine had been left to face the full brunt of the sultan’s anger alone. Murad II swept into Greece, capturing Athens and forcing the Byzantines to take refuge behind the six-mile-long Hexamilion. Safe behind the wall, Constantine expected to hold out for months, but the Turks brought with them a terrifying new weapon—several large cannons. The opening blast tore into the wall, roaring with terrible certainty that the world had changed. Defensive fortifications, no matter how grand, were now obsolete. The age of the cannon had begun.

The Hexamilion collapsed in a mere five days, and Constantine barely escaped with his life. The Ottomans burst into the Peloponnese, and only a fortuitous early winter snow that blocked the mountain passes spared the capital of Mistra. Fortunately for the empire, Murad II was more interested in conquering the Balkans than finishing off the remnants of Byzantium, so the Ottoman armies lumbered off to conquer Dalmatia, and Constantine XI was left in peace to rebuild southern Greece as best he could.^*

By the time the new emperor made his entry into Constantinople, the city was a dim reflection of its former grandeur, shrunken behind its walls like an ebbing tide. The streets of the capital no longer murmured with the babble of a dozen languages, merchant ships no longer crowded the imperial harbors, and wealth no longer adorned its palaces and churches. From an imperial height of nearly half a million in Justinian’s day, the population had fallen to around fifty thousand. Deserted fields choked with weeds now covered vast stretches of the city, and half-ruined buildings still slumped in their sprawling decay. And yet, for all that, there was a strange vibrancy in the air. The newly painted frescoes were not as sumptuous as they had been in the past, silver and gold no longer encrusted the icons, and grand mosaics no longer dazzled the eye, but there was a freshness and new vitality to the art that struck out against the waning imperial fortunes. Artisans and scholars found willing patrons in the swirling atmosphere, and new schools of art flourished in the monasteries scattered throughout the fragmented empire. Byzantium had lived in the shadow of the merciless Turk for centuries, and knew with a terrible certainty that it would be destroyed root and branch, but there was a determination to experience life in full even as the hour of doom approached. Materially, the empire may have been reduced to an insignificant speck, but intellectually and culturally it was blooming.

Constantine XI would have liked to give his subjects the welcome diversion of an imperial coronation, but such an event was out of the question. The patriarch was a known supporter of John VIII’s Decree of Union joining the Orthodox and Catholic churches, and was therefore considered little better than a heretic by most of his flock. Having such a controversial figure crown him would almost certainly touch off widespread rioting. In any case, Constantine tacitly supported his patriarch’s position. The emperor’s sacred duty was to preserve his capital’s independence, and if submission to Rome offered even the slightest chance of western aid, then it must be pursued. The last emperor of Byzantium would have to remain uncrowned.

While Constantine was negotiating the complex currents of Constantinople, Murad II was finding the capital of Dalmatia much more difficult to conquer than he had anticipated. Led by the Dragon of Albania—the charismatic Skanderbeg—the Dalmatians frustrated every Ottoman attempt at a siege. In 1451, Murad II gave up in disgust, announcing that the province couldn’t be taken, and retired to Adrianople, where, to the immense relief of Byzantium, he died.