CAUSES LEADING TO DECAY OF EMPIRE: NOT DUE TO DEMORALISATION
OF COURT; INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CAUSES; LATIN CONQUEST AND
FORM OF GOVERNMENT HAD PRODUCED INTERNAL DISSENSIONS AND
CHECKED ASSIMILATION OF HOSTILE RACES; METHOD OF TURKISH
CONQUEST AND ITS FATAL CONSEQUENCES; RAVAGES OF BLACK DEATH;
POPULATION OF CAPITAL IN 1453; ITS COMMERCE; RELATIONS OF
PEOPLE WITH GOVERNMENT; RESEMBLANCE TO RUSSIA; DIFFICULTY OF
OBTAINING IDEA OF DOMESTIC LIFE.
As the later Roman empire is now drawing to a close, it is worth while
endeavouring to realise what were the immediate causes of its weakness,
and what was its actual condition immediately preceding the final siege.
The empire to which Constantine Dragases succeeded on the death of his
brother John was over the city and a strip of land behind it which may
be estimated roughly at about a hundred miles in length from its walls
towards the north and west. To this and about half of the Peloponnesus
still held by his brother had the realm of Theodosius been reduced.
[Sidenote: How far was population demoralised?]
It has often been stated that the fall of the Empire was due to, or
at least largely contributed to by, the demoralisation of the Court,
the nobles, and the citizens. This view had its origin largely, though
not exclusively, in the religious animosity of Latin Churchmen. The
Court has been described as given over to gorgeous displays, to
meaningless ceremonies, to luxury, and to effeminacy; the nobles as
partakers in such displays and themselves effeminate; the citizens as
idle, delighting in spectacular shows, and asking only to be amused.
I know of no evidence which supports any such conclusion and believe
that, on the contrary, such evidence as exists is against it. The
population of the city, nobles and people alike, were religious--given
over to superstition, according to our modern view--but they were not
luxurious or mere pleasure-seekers. Their superstition corresponded
with that of their fellow Christians in the West. ‘I believe,’ says
La Brocquière, who visited Constantinople in 1433, ‘that God has
spared the city more for the holy relics it contains than anything
else.’[164] But the same writer adds the qualification that ‘the Greeks
have not the like devotion that we have for relics.’ Nor is this
religious or superstitious spirit the necessary companion of either
luxury or effeminacy. The effeminacy and the luxury associated with
Constantinople, in so far as they existed, belong to the period before
the Latin conquest. When any displays are recorded after the recapture
of the city--as, for example, at coronations--they are merely the
traditional ceremonies which survived as such observances do in the
coronation of our own sovereigns or at great historical courts like
the Austrian and papal. The trials and sufferings, the long struggles
against external and internal enemies which had gone on for nearly
two centuries, had divested nobles and people alike of any love for
idle ceremonies or mere diversions. The miracle plays which the people
crowded to see in Hagia Sophia do not show that they had degenerated.
The writer just quoted saw a representation of the three youths cast by
Nebuchadnezzar into the burning fiery furnace,[165] which, while it may
have served to increase the congregation’s trust in God, can hardly be
regarded as a frivolous amusement.
The hippodrome was no longer used by the people for the shows which
had pleased their ancestors at an early period. La Brocquière, indeed,
records that he saw the emperor’s brother and a score of nobles amusing
themselves on horseback within its walls, but they were training
themselves for war by practising archery, and endeavouring to make
themselves masters in it.[166] He records also that he was present at
a tournament which the emperor and empress witnessed. Neither in his
account nor in that of any contemporary with which I am acquainted
is there anything to show that the diminished population of the city
were other than an industrious and sober people, to whom a question of
religious dogma was of greater interest than any other, except perhaps
those relating to the progress of their great enemy.
But though the demoralisation of the Court and people in the usual
sense of the term ought not to be counted among the reasons for the
decay of the empire, the attitude of mind in the Court, in the Church,
and among the masses is indicative of decay. In any country, but
especially in one under absolute monarchy, the poorer classes of the
people know and care little about politics. Among them there was under
the empire a general indifference as to what was likely to happen.
They were heavily taxed, were called upon to send their sons to the
wars, and if there were to be a change of masters, it did not much
matter. Their attitude was, indeed, not unlike that which exists to-day
among the poorer Turks. A change of rulers would be welcomed by many,
perhaps by most, though at the last moment religious sentiment might
and probably would come in to rouse opposition. Present evils are so
burdensome that the hope of a change of rulers is constantly expressed.
There was also among the subjects of the empire, as among those of the
sultan, an underlying sentiment that the inevitable was happening.
Ἀνάγκη ἦν was the belief among the Greeks almost as firmly as the Turks
of to-day hold that it is their _kismet_ to be driven out of Europe.
The poorer classes may be disregarded when we are considering the
public opinion of the empire. Such opinions as existed among them were
a reflection of those of the nobles, and especially of the Churchmen.
Both clergy and nobles were intensely conservative, and had become by
habit averse to any change. The energy had gone out of the Church.
There was no fervour of belief. The missionary spirit was absolutely
extinct. No instances are recorded of abandonment of self-interest for
the common good. The great body of idle monks contrast unfavourably
with those of the West of the same period. The patriotism of the priest
Hilarion and his small following had not been imitated. A dead level
of contented mediocrity characterised the clergy. An enthusiasm for
Christianity, if it could not have saved the empire, might at least
have prolonged its existence. But enthusiasm was dead. It would be
a relief to read of wild enthusiasts leading crowds into hopelessly
impracticable schemes, for such things would at least indicate life.
Nothing of the kind exists. The life of the Church was suspended, and
it could only arouse itself to resist change. Even in the greatest
religious question of the two centuries preceding 1453, that of the
Union of the Churches, the Orthodox Church had to be stimulated into
action by the emperors and nobles.
The nobles themselves were, however, hardly less conservative than
the Churchmen. A lack of energy, an absence of vital force, is the
distinguishing characteristic of both. Until the Latin conquest,
their conservatism was that of a civilised and wealthy class, who had
enjoyed for centuries the advantages of peace and of security. In the
two centuries after the recovery of the city the nobles had regained
much of their old influence, and up to the final conquest felt, in
Constantinople, much of the same security as before and the contentment
of acquired or inherited wealth. Commerce had largely passed into the
hands of the Genoese and Venetians, but the loss hardly affected the
nobles. To all appearance they remained as contented as ever. Even in
presence of the enemy which had constantly been lessening their incomes
and drawing an iron circle around the empire, they appear to have been
hardly conscious of the life and death character of the struggle.
So long as the emperor and nobles could employ their own peasantry or
could hire auxiliaries, they had resisted the Turks with a certain
amount of success. From Dalmatia to Matapan, from Durazzo to the
capital, as well as in Asia Minor, the progress of the enemy had been
contested. The Greek armies were destroyed by overwhelming numbers
rather than defeated by superior courage. When the capital was cut off
from its supply of soldiers from the provinces, it was in grievous
straits, and to this condition it had come on the accession of the last
Constantine.
Priests and nobles appear to have gradually drifted into the belief
that resistance was hopeless. Their acquiescence in what they believed
to be the inevitable suggests the mediocrity of their leaders. Their
merits and faults were alike negative. They were not given over to vice
and profligacy; they were not cruel tyrants; they were not wanting
in courage; but they were without ability or energy, incapable of
initiating or executing any successful plan of campaign against the
enemy or of making arrangements for securing efficient foreign aid.
It is, of course, easy to suggest after the event that the empire
might have been saved, but it is difficult to believe that among the
governing class there was not a lack of vitality which contributed to
its fall. Looking across the centuries, we may, perhaps, conclude that
the empire followed the natural course of evolution under despotic
rule: struggle for existence, success, wealth, contentment to the point
of stagnation, a general slackness and loss of energy and a reluctance
to struggle of any kind. But whether such conclusion be justified
or not, it cannot be doubted that weariness of strife and general
enervation characterised all classes of society. In remembering this,
it may be said that the morale of the empire was destroyed and its
population demoralised.[167]
[Sidenote: Causes of decay of empire.]
Three causes mainly contributed to the diminution and ultimate
downfall of the empire: first, the establishment of the Latin
empire, with which must be associated (_a_) the internal dissensions
among the Greeks themselves, and (_b_) the increased difficulty in
assimilating the races occupying the Balkan peninsula; second, the
attacks, literally from every side, by hordes of Turkish invaders,
who usually, beginning by raids upon their cattle, ended by expelling
or exterminating the conquered people and taking possession of their
lands; and, third, the depopulation of the Balkan peninsula and of the
cities in Asia Minor held by the empire caused by Black Death or Plague.
[Sidenote: Latin conquest.]
The history of the empire subsequent to the Latin occupation bears
evidence of the weakness which that occupation had caused. The whole
framework of government administration had been broken up. The imperial
system was in ruins. The ancient forms of administrative organisation
were restored, but there never existed sufficient strength in the
capital to put new life into them, and the old traditional spirit of
municipal life and to a certain limited extent of self-government had
during two generations of hostile rule and the subsequent series of
attempts at the restoration of Latin rule been forgotten. The empire
was, indeed, kept together by obedience to law, but it was rather a
traditional obedience than one due to a strong administration. When
a man defied law it was public opinion which he had to face rather
than dread of the emperor. The Latin conquest and the growth of
neighbouring states consequent upon such conquest made it impossible
for the emperors ever to obtain a strong and sufficient hold over the
territories which they recaptured.
[Sidenote: Internal divisions.]
The divisions among the Greeks themselves, especially those regarding
the occupancy of the throne, led to civil wars and gave the Turks
opportunities of entering the country and occupying it. They were due
in the first place to the change in the succession when Michael the
Eighth seized the imperial throne, and were therefore also directly
caused or contributed to by the Latin conquest. Though the rules of
succession had never been so strictly observed as in the West, his
usurpation weakened the office of emperor and manifestly increased the
power--not of a regularly constituted body like our House of Lords,
or the American Senate, but--of an irresponsible body of nobles. In
the next place, the dissensions may be attributed to the existing and
traditional form of government.
It is a commonplace to say that uncontrolled autocracy is the
best government if a succession of able men can be assured. The
difficulty is that, if the ordinary rules of succession are observed,
the successor of a Justinian or a Julius Caesar may be a fool. In
Constantinople effective control over the appointment of an emperor
was wanting. The senate or council of an absolute ruler, be he called
emperor or sultan, is usually weak in proportion to the strength of the
ruler, and if, in the customary order of succession, the heir to the
throne is unsuited to the office, the ring of creatures, by whatever
name it is called, which his predecessor has gathered round him is
pretty sure to support the heir, irrespective of his merit or ability.
Others acquiesce for the sake of peace, or are drawn to support a
pretender. The nobles usually gained strength during the reign of a
weak prince, and in the support they gave to rival claimants the empire
bled.
Democratic government in the modern sense of the term had not yet been
born. Sir Henry Maine claims that the modern doctrines of popular
government based on democracy are essentially of late English origin.
It is certain that nothing like them had existed in the Roman empire,
either in the East or West. Any traditions of self-government which
the Greeks had retained--a form of self-government which was never
upon modern democratic lines--had been entirely overshadowed, not
merely by the autocratic government of the emperors, but by that of the
Church. The government was that of an absolute sovereign moderated by
irresponsible nobles.
Without, however, seeking further to discover the reasons for the
internal divisions and the consequent civil wars, their existence and
baneful effects are the most manifest, though not the most important,
of the evils which weakened the Empire.
[Sidenote: Divisions of race in Balkan peninsula.]
The second fact associated with the mischief caused by the Latin
conquest, which contributed to the decay of the empire, is that such
conquest prevented the assimilation of the various peoples occupying
the Balkan peninsula. Even at the best period of the empire that
population had always been strangely diversified. Albanians and Slavs
had been there from very early times, side by side with Greeks and
the race known as Wallachs, each of the four races having a distinct
language.
The influence of good administration and the strong hand of the
central power kept these races in order. They had the usual tendency
to hostility one towards the other, but until the Latin conquest
good government and the Greek language, that of the Church and
administration, were always a force tending to break down the
boundaries between them and to incorporate isolated sections in the
Greek-speaking community. But at all times their mutual jealousies
constituted, as indeed they do now, the most difficult factor in the
problem of the government of the Balkan peninsula.[168]
This difficulty had been enormously increased by the Latin conquest.
The populations were harassed everywhere by native rebellions and
by foreign invaders: Greek pretenders to the empire who refused to
recognise the crusading kings: crusading knights who settled in Greece
after the expulsion of Baldwin: adventurous soldiers of fortune from
Italy: freebooters from the Catalan Grand Company: Venetians and Turks:
and lastly by dissensions between the emperors themselves, the most
hurtful of which were between Cantacuzenus and John.
The various invaders found their task easier from the hostility which
existed between the various groups. Racial animosity was fostered by
inducements held out by the newcomers to one group to join them in
attacking another. These troubles destroyed the work of assimilation
which had been going on for centuries. Communities now of Greeks, now
of Slavs, were driven from the localities they had occupied for long
periods, and the constant movement left the Balkan peninsula with its
various races intermingled in strange confusion. To adopt chemical
nomenclature, hundreds of villages were mechanically mixed with those
of other races but never chemically combined. There were Slav villages
in the neighbourhood of Athens itself, Albanians in Macedonia: Greeks,
Serbians, and Bulgarians largely replaced the Latin race of that
province, which in the times of the Crusades was known as Wallachia
Proper. Language and race had taken the place of subjection to the
empire as a bond of union, and as the Turks gradually pressed forward
their advances into the interior, literally from every side, they
found the conquest of these isolated and generally hostile communities
greatly facilitated by the disunion existing among them.
Throughout Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, and Greece the boundaries were
changed oftener even than allegiance, and though the Greek element
predominated in the south and along the coast as far as Salonica and
around the coasts of the Aegean and the Marmora, other communities were
interspersed among them in great numbers.
The subjugation of the Macedonian Serbs and the South Bulgarians can
be roughly stated as having been accomplished at the battle on the
Maritza. The defeat of the Serbians and Bulgarians was a harder task.
But Serbia and Bulgaria were the two portions of the Balkan peninsula
where the people were almost all of the same race and could organise
themselves for defence. No such organisation was possible south of
their territory.
[Sidenote: System of Turkish conquests.]
The second cause which had contributed to the diminution of the empire
and of its population was the system of Turkish conquests. Large
numbers of the Christian population were killed; larger numbers were
driven away to wander houseless and homeless and either to die of
starvation or find their way into the towns.
Conquest of a territory or capture of a city, forcible expulsion of the
inhabitants or massacre of most of them and occupation of the captured
places followed each other with wearisome regularity. The military
occupation was that of nomads who replaced agriculturists. Everywhere
the cattle of the Christians were raided. Arable lands became the
wasteful sheep-walks of nomad Turks.[169]
[Sidenote: Black Death.]
Lastly, the depopulation caused by the terrible diseases which visited
Europe in the century preceding the Moslem conquest aided greatly
in destroying the empire. The prevalence of Black Death or Plague
killed in the Balkan peninsula and especially in the towns hundreds
of thousands and possibly millions of the population. In 1347 this
scourge, probably the most deadly form of epidemic that has ever
afflicted humanity, made its appearance in Eastern Europe. The cities
of the empire contained large populations crowded together, and their
normal population was increased by many fugitives. These crowded
cities, with their defective sanitary arrangements and poverty-stricken
inhabitants, offered a favourable soil for a rich harvest of death.
The disease had followed the coasts from the Black Sea, where, says
Cantacuzenus, it had carried off nearly all the inhabitants. At
Constantinople it raged during two years, one of its first victims
being the eldest son of Cantacuzenus himself.[170] Rich as well as poor
succumbed to it. What proportion of the inhabitants of the city died
it is impossible to say, but, judging by what is known of its effect
elsewhere, we should probably not be wrong in suggesting that half the
people perished. But its ravages were not confined to the towns, and
from one end of the Balkan peninsula to the other it swept the country
in repeated visitations and probably carried off nearly the same
proportion of inhabitants.[171] Cantacuzenus, in a vivid description of
the disease, adds that the saddest feature about it was the feeling of
hopelessness and despair which it left behind.
The first visitation of the disease continued during two years in the
capital. In 1348 it spread throughout the empire. We have seen that
in 1352 the victorious Venetian and Spanish fleets dared not venture
to attack Galata for fear that their crews would be attacked by the
malady. It raged in Asia Minor as fiercely as in Europe. Trebizond
was ruined. The Turks themselves suffered severely. Between its
entrance into Europe and 1364 the Morea had three visitations, and
what remained of the Greek population became panic-stricken. Further
north, at Yanina its ravages were equally terrible. In 1368 so many men
died that Thomas, governor of the city, forced their widows to marry
Serbians whom he had induced or compelled to enter the city for that
purpose. A further outbreak seven years later took place in the same
city, and among its victims was Thomas’s own daughter. During the same
period Arta, which adjoins the ancient Cyzicus, suffered severely. It
is useless for our purpose to inquire whether Black Death and Plague
were identical, but one or the other continued to depopulate town
and country. We have seen it at Ferrara in 1438, but in the interval
since it first made its appearance it had visited the capital on seven
different occasions, the latest being in 1431 when the whole country
from Constantinople to Cape Matapan suffered severely.[172]
It may safely be assumed that the Turks, who lived in the open air,
and in the country rather than in towns, suffered less than the
Christians. Though they are reported to have lost severely, the process
of depopulation scarcely told against them. The places of those who
died were taken by the ever-crowding press of immigrants flocking
westward. The successors of the Greeks who perished were not Christians
but Turks. In other words, while the Christians died out of the land,
there were always at hand Turkish nomads to take their place.
It is when contemplating the devastation produced by successive attacks
of disease, one of which was sufficient to kill half the population
of England, when remembering the weakening of the empire by the Latin
occupation and the subsequent attempts to recapture the city, and when
recognizing that the empire was the bulwark against a great westward
movement of the central Asiatic races which forced forward the Turk
to find new pastures in Christian lands, that we can understand how
the diminution of the Empire and of its population and its ultimate
downfall came to be inevitable.
[Sidenote: Desolation on accession of last empire and now.]
Those who have travelled most in the Balkan peninsula and in Asia Minor
recognise most completely how densely populated and flourishing these
countries once were, and how completely they have become a desolation.
Everywhere the traveller is even now surprised at the sight of deserted
and fertile plains and of ruined cities, of some of which the very
names have been forgotten. From Baalbek to Nicomedia the ancient roads
pass through or near places whose names recall populous and civilised
towns which are but the ghastly shadows of their former prosperity.
Ephesus, which when visited by Sir John Maundeville in 1322, after
it had been captured by the Turks, was still ‘a fair city,’ is now
absolutely deserted. Nicaea, the city which has given its name to the
Creed of Christendom, was also at the time of the Turkish occupation
populous and flourishing. It now contains a hundred miserable houses
within its still standing walls. Hierapolis and Laodicea are heaps
of uninhabited ruins. A scholarly English traveller remarks that
his search has been in vain for the sites of many cities once well
known, and that he met ruins of many cities which he was unable to
identify.[173] The same story of depopulation and of destruction was
and is told by the condition of the Balkan peninsula. The observant
traveller La Brocquière, who made his journey through Asia Minor to
Constantinople and thence to Budapest, noted that desolation was
everywhere. In the district between the capital and Adrianople he adds
that ‘the country is completely ruined, has but poor villages, and,
though good and well watered, is thinly peopled.’ He found Chorlou
‘destroyed by the Turks.’ He visited Trajanopolis and describes it
as once ‘very large, but now nothing is seen but ruins with a few
inhabitants.’ He found Vyra, to whose church three hundred canons had
been formerly attached, a poor place with the choir of the church only
remaining and used as a Turkish mosque.[174] All contemporaries bear
witness to the depopulation and ruin of the country. From pestilence
and the results of the Latin conquest it might have recovered, but when
to these disasters was added that of conquest by successive hordes of
barbarians whose work was always destructive, its ruin was complete.
[Sidenote: Population of Constantinople on accession of Constantine.]
It is impossible to arrive at an accurate estimate of the population
of the city on the accession of the last Constantine. La Brocquière,
in 1433, describes Constantinople as formed of separate parts and
containing open spaces of a greater extent than those built on.[175]
This is one of many intimations that the population had largely
decreased.[176] Some of the nobles as well as the common people had
left the city as soon as they saw that a siege was probable.[177]
To make an estimate we must anticipate our narrative of the siege.
Critobulus makes Mahomet appeal to the knowledge of his hearers in
proposing to besiege the city when he states that the greater number of
the inhabitants have abandoned it; that it is now only a city in name
and contains tilled lands, trees, vineyards, and enclosures as well
as ruined and destroyed houses, as they have all seen for themselves.
As his hearers could see as well as he whether this statement was
correct, there can be little doubt of its accuracy. He further declared
that there were few men in the city and that these for the most part
were without arms and unused to fighting, and that he had learned
from deserters that there were only two or three men to defend each
tower, so that each man had to guard three or four crenellations.
Tetaldi states that there were in the city from twenty-five thousand
to thirty thousand men[178] and six to seven thousand combatants and
not more.[179] The actual census taken at the request of the emperor
and recorded by Phrantzes gives under five thousand fighting men,
exclusive of foreigners. Assuming the statement of the French soldier
and eye-witness Tetaldi to be substantially correct, there would
apparently be something like eighteen thousand monks and old men
incapable of bearing arms. The only other indications which assist in
forming an estimate of the population are furnished by the number of
prisoners. These are probably exaggerated. Archbishop Leonard estimates
them at above sixty thousand. Critobulus gives the number of slaves of
all kinds, men, women, and children, as fifty thousand citizens and
five hundred soldiers, estimating that during the siege and capture
four thousand were killed.[180] Probably all captives are included as
having been reduced to slavery. The complete desolation of the city
and the strenuous efforts made by the sultan to repeople it after the
capture raise a strong presumption in favour of the existence of a
comparatively small population at the time of the siege. Gibbon judged
that ‘in her last decay Constantinople was still peopled with more than
a hundred thousand inhabitants,’ forming his estimate mainly upon the
declaration of the archbishop as to prisoners. I am myself disposed to
think that this number is rather over- than under-estimated. Taking
the prisoners to be fifty thousand, and allowing for the escape of ten
thousand persons and another ten thousand for old men and women who
were not worth reducing to slavery, probably eighty thousand would be
about right.
Within the narrow limits of what had been possible, the citizens over
whom the new emperor was called to rule had done their duty to the city
itself. They had kept fourteen miles of walls the most formidable in
Europe in good repair and they had preserved the wonderful aqueducts,
the cisterns, the great baths and churches.
[Sidenote: Its commerce.]
Commerce still continued to be the principal support of the
inhabitants. This was now largely shared by the Genoese in Galata and
by the Venetians who occupied a quarter in Constantinople itself. The
familiarity of the Italian colonists with Western lands and their
superiority in shipping, in which indeed at this time they led the
world, enabled them to achieve a success in what was then long-voyage
travelling which was denied to the Greeks; but the latter collected
merchandise from the Black Sea ports and from the Azof which was either
sold to the Frank merchants in Constantinople or transhipped on board
their vessels.
[Sidenote: Emperor and nobles.]
It is difficult to realise what were the relations between the
government and the governed during the two centuries before the last
catastrophe. The empire was the continuator of the autocratic--or
rather the aristocratic--form of government which had been derived from
the elder Rome. Emperor and nobles governed the country. The nobles
formed the senate. Like our own Privy Council, it met rarely and had
ill-defined functions, but upon occasions of emergency it had to be
consulted. Its co-operation gave to any measures edicted by the emperor
an important sanction. When the decision of the senate was acquiesced
in by or coincided with that of the Patriarch and his ecclesiastical
council, the emperor may be said to have possessed all the approval
that could be derived from public opinion.
Though the senate met rarely, its support was never altogether
dispensed with. The emperors did not claim to reign by divine
right, nor was any such pretext put forward on their behalf. The
succession passed in the usual manner and the emperor reigned with
almost autocratic powers so long as the nobles and the patriarch and
ecclesiastics were content. In the period with which we are concerned
the nobles sometimes preferred to associate a younger man with the
occupant of the throne. Such association was usually, though not
always, in accordance with the desire of the reigning emperor, and had
the conspicuous advantage of allowing the elder to train his younger
associate in statecraft. In some cases, as in those of young Andronicus
and of John during the reign of his father, Manuel, it was imposed upon
the emperor in order to bring about a change of policy.
No form of popular representation existed. The mass of the people had
nothing to do with the laws except to obey them. So long as their lives
and their property were protected and the laws fairly administered they
were content.
[Sidenote: Administration of law.]
So far as can be judged from the silence as well as from the writings
of the Byzantine writers, there was little fault to find with the
administration of law. When cases of the miscarriage of justice are
mentioned they are generally brought forward to show the scandal
they had produced or in some other connection which suggests that
such cases were exceptional. It was not only that the keen subtlety
of a long succession of Greek-speaking lawyers had preserved the
traditions of their great ancestors of the time of Justinian and
had guarded law in admirable forms, but the still better traditions
of an honest administration of law had continued, and this with the
result--simple as it may appear to Western readers; strange as it
would have sounded to a Turkish subject at any time since the capture
of Constantinople--that people believed that the decisions of the law
courts were fairly given.
[Sidenote: Interest in religious questions.]
The inhabitants of the capital retained until the last days of its
history as a Christian city their intense interest in religious
questions. It is of less importance to qualify such interest as
superstitious or fanatical than to try to understand it. That
theological questions possessed a dominating influence over the people
of Constantinople is one of the facts of history, and represents an
important element in the education of the modern Western world.
An able modern writer says with justice that ‘religious sentiment was
down to the fall of the empire as deep as it was powerful. It took
the place of everything else.’[181] Probably the exclusion of the
great bulk of the inhabitants from all participation in government
and the consequent want of general interest in political questions or
those regarding social legislation helped to concentrate attention
upon those relating to religion. The Greek intellect--and, though
there were large sections of the population which were not Greek, the
Greek element as well as the Greek language gave its tone to all the
rest--was essentially active and philosophical. The investigation of
theological questions was not conducted lightly. The same spirit which
made scholars of Constantinople espouse the study of Plato as they
had done for two centuries before 1453--a study which caused Pletho,
on his visit with John at the Council of Florence, to be regarded as
an authority to be eagerly sought after by those awakening to the new
learning in Italy--had been applied to many questions of philosophy
and theology. The examination of such questions was more speculative,
thorough, and scientific than in the West.[182]
While it is true that Constantinople had for centuries produced few
ideas and little of original value in literature, it had rendered
great service to humanity by preserving the Greek classics. Its
methods of thought, its civilisation as well as its literature, were
on the model of classical antiquity, but these were all modified by
Christianity. Part of the mission of the empire had been to save during
upwards of a thousand years, amid the irruptions of Goths, Huns and
Vandals, Persians and Arabs, Slavs and Turks, the traditions and the
literary works of Greece. It had done this part of its work well.
Amid the obscurity of the Middle Ages in the West, Constantinople
had always possessed writers who threw light on the history of the
empire in the East. No European people, remarks a recent writer,
possesses an historical literature as rich as do the Greeks. From
Herodotus to Chalcondylas the chain is not broken.[183] The Greek
historians of the period with which the present work is concerned,
Pachymer, Cantacuzenus, Gregoras, Ducas, Critobulus, and Phrantzes
are in literary merit far superior to the contemporary chroniclers
of the West. Though their works are written in a style which aims at
reproducing classical Greek and imitating classical models, they were
not intended merely for Churchmen. Nor was Constantinople rich only in
historians.
[Sidenote: Civilisation not modern.]
Though intellectual life was never wanting in the city, many of whose
people possessed the quick, ingenious, and piercing intellect of
the Greek race, the reader of the later historians feels that the
civilisation amid which they lived was not that of modern times. It is
difficult to realise what it was like. It has often been compared with
that of Russia, and writers of reputation have spoken of that empire
as preserving the succession of the political and religious systems
of Byzantium as well as of its mission to the non-civilised nations
of Asia.[184] Allowing for the difference between the Greek and the
Slav intellect, the analogy in a general sense holds fairly good, and
is especially noticeable in two points, the religious spirit of both
peoples and their contented exclusion from all active participation in
the government.
It is, however, difficult to determine how far the conditions of
existence in the first half of the fifteenth century among the citizens
of the capital resembled those found in Russia. The difficulty arises,
not merely from distance of time, but from the fact that in the empire
manners, usages, the conception of life, and the influence of religion
were neither Western nor modern. The people were governed much as
Russia is governed now: but there were important differences due to
race, tradition, and environment. Nevertheless, the condition of the
empire reminds one of the Russia of fifty years ago. There were the
same great distances between the capital and the provinces and the same
difficulty of communication. News travelled slowly; public opinion
hardly existed. There were in the country a mass of ignorant peasants
tilling the ground and caring little for anything else, peasants who
were in a condition of serfdom, thinking of the emperor as a demi-god
and rendering unquestioning obedience to his representatives; thinking
of the Church as a divine institution entrusted with miraculous
powers to confer a life after death, but far too ignorant to trouble
themselves about heresies or dogmas. Among these peasants probably
only the priests and monks were able to read, although among a people
naturally intelligent this would not necessarily imply a want of
interest in what was going on around them. The analogy to Russia
must not be pushed too far. Religion and language, a common form of
Christianity and the traditional duty of submission to the rule of
Constantinople were the bonds which held the empire together, but the
Greek tendency to individualism and the political development of the
empire which destroyed the belief that allegiance was necessarily due
to the ruler in the capital had been for two centuries a disintegrating
element which prevented the growth of the apathy on political and
social questions, and the deadly contentment which has been a
characteristic of the great Slavic race.
In the cities there was intellectual life: Salonica, Nicaea, Smyrna,
and other centres of population had in times past vied with the capital
in general culture and still retained something of their attachment to
it. To the last hour of the empire there was, as we have seen, general
and absorbing interest in the question of the Union of the Churches.
But interest in other questions which had once kept religious thought
from stagnation had largely died out. The more pressing questions of
life interested the citizens. Moreover, the people believed that all
questions of Christian belief had been settled. The Creed was final
and had no more need of revision than the style of the Parthenon. The
practices adopted from Paganism had become so generally accepted as to
pass without dispute. Iconoclasts and Paulicians can hardly be said to
have left any representatives. A Pagan Christianity with a Pantheism
accepting holy springs, miraculous pictures, miracle-working relics,
had become the accepted form of faith, a form which we of the twentieth
century find it as difficult to understand as the earlier belief which
had regarded the emperor as divinity.
One of the difficulties of the student of political and social history
of the thirteenth and two following centuries is that of being
unable to get glimpses of personal characteristics or domestic life.
The men who figure in contemporary writings are too often little
better than dummies who move and turn, but do not suggest vitality.
An historical novel of the period written upon the lines of Scott
or Dumas, of Kingsley or Charles Reade, or better still, anything
corresponding to Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales,’ would be of priceless
value in giving indications not merely of what was the environment of a
Constantinopolitan but of the characteristics of an individual of the
period. The writers on whom we have to depend are mostly Churchmen,
who describe the persons of whom they write as if they felt bound to
make them correspond with one of half a dozen approved models.
The absence of better indications may be accounted for. The subjects
of the empire during the century and a half preceding 1453 lived in
the midst of alarms. Its boundaries had been constantly changing
and continually narrowing. Disaster followed disaster; usurpations,
dynastic struggles, inroads of Genoese and Venetians; struggles with
them and between them; ever encroaching Turks, battles, triumphs,
defeats, hopes of final success, but territory still decreasing; hope
of aid from the West or from Tamerlane; illusions all: finally the last
siege and extinction. The writers in the midst of such times thought
they had more important matter to deal with than the depiction of
scenes of domestic character or delineations of prominent persons.