(1.) “Pera, which the Greeks call Kalathan, and the Infidels call it
the same.”—The Genoese were already established at Constantinople when
Manuel I. ascended the throne (1143). Besides the emporium of Copario
in the city of Constantinople, they possessed Orcu in the suburb
of Galata (Heyd, _Le Colonie Commer._, etc., i, 330; Desimone, _I
Genovesi_, etc., 217 _et seq._), which they occupied during the reign
of the Angelos dynasty, remaining there so long as the Latin Empire
lasted, but without ever successfully rivalling the Venetians. After
the restoration of the Greek Empire at Constantinople by Michel VIII.
in 1261, their fortunes changed in consequence of the great privileges
that were accorded to them by the emperor, which included the cession
of the suburb of Galata, soon to become the central depôt of all their
settlements in Greece, on the shores of the Black Sea and of the Sea of
Azoff, a transfer which probably accounts for the appearance of “Mæotis
palus, nunc Galatia”, in the list of new names supplied by Codinus
(_Hieroclis Synecdemus_, etc., 313).
Notwithstanding the rivalry of the Venetians, who in 1296 even seized
upon Galata, or Pera as the colony was usually called by the Latins,
and their frequent quarrels with the Greeks, the commercial prosperity
of the Genoese settlement went on increasing until about the middle of
the 14th century, when the Customs dues amounted to 200,000 hyperperes,
those at Constantinople scarcely reaching the sum of 30,000 hyperperes
(_Niceph. Greg._, ii, 842). This “State within a State”, no doubt
excited the cupidity of the Turks after their assumption of power in
Europe, and the removal of the sultan’s residence to Adrianople; but
the Genoese succeeded for a time in averting the threatening danger
by making numerous concessions, as appears by the treaty of commerce
concluded by them in 1387 with Murad I., whose successor, Bajazet, lay
siege to Constantinople. This monarch, however, was constrained to turn
his arms against Timour, and the capital was spared the horrors of a
longer siege. The battle of Angora, so fatal to the Ottoman power,
delayed for a few decades only the fall of the Greek Empire and the
disappearance of the Genoese.—BRUUN.
(2.) “caused two seas to flow into each other.”—“La formation et
l’origine du Bosphore de Thrace,” says Vivien de Saint-Martin (_Desc.
de l’A. M._, ii, 469), “ont donné lieu, chez les anciens comme chez
les modernes, aux hypothèses les plus aventureuses, jeux hardis de
l’imagination basés sur de vieilles traditions de convulsions et de
cataclysmes; les observations de la géologie moderne sont venues
anéantir ces systèmes d’époques moins rigoureuses, en démontrant que
les terrains de nature différente qui constituent les deux côtés du
détroit, n’ont jamais pu être produit par un déchirement, et qu’il
existe de toute nécessité depuis l’origine même des choses.” Other
authors, including some philologists (Menn, in _Jahresbericht über d.
Gymn. u. d. Realschule zu Neuss_, 1854, 18), think otherwise, so that
we need not be surprised if the sages at Constantinople also differed
in opinion, or that the people there should have included the cutting
of the strait among the exploits of Alexander.—BRUUN.
(3.) “Troya, on a fine plain, and one can still see where the city
stood.”—The ruins of the city of Priam did not exist in Schiltberger’s
time any more than they do now; but in the absence of the material
vestiges that Lechevalier and other travellers, his successors,
believed they found beneath the surface of the earth, there is Homer’s
admirable description, precise as that of the most accurate geographer,
and which restores to us the primitive map of the Trojan plain. I am
here under the necessity of quoting at some length, a passage from
Vivien de Saint-Martin’s _Description de l’Asie Mineur_, 489:—“Dès que
l’on accepte le plateau de Bounar-Bachi” (a name, says this author,
derived from two sources of the Scamander) “comme l’emplacement de la
Troie homérique, les indications circonstanciées et si nombreuses que
fournit le Poète sur les localités environnantes, viennent s’adapter
d’elles-mêmes an terrain actuel.”
“Une ville de fondation éolienne qui usurpe le nom d’Ilion, et qui par
la suite des temps et d’obscurité des traditions, prétendit occuper
l’emplacement même de la cité de Priam, s’était élevée sur une autre
éminence éloignée d’une lieue vers le Nord, et située non plus sur la
gauche, mais sur la rive droite du Simoïs. Cette ville est l’Ilium
des siècles postérieurs, l’Ilium Recens; et lorsque les poètes ou les
historiens de l’époque romaine parlent du berceau de leur race, c’est
toujours à cette Ilium éolienne qu’il faut rapporter leurs allusions
et leurs descriptions, car le site réel de l’Ilium primitive était
dès lors oublié. La nouvelle Ilium est maintenant ruinée, comme
l’Ilium homérique; près de l’éminence isolée qu’elle occupa, on trouve
aujourd’hui le village Turc de Tchiblak.”
The ruins near the sea and at no great distance from Constantinople,
believed by Schiltberger to have been those of the royal city, must
have been the remains of Alexandria Troas opposite the island of
Tenedos. It was there that the Russian pilgrim Daniel, and the author’s
contemporaries, the archdeacon Zosimus and Clavijo, thought they saw
the ruins of Troy, as was the case one hundred years later, 1547, with
the French traveller Belon, who landed that he might examine them
with the greater facility. At the base of a small hillock, but within
the circuit of the walls of the city, were some ancient arches and
the remains of two palaces in marble (_Obs. de plusieurs singularités
trouvées en Grèce, en Asie_, etc.; in Saint-Martin, ii, 8). Belon
passes lightly over the difficulty he experienced in not finding near
this, the supposed site of the Homeric city, the two rivers Simoïs and
Xanthus.
The honorary president of the Geographical Society at Paris has
lately sought to prove, that the city of Priam should be looked for
where Lechevalier conceived it to be, that is to say, at Bunarbashí,
whence Dr. Schliemann believes he is justified in removing it to the
neighbourhood of Ilium Recens or Hissarlik, as the result of the
successful explorations conducted by himself with the assistance of his
wife. Although some English and most German authorities applaud the
zeal with which his work was performed, and the great importance of his
discoveries to students of archæology, all are not so readily persuaded
that the question of the position of Ilium is solved, seeing that the
topographical details, as we receive them from Homer, are drawn from
the imagination of the poet, rather than after the reality.—BRUUN.
(4.) “for all [kinds of] pastime that might be desired in front of
the palace.”—The games, chiefly of Eastern origin, that were held in
the open space in front of the imperial residence, are mentioned by
various authors. It will here suffice to quote from the writings of a
predecessor of Schiltberger, and of one who followed after him.
When Edrisi visited Constantinople, circa 1161, sports were held in the
hippodrome, which he considered the most marvellous in the universe.
It had to be passed before reaching the palace, an edifice unequalled
in its proportions and in the beauty of its construction (_Jaubert
edition_, 297). Bertrandon de la Brocquière, 1432 (_Early Travels in
Palestine_, Bohn edition, 1848), thus describes one of the sports he
witnessed in the large and handsome square in front of St. Sophia:
“I saw the brother of the emperor, the despot of the Morea, exercise
himself with a score of other horsemen. Each had a bow, and they
gallopped along the enclosure throwing their hats before them, which,
when they had passed, they shot at; and he who with his arrow pierced
the hat or was nearest to it, was esteemed the most expert.”—ED.
(5.) “he has no longer that power, so the apple has
disappeared.”—Stephen of Novgorod (_Pout. Rouss. loud._, ii, 14), a
pilgrim passing through Constantinople about the year 1350, certifies
that the emperor held in his hand a kind of golden apple surmounted by
a cross. Clavijo says the “pella redonda dorada” was in its place, and
so, we may conclude, was the cross; because in 1420, Zosimus (_Pout.
Rouss. loud._, ii, 38) saw the cross on the apple that was in the
emperor’s hand; it is probable, therefore, that these insignias were
removed between the years 1420–1427, at which latter date Schiltberger
spent some months at Constantinople after his escape from bondage.
A short time before the author’s arrival in the city of the Cæsars,
the aged Manuel died (1425), and John, his son and successor, was
forced to sign a treaty of peace with the Turks, the conditions being
of the most onerous nature; for he was deprived of all his possessions
with the exception of the capital, the appanages in the Morea of
the Greek princes, and a few fortresses on the shores of the Black
Sea (Zinkeisen, _Gesch. d. O. R._, i, 533); he also covenanted to
pay the sultan an annual tribute of 300,000 aspres, and to make him
numerous presents of great value as a mark of personal regard. In
such circumstances the unfortunate monarch must have been under the
necessity of laying hands upon all the gold he could come across, and
Schiltberger’s _bon mot_ on the disappearance of the apple together
with the emperor’s power, might be taken literally.
Zosimus relates that the statue which held the apple was distant an
arrow’s flight from the hippodrome, doubtlessly the “fine square for
tilting”, now known as the Meïdan. The magnificent palace wherein
receptions were held, and that excited the admiration of Schiltberger,
must have been the Boukoleon and Daphna which adjoined the hippodrome
(Dethier, _Der Bosphor und Constantinopel_, Wien, 1873, 22). This
edifice was greatly neglected during the reigns of the last of the
Palæologi, and after his conquest of Constantinople, Mahomet II.
ordered its complete destruction.
The other palace noticed was the Blackernes, in which Clavijo (_Hakluyt
Soc. Publ._ 29) was received by the emperor Manuel. Near it, Bertrandon
de la Brocquière found a “fausse braie d’un bon et haut mur en avant du
fossé, qui était en glacis excepté dans un espace de deux cents pas à
l’une de ses extrémités près du palais”. This must have been the place
where Schiltberger saw a “getüll.”[1]—BRUUN.
[1] See page 84.
(5A.) The statement that the statue was placed on a pillar is
corroborated by Cedrenus in his Chronicles, and in the Annals of
Zonaras, in which works we find it stated that the great pillar
Augusteon was erected in the fifteenth year of the reign of Justinian,
the statue being placed on it two years later. When Bertrandon de la
Brocquière saw the equestrian statue, which he inadvertently calls that
of Constantine, it grasped a sceptre in the left hand. Pierre Gilles,
the naturalist and author, sent to the Levant by Francis I. of France,
found portions of this statue in the melting house where ordnance were
cast, it having been overturned and destroyed in 1523 (_Antiquities of
Constantinople_, London, 1729); or in 1525, according to the anonymous
author of the Constantiniade. The proportions were colossal, for the
leg exceeded the height of a man, and the nose was nine inches in
length, as were also the hoofs of the horse. Gilles represents that the
statue, which was made of brass, faced the East, as if the emperor was
marching against the Persians; the right arm was stretched out, and in
the left hand was a globe to signify universal power over the whole
world, all success in war being attributed to the cross fixed on the
top. He was dressed like Achilles, in a coat of mail and shining helmet.
It is certain that the globe and cross disappeared fully one hundred
years before the arrival at Constantinople of Gilles, whose detailed
description of the statue must have reference to its original
condition.—ED.