HISTORIC IMPORTANCE OF THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA
The destruction of Smyrna by the Turks was an event of great significance
in Church history. At the time of the birth of the Prophet, about A. D.
570, Christianity had covered, in addition to the area known in general
to-day as “Europe,” the ancient province of Asia, extending as far east
as the Caspian Sea, a broad strip of Syria, and a wide belt of North
Africa clear across to the Atlantic Ocean.
In A. D. 30, according to Kurtz, historian of the Christian Church, there
were five hundred Christians in the world; they had increased to five
hundred thousand by A. D. 100, and they numbered thirty million in the
year 311.
Asia Minor and Africa are famous in the history of the Church as the
habitat of many of the most famous Christian fathers and martyrs, such
as Polycarp of Smyrna, Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria,
Chrysostom of Antioch, Origen of Tyre, Cyprian of Carthage and a host of
others. Saint Paul was born in Tarsus of Cilicia.
In the eighth century, Timotheus sent a band of missionaries from
Mesopotamia to convert the Tartars, who went as far as the Caspian Sea,
and even penetrated into China, “planting and reviving in those parts a
knowledge of the gospel.” The Seven Churches of Revelation were in Asia
Minor, and the fact that Smyrna was the last of these, and kept her light
burning until 1922, emphasizes the significance, in Church history, of
her destruction by the Turks.
The object of the Emperor Constantine in founding his capital was to
build a distinctly Christian city that should be the metropolis of
Christendom. Its splendors, its refinement, its art and culture, its
wealth, its power, its fame as a center of learning and of piety are
unforgettable even to-day. In the presence of its gentlemen and great
dames, the knights and ladies of Western Europe were mere boors and
hoydens. Wrecked, plundered and mismanaged by the Latin knights, a
calamity from which it never recovered, there was enough of its culture
left, when the Turks finally laid hands on it, to scatter over Europe and
regenerate the West. The Renaissance, that wonderful awakening from the
darkness of the Middle Ages, was largely due to the learning brought into
Europe by the scholars of Constantinople, fleeing from the Turk. Those
scholars had kept the light of the old classic culture burning during
all the years of European darkness and ignorance.
If Constantinople could have been spared and Christianity saved in the
Near East, the results to civilization would have been incalculable.
What a glorious city a Greek Constantinople would be to-day, if it had
always stayed Greek, with its long traditions and its immense treasures
of ancient culture! Another and more beautiful Paris, bestriding the
Bosphorus, great in commerce, learning, science and all the graces and
influences of Christian civilization.
Thus says Sir Edwin Pears, in his well-known history:
“The New Rome of Constantine Augustus passed under the power of
a horde of Oriental adventurers, Turanians by original descent,
mongrels by polygamy. This was the greatest victory ever won
by Asia in her debate with Europe. For many decades thereafter
there seemed at least a possibility that the East might destroy
all the fruit of Marathon.”
Quoting again from the same author:
“Under the rule of its new masters Constantinople was destined
to become the most degraded capital in Europe, and became
incapable of contributing anything whatever of value to the
history of the human race. No art, no literature, no handicraft
even, nothing that the world would gladly keep, has come since
1453 from the Queen City. Its capture, so far as human eyes
can see, has been for the world a misfortune almost without
any compensatory advantage—poverty as the consequence of
misgovernment is the most conspicuous result of the conquest
affecting the subjects of the Empire. Lands were allowed to go
out of cultivation. Industries were lost. Mines were forgotten.
Trade and commerce almost ceased to exist. Population
decreased. The wealthiest state in Europe became the poorest;
the most civilized the most barbarous. The demoralization
of the conquered people and of their churches was not less
disastrous than the injury to their material interests. The
Christians lost heart. Their physical courage lessened.”
This description of the condition of Asia Minor as the result of the
capture of Constantinople continued down to the ultimate complete
destruction of the Christians by the Turks. Nothing changed in the nearly
five centuries that have passed. The Turk has not altered either in his
character or his methods. The scenes described by Pears as following the
taking of the Queen City, the massacres and violation of women, were
duplicated at Smyrna, with the added horror of the sufferings of the
Christians on the quay.
After Constantinople, Smyrna, “Ghiaour Smyrna,” became the last
stronghold of Christianity and Greek culture in the Near East. It had its
great and valuable libraries, its learned men, its famous schools. The
Greeks and Armenians could at any time have attained safety by abjuring
their faith. Yet, though there have been apostates, they have, in
general, kept the faith and have suffered.
The only civilization that has existed in Turkey since that black year,
1453, has been that supplied to it by the Christian remnant of the old
Byzantine Empire. For that reason the work of the American and other
missionaries took on a great importance. They went out originally to
Turkey to convert Moslems. They found that they could not do this, but
that their real mission was with the Christians, who were eager to be
uplifted and enlightened. The recent rapid development of the latter in
advanced agriculture, industries, commerce, education, was restoring
Christianity in the Orient and reknitting the wasted and torn fabric of
the old Byzantine Empire. To the great Christian Powers was given a tardy
and last opportunity of repairing the wrong that was done the world when
St. Sophia, the Temple of the Eternal Wisdom, fell into the hand of the
Turk.