Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 (32 page)

Prophecy, apocalypse, sin: as the siege entered the final weeks of May deepening religious dread gripped the people of the city. A belief in portents had always been a feature of the life of Byzantium. Constantinople itself had been founded as the result of a mystical sign – the vision of a cross that had appeared to Constantine the Great before the crucial battle at the Milvian Bridge twelve hundred and forty years earlier – and omens were eagerly sought and interpreted. With the inexorable decline of the empire, these became increasingly linked to a profound pessimism. There was a widely held belief that the Byzantine Empire was to be the last empire on earth, whose final century had started around 1394. People remembered the ancient prophetic books from the time of the earlier Arab sieges; their gnomic, oracular verses were widely recited: ‘misfortune to you, city of seven hills, when the twentieth letter is proclaimed on your ramparts. Then the fall will be near and the destruction of your sovereigns.’ The Turks, in their turn, were seen as an apocalyptic people signifying the last judgement, a scourge sent by God as a punishment for Christian sin.

In this climate people unceasingly scrutinized signs that might foretell the end of empire – or of the world itself: epidemics, natural phenomena, angelic apparitions. The city itself, old beyond the comprehension of its inhabitants, had become enshrouded in legend, ancient prophecy and supernatural meanings. Its 1,000-year-old monuments, whose original purpose had been lost, were said to be magical cryptograms in which the future might be read: the sculpted frieze on the base of the statue in the Forum of the Bull contained an encoded prophecy of the city’s end, and the great equestrian statue of Justinian pointing east no longer expressed confident dominion over the Persians. It foretold the direction from which the final destroyers of the city would come.

Against this background, presentiments of the last judgement gained an incremental force as the siege wore on. The unseasonable weather and the terror of unceasing artillery bombardment convinced the Orthodox faithful that the end was drawing nigh in explosions and black smoke. The Antichrist, in the shape of Mehmet, was at the gate. Prophetic dreams and portents were widely circulated: how a child had seen the angel who guarded the city walls abandon his post; how oysters had been gathered that dripped blood; how a great serpent was drawing near, devastating the land; how the earth tremors and hailstorms that struck the city made it clear ‘that universal ruin was approaching’. Everything pointed to a belief that time was nearly completed. In the monastery of St George there was an oracular document, divided into squares, showing the succession of emperors, one emperor to each square: ‘in time the squares were all filled, and they say that only one last square was still empty’ – the square to be occupied by Constantine XI. Byzantine notions that time was circular and symmetrical were further confirmed by a second imperial prophecy: that the city would be both founded and lost by an Emperor Constantine whose mother was called Helen. Both Constantine I and Constantine XI had mothers of that name.

In this fevered climate, the morale of the civilian population seemed to be disintegrating. Continuous services of intercession were held throughout the city. Day and night an endless cycle of prayer arose from the churches, with the exception of St Sophia, which remained empty and unvisited. Nestor-Iskander witnessed ‘all of the people assembled in the holy churches of God, weeping, sobbing, raising their arms to heaven, and petitioning the grace of God’. To the Orthodox,
prayer was a work as essential to the survival of the city as the nightly toil of carrying stones and branches to repair the stockade. It supported the forcefield of divine protection that ringed the city. The more hopeful remembered a set of counter-prophecies: that the city was personally shielded by Mary, Mother of God, and could never be taken because it contained the relics of the True Cross; and that even if the enemy succeeded in entering the city they could only proceed as far as the column of Constantine the Great before an angel would descend from heaven with a sword and put them to flight.

Despite this, apocalyptic anxiety had been fuelled by the disheartening news from the Venetian brig on 23 May and it reached a crescendo on the night of the full moon. This was probably the next day, 24 May, though dates are uncertain. The moon held a haunting place in the city’s psyche. Rising over the copper dome of St Sophia, shimmering on the calm waters of the Horn and over the Bosphorus, it had been the symbol of Byzantium since ancient times. Like a gold coin dug from the Asian hills night after night, its ebb and flow expressed the antiquity of the city and the endlessly repeated cycles of time through which it had lived – fluctuating, timeless and ominous. Earth’s final millennium was considered to be ruled by the moon, when ‘life will be short, fortune unstable’. By late May particular fear focused on a certain belief that the city could never be taken on a waxing moon; after the 24th the moon would start to wane again and the future would be uncertain. The prospect of this date filled the populace with dread. The whole prophetic history of the city seemed to be drawing to a point.

It was with apprehension that the people waited for twilight on 24 May. After another day of heavy bombardment the evening suddenly gave way to silence. By all accounts it was a beautiful spring night, a time when Constantinople was at its most magical, the last light still glimmering in the west, the distant sound of water lapping the sea walls. ‘The air was clear and unclouded,’ remembered Barbaro, ‘pure as crystal.’ However as the moon rose at the first hour after sunset the watchers were met by an extraordinary sight. Where there should have been a complete circle of gold, they could see a moon ‘only three days old, with little of it visible’. For four hours it remained sickly and minimal, then agonizingly, it ‘grew little by little to its full circle, and at the sixth hour of the night, it formed the complete circle’. The partial eclipse struck the defenders with the force of prophecy. Was not the crescent moon the symbol of the Ottomans, visible on standards
fluttering over Mehmet’s camp? According to Barbaro ‘the Emperor was greatly afraid of this sign, and all of his lords … but the Turks held a great celebration in their camp at the sign, because it seemed now that victory was theirs’. For Constantine, struggling to maintain the morale of the populace, it was a heavy blow.

Seal showing the Hodegetria

 

The next day a decision was taken, perhaps at the instigation of Constantine, to lift the spirits of the people by making another direct appeal to the Virgin. Huge belief was placed in the supernatural powers of the Mother of God. Her most holy icon, the Hodegetria, ‘the one who shows the way’, was a talisman credited with miraculous powers. It was believed to have been painted by St Luke the Evangelist, and had an ancient and honourable role in successful defences of the city. It had been processed along the ramparts during the Avar siege of 626. Again in 718 the Hodegetria was credited with saving Constantinople from the Arabs. Accordingly a huge crowd gathered on the morning of 25 May at the icon’s shrine, the church of St Saviour in Chora near the city walls, to seek protection from the Virgin. The Hodegetria, mounted on a wooden pallet, was lifted onto the shoulders of a team of men drawn from the confraternity of the icon, and a penitent procession set off down the steep, narrow streets in traditional order: in front a cross-bearer; behind, the black robed priests swinging their censers, then the laity, men, women and children probably walking barefoot. Cantors led the people in holy song. The haunting quartertones of the hymns,
the lamentations of the people, the clouds of incense and the traditional prayers to the protecting Virgin – all rose in the morning air. Over and over the citizens repeated their powerful cry for psychic protection: ‘Do thou save thy city, as thou knowest and willest. We put thee forward as our arms, our rampart, our shield, our general: do thou fight for thy people.’ The exact route for these processions was said to be dictated by a force emanating from the icon itself, like the tug of a divining rod.

In this charged atmosphere of fear and devotion, what followed was utterly devastating. The icon suddenly and inexplicably slipped from the hands of the bearers ‘without any reason or visible force and fell on the ground’. Horror-stricken, people rushed forward with wild shouts to restore the Virgin to her stand, but the icon seemed to have become fastened to the earth as if weighted with lead. It was impossible to lift. For a considerable time, the priests and bearers struggled, with shouts and prayers, to wrestle the miraculous image from the mud. Eventually it was raised again but everyone was struck with fear at this ill-omened event. And worse was soon to follow. The shakily reformed procession had hardly gone further when it was hit by a violent storm. Thunder and lightning cracked and spat across the noon sky; torrential rain and stinging hail lashed the bedraggled procession so violently that people ‘were unable either to stand up against it or move forward’. The icon came to an unsteady halt. Torrents of floodwater surged down the narrow street with ominous force, threatening to sweep children away in their path: ‘many following were in danger of being carried away and drowned by the force and terrible power of the water if some of the men had not quickly grabbed them and with difficulty hauled them out of the rushing torrent’. The procession had to be abandoned. The crowd dispersed, taking with them a clear interpretation of their plight. The Virgin had refused their prayers; the storm ‘certainly foretold the imminent destruction of everything and that, like the torrential, violent water, it would carry off and destroy everything’.

The next morning they awoke to discover the city blanketed in thick fog. There was evidently no wind; the air was still and the fog clung to the city all day. Everything was muffled, silent, invisible. The eerie atmosphere tightened the mood of hysteria. It was as if the weather itself were undermining the will of the defenders. There could only be one possible interpretation for such unseasonable fog. It indicated the ‘departure of God and his leaving the city, forsaking and turning
away from it completely. For God hides himself in cloud and so appears and again disappears.’ Towards evening the atmosphere seemed to grow even thicker and a ‘great darkness began to gather over the city’. And something even stranger was witnessed. Initially the sentries on the walls observed Constantinople to be illuminated by lights as if the enemy were burning the city. Alarmed, people ran to see what was happening and cried aloud when they looked up at the dome of St Sophia. A strange light was flickering on the roof. The excitable Nestor-Iskander described what he saw: ‘at the top of the window, a large flame of fire issuing forth; it encircled the entire neck of the church for a long time. The flame gathered into one; its flame altered,
and there was an indescribable light. At once it took to the sky. Those who had seen it were benumbed; they began to wail and cry out in Greek: ‘Lord have mercy! The light itself has gone up to heaven.’ It seemed clear to the faithful that God had abandoned Constantinople. In the Ottoman camp the unnaturally heavy atmosphere and the unearthly light had a similar effect on the troops. There was uncertainty and panic at these apparitions. Within his tent, Mehmet had been unable to sleep. When he saw the glow over the city he was initially troubled and sent for his mullahs to interpret the portents. They came and duly proclaimed the omens favourable to the Muslim cause: ‘This is a great sign: The city is doomed.’