Download PDF | Constantine XI Dragaš Palaeologus (1404–1453)- The Last Emperor of Byzantium
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Constantine XI’s last moments in life, as he stood before the walls of Constantinople in 1453, have bestowed a heroic status on him. This book produces a more balanced portrait of an intriguing individual: the last emperor of Constantinople. To be sure, the last of the Greek Caesars was a fascinating figure, not so much because he was a great statesman, as he was not, and not because of his military prowess, as he was neither a notable tactician nor a soldier of exceptional merit. This monarch may have formulated grandiose plans, but his hopes and ambitions were ultimately doomed because he failed to inspire his own subjects, who did not rally to his cause. Constantine lacked the skills to create, restore, or maintain harmony in his troubled realm. In addition, he was ineffective on the diplomatic front, as he proved unable to stimulate Latin Christendom to mount an expedition and come to the aid of southeastern Orthodox Europe. Yet in sharp contrast to his numerous shortcomings, his military defeats, and the various disappointments during his reign, posterity still fondly remembers the last Constantine.
Marios Philippides is Professor of Classics, Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. He has authored numerous books and articles on the Palaeologan era and on the fall of Byzantium.
Preface
The aim of this book is to produce a balanced portrait of an intriguing individual: the last emperor of Constantinople. To be sure, the last of the Greek Caesars was a fascinating figure, not so much because he was a great statesman, as he was not, and not because of his military prowess, as he was neither a notable tactician nor a soldier of exceptional merit. This monarch may have formulated grandiose plans, but his hopes and ambitions were ultimately doomed because he failed to inspire his own subjects, who did not rally to his cause.
He lacked the skills to create, restore, or maintain harmony in a troubled realm. In addition, he was ineffective on the diplomatic front, as he proved unable to stimulate Latin Christendom to come to the aid of southeastern Orthodox Europe. In the fifteenth century, it was even rumored that this last emperor had been born under an unlucky star. Yet in sharp contrast to his numerous shortcomings, his military defeats, and the various disappointments during his reign, posterity still fondly remembers the last Constantine.
Simply put, Emperor Constantine XI DragaS Palaeologus (1404-1453) refused to die. His idealized personality, his place in the last ruling dynasty, and the undocumented circumstances of his death provided fertile ground for the growth of a very powerful national myth, which drew its ultimate inspiration from ancient Mediterranean images and folk motifs: Constantine, it was believed, was not dead but sleeping. His eventual resurrection—awakening, it was widely prophesied, was destined to bring salvation to his former subjects who had been subjugated by a foreign conqueror. So, Constantine XI became the foundation stone of the Modern Greek nation, whose future liberation from the Ottoman overlord, was identified, to a large degree, with the last emperor’s eventual revival. In the meantime, and until the wheel of mythology turned full circle, Constantine’s death was strongly denied.
The emperor in suspended animation became the soul of Greece. His second coming would herald the ascent of Hellas from the depths of Hades. Thus a historical emperor joined a heroic company of other semi-legendary figures who had preceded his march into the realm of myths, legends, and folktales similar to those of Arthur of Britain and of the supposed sister of Alexander the Great, who had drunk the water of immortality, had become a mermaid, and ever since endlessly roams the seas in search of news about her brother: his death she refuses to accept, as the Greeks of the late Middle Ages and of the subsequent period refused to accept the death of their last emperor. Of all the historical figures from antiquity and the Middle Ages, Greek popular thought set apart Alexander the Great and Constantine XI to be assigned heroic dimensions; without doubt, they became memorable figures of ancient, medieval, and Modern Greek folklore.
The formulation and exponential growth of this potent myth, whose nucleus is ultimately based on the folktale motif of “the vanished monarch” is indeed inseparable from the highly romanticized portrait of the emperor. Thus in spite of the traditional, highly idealized and fictional portrait that has dominated the scene over the centuries, my main concern is historical reality and I have attempted to produce a balanced profile of Constantine XI’s career in mainland Greece and in Constantinople: I have tried to evaluate his role as despot, as regent, and as emperor, by assembling, translating, and synthesizing the information supplied by various eyewitness sources and by examining the contemporary and near-contemporary literature of the guattrocento, as scholars have gathered a great deal of the source material in the original languages.
Large extracts have been edited and published in various learned journals over the centuries, but some accounts have been neglected and have never been translated, while others still remain inaccessible. In addition, some of the authors of these medieval narratives have experienced a fate akin to a damnatio memoriae and their texts have been overlooked. Accordingly, one of my objectives was to collect, quote, and translate relevant testimonies, including those that have been, for various reasons, neglected by modern scholarship (such as the evidence presented in the so-called chronica breviora); I have not translated the passages quoted in the footnotes, as they will be of interest to specialists.
Ihave also analyzed and evaluated numerous hypotheses and theories put forth by modern historians. I should indicate at the outset that I have frequently found myself in sharp disagreement with the prevailing scholarly opinion. As I struggled with the evidence, it became clear to me that Constantine’s portrait could be painted only after a fresh examination and a critical review of the historical record had been undertaken. This search for historical reality compelled me to depart from the quixotic aura that has enveloped the last Greek emperor.
My scrutiny of the contemporary record compelled me to strip Constantine of the patriotic cloak, with which he was invested by nineteenth-century scholars, who, in some case, were guided by national aspirations and wishful thinking. Unlike his father, Constantine XI was not a writer and left behind neither a voluminous corpus of epistles nor any composition of literary merit to guide us in this path. We only possess a handful of documents, to which Constantine appended his signature as despot and as emperor without crown. Thus, I have been painfully aware of severe limitations in the record and of the numerous /acunae in our sources. It is for this reason that I have been obliged to resort to the occasional inference and to struggle with the surviving fragmentary evidence in order to make some sense out of events that, prima facie, seem unrelated and unconnected.
The fact that Constantine came at the end of a very long line of emperors has further prejudiced the views of numerous scholars who have found themselves unable to divorce the earlier career of Constantine from the events of the morning of May 29, 1453. Constantine’s disappearance and last ride into the realm of Legend on that day have erased a previously mediocre career and an undistinguished record; his last moments in life, as he stood before the ancient walls of his city, elevated him into heroic status. If Constantine XI had been as mad as Nero, had committed atrocities comparable to those of Vlad HI Draculea the Impaler (the prototype of our Dracula), and had matched the savagery of Stalin, posterity, I suspect, would have treated him with kindness, precisely because he was the last defender of fabled Constantinople.
During the following centuries, from 1453 to our own era, this otherwise average emperor became a symbolic future avenger, embodying the hope and expectation of eventual liberation. Lost in this sea of praise, prophecy, millennialism, folklore, and national ambitions, the historian begins to pray for the skills of a shaman in his journey to catch a glimpse of the real Constantine. The emperor’s personality remains elusive.
I should note that I have utilized the adjective “Byzantine” to refer to the Greeks of the Middle Ages, thus bowing to the tradition that dates back to the seventeenth century, when French antiquarians first coined the term. Gibbon’s towering influence subsequently colored “Byzantine” with its familiar pejorative dimension. If language and religion were to count as criteria for ethnicity, “late Byzantine” is probably equivalent to what we understand nowadays by “Greek.” After all, the language of the average Byzantine individual of the quattrocento did not differ radically from the spoken idiom of the nineteenth-century Kingdom of Greece; even nowadays the citizens of the modern Hellenic Republic could have conversed with Constantine’s subjects in relative ease. Moreover, the religion of the vast majority of modern Greek-speakers is still Orthodox Christianity.
Thus, while one may be charged with anachronism if one were to maintain that the Palaeologan coda of the Greek empire of the Middle Ages was the seminal form of the Modern Greek nation, I believe that it is neither anachronistic nor unnatural to employ the term “Greek” for the Christian Greek speakers of the quattrocento but I retained “Byzantine,” as it is more familiar with historians of this period, as long as we recall that the term “Byzantine” was not used by the subjects of the Constantinopolitan emperor.
The present study has been written in the United States, in Athens, Greece, and in Istanbul, Turkey, over the course of the last twenty years. Because I have consulted collections of rare books scattered in numerous libraries, I have been compelled to use different editions of the same sources on occasion, but I have made every effort to correlate all editions and provide equivalent pagination (in brackets) of the passage in question. In case of major departures, I have fully quoted the variant text as given by different editors. Most of my research was conducted at the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington, DC. Research materials were also acquired from other institutions, both in the United States and elsewhere, and I am deeply appreciative of the endless courtesies extended to me. Thanks are also due to the capable staff of the Interlibrary Loan division of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for invaluable assistance over the decades.
Scholarly investigation constantly reminds us of our immense debt to past generations of scholars, who toiled in libraries and in archival collections to transform chaos into order by transcribing, editing, and publishing readable versions of texts from faded manuscripts. One surely stands in awe before the Herculean labors of C. N. Sathas, P. A. Déthier, C. Hopf, N. Iorga, A. Paspates, E. Pears, and S. P. Lampros. Recent times have also produced giants and a phalanx of names comes to mind: R.-J. Loenertz, F. Babinger, F. Délger, G. T. Dennis, D. J. Geanakoplos, H. Hunger, P. Schreiner, K. M. Setton, S. Vryonis, G. T. Zoras, John R. MelvilleJones, and J. W. Barker, among so many others. My extensive debt to of all of them is indicated by the frequency with which their names appear in the notes.
It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the generous assistance, support, and encouragement that I have received from various scholars at different stages of this project. Numerous scholars have answered my persistent inquiries, have discussed various aspects of my research with me, and have given me their kind support over the years in the course of various symposia and especially during the annual meetings of the Byzantine Studies Conference and during the annual Symposia at Dumbarton Oaks; one cannot think of a more enjoyable environment for the profitable exchange of scholarly ideas: Professor John W. Barker (whose magisterial study on Constantine’s father, Manuel II Palaeologus, has been an endless source of inspiration); the Reverend George T. Dennis, S.J.‘, who generously and patiently answered my questions and persistent inquiries with regard to Manuel II’s family and with regard to late medieval warfare, in general; Doctor George Contis for lending me his expertise on the coinage of the late Palaeologi; and Doctor Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou who supplied me with some material to which I had no access.
I owe a debt to my former students, Professors Hilton Alers (who checked my translations of Catalan and Spanish texts), Michael Dixon, and Paul Kimball. My greatest debt goes to my close friend and collaborator, Professor Walter K. Hanak’, who contributed generously of his time to read every word of earlier versions of my manuscript and to place its text under the microscope.
He thus improved the narrative in various ways. I am grateful for his assistance with the Slavonic material, his fortitude in confronting my theories, his kindness, his wise advice, and his sharp observations and evaluation of the topography during our various surveys of the walls of Constantinople, as we threaded our way through dark streets and perilous neighborhoods. In addition, Professor John R. MelvilleJones most kindly read my final version of the manuscript and made innumerable suggestions and improvements to the text: Maximas gratias, magister.
I would be amiss if I did not acknowledge the assistance of Lady Lucy Higgins, candidissimae imperialissimaeque canis Pechini, whose melodious barking kept me on task. Above all, my deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Corinne Lynam Philippides, a true Philhellene, who has enthusiastically supported my scholarly interests for fifty years: yaips Gvacow éy@ Kai GAANS UVooL’ Gotdijs.
Marios Philippides May 29, 2018
Introduction , Res dubiae
1 A romantic vision
Constantine XI DragaS Palaeologus was the last Byzantine monarch to reign over Constantinople. Acclaimed emperor by his troops in southern Greece two months prior to his arrival in the capital, he was never formally crowned in Santa Sophia.' In legal terms the last emperor of medieval Greece was John VIII. Various authors noted the awkward situation of an emperor without a crown. Constantine’s legitimate claim to the throne, however, was never questioned and his position was not challenged throughout his short reign.’ By virtue of his lineage, at the end of a long line of emperors, Constantine was assured of a unique position in the history of medieval Hellenism. Furthermore, the end of his life is associated with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.
Thus, Constantine came to be seen as the emperor who expired together with the Greek version of the Roman Empire. He vanished fighting against the Turkish janissaries in front of the ancient fortifications of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, when he crossed the border from history into legend. Throughout the Middle Ages Constantinople had boasted of her direct continuity with antiquity. To the annoyance of medieval Europe’s kings, the Byzantine emperors had maintained the trappings and offices of their ancient Roman predecessors and had promoted the claim to be the only legitimate heirs of the Caesars.*
After the fall of Constantinople, the subjects of the Byzantine Caesars were reduced to the status of another religious minority under the Ottoman sultan. The conquest of Constantinople hastened the expansion of the Turks into the Balkan peninsula and into central Europe.* The Greeks under the sultan survived a long period of subjugation in full expectation of a glorious future copiously predicted by their folklore.* Generations of Greeks eagerly anticipated the resurrection of their nation, which, it had been prophesied time and again, would rise from its ashes. The Greeks, it predicted, were destined to recover their occupied capital, to lay the foundations of a modern version of their medieval empire, and to bring the Ottoman interlude to an end. Furthermore, this millennial reconquista would be initiated and implemented by none other than the last emperor of Constantinople, Constantine XI, who was expected to awaken from his long sleep, to quit his concealed underground chamber in the vicinity of the walls of Constantinople, and to lead his subjects onward to glory.
Constantine had presided over the death of the ancient empire. He would become, it was foretold in millennial lore, the deliverer of the nation. He thus became identified with the eventual reconstitution of the grand old order.° So Constantine XI refused to die, in spite of the events of May 29, 1453, and in spite of the cold facts of history, which declared that the last emperor had perished. The folklore of the ensuing centuries stubbornly declared that Constantine had not died but had been spirited away to a secret chamber by the Lord’s angel. As a Greek counterpart to King Arthur in Avalon, Constantine was destined to return.
The creation of this myth turned Constantine XI into the most beloved of all the Byzantine emperors. All memory of past grandeur accumulated around the figure of “the sleeping emperor.” Other emperors, who achieved a great deal more, were inevitably forgotten. Yet Constantine Xt] is still remembered and the average Greek readily recognizes his name. In life his achievements were mediocre, at best, or even minimal, at worst. Unlike his father, Emperor Manuel I, Constantine was not a gifted intellectual. Nothing of a literary nature by his hand, not even an epistle of a personal nature, has come down to us.
His apparent lack of interest in literature contrasts sharply with the example of his learned father, who has left us a voluminous record of letters and literary compositions. Manuel had been a prolific author of literary works, even though his reign was accented by burdensome administrative demands and peregrinations worthy of Hercules. Unlike his brother John VIII, Constantine did not visit the west and did not witness the vibrant environment in Italy, promoted by Greek scholars who had fled the impending Turkish annexation. Constantine contributed nothing to the study of antiquity, to contemporary literature, and to the humanistic environment. He was not a Renaissance prince.
Constantine’s activities extended over the administrations of his learned father and of his competent brother, John VII, who belonged to the environment of the Renaissance.’ Early on in his career, Constantine became closely associated with John VIII. He fully supported his elder brother when the latter clashed with their aged father; his policies as uncrowned emperor remained faithful to John’s policies.’ Constantine first came to prominence, when he served as his brother’s regent, a task that he had to undertake once more in later years. On both occasions, he proved a capable and loyal follower who performed adequately in the emperor’s absence.?
As lord and despot of the Morea, Constantine wore the soldier’s cloak, but his sword did not prove very sharp.'° His military “exploits” have been greatly exaggerated by his contemporaries and by modern scholarship. It took a moderate razzia by the Ottoman army of Sultan Murad II to wipe out Constantine’s famed “conquests.” Constantine proved incapable of mounting a serious defense against a Turkish naval expedition when he found himself under siege in the island of Lemnos and was compelled to summon the Venetians to his aid.'' Above all, he proved unable to save his capital from Mehmed II, the capable young sultan and brilliant strategist. Constantine’s military ambitions, especially his plans for the Morea, may have been colored by a certain degree of romanticism, since he had hoped to realize his dream of establishing a unified southern and central Greece. He had also hoped to turn the Morea into a haven for his subjects, impregnable to Turkish raids.
At that time courtiers had viewed him as the incarnation of Ares and, in the fashion of the period, the court’s intellectuals, humanists, lovers of Greek antiquity, and learned friends of the Palaeologan family had dubbed him a new Themistocles. Mistra, his capital in the Morea, was nostalgically compared to their idealized conception of classical Sparta and the Neo-Platonist philosopher of Mistra urged Constantine to become a new Lycurgus and resurrect the constitution of ancient Sparta, whose very ruins lay in the neighborhood. How much of this voluminous propaganda, wishful thinking, and escapism was taken seriously, or was even understood by Constantine and his average contemporaries is difficult to discern.
The praises and flattering comparisons at court had been composed in the deliberately archaic and convoluted prose favored by the era’s literati, which imitated the difficult linguistic idiom of the ancient Attic dialect and was far removed from the spoken language. While he remained in charge of the Morea, Constantine assumed the dimensions of a Messiah in the literature composed by various humanists close to him. His conquest of Patras and of the Latin fiefs in the Morea made a definite impression, as most of the peninsula came under Constantinopolitan rule. Yet his “unification” of southern Greece was deceptive and ephemeral. Before the ink of the accolades had dried, Constantine’s appanage fell apart. His plans remained a dream that never came to fruition.
A lone voice of protest found expression in a poem penned in the spoken language. Its author moved in circles that had no apparent contacts with the intellectuals in the despot’s court. And this poem was composed after Constantine’s death: its lines daringly spoke of an atrocity, a massacre, that may have been committed by Constantine’s troops but this voice in the wilderness spoke in the modern idiom and did not display the Atticism favored by the scholars.'*
Consequently, the intellectuals never took notice of it. Constantine, it may be concluded, was not a Hannibal. Constantine set objectives before him but was not a capable general and could not realize his goals through the military or through diplomatic means. He proved impotent. He neither established nor maintained a permanent control over his territorial gains. In the cold light of day, one may conclude, court sycophancy and wishful thinking produced a false image of Constantine, who was turned, pietatis causa, into an admirable general and a brilliant statesman after his demise, or in court propaganda while he was alive. Modern scholars have faithfully traced the footsteps of Constantine’s admirers and they too are responsible for maintaining the fiction of Constantine’s superior military skills. These are pious sentiments but do not reflect reality.
Constantine’s subsequent reign as emperor without a crown proved frustrating. The endless bickering among his courtiers undoubtedly hindered his efforts. His diplomatic campaign to secure western help for the defense of his capital failed, his appeals fell on deaf ears, and he was left to fend for himself.'? His quest for a bride who would bring financial aid from abroad did not come to a conclusion."* There was little that he could do to improve the ruined finances of his capital. He died owing a massive financial debt to Venice, his major ally.'*
There was internal unrest as well: his subjects were hopelessly divided along religious lines.'® In this chaotic situation, facing a powerful external threat, the emperor could not achieve much and, given the seriousness of the circumstances that he encountered, one wonders whether any emperor could have successfully survived such a challenge. Constantine failed to inspire and could not impose his will. In his eagerness to appease, he managed to anger all factions, friend and foe, in his capital, who saw in him an emperor without a crown, without a treasury, without will, without resolve, without élan, without religion, and without allies. Truly Constantine XI stood alone on the ramparts of his city on that fateful morning of May 29, 1453.
One doubts whether the circumstances of the Levant would have allowed anyone to do better. Had he been an incomparable diplomat, had he found himself at the head of an energetic administration, and had he faced a less determined foe, Constantine, even then, might not have been able to achieve more than Serbia’s George Brankovic, who managed to retain partial control over his territories by constantly appeasing the sultan.'’
If Constantine had matched George’s clever diplomacy, he might have gained some time for his unhappy city, at best. Eventually, the Turks would have absorbed Constantinople into their growing empire, precisely because the southeastern Balkans had been abandoned by Europe. The defeat of the crusaders at Varna and the subsequent disaster of Hunyadi’s campaign had sealed their fate. Constantinople became doomed and Balkan independence evaporated."*
The last emperor of medieval Greece has been generally viewed as a romantic figure that put up a fierce struggle against the odds and against an implacable, cruel adversary. Abandoned by the west and awaiting the aid that never reached him, Constantine assumed the dimensions of a tragic hero.
Aware of the bleakness of his situation, he valiantly refused to veer from the honorable path. Cast in the role of a sacrificial victim, Constantine was absolved of all blame and of incompetence and was thought to have been betrayed by his close associates. Indeed, charges of treachery and disloyalty surfaced after the drama had run its course. Various individuals, native Constantinopolitans and Italians, including members of the imperial administration, were thought to have betrayed Constantinople and her last guardian. Soon after the sack, Constantine’s grand duke, Loukas Notaras, was accused of playing both sides. Gradually this charge of duplicity transformed itself into an accusation of treason. What circumstances Notaras’ treason entailed, no one could say but the grand duke became the proverbial villain.’
2 The scholars
Posterity has been kind to Constantine. Some of his enemies expressed contempt and scorn for his policies and his religious views but others genuinely admired him and sought his canonization after his death, which, in their view, amounted to martyrdom, even though his policies had incurred the displeasure of both Orthodox and Catholics. His close friend and first “biographer,” George Sphrantzes, viewed him as a hero and piously sang his praises at every available opportunity. In the end, the hagiography produced by Constantine’s admirers prevailed and has influenced the judgment of later scholarship. Even Edward Gibbon found redeeming value for his “effeminate” Byzantine Greeks in the figure of their last monarch:” “The distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Caesars.” This is high praise and it comes from an unexpected quarter, from someone who had consistently displayed loathing and contempt for this theocratic state of the Middle Ages.
Echoing Gibbon, in 1883, E. A. Vlasto assigned qualities of a Homeric hero to Constantine.?! In 1892 C. Mijatovich saw him as a patriot who did his utmost to protect and defend his charge: “The Emperor Constantine, simple, kind, brave and straightforward, had gained the sympathy and admiration of all who had witnessed his wonderful patience, forbearance, and untiring devotion to the public interests.” Mijatovich™ supposes that “[t]he fate of the ancient Empire and of its last Emperor stirred the heart of the young conqueror [Mehmed II].” His concluding remarks praised Constantine: “The last Greek Emperor, the patriotic and brave Constantine [Palaeologus] Dragasses [Dragas].” E. Pears*
was also moved by Constantine’s sacrifice. According to his view,”* Constantinople had “served as a bulwark against the invasion of Europe by Asiatic hordes”; her one thousand years of service”® were “worthily represented in its last emperor.” Constantine, in Pears’ estimate,”’ “never wavered, never omitted any precaution to deserve victory, but fought heroically to the end and finally sacrificed his life for his people, his country and Christendom.” Pears concludes with the following memorable phrase adapted from an early medieval historian’s comment about a past emperor:** “His death was a fitting and honourable end of the Eastern Roman Empire.”
G. Schlumberger also painted Constantine XI in heroic colors, as a patriot who fell in the front ranks. He remarked that Constantine’s patriotism could have moved the most indifferent of observers.” S. Runciman echoed Pears’ tones and added more pathos to the figure of the last emperor, whom he described*’ as “the last Christian Emperor standing in the breach, abandoned by his Western allies, holding the infidel at bay till the numbers overpowered him and he died, with the Empire as his winding-sheet.” D. Stacton*!
invoked the same image and concluded:* “[a]s Theodora, the consort of Justinian, had said . . . the Empire would make an excellent winding sheet, and now, at last, it had.” A. E. Vacalopoulos* has argued that the last emperor was a capable, educated individual, and a visionary. Vacalopoulos’ Constantine is an enlightened monarch, who understood the importance of humanism and who endorsed, along with philosophers and lovers of antiquity, the values promoted by Hellenism, a term that had been carefully avoided by the pious Byzantines of the Middle Ages, as it evoked images of paganism. Under the last Palaeologi, Vacalopoulos argues, “Hellenism” was revived and acquired its modern significance:**
We can only conclude that the presence of Constantine Palaeologus in the capital, his commanding stature, his love of Greek culture, his constancy with regard to policies both pursued and projected, all conspired to bring about a change in attitude towards the use of the term Hellene, even to the extent that the leaders of the anti-Unionist party came generally to accept it.
This is a radical view and derives from Vacalopoulos’ more general theory that the Palaeologan coda belongs to the era of the Modern Greek nation and not to the Middle Ages, echoing Laonikos Khalkokondyles’ opinion that the Byzantines of the Middle Ages were Hellenes.** Moreover, Khalkokondyles pointed out the importance of the Greek language in the humanistic environment of his era and even predicted the resurgence of the Greek nation (without any reference to the legend of Constantine XI):°°
I have related these events in the Greek language because the Greek language can be found throughout the world and has been mixed with other [languages]; it currently enjoys great fame, which will be increased in the future, whenever a Greek king himself and his descendants establish a mighty kingdom, where the sons of the Greeks will assemble and establish a state, which would suit them the best . . . in accordance with their traditional customs.
Indeed, Khalkokondyles’ views represent the humanistic notions of the early Renaissance. Refugee academics from Constantinople tried to revive the ancient term “Hellene” and were proud of their ancient Greek heritage, which, throughout the Middle Ages, had been viewed with a measure of scorn, disapproval, and suspicion by the Orthodox Church.*’ They were delighted with the cultural environment of Italy, which favored the revival of ancient Greek literature. It should be emphasized, nevertheless, that humanists remained a minority in late Byzantium.** As their exodus to the west accelerated at the approach of the conquest, the intellectual revival of Hellenism came to a thunderous end in the Balkans and was only reawakened in the nineteenth century, when the Greeks realized the advantages of their ancient Hellenic heritage and its enormous appeal in the Philhellenic movements of Europe and North America.*”
D. M. Nicol, in his general study of the Palaeologan era, observes that during the last battle Constantine XI threw away his imperial insignia and died as a common soldier.“° In another monograph Nicol endorsed the image of the brave, tragic emperor and elaborated on his earlier remark:*! “He was killed fighting as a common soldier against the invincible might of an enemy who had, for a century and more, been steadily whittling away the measure of his inheritance.” Nicol repeated the same view in another book” and, alluding to Constantine’s financial problems, added: “The last Christian Emperor of Constantinople died at the walls of his city still owing 17,163 hyperpyra to Venice.” Nicol concludes his monograph on the life and legend of Constantine by repeating the fifteenth-century and sixteenth-century notion that Constantine XI had been an unhappy man:*® “He had prayed that he might be killed rather than live to see the consequences. He was fortunate only in that his last prayer was answered.” This last sentence comes as an anti-climax to Nicol’s slim study. Perhaps more is involved than an answer to a mere prayer that may or may not have been voiced.“ A more eloquent observation is found in Stacton:* “One cannot rise from eminence, and neither can one hide from it. It is better to die than be degraded.”
The standard general histories of Byzantium produce similar pictures. A. A. Vasiliev remarked:*° “Constantine made every possible effort adequately to meet his powerful adversary in the unequal struggle whose result, one may say, was foreordained” and praises Constantine’s heroism:*’ “The Emperor fought heroically as a simple soldier and fell in battle.” G. Ostrogorsky seconds Vasiliev’s sentiments and sees in Constantine an energetic individual, whose personal qualities surpassed those of numerous emperors of the Palaeologan dynasty:** “Neither the courage nor the statesmanlike energy of the last Emperor of Byzantium could save the Empire from certain destruction.” In addition, his Constantine XI is endowed” “with unquenchable resolution in battle,” which “set a magnificent example to his subjects.” A note of caution has been expressed by J. W. Barker, who realized the importance of equating the death of Constantine with the death of the medieval Greek state:°° “Constantine XI has won a certain fame. But the glory of the gallant death of the last Palaeologus in the final drama of 1453 has elevated him perhaps beyond the merit of his otherwise rather moderate abilities.” This is probably the most restrained observation to emerge from a sea of praises and of hagiographic lore. Nevertheless, Barker’s Constantine possesses redeeming qualities and his gallantry receives praise.*! C. Head, who reproduces the traditional picture of the heroic Constantine, was not aware of this lone note of caution.” Finally, A.-M. Talbot has judged him a pragmatist who “fought bravely” in the siege.*
The vast majority of scholars formed a favorable opinion of a gallant Constantine XI through the prism of his last tragic and heroic moments in life, but this view represents an assumption; no eyewitnesses survived the last stand to describe the emperor’s conduct in his final moments. By extension, it has been generally concluded that the earlier part of Constantine’s life must be a mirror image of his assumed heroic death. Yet, it may be objected, the last moments of one’s life, no matter how selfless and heroic, may not be an accurate guide in forming an overview of one’s earlier career. No detailed scholarly portrait of Constantine has been able to break free from the tyranny imposed on the record by the emperor’s ultimate sacrifice. Constantine’s life extended over four decades prior to this event and should not be compressed into one significant moment. The monumental siege and its heroic dimensions have attracted a great deal of scholarly attention and have colored, in various degrees, all examinations of his previous career to such an extent that the occasional “biographies” often amount to versions of the siege of 1453.4 Constantine’s earlier activities are reduced to the status of a footnote, a mere appendix to his sacrifice. The siege, fall, and sack are important, but their narratives have not been composed with the analytical perspective of a military historian who has taken into account genuine reports; often they include inauthentic details. Constantine’s life entailed a great deal more than his short tenure as an emperor and the siege of the Greek capital. His earlier experiences, his formative years under Manuel II, his cooperation with his brother John VIII as a regent, his control over the despotate of the Morea, and his various, doomed attempts to establish his authority in southern and central Greece have either been neglected or have been only summarily noted by scholars, who have allowed their judgment of Constantine to be colored by his fall and disappearance before the walls of Constantinople in 1453. Scholars have embraced the folk imagery prevalent from the latter part of the quattrocento to the regeneration of the Greek nation in the nineteenth century.
To cite the most recent example of this tendency, Nicol summarily and uncritically rushes through the early years of Constantine’s career. He allocates twenty printed pages to the historical background and only fourteen to him as the despot of the Morea.*° Constantine’s formative years are overlooked, while his roles as regent, despot, and warlord receive cursory treatment. The remaining ninety-two pages of Nicol’s monograph deal with Constantine’s reign in Constantinople, with his death, and with the inevitable host of alleged descendants. The bulk of Nicol’s study seems to have been inspired by Constantine’s heroic death, by his disappearance, and by the aftermath of the fall. The events prior to Constantine’s “enthronement” are mere background to the imperial gossip that seems to have attracted the attention of Nicol. By contrast, Vacalopoulos’ picture deserves more attention, as his portrait of Constantine has some serious implications: the last emperor is a forerunner and advocate of modern Hellenism.*” Vacalopoulos also treasures the heroic and compelling sacrifice of the last emperor; Constantine’s death (and mythical resurrection) laid the foundation of the Modern Greek state. Accordingly, the last emperor becomes the ethnarch and founding hero of contemporary Hellas. Like Theseus in the literature and art of ancient Athens, Vacalopoulos’ Constantine can do no wrong.
3 Aplaywright
A few words must be reserved for Nikos Kazantzakis, the giant of Modern Greek literature. Aware of the legend, to which he often alludes in his novels,** Kazantzakis made Constantine XI the protagonist” in Constantine Palaeologus, a play in the form of an ancient tragedy. In four acts, this work extends to one hundred printed pages. The emphasis is placed on the violent death of an era, on the plunge of a vibrant culture into insignificance, and on a divine promise for a future regeneration. The dramatis personae include, in addition to the martyr-emperor, Loukas Notaras, Anna Notaras (who in this play remains in Constantinople for the duration of the siege and becomes the lover of the Italian condottiere Giovanni Giustinian1, if only for a moment), Phrantzes [= Sphrantzes], various ecclesiastical personalities (including Cardinal Isidore and George Scholarius), and a mixed chorus of elders, monks, visionaries, and townspeople.
Kazantzakis turns the last emperor into a Christ-figure and a sacrificial victim.” The emperor assumes the sins of his people, who have scorned, betrayed, and cursed him.°! In Act II Constantine comments to Phrantzes [= Sphrantzes]:°
[also think about it tonight and pluck courage; with my own free will I took up the cross of our nation on my shoulders; I am being crucified and I am going to my death with my eyes wide open; I do fear lightning (after all, I am human and I feel pain), but again I shake myself and freely do I follow my fate.
Internal and external enemies surround him. Alone in his majesty, he is urged by one of his barons® to destroy “the snake” before him; Constantine responds:™ “Which snake? ... The people? .. . The noblemen? .. . The Turks? . . . Fate? Wherever I set foot, there is a snake!”
The play reaches its climax with the transformation of Constantine into the Sleeping Emperor who is conducted by angels and the Virgin to a chamber located deep into the bowels of the earth. Kazantzakis’ moving vision is narrated to the chorus by the mystical Orthodox TvpoBatne/Firewalker, who finds himself inspired, plenus deo, in a beatific trance. He appears to be a direct Christian descendant of the Delphic Pythia. Firewalker first recounts how the chamber for Constantine is being made ready:®
Do not hold me back! Let go! I see a cave; it is immense like Santa Sophia, opening below, deep into the foundations of our holy church. I hear an undying lullaby; thousands of mothers, you’d think, slowly rock their babies and put them to sleep in the dark bowels of the earth.
This spot, the emperor’s rocky chamber, Kazantzakis identifies with “the heart of Greece.” The playwright then reinforces the assimilation of Constantine to a Hellenic Christ by evoking an image of the pieta:®’ “She is holding Constantine in Her outstretched arms! That is how She supported Her Son from the cross!” The chorus now begins the lamentation, in imitation of the chants sung on Good Friday over the tomb of the dead Christ. The emperor, whom they had cursed while he was alive, in death/sleep becomes “the beloved emperor.”
Thus, Constantine is transformed into the personification of the sleeping nation:® “Why are you calling him, he cannot hear. By now he walks on the bank of the other world . . . Only his heart, like a living fountain, is still beating.” The abbot is divinely inspired and foretells the resurrection of Constantine and of Hellas. He first assimilates the “death” of Constantine to the earlier descents of Greece into the underworld and then adds that Persephone too returned to the upper world after her stay in Hades:” “Before us lies the greatest secret of Greece: one thousand times she descended to Hades and one thousand times she was resurrected.” The abbot concludes his vision with a millennial promise:”!
Resurrection always emanates from the soil of Greece; a time will come, as God’s wheel turns, and the celebrant will come back to the sunlight to finish the liturgy in the restored Santa Sophia. One spring, our emperor, who has been turned into stone, will rise from the sacred roots of the trees; with the Archangel’s sword in his hand, he will ascend, redolent of sacrificial thyme!
The play concludes with two lines from a folk song” that enjoyed immense popularity in the era of the Turkish domination and assisted in the promulgation of the legend, assuring generations of enslaved Greeks of the approaching salvation: “Be still, Madonna: no need for tears and lamentations; with the passage of the years, at the appropriate time, she [the city and/or the Church of Santa Sophia] will be ours again.”
This play may not be the best work that has come forth from the pen of Kazantzakis; his tragedies, in general, challenge neither director nor actor and are seldom staged nowadays. Yet he has managed to evoke the atmosphere of a fin de siécle and of a mystical experience promising delivery. This play is truly the last pious formulation of a powerful legend and of a potent myth that belongs to the literary environment of the nineteenth century.”
What of the real Constantine? History, in his case, has been contaminated by a legend that has transformed an average emperor into a millennial savior. This image of national resurrection, with Constantine at the head of an army of Greeks destined to vanquish an Oriental foe, has nourished generations. It is true that people often display short memories and easily forget numerous dramatic, abrupt, or even shocking events. Why then did this last stand make such an indelible impression upon the Greeks, to whom it continues to remain as vivid as it was in 1453? The impact of this brief incident in the three millennia of recorded Greek history can still be evidenced, as it is still stamped with deeply felt emotion.
Was it because this event amounted to the greatest Turkish victory, one that made the Ottoman sultan the lord of Constantinople, a city that had stood for over one thousand years as the Queen of all cities? This may not be so, as the conquest of 1453 was only a beginning and the Turks were destined to enjoy more dramatic triumphs in the years to come.
Was it perhaps because the human mind finds fascination with last stands in which one army and one leader are totally annihilated, like Leonidas at Thermopylae and George Armstrong Custer on the Last Stand Hill by the Little Big Horn? Was it because of the sharp contrast of Christian martyrs defending themselves against infidels, who wore colorful attire and carried exotic banners as in the tales of the Arabian Nights, when they deployed their terrifyingly monstrous cannons, the size of which had never been seen in Greek lands? Was it because of the disturbingly similar undertones of the primordial struggle between east and west, a conflict that had already been played out in antiquity with different results? Or was it because one side had been left, more or less, to fend for itself, with its leader assuming the dimensions of a tragic hero in a desperate, although doomed, effort to survive?
No matter what the answers are, for the Greeks under the Ottoman Turks, the last emperor of medieval Hellas refused to die. Sword in hand, he stands forever before the ancient fortification of Constantinople. Surrounded by hounds of Hell, he is awaiting an angel from Heaven to show him the way to his secret cave. There he will be turned into stone and will sleep until the time comes for the prophecy to be fulfilled, when Constantine XI will awaken, will receive his sword from the Archangel, and will rise to claim to his beloved city.
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