Download PDF | Liviu Pilat_ Ovidiu Cristea - The Ottoman threat and crusading on the eastern border of Christendom during the 15th century-BRILL 2017
347 Pages
Acknowledgements
This book is the result of a joint project within the framework of the research grant The Romanian Principalities as “Frontier Societies” and the Later Crusades (2011–2016) funded by the Romanian Ministry of Higher Education. The grant offered us the opportunity to continue our previous research concerning the later crusades, the history of the Black Sea, the Venetian presence in Eastern Mediterranean, and the Eastern border of Christianity in the fifteenth century. The aim was to publish several articles on these topics but, as our work progressed, it became evident that their conclusions should be developed and integrated into a wider perspective, hence the publication of this book.
Our purpose was to analyse the crusade and the Ottoman threat surpassing the general histories of the crusade in the fifteenth century and the traditional approach of the national historiographic schools. We were confronted with various difficult tasks such as the impressive bibliography written in various languages and the large amount of documents concerning the later crusades. Moreover, scholarship has addressed and interpreted issues of late crusading history in a contradictory manner, leaving many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, this study benefited enormously from the exceptional work of Hungarian, Polish and Romanian scholars (the order is an alphabetic one). We are also indebted to various institutions, professors, colleagues, and friends who offered us valuable support and suggestions during our work. Drafts of almost all chapters were previously presented over the last five years in various symposia, most of them organized by the “Stephen the Great” centre of research of Putna Monastery, created and developed by Professor Ștefan S. Gorovei. Research in the archives and libraries was made possible by the generous support of the Jagiellonian University (Krakow), the “New Europe College” (Bucharest) and of the Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica in Venice. We are enormously grateful to Professor Șerban Papacostea who encouraged us to continue the research and generously offered helpful suggestions on various topics.
Last but not least, we mention all those who were directly involved in the elaboration of the book. We have to pay a pious homage to Samuel Willcocks who started the translation of the Romanian text. We are grateful to Mária Pakucs-Willcocks who revised the book and to Gregory Leighton who made the final revision. We also send our gratitude to the blind reviewer for his expertise, thoughtful comments and helpful suggestions. Special thanks are due to Ioan-Augustin Guriță who read a first draft of the book and offered friendly support in the elaboration of the maps included in this volume. Our special gratitude goes to Professor Florin Curta (the editor of the series), who supported from the very beginning our project, and to Marcella Mulder (assistant editor at Brill). Iași & Bucharest May 2017.
Introduction
Our aim was to write an international political history focused on the CentralEastern-European context of the fifteenth century, based on two main ideas: the Ottoman threat and the Crusade. The first one has to do with the Ottoman conquest in Europe, often seen as an Islamic “holy war”, and the second concerns the Christendom’s “holy war”, including projects, negotiations and military actions. Our work focuses on the north-western Black Sea areas, where political interests were multiple and contradictory. The structure of the book highlights how the Ottoman expansion annihilated the Genoese-Venetian maritime hegemony and continued the Ottoman conquest of the northwestern Black Sea region, thus threatening Hungary and Poland. The Ottoman advance in the region generated actions and discussions concerning the need to defend the eastern border of Christendom, which our book focuses on, in the period spanning from the first Ottoman military actions to the peace of 1503.
This peace settlement in fact acknowledged the Ottoman domination in the northwestern Black Sea area and accepted the Ottoman Empire as a legitimate diplomatic partner. We felt that a chronological approach suited our aims better and prompted our choice in buiding our arguments. At the same time, we have tried to reconstruct the political realities of the fifteenth century, taking into account a multitude of political, economic and religious aspects and attitudes within a unitary approach. We are aware that the abundance of details and information may restrict the acces of the larger public to our book.
Any other approach or simplification, however, would have distorted historical realities of the late medieval Eastern-Central Europe. The Ottoman threat and the Crusade were mainly political themes, which Christian princes used and manipulated according to their interests, resulting on many occasions in a striking difference between political discourses and military actions. For this reason, the detailed presentation of the political context and the chronological structure are crucial in our view, as they emphasise that the interest for the Crusade and the Ottoman threat was not a constant one, but that it always depended on the political context. The Ottoman threat clearly was a historical reality but sometimes the rivalries between the Christian powers influenced the political discourse on the Ottoman threat and the need for a Crusade. Thus, such ambiguous situations arose when a Christian prince was, at the same time, a champion for the Crusade and in good relations with the sultan. Historians tend to approach the Crusade primarly from a Western perspective. This results in Central-Eastern Europe receiving certain general considerations, without any effort to understand the aims and strategies of the political actors in the region. However, as we have tried to suggest in the book, the historical realities within the areas of conflict with the Ottomans are dramatically different from other European regions.
Our book is dedicated first and foremost to Central and Eastern European history, with its particularities. Based on the information offered by a wide range of documentary and narrative sources, our aim was to reconstruct the complex political context of the fifteenth century crusading in Central and Eastern Europe and also to examine how events were interpreted by contemporaries.
The Sources
For the history of crusade in the fifteenth century, especially for Central and Eastern Europe, there are numerous and various diplomatic and narrative sources. At the end of the nineteenth century, V. A. Ulianicki edited a volume of documents related to the Ottoman expansion toward Eastern Europe.1 Nicolae Iorga had the idea of creating a collection dedicated exclusively to the fifteenth century crusades; he subsequently edited six volumes of documents from different European archives, mostly from Italy.2 Documents preserved by Italian archives were thoroughly investigated in the second half of the nineteenth century, during the rise of national historiographies in Central and Eastern Europe.
A large number of texts related to the relations between the Holy See and Hungary were published by A. Theiner.3 His work was completed by Vilmos Fraknói who published a volume dedicated to the correspondence between Matthias Corvinus and Sixtus IV.4 Recently, new documents discovered in the Vatican Archives were collected in a volume dedicated to studying Hungary’s status role as a bulwark of Christendom.5 For Poland, Irena Sulkowska-Kuras and Stanislaw Kuras have published a new collection of documents from the Vatican archives. The volume includes abstracts of previously published texts but also the full version of previously unknown documents.6 Important issues are included in volumes concerning councils,7 religious orders,8 and the Orthodox Church as well.9 Other documents regarding the politics of the Holy See in Central-Eastern Europe and the importance of this region for the crusading projects were included in general and special collections of primary sources.10 The Venetian archives hold a large number of documents, as Venice was involved in many negotiations related to the crusades and was the capital of news in the early modern period.
Thus, diplomatic reports, debates and decisions of the Venetian Senate were systematically published by historians starting with the nineteenth century. August Cieszkowski focused on documents about Poland,11 N. Iorga on Venice’s interests in the Black Sea,12 while Enrico Cornet published a volume on the Venetian relations with Persia.13 Together with already known sources, the present book focuses, in the chapter related to the Ottoman campaign in Moldavia, on a number of overlooked Venetian reports written in 1484 by the Venetian representatives in Constantinople, the bailo Pietro Bembo and the Venetian secretary Giovanni Dario.14 Dario’s reports were published in Italy by Giuseppe Calo,15 but his volume had, unfortunately, little impact. Pietro Bembo’s reports, published in 2004 in a Romanian collective volume,16 also passed unnoticed.
This oversight is partly set right in our work, as it shall become clear that these historical documents contain important data about the preliminaries, the preparations, and the consequences of the Ottoman expedition in 1484, a new insight into the balance of power in the Black Sea region at the end of the fifteenth century. Other Italian archives offer similarly important documents, such as those edited by V. Macuscev.17 L. T. Belgrano18 and Amedeo Vigna19 published documents related to the history of the Genoese colonies in the Black Sea, while G. Grasso was interested by the projects aimed, after 1476, to recover Crimea for its former masters.20 Important information about Ottoman and Christian military actions come also from the archives of Dubrovnik,21 Krakow,22 Lwow,23 Sibiu24 and Brașov.25 We have included in our research the decisions of the imperial diets,26 along with those of the Prussian Estates or of the Teutonic Order27 and also the special volumes containing documents related to a historical personality,28 or to a specifical aspect of chancellary activity.29 We should mention that many documents were published several times in different editions; in this book we chose to quote the edition that printed the full version of the texts. The narrative sources also vary in style and substance. We used chronicles, historical and rhetorical texts written in Latin and other vernacular Western languages,30 Slavonic-Romanian31 and Russian,32 along with Byzantine33 and Ottoman34 chronicles translated in modern languages.
One of the most significant for the purposes of this book is Jan Dlugosz’s work, a remarkable history of Central-Eastern Europe in the fifteenth century. Dlugosz was a very well informed historian, who seemed to have had a balanced view on the facts even in circumstances which were not favourable to his country and king. Many of his assertions, once considered mere speculations, were proven to be accurate. For the sake of uniformity, we quoted his chronicle according to the edition from 1711,35 but most of the fragments were confronted to the recent chronicle’s critical edition.36 The Venetian chronicles complete the picture of the fifteenth century as far as this book is concerned. Domenico Malipiero37 and Marino Sanudo’s annals38 recorded the news that arrived to Venice, and they are crucial sources for understanding how news, even false ore inaccurate ones, circulated in those times. Moreover, they represent a good indicator of the manner in which political realities from Central-Eastern Europe were received and known in Western Europe.
Ottoman Threat and Crusading
Scholarly literature dedicated to the Middle Ages gives a prominent place to crusade studies; this particular type of “Holy War” has remained a popular topic with medievalists after almost two centuries of systematic research. The high level of interest by scholars for the crusades, as well as the need for reinterpreting certain aspects of crusading history, were strongly influenced by the cultural and political ideas of the historical periods in which various scholars worked. The same episodes of crusading history have been seen successively as examples of a holy war for the defense of Christianity and European civilization, as a triumph against evil or, on the contrary, as the result of barbarism and religious intolerance and as a starting point in the history of colonialism.39
The Crusade seen as a modern phenomenon highlights the powerful impact crusading has had upon European thought and the fact that every new generation has interpreted the past from the perspective of the present, which in turn has projected the present into the past.40 Concurrently, the influences of the Zeitgeist generated scholarly debates and enforced the critical re-evaluation of the crusade at theoretical and conceptual levels,41 a fact which brought about a significant widening of this research field. The debate over the origins of the idea of crusading often emphasized social and economic factors42 but they nevertheless did not supersede the preeminence of the religious factor.43 Scholars argued that there was a profound paradigm shift, operated by the medieval Catholic Church whilst switching from a centuries-old negative view of bloodshed by Christians to the consecration of the use of weapons in the era of the crusades. Gradually the concept of a “Just War” laid a foundation for the further development of a new type of war, more specifically the “Holy War”.44
The study of the crusades involves, in addition to political and military aspects, an important ecclesiological dimension, which refers to the institutional role of the Catholic Church in theological debates and the evolution of canon law in the era.45 Later interpretations of the crusades often had an important propagandistic component,46 with both powerful implications for the construction of European identity47 as well as European ideologies.48 The different manner in which historians have approached the question of what makes a crusade distinguishable from other types of holy war has led to the identification of three categories of scholars, namely: the traditionalists, the pluralists, and the generalists. Naturally, many historians cannot be included in one group alone. Furthermore, in many situations, they avoided a strict conceptual affiliation, basing their analyses mainly on empiricism or on developing personal concepts, in turn influenced by the particularities of the region and of the period they studied.
For traditionalists, the crusade is strictly connected with the question of the Holy places. They consider that similar forms of holy war, such as the Spanish Reconquista and the effort to defend Europe against the Ottoman threat were exterior to the crusade phenomenon or, at most, corrupted forms of it. Pluralists regard the crusade as a unitary phenomenon, considering the Papacy’s role in initiating and supporting crusades as determinant. This perspective relies on Bernard of Clairvaux’s vision who, whilst preaching the Second Crusade, had highlighted repeatedly that any action against the enemies of the faith could be considered a crusade.49 Finally, the historians surnamed “generalists”50 embrace a critical position towards traditionalism and pluralism, insisting on the origins and evolution of the concept of holy war and its subsequent transformation into crusade, thus creating a theological doctrine. Generalist broadly define crusading as holy war, not necessary proclamed by the pope, because the crusaders believed they were fighting under the direct authority of God.51 From a chronological perspective, these controversies determined a differentiated approach to the crusades after the recovery of the Holy Land.
We argue that there was an alteration of the crusade ideal, a significant change in the approach to crusading strategy,52 followed by an “autumn of the crusade,”53 or the “later crusades,” which maintained the ideal of freeing the Holy Land but which also became an instrument of the papacy, to be used for other purposes.54 Crusading has recaptured the historians’ interest over the last fifty years, during which a substantial number of publications have been written on this topic. To a great extent this reawakened interest was sparked by the work of the pluralist school of Crusade historians, effectively launched by Jonathan RileySmith’s What where the Crusades? published in 1977. Riley-Smith’s many books and articles revolutionised the study of the crusades, demonstrating that the movement was not merely about the recovery of the Holy Land, but a far more complex phenomenon with a lasting presence in the history of Christian Europe. In the pluralist perspective, crusading ended in Northern Europe with the triumph of the Reformation, while in South-Eastern Europe it continued well into the sixteenth century.
A crusade, as historians of the pluralist school define it, was any war proclaimed and supported by the papacy, for which indulgences were granted, and privileges were published and preached. Even the critics of the pluralist position, who reproached the pluralists’ polemic aggressiveness, recognise the important role played by this historiographical direction, despite its limitations.55 The arguments presented in our book embrace the pluralist definition of the crusade, but they are nevertheless influenced by historical works which precede pluralism as well. Nicolae Iorga collected an impressive amount of primary sources concerning the fifteenth century conflicts that he saw as crusades.56 To Iorga’s position we might add the controversy between Aziz Suryal Atiya and Francisc Pall. Atiya considered the Nicopolis crusade to have been the last serious Christian attempt to banish the Ottomans from Europe and to reconquer Jerusalem.57 On the contrary, F. Pall argued that the idea of reconquering Jerusalem was still present in the fifteenth century crusades, but the main preoccupation was to defend Christendom against the Ottoman expansion; according to his view the crusade became associated with the defense of Europe.58
“The Balkan crusades”59 were also framed as attempts to save Byzantium from the Ottoman conquest. Moreover, historians such as Kenneth M. Setton60 and Norman Housley61 have dedicated important works to the later crusades and the Ottoman threat, but the subject is far from being exhausted. Norman Housley, for instance, coordinated a collective volume dedicated to crusading in the fifteenth century, which impresses with the multiple and various aspects brought into discussion.62 In another recent volume, dedicated to crusading and the Ottoman threat, Norman Housley highlighted the increased interest in medieval crusading in Central and Eastern European states as well, in the aftermath of the Cold War and collapse of the Communist regimes.63 We may add that in the past fifteen years, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, interest in the subject of crusading has increased significantly as part of a deeper interest in historic relations between the West and the Muslim world during the age of the “War on Terror,” which itself is seen in some quarters of the Muslim world as a type of modern crusade. In correlation with the increased appeal of medieval crusading, we are witnessing the production of a very high number of modern studies, and some of them offer a romanticized vision of the crusading that is quite remote from the fifteenth century realities.
Our intention is not to debate over this aspect, but to highlight the fact that the exclusive attention paid to the irreducible rivalry between Christianity and Islam and the ignorance of the political realities from the East European region may generate a completely misleading image. Beyond the ideal of defending the Christian faith, important political considerations were involved for those who participated in the medieval crusading movement. Embracing the crusading ethos could lead to political ascension and legitimation, but very often behind a ruler’s declarations or vows that he would fight to death against the enemies of Christendom laid various political interests that conflicted with crusading ideology. The best examples are John Hunyadi,64 and his son, Matthias Corvinus, who resorted to a skillful crusade rhetoric while their true intentions were quite different.65
This is why beyond the surviving correspondence with the Holy See, crusade bulls, crusade preaching and military actions, the political objectives and the rivalries between the Christian princes that underlaid such efforts are essential both for understanding the political realities of those times as well as the failure of the crusades. Our work highlights less known aspects of crusading efforts in Eastern Europe and the complex relation between crusading, as a common ideal and form of Christian solidarity, and the political interests of the participants, which often diverged. These considerations, collected in a unitary vision and systematised according to the fifteenth century criteria and not modern geopolitics, will definitely interest researchers concerned with the complexity of the crusading phenomenon and the political realities of Central and Eastern Europe. We put forward new considerations regarding the complexity of the frontiers of the Latin Christendom, seen from the perspective of the relations between Catholics and Eastern-Orthodox faithful. Representations of those frontiers and those relationships were manipulated for the purposes political propaganda. The crusade as a means of bringing about the solidarity of all Christians against a common enemy was an integral part of the Latin Christendom’s system of values, and there were many who believed in its validity. We must take into account that modern perspectives over the Ottoman expansion had changed dramatically during the last decades, evolving from the classical view of a confrontation between religions and civilizations, to an integration of Ottoman history as part of the European history.66
On the one hand, some historians have argued that the “Europenization” of the Ottoman political and social history, inspired by the tendency towards globalization in contemporary society, is a dangerous path which may lead to the falsification of history.67 On the other hand, integrating Ottoman history into European history can begin with the consideration of the Ottomans image in European culture68 and the growing interest displayed by Europeans in the origins and civilization of the Ottomans, albeit mixing apocalyptical traditions with historical events.69 Ottoman history suits many categories for the history of “the other”. According to the ghazi thesis, the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic empire, founded by warriors who were devoted to the cause of spreading Islam throughout the infidels’ territories. The Ottoman State was built upon the Holy War ideology (ghaza) and it raised by attracting Muslim warriors (ghazi) to conquer Christian territories. Founded at the borderlands between Islam and Christianity, the Ottoman Empire was a ghazi state whose perpetual task was Holy War against the Christians.70 On the other hand, criticism of the ghazi thesis insists upon different meanings of terms ghaza and ghazi during the Ottoman Empire history and the concept of ghaza underwent transformation in Ottoman thought.71 Heath Lowry argued that, during fourteenth and fifteenth century, both terms—ghaza/ghazi—had a nonreligious meaning, being synonymous with akin/akinci. Lowry differentiated between the secular ghaza of the frontier warriors and the religious ghaza of Ottoman intellectuals, because the akinci troops, emblematic for ghaza ideology, did not include Muslims exclusively. A great number of akingi were Christians and they fought for plunder, not in the name of Muslim faith.72 In other words, the Ottoman frontiers were not the frontiers of Islam, and they cannot be reduced only at a holy war of ghazi in the territories named “abode of war” (dar-ul-harb), to expand the “abode of Islam” (dar-ul-Islam) in the non-Muslim territories.
Of course, ghaza was a source of power and prestige in the Ottoman world, but the Ottoman Empire was nevertheless not an Orthodox Islamic state. The administration of the Ottoman realm was not based excusively on the Islamic law, but also on the law of the state and of its ruler. The Ottomans did not follow the politics of the permanent war imposed by ghaza. Furthermore, they granted rights to the non-Muslim population, they respected the existing customs and „agreements” and paid a lot more attention to their own political interests than to religious demands.73 It is evident to us that it will be wrong to approach the question of the Ottoman threat and of the crusade in terms of a brutal confrontation between the Muslim and Christian fervour. From such a perspective, the history of the crusade appears as a long succession of failures; the noble ideals being progressively abandoned on behalf of petty ambitions. In fact, the historical reality was far more complex and the fact that the Christian sovereigns followed their interests should not surprise us. Thus, despite recent critics concerning the “traditional” political history, the reconstruction, as complete as possible, of the political context provides the adequate framework for the interpretation of the late crusades and of the Ottoman threat. Hence, the same event could have been understood differently by the contemporaries and by historians. The battle of Belgrade (1456), for instance, represents a good example in this respect. According to Norman Housley, that battle was “the greatest crusading victory over the Turks in the fifteenth century”.74
Of course, the contemporary celebrations of victory and the events after the conquest of Belgrade by Ottomans in 1521 justify such a conclusion. Even if it was not a decisive military success, the Ottoman setback in 1456 put a stop to the sultan’s expansion in Central Europe for more than half a century. However, the Ottoman perspective upon the events was a different one. In 1457, when Mehmed II ordered a final assault on Belgrade, the frontier warriors of the Balkans protested. “If Belgrade is conquered”, they said, “we will have to plow the land”.75 Such a statement, included in a Ottoman chronicle, should not be taken at its face value; however, it reveals the divergent perspectives between the sultans and his subjects’ concerning the conquests in Christian Europe. Moreover, the defeat of Belgrade had no serious consequences for the Ottomans, as in a few years time the Empire resumed its expansion both in Asia and Europe.
The ideology of Islamic expansion through war against the “infidels” played an important role in legitimating the sultans’ dominion, but it was combined with a remarkable pragmatism stemming from the structure of the Ottoman political elite and the particular manner of making political decisions.76 The Ottomans knew how to appeal to local aristocracy and integrate it within the Ottoman military system. They also understood the rivalry between the Catholics and the Orthodox faithful, setting themselves up as protectors of the latter.77 Furthermore, the Ottoman military organization incorporated many Christian elements, just as Christians were used in the administrative structures of empire.78 It is also worth noting that in the fifteenth century, the most powerful enemies of the Ottomans were Muslim rulers, and the sympathy that Timur Lenk, or Uzun Hasan, allegedly had for the Christians was an illusion.79 Clearly, the pillaging, the destruction, and dramatic military confrontations between Ottomans and Christians were real and painful and cannot be ignored, but, at the same time, through different channels, the Christian and Ottoman rulers looked for a peaceful solution.
Frontier Societies and the Eastern Border of Christendom From a geographic viewpoint, the book focuses on Ottoman expansion in the northern Black Sea region, a secondary front from the perspective of the contemporary historiography, compared to the Central Europe one, but nevertheless equally important from the perspective of the fifteenth century. Described as a “plaque tournante” of international commerce at late Middle Ages,80 the Black Sea became attractive for European merchants after the conquest of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204.81 With the temporary removal of the Byzantine Empire’s authority, which encumbered access to the Asian markets, the Black Sea area evolved to become vital for Euro-Asian commerce, a fact which generated powerful political rivalries and military confrontations. The most prominent was the fight for hegemony between the Genoese and the Venetians, a long-lasting confrontation which ended only with the Ottoman domination in the Black Sea. However, the struggle for hegemony in the Black Sea area was complex and involved many Christian and Muslim powers.
Moreover, despite the religious differences, on various occasions the Christians allied with Muslims against Christians, and Muslims allied with Christians against Muslims. From the mid-thirteenth century onwards, the political expansion and the commercial exploration and exploitation of the Pontic area led to the advance of the Latin Christendom towards the east, even though it consisted in fact of a network of fortresses and commercial centres in a vast territory dominated by the Mongols. Alongside merchants, Franciscan and Dominican monks traveled long the trade routes all the way to central Asia in an impressive effort of evangelization enabled by the foundation of new ecclesiastical structures.82 Moreover, after the great Tartar invasion of the mid-thirteenth century, which produced serious damages at Christendom’s eastern border, the kingdoms of Hungary and Poland had resumed the offensive toward the east with the intention of taking control of the commercial land routes that connected northern and central Europe with the Italian colonies of the Black Sea.
Directly or indirectly, the crusade was linked to these economic and religious interests in the Black Sea, whether we consider the relations between Genoa and the duchy of Burgundy,83 or those of Venice with the Tartars and the khanate Ak koyunlu.84 Eventually, the installation of Ottoman political and economic hegemony in the Black Sea affected altogether the interests of Genoa, Venice, Poland and Hungary Given these conditions, the Eastern border of Christendom was a vast area of confrontations between divergent interests and not simply a military frontier between Christians and Muslims. The notion of frontier is not limited only to the military aspects, for it represents, same as the crusade and the Ottoman threat, the object of a conceptual re-evaluation. Recently, historians have paid more attention to “frontier societies,” a controversial concept grounded in Frederick Turner’s much-debated theory of frontiers. In his view, the frontier is not only a simple boundary between states; it is the focus of expansion that in turn leads to social transformation.85 In recent works, the “frontier” thesis has undergone significant revision and is now somewhat removed from Turner’s original concept. Even though historians continue to approach it as a militarised space,86 the frontier is also view as a zone of mediation and intense cultural and economic exchange.87 It has become clear that the task of defending Christendom led to the development of a “frontier ideology,” yet there is an important distinction between concept and reality.88
Examining the connections between Christendom’s frontier societies and crusading, Norman Housley noticed that these frontiers present a highly complex phenomenon which cannot be conceptualised in terms of a simple line of cleavage or clash of civilizations.89 The application of theoretical concepts about the frontier is not an easy one and divergent approaches appear even when scholars discuss the same historical reality. A volume of studies dedicated to the OttomanHabsburg frontier insists upon its military character and considers that the use of the concept of “frontier society”, in this case, leads to a historical construction which has less to do with the historical realities of those times.90 By contrast, a book dedicated to the same topic argues that, beyond its military importance, the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier was, from an economic and social perspective, an area of dynamic transition which ensured the encounter and interaction between different people and states.91 In referring to the Eastern border of Christendom, we do not mean a line between Christendom and Islam, analogous to a modern frontier, but a formula which was used in ecclesiastical and political rhetoric with an ideological rather than geographical meaning. The borders of Christendom were closely connected to the territorialisation of Western Christendom and to theories of papal rule in which the Roman Catholic Church was identified with the Respublica christiana, organised in a feudal hierarchy, with the Pope at its head as the source of imperial and royal power.92
Pagan or schismatic rulers were thus seen as illegitimate, and the Papacy supported the conquest and conversion of their lands. Regarding the Eastern border of Christendom, Poland and Hungary submitted to papal authority in return for protection and support in internal conflicts. In the thirteenth century, this submission was expressed by their agreement to allow the Teutonic Knights to settle in their lands under the direct authority of the Holy See, which afterwards proved inconvenient for both kingdoms. After the great Mongol invasion, the two kingdoms defended once more the eastern border, and the Papacy preached a crusade against the Mongols and the need to defend the borders of Christendom. In turn, the Papacy used their political ambitions to support missionary activity in the East and to counter-balance the growing influence of the Holy Roman Empire which was threatening its own authority. The ideology of defending Christendom was created by dressing up local political interests in Papal ideology, and the kings of the frontier realms used it to strengthen their own power and to claim a central place in the mental geography of Christendom.93
Hungary and Poland were both identified as the “bulwark of Christendom” against the Ottoman threat, yet only Hungary confronted directly the Ottoman expansion. The formula was not a strict expression of geopolitical reality but rather reflected the relationship between the pope and each kingdom, often used to remind the kings of their duty towards Christendom. The “gateway of Christendom,” similarly to the “bulwark of Christendom,” were seen at the time as zones of permanent conflict with the enemies of Christianity, so that other Christians had a duty to come to their aid.94 From the mid-thirteenth century, Hungary had adopted the status of the “gateway to Christendom,” with the process closely reflected in the conscious use of the frontier rhetoric to strengthen royal power.95 With the rise of the Ottoman Empire, Hungary shifted from being a “gateway to Christendom” to a “bastion of Christendom”, a key term for the “defensive” crusade which Hungary waged against the Ottoman Empire.96 The kingdom of Poland was similarly called antemurale Christianitatis starting from the fifteenth century, with the expression linked to its mission to defend Christendom’s Eastern frontier.97 Although the term was initially related to the double kingship of Władislas III, it was also used to refer to Poland alone in 1462, when Pope Pius II used the terms scutum, murus and antemurale for Poland as “honorific metaphors” with a clearly political purpose.
The Pope wanted Poland to join the coalition against the Ottomans98 but King Casimir IV was much more preoccupied with his own dynastic problems than with his realm’s role as bastion of Christendom.99 After 1444, Poland avoided any serious involvement in crusade projects, a decision which was somehow ambiguous. Since it claimed a position as antemurale Christianitatis, at least against the Tartars, Poland could not refuse Rome’s call to crusade, but at the same time took no part in the wars against the Ottomans.100 Moldavia too was considered as a “gate of Christendom.” Ruled by a GreekOrthodox prince, vassal to the king of Poland and tributary to the sultan, Moldavia represents a special case from the perspective of embracing crusading rhetoric and of the political game played by the Moldavian ruler amongst the divergent interests of the neighbouring states, including adhesion for the crusade and the military collaboration with the Ottomans.101 From Prince Stephen the Great’s viewpoint, Moldavia’s position as the “gate of Christendom” resided not only in crusading rhetoric but in a concrete plan to defend the fortresses of Kilia102 and Akkerman,103 whose conquest by the Ottomans would have jeopardised Moldavia, Hungary, Poland, and all of Christendom. In this case, the coincidence with the Ottoman political rhetoric indicates a military frontier, visible not only because of the permanent military confrontations, but because of the interest in controlling a certain strategic point.
According to the Serbian janissary’s chronicle, sultan Mehmed II was convinced of the fact that, as long as the Hungarians controlled Belgrade and the Moldavians Akkerman, Poland and Hungary would be protected, and the Ottoman expansion would fail.104 As the chronicle was written in late fifteenth century, after the Ottoman conquest of the two fortresses, it is debatable whether the chronicler managed to faithfully reproduce the sultan’s words, but in 1484 Bayezid II described the conquest of Kilia and Akkerman in the same terms. In the letters announcing the sultan’s victory, it is also mentioned that the Ottomans had a free path to Moldavia, Hungary, Poland and Russia and the “keys” of this region were in their hands. Simplifying, we may assert that, after the fall of Caffa, the fight from the eastern border of Christendom was reduced to the mere defense of Kilia and Akkerman. However, the situation in the region was complicated by the fluctuation of the political-military relations in northern Black Sea region and by the subordination of the Crimean Khanate to the Ottoman Porte.105
The latter event significantly increased the political and military pressure on Moldavia, thus limiting Stephen the Great’s room of manoeuvre. Beyond these considerations, our work tries to integrate the Ottoman threat into the complexity of the religious and cultural realities of the fifteenth century, underlining specific aspects of the polemic between Christians and Muslims, or between Catholics and Greek-Orthodox, attitudes and expressions of political and religious thought, without claiming to establish a causality between specific aspects of cultural history and political events. In other words, the circulation of a prophecy about the last emperor has an important connection with the crusade and the Ottoman threat, but the text should not be treated as the political program of a certain prince. Furthermore, the religious zeal and ecclesiastical rhetoric against the Ottomans are important for their content, but they cannot be seen as indicators of a widely-accepted stance on the Ottomans. Moreover, in some situations, such rhetoric was a simple figure of speech. Thus, it would be very interesting to discover, when the sources allow it, what lay beyond the political discourse and the true goals of the political actors. Such an approach avoids sterile and useless controversies, generated by some historians’ obsession for the “historical truth,” given the fact that because of the subjective nature of historical sources the researcher deals with a multifaceted historical reality. Naturally, that does not imply ignoring the controversies or asserting superiority of one interpretation over another.
Our goal is to offer a different image of the past, as close as possible to the one with which the people from the past viewed their world. The accurate reconstruction of historical events is of utmost significance but we should not ignore the rumors, the false news, the mystifications and generally all sources that distort reality.
Crusading, Information and Propaganda In this respect, our approach deals with the history of information and the history of communication, two research fields with great potential for reviving political history. History of information analyses the mechanisms of obtaining information, the costs of an information and its dissemination in a certain area.106 The history of communication derives from the history of information but it puts more emphasis on how news was exchanged, how a piece of information could be, according to circumstances, a diplomatic tool, a gift, or a weapon. Research on the topic has focused on the impact of news and propaganda on political actions.107 By “propaganda” we understand the attempt of political actors to impose certain perceptions about an event or political decision.
The two directions of research are tightly connected with the new orientations of political history, the information having an important role in political decision making, and communication representing a fundamental aspect of politics.108 After the invention of the printing press, “the wars of the pens” experienced an unprecedented evolution, with European monarchs being aware of the importance of legitimating their position in the eyes of their contemporaries by means of pamphlets and flyers. Whether information circulated orally, in writting, or in print, provoking favourable or unfavourable reactions which depended not only on the content, but also on the manner of presentation. Our book considers first and foremost claims about the Ottomans and the reactions that they provoked. This choice was prompted by the fact that the Ottoman threat and the crusade represented a constant issue for Christian monarchs, either a real threat or a theme of discourse, with numerous references to the Ottoman peril in medieval sources. The correct interpretation of this information is strongly connected to understanding its background: who were the people involved in collecting, disseminating, and using the information about the Turks, which are the paths on which the news about the Ottoman Empire reached destination, what was their price? The main source for information on the Ottomans was Venice, “the world capital” of the news in medieval Europe. The manner in which the Republic of San Marco managed to create and make functional a network for gathering and disseminating news can help us understand better the problems that the fifteenth century people encountered whilst handling information.
Using its economic resources and political network, Venice placed itself amidst the anti-Ottoman fight, but at the same time was suspected of secret agreements with the Ottomans. Thus, the tense Hungarian-Venetian relationship were, more than once, enhanced by the launch of mischievous rumors aimed at discrediting the opponent. Pietro Dolfin’s chronicle reminds one of “the infamies” spread throughout Europe by King Sigismund of Luxembourg, according to which the Venetians tried to prevent efforts to resolve the Great Schism from the Western Church and, moreover, they helped Ottomans against Christians.109 Sixty years later, another king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus launched similar accusations through his emissaries from the Nürnberg Diet (21 December 1479): Venice was guilty of concluding a shameful peace with the sultan to whom it promised to open its ports, to offer safe conduct on dry land and on sea, and to give help against other Christian powers.110 Clearly, the Ottoman Empire was not a passive actor in this war of news, and knew how to manipulate information sent to the worlds.
The manner in which the Ottomans shaped information regarding King Jan Olbracht’s campaign in Moldavia tells us less about the Moldavian-Polish war from 1497 and more about the image that the Ottomans were trying to create in the West and especially in Venice about the power of their own empire. Paradoxically, for projecting this powerful image, the Turks used elements of the Polish rhetoric, primarily the idea of a crusade launched by Jan Olbracht as purpose for the expedition from 1497. Nevertheless, while the Polish king used the crusade project to disguise his intentions to attack Moldavia, the Ottomans continued throughout 1497 to cast news according to which they were under serious threat. The aim of such a manoeuvre was to uncover Venice’s intentions and distract the Venetians from the sultan’s preparations for war.
In order to reconstruct such events our book deals with communication and the manipulation of information. This might throw an unadvised reader off track, or it might give the impression that it relativises the crucial importance of some events, distorting the pious images of certain historical figures as pictured in national historiographies against the anti-Ottoman fight. We assure our readers of our intention to grasp, as best possible, the realities from the late Middle Ages, a period of which our understanding changes more and more thanks to recent studies that differ from the romantic knightly spirit attributed to it by historians in the nineteenth century.
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