Download PDF | Steven Runciman - Fall of Constantinople-Cambridge University Press (1965).
275 Pages
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In the days when historians were simple folk the Fall of Con- stantinople, 1453, was held to mark the close of the Middle Ages. Nowadays we know too well that the stream of history flows on relentlessly and there is never a barrier across it. There is no point at which we can say that the medieval world changed itself into the modern world. Long before 1453 the movement that is called the Renaissance was under way in Italy and the Mediterranean world. Long after 1453 medieval ideas lasted on in the north. It was before 1453 that pioneers had begun to explore the ocean routes that were to alter the whole economy of the world; but it was several decades after 1453 before these routes were opened up and before their effect could be felt in Europe.
The decline and fall of Byzantium and the triumph of the Ottoman Turks had their effect on these changes; but the effect was not due solely to the events of one year. Byzantine learning played its part in the Renaissance; but already for more than half a century before 1453 Byzantine scholars had left the poverty and uncertainty of their homeland to seek comfortable professorial Chairs in Italy, and the Greek scholars that followed them after 1453 came for the most part not as refugees from a new infidel rule but as students from islands where Venice still was in control.
Already for many years the growth of Ottoman power had caused some embarrassment to the merchant cities of Italy, but it did not kill their trade, except in so far as it blocked the routes to the Black Sea. The Ottoman conquest of Egypt was more disastrous to Venice than the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople; and if Genoa was severely struck by the Sultan's control of the Straits, it was her precarious position in Italy rather than the loss of foreign commerce that was her downfall. Even in the wide political field the fall of Constantinople altered very little.
The Turks had already arrived on the banks of the are invaluable; and amongst younger Turkish scholars mention must be made of Professor Inalcik, Father Gill's important work on the Council of Florence and its aftermath has been of the greatest use to me. I discuss briefly the principal sources for the story in an appendix. Not all of them are easily obtained. The Christian sources were collected together by the late Professor Dethier in two volumes, XXI and XXII, parts 1 and 2, of the Monumenta Hungariae Historica, some eighty years ago, but though the volumes were printed they were never published, apparently owing to the num- ber of errors that they contained. Not many of the Moslem sources are readily accessible, particularly for anyone who can only read Ottoman Authors slowly and painfully. I hope that I have been able to extract the essence from them.
This book could never have been written but for the existence of the London Library; and I would like to express my gratitude to the Staff of the Reading Room of the British Museum for their patient help. I should like also to thank Mr S. J. Papastavrou for his help with the proofs, and the Syndics and staff of the Cambridge University Press for their unfailing forbearance and kindness. Note on the transliteration of names I cannot claim to any consistency in my transliteration of names from Greek or Turkish. For Greek names I have used whatever seems to me to be the familiar and natural form. For Turkish names I have used a simple phonetic spelling, except when I am citing words in modern Turkish, for which I use modern Turkish spelling. I have called the Conquering Sultan by his Turkish name of Mehmet, not Mahomet or Mohammed. I hope that my Turkish friends will forgive me for calling the city about which I write 'Constantinople' and not 'Istanbul'. It would have been pedantic to do otherwise.
STEVEN RUNCIMAN
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