Download PDF | Nancy Bisaha - Creating East and West_ Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks, University of Pennsylvania Press 2004.
320 Pages
Introduction
IN THE SPRINGOF 1453 MEHMED II, the clever and ambitious young sultan of the Ottoman Empire, was laying siege to Constantinople, the stillformidable capital of the waning Byzantine Empire. Despite some help from Western European fighters primarily from Venice and Genoa, the Greeks were heavily outnumbered: approximately seven thousand fighting men within the city faced an army of eighty thousand camped without and armed with powerful cannons. Despite the city's redoubtable three sets of land walls and seaward walls, the courageous leadership of its emperor, and the military expertise of its soldiers and sailors, Constantinople could not resist Mehmed's overwhelming assault power. Mter an intense, yet brief siege the city fell to the Ottomans on 29 May and was brutally sacked.'
In keeping with Islamic tradition, a three-day pillage was granted to the soldiers. Hundreds of citizens and soldiers managed to escape by ship, but most of the population were enslaved and their houses and churches looted." Approximately four thousand inhabitants were killed in the siege; countless women and boys were raped. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus Dragases, died while attempting to defend the walls of his city, dramatically hurling himself into the fray rather than fleeing, according to several accounts. (Mehmed reportedly had his head stuffed and sent around to Muslim courts to regale them with his victory.) A few hours after the city was taken, Mehmed entered in triumph. In only seven weeks the twenty-one-year-old sultan had accomplished a feat that had eluded numerous commanders before him. Given its strategic and symbolic import, the city became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Western powers slowly mustering relief forces, secure in the belief that the city could withstand a siege of several months, were stunned by the news. The broader populace, particularly in Italy, was equally horrified; Roman citizens were so shocked that they refused to believe the news at first." Accounts circulating in the West fed popular anxiety by depicting the sack as one of the bloodiest and most inhumane acts of history.
The Venetian Senate, for example, exaggerated tales of casualties by reporting that all inhabitants over the age of six had been slaughtered. Numerous laments were penned in Latin and the vernacular alike, and rumors abounded that Mehmed would not be content with the prize of the "new Rome" and would soon attempt to conquer the old Rome." Humanists as a group responded to news of the sack with great emotion. Calling the Turks "the most inhuman barbarians [immanes barbariJ and the most savage enemies of the faith," Cardinal Bessarion exclaimed, "Men have been butchered like cattle, women abducted, virgins ravished, and children snatched from the arms of their parents. If any survived so great a slaughter, they have been enslaved in chains so that they might be ransomed for a price, or subjected to every kind of torture, or reduced to the most humiliating servitude.?"
In addition to the loss of life, humanists lamented the desecration of churches and the irreparable damage to famous buildings and libraries. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) labeled the fall of Constantinople a "second death for Homer and a second destruction of Plato."> Hence, in the midst of a golden age of learning and the arts, Renaissance Europeans battled fears that a hostile, Islamic enemy to the East could at any moment destroy their world and hurl them back to the "dark ages." The events and rhetoric surrounding II September 2001 serve as a grim reminder of just how powerful the perceived opposition between East and West continues to be-both for the Muslim extremists who planned the attacks and for the American and European politicians who responded with broad insinuations about the savagery of the Muslim East. Before this date, intellectuals had an open forum to argue leisurely about whether stark divisions of any kind mirror cultural realities, man-made and simplistic as they are? Recent events, however, have revealed how easily such reductive rhetoric is resurrected, be it the West as the Great Satan or evil crusader, the East as the intolerant and cunning foe, or the "clash of civilizations.t " The broad appeal of such biting sophistry is part and parcel of deeply rooted cultural constructs.
The myth of East and West as polar opposites was introduced over two thousand years ago by the Greeks and adapted by the Romans." From about the eleventh century on, Europeans used the terms "Christian" and "Infidel" to articulate this renewed sense of cultural division.'? By the modern colonial period Western European powers had come to view themselves as superior to Eastern peoples both militarily and culturally. Today, of course, the question of East and West is receiving renewed attention. All of the aforementioned periods have been carefully studied in terms of Western cultural perceptions of the East, but the period that in many ways links them all, the Renaissance, has suffered severe neglect. Later Renaissance attitudes toward other cultures have been explored in some detail, but few scholars think of the early Renaissance as a formative moment in cultural perceptions of any kind. Perhaps the fifteenth century has been neglected because it was not an era of aggressive European conquests and contacts.
On the contrary, Europeans-particularly Italians and Eastern Europeans-were on the defensive against a powerful enemy from the East. Between their rise in the late thirteenth century and their first attempt to capture Vienna (1529 ), the Ottoman Turks became masters of Anatolia, several islands in the Mediterranean, and a large portion of southeastern Europe, including the Byzantine Empire, the Balkan region, and the area around the Black Sea and the Danube. 11 Not until the seventeenth century did Europeans begin to believe that the ominous Turkish threat was slowing down. Western Europe's response to the Ottoman Empire was complex and multifaceted, ranging from warfare and espionage, to diplomacy and trade, to religious, literary, and intellectual approaches. Some of these topics, particularly military and political efforts, have been studied in depth.'> Recentlya few scholars have examined commercial and artistic exchange between the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe.I" Attention has also been devoted to the ways in which religious thinkers approached the 'Iurks.!" But one area of Western reactions to the Ottoman advance has received little scholarly attention until recent years: intellectual responses, particularly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." This long period of neglect is striking given the many works Italian humanists composed on this subject.
From the late fourteenth century to the early sixteenth century a large group of Italian humanists addressed the Turkish problem and the question of crusade. They composed letters and orations to princes and prelates calling for crusade, histories of the Turks and the Crusades, epic poetry, ethnographic and religious studies of the Turks, laments on areas lost to the Turks, and even tracts on converting the Turks to Christianity. The number of these works is impressive in and of itself. 16 Their content, however, makes them hard to categorize. Why so many humanists should write on a topic that was neither classical nor Western is a question that has puzzled scholars or, more often, led them to reject these texts as unrepresentative of "typical" humanist subjects.!" The supposed anomaly of these texts has also led to questions regarding the sincerity of the humanists who penned them; one scholar opined that humanists regarded crusade as nothing more than "a golden opportunity for rhetorical exercises. "18 More pointedly, another scholar dismissed these humanist works as silly, degrading, and venal.!? Such views might persuade if humanists only touched on the Turkish advance, but they do not explain why prominent humanists devoted much time and energy to the crusade cause."? Nor do these assumptions jibe with the large number of manuscripts and crusade treatises that were disseminated throughout Europe-evidence that strongly suggests humanists were discussing and publicizing a timely and serious issue that drew a sizable readership."
These texts were widely read because they spoke to central issues in Italian culture and humanism. Humanists wrote against the backdrop of a long history of Italian involvement in the eastern Mediterranean as well as a rich tradition of Italian and European support for crusading. On a very basic level, their texts are worth further study for the palpable fear of invasion that they convey-an attitude that brings human dimension to the battles and negotiations that were being conducted by rulers, diplomats, and merchants at this time. More important, these texts were hardly peripheral to humanism, nor were they, as one scholar has argued, mere footnotes to an established medieval tradition;" The rise of new intellectual currents in the early Renaissance, namely a return to classical texts, rhetoric, and ideas, enabled humanists to complicate and innovatively shape contemporary attitudes on countless issues, including the Turks. This study will show how humanists revolutionized Western views of Islam, transforming an old enemy of the faith into a political and cultural threat to their growing sense of "Europe."
Fortunately, the trend of indifference or disdain toward humanist writings on the Ottoman Turks is beginning to wane due to the work of a handful of scholars in the last few decades-much of which has been indispensable to the present study. In his monograph on Benedetto Accolti, Robert Black drew attention to the vast number of texts written by other humanists on the Turks and crusade, providing extensive bibliography on both primary and secondary texts.i" More recently James Hankins published an article on humanists and crusade c. 1451-81, which includes an appendix of a dozen texts of this genre edited by him.:"
This article is a valuable introduction both to key humanist thinkers and to certain thematic strains in this area of humanist thought. Agostino Pertusi, Francesco Tateo, Ludwig Schmiigge, Michael J. Heath, John Monfasani, Margaret Meserve, and others have contributed substantially to the study of humanist literature on the Turks through editions of primary sources, monographs, and articles." Finally, several studies on crusading, perceptions of the East, or humanism contain helpful discussions of humanists writing in this genre. 26 The present study, in contrast to previous ones, includes close readings and extended analyses of a large sampling of humanist compositions on the Ottoman Turks. The writings of about thirty humanists are examined closely and located within their various historical, intellectual, and cross-cultural contexts. Though rarely applied to these texts, cross-cultural theory is useful in that it places Renaissance thought on the East firmly within the history of Western perceptions of other societies." As such, a clearer picture emerges of the ways in which humanists drew on medieval and ancient traditions or broke free of their models and ultimately influenced later generations. Finally, on a more limited scale, cross-cultural theory provides new ways of reading humanist texts within their own historical context.
Edward Said remains one of the most important thinkers on the intersection of cross-cultural and intellectual history. While aspects of his approach have been criticized, his vision of a Western discourse of the East as a deliberately constructed exaggeration or fiction of otherness and cultural inferiority has influenced scholarship in a variety of fields." As Said explains, this sense of the East as a foil to the West constrains and limits scholarly approaches to Muslim societies; all inquiries about the East founded on the Self/Other dichotomy are bound to return to stereotypes, or a "discourse" of superiority versus infcriority.> Renaissance humanists, however, present some important challenges to Said's model. Where Said focuses on colonialism as a key component in the formation of the WestEast discourse, the bulk of humanist rhetoric on the Turks and Islam shows a highly developed sense of Europe as the cultural superior to the East-precisely at a time when Europe was fighting for its survival." Perhaps the clearest example of this can be seen in humanists' frequent designation of the Turks as "barbarians" who tore down the achievements of civilization."! A second problem in applying Said's model is that, just as it fails to address more open-minded views of a large number of orientalists, it does not help explain expressions of relativism among a handful of humanists.F This study, then, presents not one monolithic humanist discourse but two or three discourses, each significant and influential in its own way.
Cross-cultural studies on other parts of the world by Stephen Greenblatt, among others, have also provided useful ways in which to frame humanist texts on the Turks and Islam. Greenblatt's literary critical approach to the Age of Discovery resonates with humanist rhetoric in his discussion of "engaged representations" that rely more heavily on the imagination of the writer and his cultural and historical context than on any detached, scientific observations.> This imaginative approach to other cultures helps explain how many humanists could write with such confidence on the Turks when relatively few of them had firsthand experience of the Ottomans and their empire, apart from what they gleaned from ancient and medieval texts and contemporary reports." In addressing the issue of cultural distance and perceptions, comparative historical studies, such as John Dower's War without Mercy,have also proved useful. Dower sheds light on the demonization of enemies and the malleability of cultural perceptions between America and Japan during World War II. Just as the Japanese were alternately demonized or portrayed as harmless monkeys, depending on the level of threat they posed, so too did humanists depict the Turks as inhuman savages or simple primitives;" Of course, cross-cultural theory alone cannot fully illuminate humanist rhetoric on the Turks and Islam.
The discourse of "otherness" becomes a vague notion without more tangible reference points, specifically the intellectual world that humanists inhabited. Hence this study seeks to create a dialogue between cross-cultural theory and intellectual history by focusing on the language and context of the pieces under consideration. Such an approach reveals the subtleties of humanist concepts of cultural and religious alterity, but even more important, it reveals the Renaissance as a crucial moment of cultural self-definition: in responding to the Turkish outsider, humanists simultaneously crafted a compelling notion of Western society. As Denys Hay has argued, the Ottoman advance set the stage for the modern creation of European civilization-an idea based in part on ancient sources and in part on modern political and religious concerns.:" Understanding the route by which humanists arrived at this point, however, requires a closer look at humanism itself. The modern word "humanism," according to Paul Oskar Kristcllcr, derives from the studia humanitatis, which represented a group of scholarly disciplines already well defined by the mid-fifteenth century. These included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy; all of these studies revolved around the careful reading and interpretation of ancient Roman and Greek texts." It was this emphasis on ancient authori-ties that distinguished humanism from other studies. Classical concepts became sounding boards for humanist thought on topics ranging from political thought and history to social issues, ethics, and theology. When it came to applying these skills, some humanists preferred the contemplative life, but most sought out career opportunities in secular or ecclesiastical chanceries or in teaching.
They served as chancellors (high-profile letter and speech writers), ambassadors and orators, as well as humble notaries and copyists. As teachers, some occupied prestigious chairs of rhetoric, poetry, or philosophy in state-sponsored universities and studi; others were employed as tutors for individuals and families.?" Hence, training in classical rhetoric and literature as well as the ability to inspire and persuade through rhetoric allowed most humanists to lead active lives and often provided opportunities to address audiences of considerable size or influence. From delivered speeches to written works such as poems, letters, or orations, the majority of humanists addressed in this study composed what is known as primary rhetoric: works with a civic function, designed to be broadly disserninated.v' While the activities of humanists are easily defined, there is some debate on the significance of humanism and its role in Renaissance culture. Humanist texts on the Turks may be seen as representative of that debate. Scholars have argued at length over whether humanism represents a break with medieval culture or indeed sprang organically out of it;41whether it was more secular or more religious in naturer'? and whether it encouraged individuality and a creative approach to the classics or a dry, formulaic parroting of the same works, written to appease the elite who controlled the message and paid humanists' salaries." Some texts on the Turks demonstrate a strong attachment to the medieval past, almost all of them address religious concerns in some way, and many of them indeed reflect the goals of the powerful men who commissioned these works.
Still, the bulk of humanist literature on the Turks more consistently reflects the opposite tendencies. A strong preference for classical models and concepts characterizes most humanist treatments of the Turks, Islam, and crusade. This radical departure from previous writings on Europe's confrontation with Islam inspired a more secular outlook vis-a-vis the Turks. By engaging pre-Christian concepts of foreign cultures and adversaries, humanists were able to see the Turks as more than just "enemies of the faith." Without discarding expressions of religious superiority and concern for the faith, humanists began to address new topics such as the Turks' record on learning, the arts, civility, and government. The Turks could now be considered in lay cultural and political contexts alternately as members of a backward, barbaric society or as a virtuous, austere culture: as a foreign menace, or as worthy and capable adversaries, or even as potential allies.?"
This secular outlook, then, gave rise to two opposite approaches: Eurocentrism and, conversely, cultural tolerance. It may even be argued that one branch of humanist rhetoric on the Turks acted as a precursor for intellectual justifications of colonialism;" These two poles of perceiving the Turks (and increasingly all Muslims) through the secular lens show how humanist views of the Turks acted as a bridge between medieval and modern attitudes toward the East and Islam. They also helped shape new constructs of the "Western Self." How exactly did an interest in the classical past bring about such a dramatic shift? As Kenneth Gouwens argues, Renaissance humanists cultivated an active relationship with the ancient world; for many this was a moving and transformative experience. Using the tools of cognitive psychology, Gouwens views humanist engagement in classical texts not simply as study or mindless imitation but as a reciprocal relationship, a cultural context, a state of mind, and a shared discursive field among fellow scholars.:" This theory helps answer two important questions regarding humanism and the Turks. Their unique "cultural context" helped humanists create an original vision of the Turks and Islam-a vision that was very much their own and not that of the ruling elite whom they served.:" It also helps explain the emergence of a common discourse or "shared discursive field" on the Turks.
Humanists' common educational and cultural context, nourished by their tendency to form intellectual circles comprised of friends, teachers, pupils, and professional associates, provided fertile ground for shared ideas and language." The unique historical circumstances of the Ottoman advance were also important. Humanists were responding to a very real threat; they actively created a timely discourse instead of passively participating in a preexisting one."? Hence, instead of viewing common humanist rhetoric as repetitive or insincere, we should view the phenomenon as the joint creation of a powerful dialogue that involved a large group of scholars across Italy, and later Europe, in the act of speaking and writing about the Turks and Islam in similar, yet meaningful terms. 50 Owing to the amount of humanist literature on the Turks, I have found it necessary to limit my inquiry both chronologically and geographically. The fifteenth century is the main focus as this period witnessed the first real surge of concern over the Turkish advance among Europeans in general and humanists in particular. To set the scene, I examine a few earlier humanists' texts as well as examples of medieval and early Renaissance crusade rhetoric and religious polemic. To assess the consequences and legacy offifteenth-century attitudes, a brieflook at some early modern thinkers is presented in the epilogue. In terms of geographical limits, Italy is the main focus because this is where most early humanist thought on the Turks was generated. In addition to Italian humanists, though, Byzantines such as Cardinal Bessarion and George of Trebizond appear, as do the northerners Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, and the Spaniard John of Segovia. This study is divided into four areas or themes and thus into as many chapters, plus an epilogue. I should stress that humanists moved back and forth between these categories, often in the same work.
The purpose in dividing them here is to facilitate an understanding of both a dauntingly large body of literature and the unique attributes of each genre, not to imply that humanists perceived them as hard and fast divisions. Chapter I acts as a fitting opening by exploring medieval influences on humanist thought regarding the Turks, particularly crusade and chivalric literature. It demonstrates the sense of continuity humanists felt with medieval traditions as well as the ways in which they experimented with these models. In Chapter 2 I come to the heart of my argument: the influence of ancient Greek and Roman literature and thought on humanist attitudes toward the Turks. Here I explore the ways in which humanists, with the aid of classical thought, departed from medieval rhetoric and began to formulate a more recognizably modern and secular discourse of the Turks and Muslim cultures in general. Chapter 3 is devoted to the influence of Byzantium as well as Greek scholars and refugees who settled in Italy. Issues explored here include Greek views of the Turks and the loss of Greece, Greek and Italian perceptions of the modern Greeks as heirs to ancient Greece, and the complexity and ambivalence of humanist attitudes toward the modern Greeks. Chapter 4 is devoted to religious approaches to the Turkish threat inspired by Christian thought and/or anti -Islamic polemic. These include both traditional and more-creative polemics against Islam, works inspired by prophecy, and calls to convert the Turks or simply to make peace with them. This chapter will show how certain humanists continued to view the Turks as a religious problem, and how some frequently blurred the distinctions between the Turks and Muslims from other cultures. The final section is an epilogue that traces the humanists' impact on later generations of writers. My goal, then, is to open the conversation and debate on an overlooked set of works that challenge views of not only Renaissance humanism and culture but also the history of cross-cultural perceptions. Humanist reactions to the Ottoman Turks are a legacy of the Renaissance no less important than the dignity of man, republican thought, and threepoint perspective in painting. Scholars have been attentive to bleaker aspects of Renaissance attitudes, such as the position and treatment of women, religious minorities, and the poor. This study aims to show how the enlightened humanists, who in many ways broke free of the confines of medieval perceptions of other cultures, created a darker heritage to replace it. It will also show how some humanists did in fact embrace the more peaceful, relativistic aspects of the humanist tradition, echoing Herodotus.
Humanists drew on earlier examples, both ancient and medieval, both positive and negative, but they created something very new and influential that would affect Western thought for centuries to come. Humanists' in short, added dimension and depth to preexisting cross-cultural and religious perceptions and rhetoric, shaping them for use in a modern context with resonance from Petrarch's world to our own. Just as they defined "Western civilization" in terms still used today, they shaped Western perceptions of other cultures. I would like to clarify what this study is not attempting to imply. My focus on negative views of the Turks should not suggest that cultural chauvinism is the unique province of the West. Muslims too were guilty of cultural and religious biases in their dealings with Christians. The practice of dhimmitude, often portrayed romantically as proof of Muslim tolerance, was a repressive system whereby Jews and Christians were protected but treated unequally in many ways. 51 Cultural perceptions were no better than legal and political practice. A similar discourse of otherness and cultural/religious superiority had long existed in the Muslim East. During and even after the crusading period Muslim writers dismissively labeled Westerners from all over Europe as the "Franj," or the Franks, using harsh stereotypes to describe them.P Also, while Westerners wrote often about the world of Islam-regardless of accuracy-Muslims exhibited slight interest in the West, confident that it had little of value to offer. 53
While the Ottoman Empire made greater efforts to deal with Western governments, their cultural attitudes have been depicted as more cosmopolitan and enlightened than the sources can prove.r' Today, of course, the demoniza- tion of the West by radical Muslim clerics and their followers is a problem that even the most liberal of postmodern thinkers can no longer portray as innocuous. These are undeniably important issues, but they take us well beyond the parameters of this study. My focus on Western attitudes and their tendency toward chauvinism and hostility, then, should not be read as an implication that more open-minded attitudes prevailed in the Muslim world or that reductive, hostile attitudes are excusable on either side of the debate. It is my hope that this study will be read in tandem with others viewing the issue from the East looking West so that this complex, two-sided problem will be examined in its entirety.
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