Saving Byzantium

Did Constantinople’s fall in 1453 end the Byzantine Empire as neatly as we think? Dr. Eleanor Janega and Dr. Laura Bolick unpack the Empire's dramatic final years and reveal a story far more complex than simple decline. Through the lives of Isidore of Kiev and Bessarion, they explore desperate diplomacy, church union, Ottoman expansion, and the political gambles behind the demise of Constantinople. MORE The Rise of Constantinople with Bettany Hughes Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rise-of-constantinople-with-bettany-hughes/id1564113746?i=1000636435538&itscg=30200&ls=1&mttnsubad=6442463604&at=1000l3ctA&itsct=podfollow_podcasts&ct=gone-medieval-eplink Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0xDnUgTBWpztIx2NCDrFPt The Fall of Constantinople Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ottoman-conquest-of-constantinople/id1615075257?i=1000763739371 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6EaHnd3n5TdbUO6jzvgbSr Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:16Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Today, I'm setting out to debunk some myths that have continued to surround the devise of a city, and with it, an empire.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Located where Asia and Europe almost touch, where three seas wrap around stone walls like a moat, the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium was chosen by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 330 of the Common Era and reborn as Constantinople.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  As Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Western Roman Empire finally cracked, the Eastern half, based in Constantinople, held its ground and continued to call itself Rome.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  So, in the centuries that followed, why didn't the West simply accept that the Roman Empire was alive and well in Constantinople? Well, because the West saw the East as a rival. In 800, the Pope crowned Charlemagne the Emperor, creating a new Roman Empire and declaring, politically and spiritually, that Rome could belong to the West again.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  It was a blow to Byzantine prestige, and it deepened a dangerous idea. If there should be one Christian church, then there should be one Roman Empire. From that point on, East and West competed for supremacy in both realms. Language pulled them apart. It's Latin in the West and Greek in the East. Theology pulled them apart.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Politics pulled them apart.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  This widening gulf became the very weakness that Constantinople's enemies could exploit. And by the 15th century, while Christian Europe quarreled with itself, they barely noticed what was happening at the frontier. The Ottomans were systemically dismantling the Eastern Empire that had long served as a buffer for the West. And this is where today's episode begins. Historians have told this story as a slow, inevitable slide. Byzantium declining from the 14th century and finally ending neatly in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  But my guest today argues that this tidy narrative flattens reality. Constantinople was the symbolic epicenter, yes, but it was not the only center.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Two men in particular believed Byzantium could still be saved, and they set out to galvanize the Roman Catholic West into forming a crusade that would defend Constantinople from the encroaching Ottomans.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Laura Bolick, author of Saving Byzantium: The Struggle to Salvage an Empire. In her book, she describes how these Byzantine emissaries faced formidable obstacles, notably the strong divisions between Roman Catholic Christianity in the West and Orthodox Christianity in the East. They also had to navigate mutual suspicion and indifference. And although Constantinople would eventually fall, Laura offers new insights into this momentous period of history.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Laura, welcome to Gone Medieval.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  I'm so excited to have you here because this is just such an incredible book that you've written. And one of these things where I think in the general understanding of the Eastern Roman Empire, as I like to call it, there's a sort of gap in people's knowledge. Everyone understands, you know, the idea of the fall of Constantinople, but whether or not they understand what's going on in what is arguably the most important city in Europe through the Middle Ages is much more limited. So the first thing I kind of want to talk about. Is what you cover in the book, the sort of champions of the Byzantine Empire. So we're talking here about Isidore of Kiev and Bessarion.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  So can you tell us who they were and what we know about them?

• 6:25Speaker 04

  So they are contemporaries. They were born within about 10 years of each other in the Isidore in the late 14th century and Bessarion in the early 15th century. We know very little about their early lives, but they became career politicians through the church in the Byzantine court, primarily in Constantinople, but they also moved around. They spent a lot of time in Mistra, in the Peloponnesus. And then eventually they end up essentially jumping ship and heading off to Rome, where they converted to Roman Catholicism, which is possibly more extreme than, say, a Jew

• 7:10Speaker 04

  converting to Islam today. So in terms of contemporary attitudes, that was really quite extreme. To us, it just sounds like, you know, one brand of Christianity for another, but it was, it was really big. And there they pursued a more almost traditional cardinal career within the papal court.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  It boggles my mind slightly because I suppose that what I would be expecting to see from anyone who's kind of working within the Constantinople realm, it is the possibility that one can sort of climb through the ranks within the Orthodox Church. There are, there are huge places to be made. I mean, the patriarch of Constantinople is nothing to sneeze at. And, and so I think also just moving from one intellectual tradition to another here is quite interesting to me because. You know, I would kind of see someone who's coming out of Constantinople being more linked into, you know, the eastern doctors of the church, perhaps, or more interested

• 8:16Speaker 03

  in the patristic era. And so to make this move, to me, is baffling slightly.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Within the church, there was a very traditional, conventional set of thinking. And then there was a group of churchmen, politicians, scholars, who were interested in what was essentially reviving Hellenism and bringing back the ancient, the ancient ways through reviving the texts of the ancient Greeks. And this very much played into the interests of the Italian Renaissance. And both, well, more Bisarrian than Isidore,

• 9:02Speaker 04

  were conduits for bringing these texts over to Italy. But within Constantinople itself, it was very much a, a group of, a way of thinking, a philosophy and an approach. And it was not something that everybody respected. And it was not something that was endorsed by everybody within the church. So they certainly would have had their critics. I think one of their mentors was actually expelled from Constantinople for heresy because they believed he was a pagan. This was Gamistus Plato, who wanted to bring back the teachings of Plato, wanted to actually bring in reforms to the Byzantine culture, the politics, the

• 9:47Speaker 04

  military, the social constructs, based on the ancient traditions of Sparta. So he had a whole agenda that was way more extreme than anything Isidore or Bisarrian. Promoted, but they were on the spectrum closer to his type of academic approach than they were towards the traditional churchmen who were more part of the population and day to day practices of your average Byzantine churchgoer.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  This is quite interesting to me because I think that there is a tendency, there's a sort of myth about the medieval period that there is this kind of forgotten access to the ancient world and ancient texts. And what we're seeing here actually is that there's more of a kind of receptive view to philosophical leanings or classical ideas in the West than there is in the East, perhaps because they have a kind of deeper understanding of the pagan underpinnings of all of this in the East, whereas in the West, everyone is like, oh yeah, that's great, a new Plato, we love that, you know. Is there also kind

• 11:02Speaker 03

  of like a cachet, if you're coming from Byzantium over to Rome, that like a sort of exoticism that they're playing on here?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. There's very much an interest in that. That works both ways. It's a negative thing. Some people, you know, these crazy eastern exotic people with their strange hats and their beards and everything was, for some people, something that they found uncomfortable. But for others, and particularly the humanist groups, this was, you know, this is like probably as close to an ancient Greek that they'll ever get. And they had books and they had texts and direct access to it, but the Latins did not. And they were able to form that bridge where they translated texts from ancient Greek

• 11:52Speaker 04

  into Latin, thus making them accessible to a lot of the humanists. Plus, they also taught Greek, so while they're over there. So Bessarion and Isidore are not the first Greeks to come over to Rome and settle. There are various scholars who are invited over to the humanist courts, the Medici, the Urbino Court. So it's very much a, it's a formula that's recognised to have a, you know, a celebrity Greek come over and, and, and teach you Greek and, and give you access to their manuscripts. And Basarian particularly was really into that whole community in Greek.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  And when he came over for the council, when they were going to discuss the union of the two churches, he was wined and dined by all the humanists because they wanted his knowledge as well.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Do you think that there, there is then, to an extent, an acknowledgement on the part of Basarian and Isidore that this is a way of kind of making a name for themselves or climbing through the ranks that isn't available to them in the East, you know? Do they have the same sort of access to imperial decision makers in the East that they get in the West with this celebrity status?

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Their access in the East is based on their church positions. And it's a little bit like becoming an MP of a place that you're not really tuned into, but it gives you access to the court or to the government. So for example, Basarian becomes basically the bishop of a metropolitanate, which was essentially a bishopric in Nicaea. And he was not based in Nicaea, but that he needed that title. And the emperor and the patriarch gave him that title so that he could be part of the court. So I think he was very highly placed within the imperial court on, in a, in terms of politics. He was, and Isidore too, was bishop of Kiev.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  And that was an appointment made in Constantinople so that he could also have a title that would give him the political clout that he, he needed to do the emperor's bidding. Because the emperor and the patriarch are very much one entity when it comes to running the empire. And I think that what makes, what they did in terms of leaving Constantinople so extraordinary was that they were not going somewhere to get a better career. They were actually. Burning a very highly successful careers in order to to start again in Rome.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  So there there has been certainly amongst their contemporaries, because they were vilified by many for doing this, accusations that they were doing it for money, that they were doing it for power. But in reality, they had power. And I think the money that was being offered was a cardinal stipend. I don't I don't think we're talking millions here. I don't see this as a financial financially driven decision. And I think that they actually risked by leaving, losing a lot of the power and influence they had. They were taken under the wing of Pope Eugenius. But as I chart in the book, he didn't last that long.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  There are multiple other popes that they then had to basically build a career for themselves from the ground up.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  It's such an incredible story because you just do not see defections of this level ordinarily. Entire bishops switching sides is is it is truly incredible.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  I think it's quite interesting because it's also happening at this time when we're seeing real stresses on Constantinople. You know, for example, we have a lot of geopolitical intrigues that are happening at the same time. And can you tell us a little bit about what is happening over in Byzantium? In terms of trying to cultivate some kind of political survival in the face of, at this point, it is seriously growing Ottoman influence and confidence, I guess we could argue.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, Bessary and Isidore are part of a court that is aware that its survival is is under threat. And its survival is under threat from an external force in the form of of the rise of the Ottomans. And this rise has been taking place over decades at this point.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  There've been various sieges, fights, a bit of territory lost here, a bit of territory gained back there. And there are various attempts to create an uneasy peace with the Sultan. So you get instances where they are paying tribute in return for being left alone. They are walking the tightrope between appeasement and resistance. And around the time that Bessarion and Isidore come of age, there is the transition between Emperor Manuel and his son John VIII in Constantinople. And Manuel has very much followed the approach

• 17:23Speaker 04

  of appeasement. He's negotiated treaties, he's paying annual tributes. And it's a little easier for him because he's dealing with a Sultan who, Murad, who was actually fairly reasonable and also distracted by his own internal problems for his, fighting for his own survival within the tribal issues that are taking place among the Ottomans. When John VIII starts to take power, and at one point he is co-Emperor with his father, who becomes incapacitated following a stroke, John has a different approach. He wants to

• 18:02Speaker 04

  be more, more forceful. He wants to actually take them on. And he attempts to try to work behind the scenes to effect regime change, essentially.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  I find this really interesting because to an extent, I sort of respect it as a response. It's only because it doesn't work out that we're, we're kind of laughing about it.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. He sponsors one of the relatives, when Murad dies, and there's a bit of a power vacuum amongst the Ottomans, he sponsors one of the, the various relatives to basically stage a coup, take over, and in exchange, give the Byzantines some land back.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Here's what I can only assume was his absolute horror. They Mustafa staged the coup and initially was successful, refused to give anything back to John, and then was defeated by the rallying of Murad's followers. And a very young Mehmed the Second becomes emperor. And then, as if that wasn't enough, he tried it again with yet another guy called Mustafa. And that that one doesn't even get close.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  It's just funny because it's sort of like the worst of all possible worlds.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  You know, you you you're doing the meddling. You're involved in some very shifty political games. In theory, your guy wins and then he says no.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  And then he says no, yeah. And he he betrays you and then he's not even able to withstand the the forces that opposing him. And you lose out all round because now now the incumbent is furious with you.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, and that's the thing. And they are furious, right? What's the what is the response?

• 19:55Speaker 04

  With the initial one, they besieged Constantinople. And this is a long siege in the 1420s. And the people suffer. There's no food. There's nothing coming in. There's nothing going out. The siege goes on and on. And I presume that has something to do with driving John to try it again two years later in 1424. And this time, when it fails, they go after Thessalonica. And they they actually, that one's brutal. They managed to storm Thessalonica. And eventually, John is forced into the position that his father had been, which was to agree in treaty, an uneasy peace and extortion annual tribute to keep the Ottomans at bay.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  But it's not something that that sits well with with John VIII. And he continues throughout his reign to try to find a way to actually. Resist and not to coexist with the Ottomans.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  I one can kind of understand why, because you know, at this point in time, when we see this big siege on Constantinople in fourteen twenty two, Byzantium has to put up a really intense defence just to survive. And I think that that's it's a hard sell. I think by the time we've got ordinary people having just kind of joined the ranks of soldiers, you know, how do you then turn around and say, forget about it, right? He's kind of painted himself into a corner because the ordinary populace has had to actually dirty their hands, has had to get involved militarily.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  And has suffered, has, yeah, and has seen what it's like to potentially live under or suffer the wrath of an Ottoman occupation. And that's not something that, I mean, they were brutal, that whole period, anytime anybody conquered anyone else, it was that no quarter was was given. And there was no such thing as as the civilian population, they were fair game, in terms of of winners and losers. So at this point, I this is where John starts to look to the West again. And this is not, this is not new. Every emperor has been doing this. And every emperor has failed to make much progress. But Asarian and Isidore become

• 22:22Speaker 04

  very involved in John the Eighth's bid to get the West to join in.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think that this is an interesting one, because to an extent, I think that the calls are very much linked to what's going on in Thessalonica as well. Because there has long been, I think we can agree, a bit of a rivalry going on between Byzantium and Venice over places like this. And, you know, Venice is making inroads in Crete, you know, there are all these sort of creeping things. And and to an extent, you know, this is a real Psychological blow for Constantinople, not just on the Ottoman front,

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  The Venetians make hay of this, you know, they're making inroads as well.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, actually they do. Yes, yes, for them, it's a, well, Venice is a merchant state. And with Constantinople weakened, they take over the trade routes. They also are walking this tightrope between taking Constantinople's position, but not giving way too much to the Ottomans, who also probably would quite happily trance them to take the trade routes. So there is this very uneasy issue between when you ask the West for help, do you get more than you bargained for? And is the West really helping you or are they helping themselves? And this is where the whole issue of,

• 23:52Speaker 04

  we want military support from the West, but we don't want the West to run the show as they did in, which actually happened in 1204, when they were coming, the West was, had mustered a crusade. They landed it outside Constantinople, which was having its own political crisis at the moment, at that time. And the internal sides split. They must, they asked for help from the crusaders, who were all standing around outside the walls, and the Latins took over. They marched in and they were also brutal. And this sack in 1204 has this huge, huge

• 24:35Speaker 04

  shadow over any relations and any dialogue between the West and the East. And that causes unbelievable problems all the way up to the fall of Constantinople.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I would argue that by the time we're seeing John VIII reach to the West at all for help and going to the church for help, that

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Really shows us how desperate he's feeling.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  Go speak to the church at all, given what happened on that crusade is really incredible. Right?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, he agrees to this whole council and conference to discuss a union between the two churches. Because for the West, that is a condition for any military support. When he arrives with his 700 delegates from Constantinople in Venice and they're greeted and there's the pop and the ceremony. They're taken on a tour of St Mark's where they see half the looted relics from Constantinople.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  The PR disaster.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  It's, it's just like, you know, having the gumption to do it.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  I can't. I know.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  You know, it's like, oh, oh, you like that? That's the lions.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, fantastic.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  Like, taking them now to see the Elgin marbles.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  But I, you just wouldn't, you know?

• 26:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  And it's, it's interesting because it does, I think, to an extent, show that in the West, they really feel like they hold all the cards. Right? And I mean.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  They're tone deaf. I think they're absolutely tone deaf on this. They, they just don't get it. And I think there's a, there's a large element of, they, they believe that they are sanctioned by God to be the prime head of the church of all of Christendom. And the Greeks just need to get with the program in their mind. It's just.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  And so for them, what's the program, right? So how is the church going to try to resolve the Great Schism between the Eastern Church and themselves? Other than, you know, insulting them by showing them everything they've looted?

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  So this whole union is an attempt to reunite the East and the West churches, which have been divided since the Great Schism for centuries. And it's. All revolves, I think, entirely around primacy and who is head of the church. I mean, there are a whole bunch of doctrinal differences and small practice differences between leavened bread and unleavened bread and beards for priests and no beards for priests. But fundamentally, it comes down to who's in charge. And the patriarch of Constantinople believes that he is an equal to the pope in Rome and

• 27:31Speaker 04

  that there are, the pope in Rome does not have primacy over the patriarch of Constantinople, Alexandria and the other, the other sees that were instituted where they originally set up the five, the Pentarchy, basically, the, the five bishoprics of, of Christendom. And Constantinople has always felt that they are, they are being seen as less than, than Rome and Rome absolutely sees itself as the head of Christendom. And this is a sticking point that I do not believe was ever resolved and is essentially

• 28:12Speaker 04

  why the union failed and why the Byzantines did not get the help that they needed from the West in the end.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  And there, and there are all sorts of, I, I, I think that it's a really obvious sticking point and it, it's just so frustrating. There is this chauvinism on the part of Rome over and over again, because you know, if you look into any of this, I mean, I think it actually makes perfect sense to say that the Pentarchy, they've got the same power as, I mean, like, listen, just because the bishop of Rome decides he's the most important, which is just the, just how it works, then like, why would anyone else accept that? And they're like, oh, well, we spent centuries just saying that over and over again, so we'd believe it to be true.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course it's true.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  And, and I mean, that's literally the magic. They simply willed it into being by, you know, writing the Liber Pontificalis, you know, and then they're like, look, well, we wrote a book that says we're the most important here. And it's like, that's not how any of this works. And then meanwhile, we have also all of these doctrinal issues to overcome as well. I mean, off the top of my head, purgatory.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Yes, that was.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  That's a really big deal.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  And then the biggest one, then the one that Bessarion gets involved in is whether or not the Father proceeds from the Holy Ghost or through the Holy Ghost.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  And can you tell us a little bit about what happens with Bessarion's role in these arguments? Because, yeah, yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  There is, the Greeks believed that, or in the Greek Orthodox Church, the tradition is that the Father and Son are one. The Holy Ghost, Father and Son, are three parts of one equal body. The Roman Church believes that the Son comes from the Father. In a biological sense, that sort of makes sense, and that the Son is therefore secondary to the Father. Now, for you and me, this probably really doesn't matter very much, but it was really quite, quite a sticking point and involved days and days of debate at the Council of Arraran, Florence.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  And Bessarion, using his linguistic, as a linguistic bridge between the Greek and the Latin, managed with a, basically a linguistic slate of hand to persuade the Greeks that the Latin translation for the word through and from is kind of the same, and to persuade the Latins that it was also the same, and that their respective interpretations could use these, these prepositions interchangeably, and that solves the problem.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  I love it. I'm, it's like, as a, as a Latinist myself, I'm like, this is a great argument, actually. I love it. I love it.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. And that's, that's kind of how they deal with that final debate. I don't think anyone's fooled. I don't, I don't think. I think, you know, the Greeks had been over there for months. They dealt with plague in Ferrara that had caused the place, the whole council to have to troop down to Florence. They were supposed to be being supported financially by the Pope while they were there, but the money wasn't coming through, so they were kind of sleeping on floors in barns. There's seven hundred Greeks over there with no income, no home, and they are getting increasingly frantic to go home.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  But these debates just kind of get locked into a paralysis mode and they repeatedly petition the patriarch to ditch the union and just leave and walk away. And so I think for people like Isidore and Basarian, for whom I think they genuinely believed that this union was the salvation for the empire and that it had to work. And I don't think that was, that was political. I don't think that was financially motivated. I think they genuinely believed that was the army solution.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  They were kind of desperate to get this decree signed and to persuade the Greeks to come along for this journey and to sign it. But I think at the end, the imbalance of power and the sense of resentment made the delegates feel that they were signing under duress. And it, it just didn't, it didn't stick. You know, for, for the Latins, it was a done and dusted deal. For the Greeks, they, they just, they just rejected it.

• 33:13Speaker 05

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• 34:05Speaker 03

  Well, it's funny how if you treat people like they're inferiors, that this is all a done deal, how people don't react well to being blatantly disrespected.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  But this is what I find so fascinating with the Roman side, is how, and like I say, tone deaf can you be? I mean, they could have had a much more, I think with a little bit of tact and a bit more persuasion, they really could have had what they wanted and possibly had it work.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  That's interesting. It's almost as though they're saying, well, we're going to leave it to our pet Greeks. Basarian will land this fish for us. We don't need to do anything and everything is going to be fine. And instead, we do have this rejection of the talks altogether, right?

• 34:53Speaker 04

  They sign the decree and it is technically a success. And, you know, the Basarian makes some grand speech and about the bells of St Mark's peal and all over Rome and Florence and Ferrara, the celebrations happen. There's a lovely story about the emperor's dog howling under his seat as the decree is signed.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  The dog is a Byzantinist, okay?

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the dog knew what was going on.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  And they, um, that, you know, in the meantime, the patriarch actually died while they were there. So he passes away in Florence and has to be buried in a church over there.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  And so they're kind of, they're leaving, having signed it, but the question is, how genuine was that? That signature? Now, they take months to get back to Constantinople and they're stopping at the islands all along the way to, to basically make the declaration that the decree has been signed and now the two churches are a, a, a union. We don't have much information on how it was received in the small place, these small islands. But what we do know is that the anger of some of the Greeks at the council had got to such a fever pitch that they actually left, a group of them.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  They left before the, the decree was signed and they headed back to Constantinople. And that time in which that vacuum during which they were in Constantinople, but John the Eighth and the rest of the delegation had not yet arrived, was time for them to basically harness an entire anti-unionist movement. And this is led by a bishop called Mark of Ephesus, who originally had been pro-unionist, but he was so angered and disgusted by what was being conceded in Florence, that he went completely the other way. So by the time John the Eighth lands back in Constantinople and Bessarion with him, they are facing basically a revolt.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  The church, the people, they don't want it. They believe that they've been, that they've been sold out.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Probably because they have been slightly.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  Yes. Fair enough assessment, yeah. And at the same time, John discovers when he arrives that during the time he was away of the council, his wife has died. And this was actually a marriage of love. It wasn't a, it wasn't just a, a political marriage. So he's devastated and he basically doesn't harness the situation. He doesn't take control. He just retreats into himself and this vacuum continues in which the anti-unionists grow and grow and grow in power. And I think ultimately leads to Bessarion making the decision that he'll take up the Pope's offer to go back to Rome.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the, the impact on Bessarion of all of this? Because he really becomes sort of the figurehead for this, right? It's, it's, he attracts a lot of personal ire in the East as a result.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. So, so many of his friends with whom he's been corresponding for, for years, who he grew up with, start to say that, you know, he's done it for the money, he's, he's betrayed the Greeks and he loses Cleito, who was his mentor in his early as a mistra, will no longer speak to him. He is basically ostracized because of this and yet, and he's got no government backup behind him because John's sort of left the scene. So he is essentially quite isolated in this scenario. And while he's been on his way back, he was made an offer by Eugenius IV at the Pope

• 38:53Speaker 04

  at the time during, during this, all these discussions, to come back to Rome and to take up a position as a cardinal with a stipend and a role within the papal court. And I think Bessarion sees this as a way to, you know, he's, he was feted while he was in Rome, while he was in Italy. He experienced that the whole, the whole intensity of the Renaissance and, and that, that was his milieu, that humanist environment. So the temptation to go back to it must have been extremely high. Plus, he seems to have seen it as an opportunity to continue to campaign for Western support,

• 39:38Speaker 04

  to support Constantinople. And I think he didn't see any option for doing that actually. Within the imperial court anymore. Because with the anti-unionist movement so intense, you know, there was going to be no support coming from Rome. While that decree was because in Constantinople, they refused to pronounce the decree and to promulgate it. So it was essentially non-existent in the regardless of what the rest of the empire felt. Within Constantinople, it was officially rejected or ignored. I'm not sure they officially rejected it, but they certainly didn't put it into practice.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  You know, pretending that it didn't happen, that's a legitimate response. What can I say? But meanwhile, we've got Isidore of Kiev out on his own as well. Can you tell us a little bit about the mission that he was given at this time?

• 40:34Speaker 04

  Sure. So he didn't go back to Constantinople with the delegation. He took on a mission that was was set up by the Pope. I think at this point, he hadn't officially left the Orthodox Church. He was not given a cardinalate until after this mission. But he was charged with delivering this decree of union to all the Central European Orthodox states. So through Hungary and out into as far as Russia. Because at the time, he was still the Metropolitan of Kiev, the Bishop of Kiev, appointed by the Constantinian Politan Church.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  So he was the representative of the Greek Orthodox in Kiev and Russia. So Eugenius gives charges him with gives him a letter talking about the union and how the Pope was the head of it. And all the wonderful things that would come to them because of this and all the terrible things that would happen to them if they didn't accept it. And he went on a sort of a progress on his way back to Kiev and Rus, where he stopped off and delivered this decree. And by and large, it was accepted along the way until he gets to Russia. And then it goes horribly, horribly wrong.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes a little bit of sense, right? Because if you show up in Buda and you say, look, everybody, we're, we've made this act of union, you're going to be getting support from Rome. You know, the Hungarians feel very personally threatened by the Ottomans.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  They are, they are existentially at threat from, from the Ottomans, whereas the Russians are not at this stage. And by the time he gets to Russia, where he had only been allowed to go to the Council of Ferrara and Florence by the Grand Prince on condition that he championed more or less the anti-unionist cause.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  It's just funny.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  A little bit of a, it's a little bit of a slap in the face when he arrives outside the walls, puts on his cardinal's gown, which he wasn't even a cardinal at the time, takes up a cross that was in the shape of the Latin cross. So it had a very, it, it looked different and leads a procession into, to Russia, into Moscow, where he then goes to a church, delivers a sermon and the decree of union and asks everyone to pray for the Pope and not for the Grand Prince and not for the patriarch of Constantinople. And then is a bit surprised when the Grand Prince claps him in chains for heresy.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  I mean, I just, I'm sort of like, where did he even get the outfit? You know, sir, like.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  I don't know, because he really wasn't, he, he didn't need to do this at that time.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  I'm not even sure what he thought was going to happen, right? You know, because this is, this is a form of heresy and you're supposed to be there proclaiming this act of union. You need to bring people along and it's clear what's in it for a Hungarian. It is not particularly clear what is in it.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what is so extraordinary is that Isidore's role within the Council of Ferrara and Florence was very much the astute diplomatic politician. He brought the sides together. He hosted dinners. He, he persuaded, he cajoled. He was not the dry academic that Bessarion was. His contribution was not linguistic sleights of hand. It was actually. Massaging relationships and egos and getting people on side. So I do not know what happened to him when he waltzes into Russia with this dressed up as a cardinal.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  It's just a bad plan. I'm sorry.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  I really is. He's having a very bad day.

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• 46:20Speaker 03

  So he gets arrested and frankly, quite right too. I don't know what the man was thinking, but he does eventually get out. Can you tell us how?

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Yes, I think they basically just let him go. I think he's allowed to just kind of slip away because it was just a, it was a situation that nobody really wanted to deal with. And he just needed to get him out.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  You're like, just please leave.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  Exile. Don't ever come back. And he makes his way back to Rome and that's where he is offered a title as a cardinal by Eugenius IV for all his troubles.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I love it because it's exactly the same thing as the papacy declaring that they are the head of the church, right? He got the, he got the costume.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Well, I guess.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Gets himself thrown in prison wearing it. And then they're like, okay, well, fair enough. I guess you're a cardinal now.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  It would be treacherous to say no. So yeah. So he's back in Rome. Vassarion ends up in Rome and they start to work the papal court over the course of about five papacies as popes die off and new ones are elected. And they play various roles in terms of trying to muster a crusade to go and rescue the Byzantine Empire from this, this Ottoman threat.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  And what happens with that? You know, eventually we get to kind of Pope Nicholas V. What is his reaction to the idea that we maybe should be doing something to save Vassar to him?

• 47:55Speaker 04

  So he has a combined and unfortunate combination of kind of other preoccupations with his own domestic situation. He is more interested in consolidating power in the Italian states. So he wants control within Italy, which of course, at the time is not Italy. It's a bunch of. Often warring, princedoms, fiefdoms, gutchie's. And he wants to establish his, his control there. So he actually packs Basarian off to Bologna, which is a cause of, is a thorn in the side of the papacy with a lot of insurrection and issues.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  And he charges Basarian with sorting that out, which Basarian does very effectively. But in the meantime, he's not really keeping an eye on the, the situation in Constantinople. And he ends up presiding over the fall of Constantinople. And his whole approach was that until they accept the union and they declare it, he's not sending any help. And the debate has always been about, did he misunderstand how grave the threat was? Or was he really, really that stubborn? Because it was a terrible legacy.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a really, really difficult thing to say. Because on the one hand, sure, you know, go ahead and, and be stubborn and try to play your point. But if you really, if, this is an existential threat to the conception of Christendom. Right?

• 49:35Speaker 04

  It is, yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  And, you know, the, this idea that Constantinople is this bastion. I mean, like this, this is the Eastern Roman Empire. It's still going, right? And

• 49:45Speaker 04

  Its symbolic importance was, was huge, absolutely huge for Christianity.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  And so, you know, the, the stubbornness, I mean, the, the reason why you want this union to happen is because you want to control Constantinople. And, and so it, it just is really smacks of sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face kind of a thing, right?

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that when he does realise how serious the situation is, he starts to send ships. It's just too little, too late. And, and the, the damage is done, or the, the fall happens.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  So what happens before we get to the fall? What is the thing that starts turning the tide in the Ottomans' favor? Should they have picked up in the West on what was happening about this?

• 50:36Speaker 04

  I think probably what achieved this was Mehmed II and his accession. He was messianic in his desire to extend the Islamic empire via the Ottomans. So he wanted Constantinople. And he didn't want to punish the Byzantines or control the Byzantines. He wanted Constantinople for himself. And then every bit of the imperial empire beyond that, that was his goal. And I think with that, faced with that kind of agenda, that is when the West should have woken up and realized that this was more than the usual

• 51:19Speaker 04

  sort of forwards and backwards of a little bit of territory here, a little bit of territory there, and passing sometimes to the Byzantines, sometimes to the Ottomans. This was different. And I think they missed that. They understood it afterwards. So if you look at the letters that came out, particularly from Isidore after the fall of Constantinople, there's a lot about Mehmed's aspirations to dominate Christianity, to bring the Ottomans and the Islamic religion to the same height and to the same power. But before that, I don't think that was particularly understood in the West.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  One of the things that I really love what you cover in the book is that it's not just about the fall of Constantinople. I think everyone's really aware of its fall in 1453. But one of the things you cover really extensively is not just the fall of Constantinople, but the encroachment onto what had been Byzantine territory more specifically. And I was quite interested in what you had to say about Negroponte. And you described that as almost as dramatic as Constantinople. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

• 52:36Speaker 04

  So that was out in the Yubia. It was a Byzantine Stronghold. It had Venetian connections as well. So they're constantly passing it back and forth between Venetian control and Byzantine control. It was kind of seen at that point, because we're in the into the fourteen late fourteen sixties, early fourteen seventies, as kind of the last stronghold. And its strategic importance, should the West manage to get their act together and and launch a crusade, was critical. But also, its kind of symbolic importance in terms of this is at our stand, was something that even Pope

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Paul the Second, who was ruling at that point, acknowledged. He was not interested in the Ottoman advance whatsoever. He kind of went through the motions of saying we should have a crusade to get Constantinople back, but it wasn't a passion for him. However, when Mehmed started to threaten Negroponte, he very much felt responsible for for its fall. And the whole drama that built up around it, I think, had a great deal of emotional appeal for everyone. So Venice agreed to help them out. They sent ships. One of the

• 53:59Speaker 04

  ships and one of the battalion fleets arrived ahead of the others. The naval commander could see the siege taking place. The people at Negroponte were desperate at that point, but he wouldn't help out. And he was waiting for backup.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  The the feeling is that he miscalculated, that he thought there were more Ottomans there than there actually were, and that he couldn't. But actually, there were fewer than he thought. And had he intervened, they could have won. There's there's so many of these cases where You know, Mehmed nearly gave up on his siege of Constantinople in fourteen fifty three because he believed that the West was on the horizon, that he he thought the ships were coming. His generals were saying, let's leave. We don't, we can't do this. He made one last attempt in May, when Constantinople fell, and he got through. But he was on the

• 55:05Speaker 04

  point of leaving. And there are, over and over again, these these issues where had the West just been there, the story would have been completely different.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  And from, I think, the Byzantine standpoint, this is just another case in which they're let down by these people that, you know, in theory, you know, there's a union between them. And I mean, first, you have Venetians, sack your city. And then two hundred years later, they're just sitting there watching.

• 55:34Speaker 04

  Watching while the Ottomans sack your city.

• 55:37Speaker 03

  The last bastion of Christendom over in the east is attacked. And they're just like, wow, that's crazy.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Look at those people. I've got game in there.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Oh, no, it's it's and and this is this is kind of a really significant defeat, right, at at Negroponte. This is like, that's essentially it in terms of what could have been done to retake Eastern Rome at this point.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I think at this at this stage, that that is, that's probably the kind of, when Constantinople fell, there was still a chance, there was still bases from which on a crusade could have been launched, a military effort could have been launched to reverse those those advances. But once Negroponte is gone, that's kind of it. The the whole, the entire area has to be retaken, not just one or two, two spots of it. And I think. Emotionally, that was also, that was kind of it, at least for Bessarion,

• 56:43Speaker 04

  who passes away two years later. And I think that was, that was just kind of the end for him.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  He does a good go of attempting to kind of preserve a bit of the cultural legacy of the East. And that's kind of the last battleground, right? Because if there is no actual political polity, what you can say, so now this is kind of a war for tradition in the minds of Christians, yeah?

• 57:14Speaker 04

  If you don't have the land, at least you can hold the concepts, you can preserve those. And he's, he's, he's kind, it's not just the last two years. He's actually doing that simultaneously through his entire career in Rome. He's collecting manuscripts, he has scouts all over the Byzantine Empire, either commissioning scribes to copy ancient texts or buying the texts them outright. And he's bringing them to Italy and he eventually, he has one of the largest collections of Greek manuscripts at the time. He donates the whole thing to the Republic of Venice and that's the founding collection of the Biblioteca Marchiana, which is still, still is Venice's kind of national library.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  He creates little, a little bit in the, the style of Plato. He, he has familiaries who surround him and they, they discuss philosophy and he teaches Greek and, and he plants his students in various positions as tutors for all the great Italian families out in Urbino and various places. I think some even end up in the, in Britain. And he's, he's got, he's basically sending out little missionaries all over the place. He collects reliquaries, he, alongside manuscripts, he's got people collecting relics, icons from all over the empire. So he's, he's kind of a one man rescue mission for.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  These artifacts and you can understand why, because if when you read the descriptions of the sac of these of Constantinople, Negroponte, Thessalonica, they absolutely devastated the churches, the libraries, anything. The cultural artifacts were smashed or they were taken for their precious gems. The altars were desecrated, the metalwork was melted down. So it really was a campaign of preservation to pull these things out of the former imperial lands and distribute them around Italy.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  But you in the book, I really like this. This is an interesting argument, which I hadn't really considered before. By saying that we also do have a bit of a play on the part of two other rival powers to preserve the Byzantine legacy, and that is the Russians and interestingly, the Ottomans.

• 59:46Speaker 04

  Ottomans.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  Can you tell us?

• 59:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, my father.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  I mean, I loved this, so.

• 59:51Speaker 04

  Yes. When Mehmed gets his beloved Constantinople, which he really names Istanbul, and he converts Sias Sophia into a mosque, he's come into a city that his troops devastated, you know, a place that he coveted, not because of its front, but because of what it represented culturally and its magnificent architecture and its past wealth. And so he's entered this absolutely war torn, damaged city. And he actually limits the amount of ransacking that's allowed to go on because apparently in the armies, the soldiers were entitled to a certain number of days of pillaging.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Upon successfully capturing a city, he cuts that short for Constantinople. And then he goes about a program of restoration. But not just that, he wants the Greek population back. So he starts incentivizing as well as mandating as they capture other islands and areas of the Byzantine Empire, they start shipping the citizens into Constantinople to repopulate it. And he then creates, he appoints a patriarch, so he allows the Orthodox Church to continue. He appoints a man called George Scholarius, who

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  has been a bitter enemy of the Unionists all the way through. So he's, he's kind of proved his, his colors and, and he led the whole group of Byzantines in Constantinople, who believed that they would rather be under the yoke of the Ottomans than accept the Union. They were very clear, that group that opposed the Union was clear, absolutely clear about that. So from the Sultan's perspective, he potentially has some loyalty there. And he uses it to basically preside over the Orthodox Church by appointing the patriarch. And they're allowed to continue practicing.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  It's a little bit of an apartheid, they can't hold certain positions, there, there are many restrictions, but they are left to worship and have, can sustain their hierarchies and their structures under the Ottoman rule. So in some ways,

• 1:02:18Speaker 04

  they were right, in that sense.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  You know, have better to throw their hand in with the, uh, with the Sultan than rely on Pope Nicholas V and his ships.

• 1:02:29Speaker 03

  At least he's interested in preserving it, you know. He really does believe in, in this, this culture, it's, yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  The irony is that the papacy that so desperately wanted to be the head of Christendom is now looking at, at an Islamic Ottoman Emperor, a Sultan, ruling over the Orthodox Church in Constantinople.

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  Great job, everyone, congratulations.

• 1:02:56Eleanor Janega?

  Finally, did you think ultimately, would you say that Isidore Basarion fail? Or are they able to make cultural inroads that have a lasting impact?

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  I think Basarion's cultural program was lasting. I think that has a legacy that continues today. I think just visit the Biblioteca Marchiana. That's an institution that is still there today. And I think his contribution towards the development of the Renaissance and the humanist movement by bringing in these ancient Greek texts was pretty unsurpassed. I think Isidore probably was less so. I think he made a valiant effort. He was there on the walls in Constantinople, fighting the Ottomans. But ultimately, the territory was lost.

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  And I think that probably would feel to him to have been a failure.

• 1:03:59Eleanor Janega?

  See, this is why you want to play the cultural game. You don't want to play the political game.

• 1:04:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know what they say, when experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. In this instance, culture is what you get when you don't get what you want.

• 1:04:14Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Laura, thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. And thank you so much for such a wonderful book.

• 1:04:22Speaker 04

  Awesome. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks a lot.

• 1:04:26Eleanor Janega?

  Thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. And if you want to get into the nitty-gritty drama of the siege of Constantinople and how Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II forged his legacy in battle, Gone Medieval's own Matt Lewis has made a whole episode about it on our sister podcast, Echoes of History. There's a link in the description. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:05:09Eleanor Janega?

  Until all your friends and family that you've gone medieval, until next time.

• 1:05:35Eleanor Janega?

  Scaling your business doesn't have to mean endless meetings or repetitive training. With Camtasia Pro, teams can easily transform their expertise into engaging video content. No professional editing experience required. By combining screen recording, editing, and AI-powered workflows into one simple solution, Camtasia Pro helps you train faster, onboard smarter, and easily document critical processes. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.