Fr. George Dorbarakis
May 29 is the anniversary of the tragic day for Ecumenical Hellenism - the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The thousand-year-old Empire fell at that time and was delivered as prey to the barbarous hordes of the Ottomans, who filled most parts of the Great City with the corpses of Christians. “And in some places the ground could not be seen because of the multitude of the dead,” the well-known historian of the Fall, George Phrantzes, tells us in his Chronicle. He continues:
“It was a dreadful sight, and one heard many and varied lamentations, and saw countless enslaved noblemen, noblewomen, virgins, and monks, whom the Turks mercilessly dragged by their clothes, hair, and braids out of the churches, while they wept and wailed... One saw the divine Blood and Body of Christ being poured upon the ground and cast away...”
Equally, and even more tragically, does the first Patriarch of Constantinople after the Fall, Gennadios Scholarios, describe the catastrophe. In a lamentation concerning that day he writes:
“Remember how great and how noble our race was. For it was wise, glorious, brave, prudent, and heroic. It subjected the whole inhabited world under one empire and, with its virtuous zeal, absorbed every virtue, just as a sponge absorbs water. But now, alas for these evils! Everything has been lost, since Constantinople has fallen into the hands of the enemies. The very remembrance of her is enough to make us break forth into cries of pain and bitter weeping and to faint away. Indeed, when the City was captured, the altars were profaned, the sacred vessels and holy objects were trampled underfoot, much blood was shed, nuns were dishonored, virgins were violated, infants were beheaded, and rulers, priests, men, women, and people of every age were slain by the swords of the impious.
Alas for me, the wretched and miserable one! Who is able to recount dramatically this great suffering and announce the disaster to future generations? Alas! Where is the imperial procession and retinue? Where is the military array of the palace? Where is the vast multitude of nobles? Where are the schools of wisdom? Alas for me, the unfortunate one! Where is the patriarchal administration? Where is the beauty of the Church of Christ? Where is the numerous and distinguished choir of bishops and monastics? Muhammad has destroyed everything. And the evils are not confined to the Queen of Cities alone, but also to the smaller cities. Indeed, there they are even greater and more terrible.”
Beyond the tragic descriptions of that dreadful day, however, what is especially striking in all the writings of the period is the interpretation that all the authors give to the event of the Fall. More or less unanimously, they consider the chief cause of the loss of the Queen City to have been the sins of the Christians themselves.
Saint Gennadios again says in the same lament we have cited:
“And all these things happened because of our sins!”
“And all these things occurred because of our sins. Whenever I turn my attention to them, I become beside myself, my soul is troubled, and my spirit is seized with dizziness.”
And the aforementioned George Phrantzes, describing the final moments of the City before its ultimate fall, notes:
“The emperor therefore ordered that, together with the holy and venerable icons and the sacred relics, priests, bishops, monks, women, and children should go in procession with tears along the walls of the city, chanting ‘Lord have mercy,’ and beseeching God not to deliver us because of our sins into the hands of unlawful, apostate, and most wicked enemies throughout the world, but to have mercy on us as heirs of the true God.”
The City therefore fell, by God's permission, because of the sins of the Christians. This was the judgment and assessment made by the Byzantines themselves and by the historians closest to the events.
And this is something remarkable for us modern people, because it shows very clearly that faith for the Byzantines was not something theoretical or outdated. It constituted the very axis of their life, for upon it they judged every thought and action. In other words, a thousand-year empire made a magnificent journey upon the earth — with all its dark pages as well — because it was nourished daily from Heaven. And when deviation from the law of God began, the consequence followed: subjugation to the enemy. The purpose, of course, was to create conditions for repentance and a return to the right path.
We should not hasten to mock the thinking and perception of these ancestors of ours, we modern people who have become accustomed to viewing history only horizontally and independently of God's action. For our own perspective is a shortsighted one, which presupposes unbelief — or at best weak faith — in God.
If we believe that history is written solely by human beings under accidental circumstances, without the intervention of God, then we simply confirm that we ourselves live as “those without God in the world.” And certainly we do not possess the vision of reality that we were taught to have by Christ Himself.
Within the framework of the Christian faith, therefore, the Byzantine assessment that the City fell because of their sins sounds profoundly Christian. One might even say that this judgment is prophetic, since the prophets sent by God evaluated matters in precisely the same way regarding the people of Israel, God's chosen people.
We all know that every departure of Israel from the law of God led to its subjugation by foreign and hostile nations, bringing innumerable calamities and disasters. And the prophet sent by God, who appeared at every such critical moment in Israel's history, interpreted events exactly in this manner: the catastrophe was due to the sins of the people, and therefore the way out was repentance and a return to God.
The tragic anniversary of May 29 should not be merely an occasion for sharpening our historical memory, but also for instruction and self-examination. This means that if we too display in our lives signs of departure from the will of God — and unfortunately, do we not display them on many levels? — the result will be the same as in earlier times: God will permit, as a consequence of our un-Orthodox way of life, that we suffer disasters.
Perhaps we should also view the crisis we are experiencing today — as a society, as a state, and as individuals — from this perspective. In that case, the way out becomes a single path: genuine repentance and our return to God.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
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