WHEN BYZANTINE EMPEROR KONSTANTINOS XI THREATENED SULTAN MEHMET II WITH CIVIL WAR

In February 1451, the 18-year old Mehmet II became Sultan for the second time following the death of his father. Immediately, he had to deal with Karamanid attacks on Ottoman lands in Eastern Anatolia. Emperor Konstantinos XI of Byzantium, attempting to use this situation to the Empire’s advantage, decided to attempt a risky strategy of disruption as he thought that he had an ace in the hole...

 

A great-grandson of Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, Orhan Çelebi, lived as a hostage in Constantinople. Other than Mehmet II, Orhan was the only other claimant to the throne. Murad II had previously agreed to pay annually 300,000 aspres for Orhan being kept at Constantinople, but this time, Konstantinos XI asked for a doubling of Orhan’s allowance or otherwise to release him, potentially sparking an Ottoman civil war.

 

Mehmet's Grand Vizier, Çandarlı Halil Pasha received the ambassadors at Bursa. The Grand Vizier was the main force in the Ottoman Government counseling the new Sultan against war and an attack on Constantinople. Because of the blatant provocation, he lost his temper with the Byzantine messengers, supposedly exploding in anger: 

 

"You stupid Greeks, I have had enough of your devious ways. The late sultan was a lenient and conscientious friend to you. The present sultan is not of the same mind. If Constantine eludes his bold and impetuous grasp, it will only be because God continues to overlook your cunning and wicked schemes. You are fools to think you can frighten us with your fantasies, and that when the ink on our recent treaty [1449] is barely dry. We are not children without strength or reason. If you think you can start something, then do so. If you want to proclaim Orhan as Sultan in Thrace, go ahead. If you want to bring the Hungarians across the Danube, let them come. If you want to recover the places which you lost long since, try it. But know this: you will make no headway in any of these things. All that you will achieve is to lose what little you still have".

 

The threat of releasing Orhan gave Mehmet a pretext for concentrating all of his energy and resources on seizing Constantinople, his true goal since he had become Sultan. He began large-scale preparations immediately. He sent a message to Konstantinos: “Either surrender the city or stand ready to do battle.”

Photograph from the Panorama 1453 Museum, Istanbul

The Byzantines had greatly underestimated the young Sultan. On 2 April 1453, Mehmet's advance guard arrived outside Constantinople and began pitching up a camp. On 5 April, the Sultan himself arrived at the head of his 60,000-men army and encamped within firing range of the city's Gate of St. Romanus. The most important siege in History had begun…

ART OF THE DAY: KNIGHTS HOSPITALLER VS SARACENS BY MARK STACEY

The origins of the Hospital in Jerusalem goes back to around 600 AD, when Abbot Probus of Ravenna was commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great to build a hospital in Jerusalem to treat and care for Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. This hospice was destroyed fourteen years later when Jerusalem fell to the Persian – Jewish armies: The Christian population was slaughtered, and their churches and monasteries destroyed. Rebuilt after the Byzantine reconquest, it was enlarged by Charlemagne. In 1009, Fatimid caliph Al Hakim destroyed the hostel again and a large number of other buildings in Jerusalem. In 1048, the Fatimid Caliph Al-Mustansir Billah gave permission to merchants from the Republic of Amalfi to rebuild a hospital in Jerusalem on the site of the monastery of St John the Baptist. The hospital was run under the auspices of the Benedictines monks of the Latin Church of Santa Maria Latina in Jerusalem. Throughout the new persecutions against the Christians after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Seljuk Turks in 1078, the Hospital continued to operate. 

The community which ran the hospital became independent during the First Crusade in around 1099, under the leadership of a monk called Gerard. After Jerusalem was taken by the First Crusade, Gerard adopted the policy of receiving all needy patients, irrespective of religion. He organized the Fratres Hospitalarii into a regularly constituted Religious Order under the protection of saint John the Baptist. The members of the Order became known as Knights of St. John or Hospitallers. The formal establishment of the Knights Hospitallers under Brother Gerard was confirmed by the Papal bull Pie postulatio voluntatis of Pope Paschal II in February 1113. All the Knights were religious, bound by the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

By then, the Hospital was an already wealthy and powerful organization within the kingdom of Jerusalem, and Gerard expanded its operations far beyond the limits of the city, establishing daughter hospitals at Bari, Otranto, Taranto, Messina, Pisa, Asti and Saint-Gilles, placed strategically along the pilgrim route to Jerusalem.

It was his successor, Grand Master Raymond du Puy (1083-1060), who militarized the Order. He organized the Order into three classes: To the nobles he assigned the profession of arms, for the protection of pilgrims; the ecclesiastics were to exercise the religious functions; the lay-brothers were to take care of the pilgrims and the sick. The military role of the Hospitallers really began in 1137 when Foulques I, king of Jerusalem, transferred possession of the castle of Bath-Gibelin in the east of Gaza to the Order.

From then on, the Order appears in all the wars that the armies of the kingdom of Jerusalem fights against the Saracens. Under siege, the Kingdom of Jerusalem found it increasingly difficult to stand against its enemies. Following the example of the Templars, Raymond du Puy then developed a system of protection for the pilgrims by providing them with security in their travels to the Holy Places. Little by little, knights and men of arms were hired and participated in the defense of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

-The artist’s website: http://www.markstaceyart.co.uk/