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CHAPTER VIII

THE GREEK CHURCH AT THE FALL OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

 

(a) Anna Comnena, Alexias; Nicetas, Historia, de Rebus post C. P. etc.; Pachymer; Nicephoras Gregoras; Ducas; Chalcondyles; Phranza; and new sources later than Gibbon, especially Nicolo Barbaro, Giornale dell' Assedio di Constantinopoli—the diary of a besieged resident; and Critobulus, Life of Mahomet (βίος τοῦ Μωαμέδ βʹ).

(b) Gibbon, chaps. lxi.–lxviii.; Bury, Later Roman Empire; Oman, Byzantine Empire; Pears, Destruction of the Greek Empire, 1903; Revue de l'Orient Chrétien, 1^re Année, 1896, No. 3, 1.

 

The decay of the Byzantine Empire involved the orthodox Church in two serious calamities. The Turkish victories brought disaster to those Christians who looked on Constantinople as the metropolis of their religion, over and above the ruin of the State of which the same city was the capital and at times almost the whole territory. That was bad enough. But the mischief was aggravated by the schism which divided the Eastern Church from the papal Church of the West. As we saw in the previous chapter, under these circumstances the advent of the Crusaders, who came as the rescuers of the East from the infidel, was regarded with very mixed feelings by the Christians on the spot. The Greeks hated the Latins at least as much as they feared the Turks. At times we find the emperor plotting with the sultan against his friends from the West. The conduct of the invading hosts intensified this antipathy.

The chronicles make it clear that this must have been the ease even before there was any outbreak of hostility

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