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CHAPTER IV.

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST-(Concluded).

EFFECT OF THE EASTERN OR MILITARY ATTACK.-GENERAL REVIEW OF THE AGE OF FAITH.

The Fall of Constantinople-Its momentary Effect on the Italian System. GENERAL REVIEW OF THE INTELLECTUAL CONDITION IN THE AGE OF FAITH.-Supernaturalism and its Logic spread all over Europe.-It is destroyed by the Jews and Arabians.-Its total Extinction.

The Jewish Physicians.—Their Acquirements and Influence.-Their Collision with the Imposture-medicine of Europe.-Their Effect on the higher Classes.-Opposition to them.

Two Impulses, the Intellectual and Moral, operating against the Medieval state of Things.-Downfall of the Italian System through the intellectual Impulse from the West and the moral from the North.-Action of the former through Astronomy.-Origin of the moral Impulse.-Their conjoint irresistible Effect.-Discovery of the state of Affairs in Italy. -The Writings of Machiavelli.-What the Church had actually done. Entire Movement of the Italian System determined from a consideration of the four Revolts against it.

FROM the West I have now to return to the East, and to describe the pressure made by Mohammedanism The Eastern on that side. It is illustrated by many great pressure. events, but, above all, by the fall of Constantinople. The Greek Church, so long out of sight that it is perhaps almost forgotten by the reader, comes for a moment before us like a spectre from the dead.

A wandering tribe of Turks had found its way into Asia Minor, and, under its leader Ertogrul and Invasions of his son Othman, consolidated its power and the Turks. commenced extending its influence by possessions taken from the sultans of Iconium and the Byzantine empire. The third prince of the race instituted the Janissaries, a

remarkable military force, and commenced driving the Greeks out of Asia Minor. His son Soliman crossed the Hellespont and captured Gallipoli, thus securing a foot hold in Europe, A.D. 1358.

Extension of

Europe.

This accomplished, the Turkish influence began to extend rapidly. Thrace, Macedon, and Servia their power in were subdued. Sigismund, the King of Hungary, was overthrown at the battle of Nicopolis by Bajazet. Southern Greece, the countries along the Danube, submitted, and Constantinople would have fallen had it not been for the unexpected irruption of Tamerlane, who defeated Bajazet and took him prisoner. The reign of Mohammed I., who succeeded, was occupied in the restoration of Turkish affairs. Under Amurath II., the possession of the Euxine shore was obtained, the fortifications across the Isthmus of Corinth were stormed, and the Peloponnesus entered.

The Byzantine sove

reigns apply

to the West.

Mohammed II. became the Sultan of the Turks A.D. 1451. From the moment of his accession, he turned all his powers to the capture of Constantinople. Its sovereigns had long foreseen the inevitable event, and had made repeated attempts to secure military aid from the West. They were ready to surrender their religious belief. On this principle, the monk Barlaam was despatched on an embassy to Benedict XII. to propose the reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches, as it was delicately termed, and to obtain, as an equivalent for the concession, an army of Franks. As the danger became more urgent, John Palæologus I. sought an interview with Urban V., and, having been purified from his heresies respecting the supremacy of the pope and the double procession of the Holy Ghost, was presented before the pontiff in the Church of St. Peter. The Greek monarch, after three genuflexions, was permitted to kiss the feet of the holy father and to lead by its bridle his mule. But, though they might have the will, the popes had lost the power, and these great submissions were productive of no good. Thirty years subsequently, Manuel, the son and successor of Palæologus, took what might have seemed a moro certain course. He travelled to Paris and to London to lay his distress before the kings of

France and England; but he received only pity, not aid. At the Council of Constance Byzantine ambassadors appeared. It was, however, reserved for the synods of Ferrara and of Florence to mature, as far as might be, the negotiation. The second son of John Palæologus journeyed again into Italy, A.D. 1438; and while Eugenius was being deposed in the chamber at Basle, he was consummating the union of the East and West in the Cathedral of Florence. In the pulpit of that edifice, on the sixth of July of that year, a Roman cardinal The Greek and a Greek archbishop embraced each other Church yields before the people; Te Deum was chanted in to the Latin. Greek, mass was celebrated in Latin, and the Creed was read with the "Filioque." The successor of Constantine the Great had given up his religion, but he had received no equivalent-no aid. The state of the Church, its disorders and schisms, rendered any community of action in the West impossible.

The last, the inevitable hour at length struck. Mohammed II. is said to have been a learned man, Mohammed able to express himself in five different lan- II. guages; skilful in mathematics, especially in their practical application to engineering; an admirer of the fine arts; prodigal in his liberality to Italian painters. In Asia Minor, as in Spain, there was free thinking among the disciples of the Prophet. It was affirmed that the sultan, in his moments of relaxation, was often heard to deride the religion of his country as an imposture. His doubts in that particular were, however, compensated for by his determination to carry out the intention of so many of his Mohammedan predecessors -the seizure of Constantinople.

At this time the venerable city had so greatly declined that it contained only 100,000 inhabitants--out The siege of of them only 4970 able or willing to bear arms. ConstantiThe besieging force was more than a quarter of nople. a million of men. As Mohammed pressed forward his works, the despairing emperor in vain looked for the longpromised effectual Western aid. In its extremity, the devoted metropolis was divided by religious feuds; and when a Latin priest officiated in St. Sophia, there were

In

many who exclaimed that they would rather see the turban of the sultan than the tiara of the pope. several particulars the siege of Constantinople marked out the end of old ages and the beginning of new. Its walls were shaken by the battering rams of the past, and overthrown by cannon, just then coming into general use. Upon a plank road, shipping was passed through the open country, in the darkness of a single night, a distance of ten miles. The works were pushed forward toward the walls, on the top of which the sentinels at length could hear the shouts of the Turks by their nocturnal fires. They were sounds such as Constantinople might well listen to. She had taught something different for many a long year. "God is God; there is none but God." the streets an image of the Virgin was carried in solemn procession. Now or never she must come to the help of those who had done so much for her, who had made her a queen in heaven and a goddess upon earth. The cry of her worshippers was in vain.

In

On May 29th, 1453, the assault was delivered. Constantine Palæologus, the last of the Roman emperors, putting off his purple, that no man might recognize and insult his corpse when the catastrophe was over, fell, as became a Roman emperor, in the breach. After his Fall of the death resistance ceased, and the victorious Turks city. poured into the town. To the Church of St. Sophia there rushed a promiscuous crowd of women and children, priests, monks, religious virgins, and-men. Superstitious to the last, in this supreme moment they expected the fulfilment of a prophecy that, when the Turks should have forced their way to the square before that church, their progress would be arrested, for an angel with a sword in his hand would descend from heaven and save the city of the Lord. The Turks burst into the square, but the angel never came.

More than two thirds of the inhabitants of Constantinople were carried prisoners into the Turkish camp-the men for servitude, the women for a still more evil fate. The churches were sacked. From the dome of St. Sophia its glories were torn down. The divine images, for the sake of which Christendom had been sundered in former

days, unresistingly submitted to the pious rage of the Mohammedans without working a single miracle, and, stripped of their gems and gold, were brought to their proper value in the vile uses of kitchens and stables. On that same day the Muezzin ascended the loftiest turret of St. Sophia, and over the City of the Trinity proclaimed the Oneness of God. The sultan performed his prayers at the great altar, directing the edifice to be purified from its idolatries and consecrated to the worship of God. Thence he repaired to the palace, and, reflecting on the instability of human prosperity, repeated, as he entered it, the Persian verse: "The spider has woven his web in the imperial palace; the owl hath sung her watch song on the towers of Afrasiab."

This solemn event-the fall of Constantinople-accomplished, there was no need of any reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches. The sword of Mohammed had settled their dispute. Constantinople had submitted to the fate of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage. Christendom was struck with consternation. The Terror of

advance of the Turks in Europe was now very at the fall of rapid. Corinth and Athens fell, and the reduc- Constantition of Greece was completed. The confines of nople. Italy were approached A.D. 1461. The Mohammedan flag confronted that peninsula along the Adriatic coast. In twenty years more Italy was invaded. Otranto was taken; its bishop killed at the door of his church. At this period, it was admitted that the Turkish infantry, cavalry, and artillery were the best in the world. Soliman the Magnificent took Belgrade A.D. 1520. Nine years Progress of afterwards the Turks besieged Vienna, but were the Turks. repulsed. Soliman now prepared for the subjugation of Italy, and was only diverted from it by an accident which turned him upon the Venetians. It was not until the battle of Lepanto that the Turkish advance was fairly checked. Even as it was, in the complicated policy and intrigues of Europe its different sovereigns could not trust one another; their common faith had ceased to be a common bond: in all it had been weakened, in some destroyed. Eneas Sylvius, speaking of Christendom, says, "It is a body without a head, a republic without

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