and they presented those kept in faith to the king. Deeply moved on account of the town, A he ordered the land of Pera to be destroyed and slaughtered, unless God diverted him. From this, the Calibascian was first enchained and enslaved in a tower, then deprived of all gold and property; afterwards, he was transferred to Adrianople and ordered to be deprived of his life; the entire army bore his death with grievous and tearful lamentation. But the wickedness of Chirluca did not escape punishment: for, having immediately lost in the war his two eldest children—with the other, an underage child being reserved for royal luxury—and his third son having been killed before his eyes, he was beheaded along with the other barons. He likewise ordered the bailo of the Venetians and the other chosen nobles, and his son, to be extinguished by the sword; and the consul of the Tarraconenses, along with two others; and likewise Catharinus Contarenus, a man of the greatest kindness, along with six Venetian nobles who had already been ransomed, he would certainly have put to death contrary to all faith, had they not purchased their lives for seven thousand gold pieces. But after the Bacchanalia were finished, permission having been granted and the Greeks handed over into captivity—likely never to see their homeland again—the Turks returned to their own regions. O wretched and miserable Greeks, who prohibited the Latins so that they might not handle divine things or offer at their own altars, which they have now surrendered to the profane and the filthy; and who, having spurned the union of the faith, are now dispersed and cannot even come together as one as a punishment for their sin. Reflect on these things, most blessed Father, you who bear the vicariate of Christ on earth, whose concern it is to avenge such great injuries to Christ and the faithful. Let divine pity move you, and have mercy on your Christendom, you who know and are able: for all Christian princes, at whose beck all are ready to avenge the injuries of the Christians, will easily obey. Otherwise, know that the Turk is now exalted to such a great pride B that he is not ashamed to say that he wants to penetrate the Adriatic gulf and come to Rome. Therefore, may the faith and the see of Peter move you again, most blessed Father; may the seamless garment of Christ move you, the sponge, the lance of the lost, the shredded relics of the saints, the holy buildings overturned, and the temples of God profaned with dung heaps.
But see also the storm of loss connected therewith, so that the Perenses, when they see the city captured, turn to flight as if demented. Those among them who had not yet boarded the ships become prey to the Turkish small craft raiding the shore; mothers are taken captive while their children are abandoned and left behind. Others, pressed by the sea, are drowned, gems are scattered, and they plunder one another without mercy: so that it is true, that the wicked man flees when no one is pursuing. What shall I say? O power of Pera! O wicked and foolish counsel of your people. Stricken by terror, ambassadors are sent to the king from the Perenses to offer him the keys. He, understanding very happily that they have no power, accepts, and receives them as federated servants. He appoints a Turk as governor; he assigns the property of all the refugees to the treasury; he orders the towers and the wall of the city to be torn down: they obey, and so that they might be safe, they deliver themselves to him, neglecting the mandate of Genoa, and they suffer the tower on whose point the sign of Christ's cross—from which it was also named—was placed, to be overturned down to the foundations: and so those who were free and kept the peace are now slaves, not without regret, from which they will hardly ever be able to be freed, unless by you and through you, Supreme Pontiff; whom we pray for more confidently, that God may animate him to vengeance, and we pray as suppliants. Given from Chios, August 16, 1452.
ISIDORUS S. R. E. CARDINALIS. NOTITIA.
(Purpura docta, Munich 1714, part III, p. 105.)Isidorus of Thessalonica, monk of Saint C Blasius and abbot of Saint Demetrius of Constantinople, Archbishop of the Ruthenians, when he had come to the Council of Florence in the company of Bessarion, and the virtue, doctrine, and piety of both were approved of in the highest degree not only by the Roman Pontiff himself, but by the entire council, both were summoned by Eugenius IV, in that very assembly of the Fathers, into the sacred senate—Isidorus indeed under the title of Cardinal Priest of Saints Peter and Marcellinus; Bessarion under the title of the Twelve Apostles. Alexander Guagnius of Verona recounts in his description of European Sarmatia, where he treats of the Ruthenians, Muscovites, and others of the same C customs, rites, and religion of the peoples of Sarmatia, that Cardinal Isidorus, after he had united the Ruthenian Churches with the Roman Church at the Council of Florence, casting aside the rites of the Greeks, and had returned to Russia by order of the Pontiff, and there as he was setting forth his purpose and the matter already concluded, and was instructing them from the Word of God in the unity and harmony of the faith, he was seized, despoiled of all his goods, and cast into prison. For those peoples, from the time they once drank in the rites and errors of the Greeks, were such tenacious observers of them that they yielded to none of the other professors of Greekism, and even surpassed many.
A Michovius, who speaks more distinctly regarding the dangers to the life of Cardinal Isidore and the other trials he endured among the Ruthenians, says that in the year 1440, having been sent to Russia with leaden apostolic bulls and golden ones from the Emperor of Constantinople, he entered the Polish town of Sandech on Good Friday. There he was received with great kindness by Sbigniew, the Bishop of Kraków, and was admitted to celebrate divine services according to his own Greek rite, as one reunited to the Roman Church. That union of the Latin Church with the Greek, however, lasted only a short time, as the Greeks and Ruthenians mocked it and held it in contempt. Thereafter, when Cardinal Isidore had come to his suffragans in Russia and Moscow and began to preach that union to them, he was seized by the princes of Moscow, thrown into B prison, and despoiled of all his belongings; yet a little while later, by the favor of God, he escaped and returned to Rome. Such is the account of Michovius.
After some months had passed in Rome, Isidore was sent by Eugenius as legate to the Emperor at Constantinople, so that by his exhortation and presence he might preserve, whole and sound, the concord and the bond of Christian faith which the Greeks had once professed with the Latin Church at Florence. Upon the death of Eugenius, he remained there under his successor, Nicholas V, fulfilling the same office and applying all his efforts to preserve that unity. But when the Greeks had nonetheless relapsed basely into perfidy and heresy, it happened by the most certain punishment of a vindictive Providence that not long afterward—namely, on the day sacred to the Holy Spirit (whose procession from the Father and the Son they had impugned with the utmost impiety)—the Turks, fortified by a most powerful army, stormed Constantinople, the capital and seat of the Eastern Empire, and once captured, devastated it with barbaric ferocity even to the point of extermination. Since this is an opportune place to treat at greater length of its memorable destruction, I judge that it is not foreign to my design. However, so that the series of history may be properly understood, we must return to a point somewhat further back.
After that bloody battle which, as we remembered above in the Life of Cardinal Julian, took place at Varna, Amurath, the emperor of the Turks, returned to Adrianople and fulfilled his vows to his god for what he had achieved as victor. Then, turning over in his mind that the cares of the kingdom were void of true happiness, and also prudently fearing the inconstancy of fortune, which is never good for anyone forever, he summoned the grandees of the provinces and appointed Mahomet, the elder of his sons, as king in his stead. He himself, choosing a private life, set out for Asia and, with a few companions of his pleasure-seeking leisure, applied himself to a certain solitary religion. Calibassa, who was greater in wealth and authority among the Turkish satraps, was given as a governor to the king-designate Mahomet, because he was not yet fit for empire by reason of his age, and administered everything while Amurath was away. The rest of Amurath’s sons, sixteen in number, were put to death in the custom of the race, lest they create disturbances in the kingdom while Mahomet was raised to the empire.
D A considerable time then elapsed during which neither the Hungarians presumed to provoke the Turks, nor the Turks the Hungarians, with arms: each was struck dumb by their own calamity at home; for the most bloody battle of Varna had exhausted the strength of both sides. It was suitable for neither the Turks nor the Hungarians to engage in war. Hunyadi governed the latter, and Calibassa—a man of a different name—governed the former. Hunyadi, more fierce and skilled in military affairs, could not forget the ignominy accepted at Varna. Hence, day and night, he meditated by what means he might wipe out that shame and make up for the losses. The quiet of the Turks, who had for a long time shown no preparation for war, afforded him the hope of conducting his enterprise successfully. Judging that they lacked strength and spirit, he deemed it a fitting time to recover his former glory and to crush the Turks, thinking that if their armies were present, the emperor would still be completely lacking, and that it was no more right to think of an army without a leader than a leader without an army. Therefore, having suddenly gathered forces from Hungary, and also having summoned the aid of the Bohemians and contracted for no small band of mercenary soldiers, he decided to lead an army against the Turks, whom he believed he would attack and defeat before the news arrived at the latest from Hungary: such was the skill and speed he applied to his operations. However, Gregory the Despot of Serbia, contrary to the faith given, disclosed his plan to the Turkish leaders, and while showing the great danger imminent to his people, he portrayed it as even greater.
Struck by this news, the Turks did not know well what they should do. Amurath, already aged and, as we said before, given to religion and leisure, had cast aside the cares of the kingdom. Mahomet, younger in age, was not thought able to bear so great a burden of war; they thought Calibassa would lack obedience, than which nothing is more necessary in war. Therefore they trembled, they swayed, and one moment they turned their vacillating mind here, the next there; no plan pleased the satraps stuck in deliberation, and at last nothing was seen as more salutary than to recall Amurath from his leisure; nor were the veterans believed to be willing to fight under another, nor was the fortune of war thought to be entrustable to any but him who was accustomed to win. Calibassa was the author of this opinion. In this matter, he vehemently offended the mind of Mahomet, who desired to show himself a man in that expedition and feared that he would lose the empire if his father resumed the kingdom: such are the mutable hearts of men. Therefore, legates were sent to summon back Amurath, who, having soon gathered a terrible army and set out against the enemy, led his soldiers—who were as eager as if they were going toward plunder—no differently than if they were going toward victory.
Already Hunyadi had crossed Sofia with his forces, and after the prefects of the places that he had encountered were overthrown and the hostile fields laid waste far and wide, he had placed his camp in the place that is called Basilia, when it was announced that Amurath’s army was approaching. Hunyadi did not wait to be provoked, but himself raised a shout and initiated the battle first. When the battle was joined, for a long time the issue remained in doubt. In the area where Hunyadi fought, the enemy was routed and turned their backs,
and equal slaughter was dealt; in like manner, Amurathes, even by breaking his oath, also brought it about, and at the same time on his flank the victor put the Hungarians to flight. Finally, when victor encountered victor, the Christians could not withstand the onslaught of the Turks, who, although they excelled in valor, were nonetheless overcome by numbers, and not so much defeated as they were forced to yield, oppressed and wearied by the multitude. After Hunyadi could hold his men neither by threats nor by entreaties, he fled from the battle with a few of his own. Many of the nobles of Hungary and some of the prelates of the churches fell in that battle. Twenty thousand of the faithful were lamented, nor was the number of the slain enemies any less. Amurathes returned home with a victory bought at the cost of much blood: and he neither pursued the fleeing Christians, nor did he boast of magnificent words among his own, nor did he show a cheerful countenance, as he had been accustomed to do before. Being asked why he was somewhat sad, and why he did not exult over the defeated enemies? I would not, he said, wish to win in this manner very often: and ordering the vessels to be collected, he sent the forces that had survived back home. Not long afterwards, having left the empire to Mahomet, he returned to leisure, and having become enervated by sexual indulgence, he died in the year of salvation 1451, at the age of 63, in the 39th year of his reign. His body was buried in Bursa according to the custom of his ancestors. That is a city of Bithynia, and the capital of the Asiatic kingdom. A little before he had departed, Amurathes had taken a wife, the daughter of Sponderbes, a noble satrap in Penderacia, from whom a son was born named Chilapius. Dying, he commended the child, then in his sixth month, to Calibassa. He, intending to initiate his favor with Mahomet through perfidy, betrayed both the mother and the child to him. Mahomet, having summoned thirty matrons, as they say, who might recognize the boy, after it was established that he was certainly the offspring of Amurath, returned the son to his mother strangled, and led his brother’s funeral according to the royal custom, consecrating the auspices of his reign with fratricide. Alas! How much more happily are children born among the Turks as private citizens than as kings!
Mahomet therefore, upon the death of Amurath, having obtained the reins of the empire according to his wish, corrected the institutions of his ancestors according to his own judgment. He enacted his own laws at home and abroad, enriched the treasury, devised new taxes, increased his forces, and began to rage against suspect nobles and courtiers and to treat them insultingly. This is that Mahomet the Second of this name, who waged war upon the Constantinopolitans, about whom it will not be out of place to report now, with Aeneas Sylvius D leading the way. Mahomet had long turned over in his mind how he might be able to subdue Constantinople, a second Rome in the East, for he did not consider it to pertain to his glory that a city situated in the midst of the Turks should not obey his empire, and that so much greater honor would redound to his name if he were to take that city, the more shamefully his progenitors had desisted from their attempts, though they had essayed the same. Having therefore communicated his plan to a few, and those the most faithful, he built and fortified with incredible speed a castle near the shore at the mouth of the Bosporus, a little further from the city, pretending another purpose: he then not only declared war upon the city, but against A many treaties, against justice, he also began with [the] perjuror's oath. B The Greeks had perceived his mind, and distrusting their own strength, principally at the exhortation of Cardinal Isidore, they had fled to the resources of the Latins, both imploring and expecting their aid with constant tears. But alas, shame! The ears of our princes were deaf (says Aeneas Sylvius, groaning at this place), their purses were closed; their eyes were blind, who, while Greece was falling, did not see the remaining part of the Christian religion, which was about to perish, although I would believe that each one, intent upon private hatreds or advantages, neglected the public safety.
Mahomet meanwhile, having gathered his forces from everywhere, with marvelous equipment, with a fearful spirit and onset, attacked the royal city by land and sea, with mines and hidden trenches dug very deep, with a mound built wide, and a bridge built in haste of two thousand paces in length, where the city walls are washed by the sea towards the town of Pera, and having erected wooden towers up to it, so that they exceeded even the highest walls, the city was assaulted with a manifold range of engines and artillery, and defended with the utmost strength on both sides. Not many days later, it was finally shouted by the voice of a herald throughout the whole camp: On the fifth day before the Kalends of May, let all the soldiers sanctify the fast, and on the following day let them be present in arms, to assault the city with their utmost strength, for in three days the city would be given over to the soldiers for plunder. On the appointed day, the fast was kept until night: thereafter, with the stars shining, invitations and banquets were held everywhere, and C whoever had a friend, a relative, or an acquaintance, feasted merrily with him; and when they had feasted sufficiently, as if they were never to see each other again, they embraced and kissed and said a final farewell at the same time. But in the city, the priests, at the insistence of Isidore, carrying the sacred images, with the people following, went about the city; they begged for help from heaven, afflicted their bodies with fasts, and all the citizens gave themselves over to prayers, and on the following night, each one returned to their own posts to be defended.
The walls of the city were famous throughout the whole world for both height and thickness, but due to age and the negligence of the Greeks, they were bare of battlements and breastworks, though the outer walls had been opportunely strengthened. In these the Greeks placed their hope. Armed soldiers decided to sustain the battle between the walls and the outer defenses. They say that the form of the city was almost triangular: the sea washes two parts: nor were the walls lacking that were suitable for repelling naval attacks. What remains, facing toward the land, is closed off behind high ramparts and outworks by a huge trench. The battle was begun a little before dawn, when the Turkish soldier was more patient of danger than of delay, and compensated for wounds and blood with the sweetness of plunder. They fought in the darkness to the greater destruction of the Turks, upon whom shafts were being hurled from above. But after it dawned, the signal having been given from all sides, not only Constantinople, but even Pera itself also began to be attacked, so that it might not provide any aid to the Greeks. To each legion was attributed its own stretch of walls and gates, so that the distinct labor might distinguish the brave from the cowardly, and the very [nature of the labor itself determined the outcome.]
In the same way, he ordered his naval allies to attack the sectors assigned to them. Wooden towers were moved up to the city. The soldiers brought up axes, bills, and ladders. Now, with shields raised over their heads, they advanced in a dense testudo formation. The Greeks rolled down the weight of rocks, and with lances and pikes they searched the scattered and floating testudo until, with the structure of shields broken apart, they laid the bloodless and mangled corpses prostrate. A great slaughter ensued, and the Turks, their spirits failing, fought more languidly. But Mahomet was present, calling upon each of the bravest by name, urging them to return to the fray; he enticed some with rewards and deterred others with threats. The battle was renewed from the start: the Turks again sought to undermine the wall and batter the gates, leaning on their shoulders and climbing over the reconstituted testudo, B striving to grasp the weapons and arms of the enemy: again the whole were rolled out with the wounded, the half-alive with the dying. A varied form of those perishing was seen, and a multitude of images of death.
Among these events, John Justiniani, born of noble station in Genoa, the metropolis of the Ligurians, who seemed to have been defending the city alone in the days prior, was gravely wounded. When he noticed his blood flowing, he sought a remedy and secretly withdrew from the battle, lest he discourage the others. But the Emperor Constantine, when he learned that Justiniani was absent, inquired where he had gone. Finding him, he begged him earnestly not to desert the battle. He, not at all swayed, ordered the gate to be opened, by which he might return into the city to have his wound treated. For the gates of the city, through which there was a path to the outer walls, had been blocked, so that there was no opportunity for the soldiers to flee, and so that they might therefore fight the enemy more stoutly: meanwhile, the defense was slackened, which the Turks, noticing, and with Mahomet pressing hard, attacked more fiercely. And since part of the wall had now been destroyed by bronze artillery and had largely filled the moat, they climbed through the very ruins, ascended the outer wall, and dislodged the terrified Greeks from their positions. The gate, which could have been opened to all on account of the wounded Justiniani, rendered the flight more profuse. Then Constantine, not as befitted an emperor in fighting but in fleeing, fell in the very narrowness of the gate, and was overwhelmed by the multitude of those breaking through, and died trampled underfoot. In such a multitude of fighters, only two were found who showed themselves to be men, one Greek and one Dalmatian: Theophilus Palæologus, and John the Slav, who, judging it shameful to flee, having withstood the attack of the Turks with incredible vigor and having cut down many, finally fell among the corpses of their enemies, not so much conquered as exhausted by conquering. Justiniani, having barely struggled through to Pera, and since everything was thrown into turmoil and he could not find the physician he especially sought, sailed from there to Chios, and there, whether from the bitterness of his wound or from the sadness of his soul, he fell into sickness and ended his life ingloriously; truly, he would be fortunate and highly to be praised if he had breathed his last on the very walls of the besieged city. At the entrance of the gate, eight hundred C of them were cut down, slaughtered after the Latins and Greeks had perished, some struck from behind, some overwhelmed by the rout. And now the enemy held the upper wall and, casting rocks down upon the citizens, was a help to his own men entering.
In this way, the city having been captured and all who dared to resist having been slain, they went in troops to plunder. The number of the victors was almost infinite, more corrupt in lust and cruelty; neither dignity, nor age, nor sex protected anyone. Rapes were mingled with slaughters, slaughters with rapes. They dragged off old men of advanced years and vile women for plunder and mockery: where an adult virgin, or anyone conspicuous for beauty, had fallen into the hands of the plunderers, being torn apart, they finally drove the spoilers themselves to mutual destruction. While each one dragged away to himself gold or the heavy gifts of the temples, he was cut down by the greater force of others. And because there were diverse languages, different customs, and various lusts in a most vast and discordant army, gathered from citizens, allies, and foreigners, where what was right and wrong differed for each, nothing was illicit in Constantinople for the whole three days. The Temple of Sophia, the work of Caesar Justinian, famed throughout the world, and to which no other could be compared at that time, stripped of its sacred furnishings, lay open to every abomination: for captive virgins, sacred and secular, widows and matrons, even ten-year-old boys and girls, were dragged there by force and compelled to serve the insatiable lust and luxury of the most filthy dogs until they breathed their last. The bones of the martyrs, which had been most precious in that city, were thrown to the dogs and swine. The images of the saints were either defiled with mud or destroyed with iron, the altars torn down and overturned
A by human praise, nor can it be humbled by the vituperations of the spiteful. These things wound and confound us, who, through sloth and indolence, allow the worship of the true God to perish, and lose both a good name in this age and the hope of salvation in the next. Why, therefore, do we Christians, meeting in the midst of these wars, not avenge such a great injury?
After this, Mahomet held a banquet, and having drunk more wine than usual, so that he might add the blood of his victims to his intoxicated rage, he had the princes and nobles of the city seized, and after they had been brought into his presence and he had mocked them thoroughly, the cruel and bloodthirsty executioner ordered them to be foully and miserably slaughtered. Sirelucas, a prince of noble blood, who held great power under Constantine, was killed with an axe before his own eyes, his eldest son having already been slain, and his other son, because he was handsome, having been reserved for illicit uses. Two of his other sons had been killed in the war. The tyrant ordered the wife of the Emperor Constantine, his daughters, and the leading virgins and noble matrons of the court to be brought to the banquet. There, they were first violated by Mahomet himself and other satraps of his, and afterwards, their pleas availing nothing, they were hacked to pieces. Constantine’s head was severed from his recovered corpse and fixed upon a spear so that it might be a laughingstock to all, and it was carried around the crossroads and camps of the city with the greatest ignominy. Those who had observed the forces of Mahomet report that there were three hundred thousand combatants who besieged the most noble city by land; by sea, thirty thousand, with three hundred ships noted. And so, the city of Constantinople being taken on the fifty-sixth day of the siege, the empire of the Christian emperors in the East was ended in the year of salvation 1453, a noble and ancient empire which had lasted under the power of the faithful for one thousand one hundred and ninety-one years. And what is most worthy of note, Constantine the Great, son of Helena, first founded and built it; but the other Constantine, the fifteenth emperor, also the son of a Helena, lost it: so that the beginning might accord with the end.
In this calamity and public destruction of the most noble city, Cardinal Isidore, who was at that time the pontifical legate to Constantine and was sought by the Barbarians for death, in order to escape the imminent slaughter, quickly exchanged his garments in the heat of the tumult with those of a corpse lying nearby, and joined the crowd of fugitives, escaping the city unharmed. Truly, he who had escaped death by a feigned appearance did not escape servitude with the same fortune: for having been captured by the following victors, and not being recognized because of his shaven chin and foreign clothing, he was nonetheless led away into slavery. Meanwhile, the corpse, which pretended to be a senator of the Church in purple robes due to the garment of Isidore that had been cast upon it, those who were [looking for] D the number of the dead and examining the bodies scattered about, raised up in great joy, found it, and drove its severed head, covered with a rose-colored cap, onto a spear; and as a herald proclaimed that this was the head of the Ruthenian cardinal, they carried it around the squares and streets of the captured city with much ridicule. He meanwhile, alive, lay hidden, destined for menial tasks before the prince of the Turks. From which servitude not long after (because he was believed to be a base, common man), having paid three hundred gold pieces, he was redeemed and traveled by an indirect route to Rome. There, being rewarded by Pope Nicholas V with many gifts in return for his labors, he was advanced in turn to a threefold episcopate, namely Sabina, Corfu, and Nicaea: and having administered these for about nine years with the greatest integrity of life and prudence, he finally discharged his debt to nature in Rome on the 27th of April in the year 1463, and was buried at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, to the great grief of all after his death.
Concerning Cardinal Isidore, Laonicus Chalcocondylas has this to say: In this miserable confusion of things (he speaks of the sacking of the city of Constantinople), Cardinal Isidore, prelate of the Ruthenians, was captured, and having been led into Galatia was sold as a slave, but having boarded a ship, he fled into the Peloponnese. If the king of the Turks had known this man, namely that he was a cardinal, he certainly would have killed him; but since he thought him killed among the others, he paid him no heed. In the Council of Florence held under Eugenius IV, he subscribed to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, third after the emperor of the Greeks, before the patriarch Dorotheus of Antioch, in these words: I, Isidore, metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia, and holding the place of the apostolic see of the most holy patriarch, lord Dorotheus, having been satisfied, have subscribed. In the same synod, mention of Isidore is made several times; in the 25th session, when the procession of the Holy Spirit was being discussed, Isidore said before Bessarion: We say that the procession of the Holy Spirit is attributed to the Son not only by the Western Fathers, but also by the Orientals. Wherefore it is right that we, following our saints, be joined with the Roman Church.
Cardinal Isidore was, however, a man most learned in every respect, a distinguished theologian of the Greeks, thoroughly versed in the divine Scriptures, subtle and sharp in intellect, vigorous and grave in speech; Paulus Cortesius recognized his eloquence from his cardinalate, as the lion is known from its paw, by the epistle in which he lamented the sacking of Byzantium and the bitter death in Thrace. He is called in some places the eloquent doctor of the Greeks and the ornament of his race.
ISIDORE, CARDINAL OF THE RUTHENIANS, BISHOP OF SABINA, LEGATE OF THE PONTIFF, TO ALL CHRIST'S FAITHFUL.
A Hear, all nations, hear and perceive with your ears, you who inhabit the world. Hear all these things, you who inhabit the faithful part of the world, ministers, pastors, and princes of all the Churches of Christ: and all kings and princes who are Christ's followers, and all the Lord's people with all the religious. Hear, I say, and let it be known to you that the precursor of the true Antichrist, the prince and lord of the Turks, but the servant of as many demons as vices, whose name is Mahomet, the enemy of Christ's cross, the heir of the matter and name of that first false prophet, and the author of the most impure law of the Hagarenes, the most wicked son of Satan: he who, driven by furies and madness, thirsts unceasingly for the blood of Christians; nor can his thirst be extinguished even after their innumerable slaughters; and he is moved by such hatred against Christ B and His members, that he strives to erase His name from the earth; and if he sees any Christian crossing his path, he considers himself defiled by it, such that he washes his eyes and mouth, claiming that he was previously unclean. This therefore, so terrible and horrific a monster, permitted by the just judgment of God, owing to the merits of Christians, to rage and carry out destruction against them, has captured, stormed, despoiled of all goods, and nearly destroyed the imperial city, New Rome, once most happy, now most miserable and oppressed by every calamity, known as Constantinople, which he had long besieged.
Who, moreover (to use the words of the prophet), will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes, so that I may weep day and night for the slain of that people, and the most wicked sacrileges committed in that capture? Who, remembering this horror, would not be struck dumb? Who would not become lethargic? Who would not be struck silent by grief? And yet, I will not describe all the enormities, lest pious ears recoil from hearing; but from the few things related, let the rest be imagined. This wicked tyrant, filled with blasphemies, after the city was received and the Emperor was beheaded, together with all his offspring and nobility, led outside the city very many who were bound in iron shackles and fetters, and with ropes tied around their necks: his soldiers dragged them—nobles, plebeians, monks and nuns, males and females, distinguished in virtue and station—and subjected them to many injuries. Where the Turks dragged persons vulnerable to insults to act as prostitutes in a brothel; and they did such and so many things against them, as much as one would do to dumb animals, and such that no one could speak of them without shame: they separated adolescents of both sexes from their parents, and dealt in them by selling them separately: they slaughtered infants before their parents like little lambs; mothers were deprived of their children, and the born were deprived of those who gave birth to them: brothers were separated from brothers, wives from their husbands, daughters-in-law from weeping and wailing mothers-in-law: separated kinsfolk and friends were led away, sold as slaves in diverse regions. Oh, what bitter tears! Oh, what great sighs! Oh, how many clamorous sobs among friends and acquaintances, what miserable voices were emitted amidst such slaughters, slaveries, expulsions, and insults! Princes, barons, and masters were made servants to cowherds, swineherds, and base men; within a decade they forced the children into the rites of their own perfidious sect.
C Alas! How the shining gold of wisdom has been obscured by the darkness of ignorance: gold of dignity by the ignominy of slavery! How has the excellent color of Greek eloquence been changed into the barbarism of Turkey! The stones of the sanctuary, if any were constant in faith, have been scattered, lying prostrate at the head of every street. Let us be silent about the rest, which things are human, but who has the tongue to explain, what intellect to grasp, what ears to hear patiently the injuries, mockery, insults, and wicked outrages against divine things? If I am not mistaken, never has God been so dishonored. O God, the nations have come into your inheritance, which is Israel, seeing you through faith. They have polluted your holy temple, the most noble church of Saint Sophia, along with others: they spat upon, broke, and trampled the images of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His Mother, the glorious Virgin, and of the saints and holy ones of God; they tore to pieces, defiled, and burned the most holy Gospels, Missals, and other books of the Church; they cut up the sacred vestments of the priests and the remaining ornaments of the church, taking them for their own clothing and adornment, or conferring them for a vile price; the vessels of the Lord and those of His worship
A dedicated, they ate and drank from them, and the rest they melted down, transferring them to profane uses. Finally, they placed the flesh of your saints, the carcasses of your servants, and the relics of blessed bodies as food for the birds of the sky, scattering here and there the flesh of your saints, whom they killed, to the beasts of the earth: there was no one to bury them. They dug up the altars, calling upon the name of the accursed Mahomet, praising him for the victory.
I omit, for shame, the fact that they urinated, defecated, and practiced every kind of shameful act in the temples, upon images and holy relics; they gave what was holy to the dogs; they cast the pearls of the sacraments before swine. While I recall these things, I tremble all over in horror: nor can I further write with my pen of their crimes, and the mockeries and disgraces inflicted upon the faith of the Christian religion. Invading the monasteries of both monks and nuns, they plundered everything, casting them out of their dwellings, and they destroyed the infirmaries of the sick. Even if historiographers of the heathen world recount many and great destructions and exterminations of cities, almost none could be equaled to this desolation. They left no inhabitant within the city: B neither Greek, nor Latin, nor Armenian, nor Jew; they made the city itself, stripped of its own citizens, as if it were a desert; I myself saw their acts and works with my own eyes, and together with some most steadfast men, I suffered many evils and dangers: though God snatched me from their hands, as He did Jonah from the belly of the whale.
Constantinople having been stormed, they occupied Pera, not far distant from there: bringing its walls down to the ground. From the bells of the churches, they cast cannons: the cross, which was on the summit of its tower, they smashed along with the tower itself: they reduced the commonwealth to nothing; appointing a Turk as its judge and prince; they established tolls, duties, taxes, and burdens there for those arriving or staying, according to their own will. C Not content with these most atrocious things, the most cunning and most bloodthirsty Mahomet, the supreme enemy of Christians, extended himself to further things: and he already prepared one hundred and seventy triremes, both large and small, and sent them to the Aegean Sea to subject the Cycladic islands to himself.
Thence he prepares himself with an infinite army to cross over to three notable and powerful cities situated near the Danube, and to storm them: one which we call Periston, another Forabium, and a third Belgrade, intending afterwards to overrun the whole of Hungary, and to plunder, devastate, and crush it: so that he leaves no one behind him to hinder anyone wishing to set out for other places. Furthermore, he makes haste to cross into Italy as quickly as possible, and also attempts to prepare three hundred galleys, both large and small, twenty large ships, and over one hundred thousand infantry and cavalry: and thus he endeavors to cross from Dyrrhachium to Brindisi, which city is situated in the kingdom of Apulia.
Wherefore I beg, entreat, and exhort you, all Christians, that out of zeal for the faith and the Christian religion, you gird yourselves with the sword for your liberty against such dire D enemies of divine worship, and of all holiness and moral life: and first indeed, casting away all dissension and emulation, forgiving offenses against one another, just as Christ granted to all, embrace peace and union among yourselves most earnestly: so that, rendered united and stronger thereby, trusting in the help of the Most High (whose is the victory and the war, not that of a multitude), you may be able to crush Satan himself with his henchmen beneath your feet. For although he may trust in a multitude, and in the ferocity of his own men, there are nevertheless more who are with us: nay, the Lord of hosts himself, for whose faith and religion you fight, [ordains] so that one hundred of you may be able to pursue and overcome one thousand of them, and one thousand of you ten thousand. For sloth and ignorance of war are innate in them.
Pera; in the year of Christ 1452.