Forever and Ever (Part 4)
of the last flowering of Byzantine civilization before its destruction by the armies of the Ottoman Turks.
He argues that by the 14th and 15th centuries, Byzantines, living in the sad vestiges of their once great
Empire new that they were doomed. Nevertheless, this sense of impending annihilation did not lead
them to despair, rather they created many of the greatest works that Byzantines had ever produced.
In order to show something of Late Byzantine civilization, Romer visits the remarkably beautiful tiny
Byzantine town of Mistra in the Pelopponese. Here, the Platonist philosopher and teacher Plethon,
whose students helped to inspire the Italian Renaissance, had his academy. Here too in Mistra,
emperors would retire in their old age and the last Emperor, Constantine XI was crowned. Romer
also takes time to show the great late Byzantine mosaic of Christ Pantokrator in Haghia Sophia, the
climax of Byzantine art. Also, he visits the monastery church of St. Savior in Chora, near the late
imperial palace on the city walls. The frescoes show the late Byzantine meditation on eternity. He also
shows how the Emperor John VIII's trip to Florence to secure western aid helped to redefine the
Latin West for a time, though without bringing needed military assistance.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of this episode is Romer's vivid narrative of the final days, siege and
conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet II. He shows the siege from both the points of view of the
Sultan in Edirne and the Emperor in Constantinople. To do this, he reads from the actual
correspondence between Sultan Mehmet II and Emperor Constantine XI. He then shows a fifteenth
century frescoes of the fall of Constantinople in Romania, to describe the siege.
To his credit, Romer does not simply stop in 1453, but goes on to describe the transition from
Byzantine Constantinople to Ottoman Istanbul. How the city once again became the center of a great
and powerful empire. How Mehmet II made one Gennadios patriarch to all Orthodox Christians in his
realm. How too many, though not all, of the city's churches were converted into mosques. And how
Byzantine refugees like one Bessarion, who was made into a Cardinal in Rome, established an
academy in the eternal city to preserve something of Byzantium.
For Romer, the one enduring legacy of Byzantium that still influences the world today is the vision of
heaven's order. The idea that there is law and authority, the just and the unjust, and the elixir of life.
The vision that Byzantines inherited from the Ancient world and have passed on to both those in the
East and in the West.