Converting Constantinople
On April 6, 1453, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (1431-81) besieged Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire, and the most populous city in the European world. Less than two months later, Ottoman forces conquered and sacked the city, claiming many lives, and remaking the city as an Islamic capital, converting its ancient churches into mosques. The fall of the Eastern Christian capital before the ever-expanding Ottoman Empire prompted apprehension and antipathy throughout Europe. This devastating defeat also felt like a threat to classical learning and culture, since the conquest cut off access to Greek libraries which had been invaluable destinations for humanists seeking ancient texts. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405-64), a poet, orator, and diplomat at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (1415-93)—and the future Pope Pius II—composed this impassioned lament addressed to Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455), who had himself funded humanist expeditions to Constantinople:
“I grieve that Santa Sophia, the most famous church in all the world, has been ruined or polluted. I grieve that saints’ basilicas without number, built with wondrous skill, should lie beneath the desolation or defilement of Mohammed. What shall I say of the countless books, as yet unknown to the Latins, which were there in Constantinople? ...Here is a second death for Homer and a second destruction of Plato. Where are we now to seek the philosophers’ and the poets’ works of genius? The fount of the Muses has been destroyed!”
In reality Sultan Mehmet II himself supported humanism, gathering Italian scholars and artists at his court, and he also allowed considerable religious freedom to conquered Christian subjects, but these realities were dwarfed in Europe’s imagination by the shock of Constantinople’s destruction. In representing the city, artists struggled to reconcile its Byzantine past with its Ottoman present, producing images that both celebrated and contested the Turkish capital.
Guillaume-Joseph Grelot (b.ca.1630)
Relation nouvelle d’un voyage de Constantinople…
Paris: Chez la veuve de Damien Foucault, 1680
Rare Books Collection
The church of Hagia Sophia served as one of the most important imperial Christian basilicas from its dedication in 360 A.D. until its conversion into a mosque after Mehmed II’s (1431-81) conquest of Constantinople. Sixteenth-century architectural interventions by Sultan Suleiman I (1494-1566) added minarets around the perimeter of the building and covered Christian mosaics with whitewash. Even centuries later, European visitors could not accept the transformation of this great monument. In this seventeenth–century interior view of the building’s central basilica, mosaics of the Veil of Veronica and Christian saints can still be seen, juxtaposed with several tughras, or calligraphic monograms, of the sultan.
Pierre Gilles (1490-1555)
London: Printed for the Benefit of the Translator, 1729
Rare Books Collection
In this rendition of the Hagia Sophia’s exterior, the printmaker has pointedly and incongruously placed a fictive cross on the building’s central dome. However, the existing crescent moons–which came to be associated with Islam during the Ottoman Empire–crown the minarets. Although Hagia Sophia had been a mosque for over two centuries at the time of this publication, for some, it would always retain its original identity as one of the great monuments of Byzantine Christianity.
Pierre Gilles (1490-1555)
London: Printed for the Benefit of the Translator, 1729
Rare Books Collection
Tensions over the conversion of Constantinople are evident in representations of the overall urban landscape. This print of the city was made prior to the Turkish invasion based on a drawing of the early 1420s by the Florentine traveler Cristoforo Buondelmonti (1386-1430), and was ubiquitous for over a century. It was purposely included in this volume alongside contemporary views of the city, underscoring the lasting European nostalgia and regret over the loss of the imperial Christian capital as well as the endurance of this representation as the only extant image predating the Ottoman conquest.
Guillaume-Joseph Grelot (b. ca. 1630)
Paris: Chez la veuve de Damien Foucault, 1680
Rare Books Collection
This view of Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus shows the city as it appeared in the eighteenth century. The promontory of what was called the Serraglio Point is highlighted by the artist who chose to emphasize the importance of the heavily trafficked waterways, as well as the urban landscape of the Ottoman city in his own time.
