Constantinople fell on May 29, 1453. The
news reached Venice on June 29, during a meeting of the Great Council. A
message was promptly drafted and sent by courier to Pope Nicholas V. It reached
Bologna on July 4, and Rome on July 8.
This guy was not very popular in 1453 Rome
When the Fall of Constantinople was
announced to the Roman people, the initial reaction was a combination of horror
and disbelief. Everyone knew that Constantinople was in terrible danger; but
the city loomed so large in the popular imagination that its conquest seemed
impossible. In the weeks between the advent of the Venetian message and the
arrival of corroborating reports, rumors circulated wildly. Some claimed that
the city had not fallen, could never fall. Others said that it had been seized
by the Turks, but then swiftly recaptured by Christians. Others still warned
that the Sultan, having conquered the New Rome, was already on his way (with a
large Turkish fleet) to subjugate the old.
For Pope Nicholas, the news was both a
crushing blow and a desperate inspiration. Constantinople, Nicholas resolved,
had to be retaken; and to that end he sent couriers to all the major Italian
states, ordering them to cease their wars and commit to a common cause against
the Turks. A crusade was formally proclaimed by papal bull at the end of
September. Yet despite a brief surge of enthusiasm (and a still briefer bout of
fund-raising), these efforts came to nothing.
Back in Rome, other reports had by now confirmed the truth of the Venetian missive: Constantinople was in the hands of the Turks, and the Sultan was contemplating an invasion of Italy (that threatened invasion, as it happened, only took place in 1480). Roman humanists turned their fertile pens to laments - and, somewhat later, to elaborations of the curious theory that the Turks were actually distant descendants of the Trojans, and that their conquest of Constantinople represented a long-deferred revenge on the Greeks.
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