A lecture in Dublin marking the ‘Year of Kazantzakis’

The grave of Nikos Kazantzakis in Crete has a simple epitaph: ‘I hope for nothing, I fear for nothing, I am free’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Greek Ministry of Culture has declared this year [2017] the ‘Year of Kazantzakis.’ Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), one of the great Greek writers of the 20th century, died 60 years ago on 26 October 1957.

Kazantzakis was nominated on nine occasions for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His books include Zorba the Greek, Christ Recrucified, Captain Michalis (first published as Freedom or Death) and The Last Temptation of Christ.

By one vote, he lost the Nobel Prize for Literature to Albert Camus a few days before he died in 1957. He is buried on the bastion above Iraklion.

The Irish Hellenic Society opens its new season of lectures with an inaugural meeting in University College Dublin this Friday [20 October 2017] with a fresh look at the work of this great figure in modern Greek literature and philosophy.

Niki Stavrou is the publisher of Kazantzakis’s works and the Director of Kazantzakis Publications since May 2014. Her godmother, Eleni Kazantzakis, gave her the name Niki to honour and commemorate her late husband, Nikos Kazantzakis.

Niki spent her childhood listening to stories from the life of Eleni and her Nikos. Eleni read to her and meticulously explained one by one all the books of Nikos Kazantzakis, starting with his children’s books, Alexander the Great and At the Palaces of Knossos, and continuing with his translations of Dante and theatrical plays, enlightening every line with her deep knowledge of her beloved husband.

Even though at the time, Eleni lived in Geneva and the Stavrou family lived in Cyprus, Eleni regularly visited Cyprus and Greece to spend her holidays and work with Patroclos Stavrou.

When Eleni adopted Patroclos Stavrou in 1982, this formalised the already profound family relationship between Eleni Kazantzakis and the Stavrou family. Eleni used to quip that with that once official act of adoption she had acquired a son, a daughter-in-law, a granddaughter as well as a goddaughter. In July 1974, at the time of the Turkish invasion in Cyprus, Eleni Kazantzakis, Mary Stavrou and Niki’s nanny Angela Kapodistrias were together at the apartment Eleni had just bought in Kyrenia, as a gift to Niki.

Patroclos Stavrou was the chief of staff in the Presidential Palace for Archbishop Makarios, at the time of the coup and was arrested by the junta leaders. Meanwhile, from 1967 until 1974, Eleni Kazantzakis was unable to travel to Greece until the fall of the colonels’ junta. Ever since, she spent her summers and holidays with the Stavrou family.

Eleni Kazantzakis died on 18 February 2004 in the Henry Dunant Hospital in Athens, holding the hand of her adopted son, Patroclos Stavrou. I was visiting Athens at the time, and had arranged to meet her, only to find she died on the night I arrived.

Niki Stavrou studied philosophy and political sciences at the University of Indianapolis. She holds a master’s degree in English Literature and taught English and American History, Literature and Poetry before becoming the Director of Kazantzakis Publications.

In her research on the life of Nikos Kazantzakis and the real people behind the characters of Report to Greco, she has identified the first love of Nikos Kazantzakis, Kathleen Forde from Ireland.

Niki Stavrou is still working with a deep sense of commitment and respect for the promotion and dissemination of the work of Nikos Kazantzakis, following in the steps of her godmother, Eleni Kazantzakis, and her father, Patroclos Stavrou.

I have been invited to follow Niki Stavrou with next month’s lecture in this season’s programme of the Irish Hellenic Society. I am speaking on ‘Sir Edward Law (1846-1908): the Irish Philhellene who rescued the Greek economy in the 1890s.’ The lecture takes place on Wednesday 22 November 2017, at 7.30 pm in the United Arts Club, 3 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2.

Sir Edward Law (1846-1908): the subject of my lecture at the Irish Hellenic Society next month.

Translating a Greek icon

Inspiration; Yannis Ritsos, left, with Amy Mims, who spent 12 years translating his last major work into English

Having brought Yannis Ritsos to English speakers, his translator is now taking Kavanagh to Greece, writes Patrick Comerford

Amy Mims, an award-winning poet and translator, is proud of her descent from the O’Sullivans of Castletown Bere, in Co Cork. Having lived in Greece for more than four decades, she now feels Greek. But having devoted much of her working life to introducing Yannis Ritsos, the great Greek poet of the left, to English-speaking readers, she is now introducing Patrick Kavanagh to her adopted home.

Mims met Kavanagh on her very first day in Ireland, in 1957. On later visits she went with Kavanagh and John Ryan, the friend and supporter of many literary figures, to Newgrange, where they made comparisons with Knossos and the Minoan civilisation of ancient Crete. Studies in classical Greek at Harvard, followed by Byzantine and modern Greek studies at Oxford, led to a Fulbright scholarship in 1958 to study medieval Greece. Having chosen to stay in Greece, she now describes herself as “Greek by identity”.

She has published four translations of Nikos Kazantzakis – author of Zorba The Greek and The Last Temptation Of Christ -- innumerable versions of contemporary Greek playwrights and poets, and her own poetry and essays. She has been good friends with Leonard Cohen since they first met on the island of Hydra, but her literary and artistic Greek friends have included the composer Mikis Theodorakis and, of course, Ritsos.

Like many creative Greeks, she was forced into exile under the colonels, first to Paris, where the Greek exiles included Vassilis Vassilikos, author of Z, followed by “18 ghastly months in London” and travels in Cyprus and Crete and among the Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea.

Ritsos (1909-1990) paid for his political commitment with long periods of internment and internal exile under the post-war right-wing regime and under the colonels. His epic poem Epitaphios became the anthem of resistance to the colonels, while Romiosini made the resistance movement the natural heir to the heroes of Greek mythology. Both were set to music and arranged by Theodorakis and Manos Hatzidakis.

Ritsos was hailed by Aragon as the greatest poet of his time; Pablo Neruda thought Ritsos better qualified for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mims first met him in Cyprus in 1973, then spent the next 30 years making his works available to an English-reading audience.

Her translation of Ritsos’s nine-volume Iconostasis Of Anonymous Saints was a 12-year labour of love on his last major work, the one he considered his freest and finest ever; it led to her three-volume collection from the leading Greek publisher Kedros (1996-2001). Now a new complementary bilingual work, Ritsos Of The Iconostasis, offers readers in both languages a companion for the journey through the Joycean passageways of her translation of Ritsos’s swansong.

The iconostasis is the screen decorated with icons of saints that traditionally separates the altar from the main body of a Greek church. For Ritsos, the anonymous saints he needed to remember in his prayers and to keep the oil lamp of his heart burning before are not the traditional saints of Orthodoxy but the everyday “anonymous saints” from his neighbourhood in old Athens, members of his large family, the simple inhabitants of his home town of Monemvasia, his tragicomic aunts, unassuming political prisoners sharing internal exile on a lonely island and a close-knit band of friends.

All these “anonymous saints” are skilfully counterpointed with the hero, Ion, who is Ritsos, and his alter ego, Ariostos, and woven into a dreamlike tapestry of reminiscences, vivid memories from childhood, reflections on modern Greek history and politics, introspective confessions and surrealist dreams. Although a quarter of the size, it has been compared with Proust’Remembrance Of Things Past.

Although the Times Literary Supplement described Mims’s translation as a “wild and fascinating work”, the Iconostasis received little attention from the Greek literary world and has yet to attract a wider readership. Her translation has been praised by Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, as “a marvellously diverse and rich work” of “sheer beauty, individuality and humour”, a “masterpiece that remains always inexhaustible” and a commonplace Odyssey of “the world’s little people”. Theodorakis believes Ritsos Of The Iconostasis “should be read by all who love the work of Ritsos”.

In Ritsos Of The Iconostasis, Mims finds similarities between Ritsos’s style and that of James Joyce in Ulysses. “Ritsos’s Iconostasis is embellished with an almost Joycean richness of words,” she says, “including outrageous puns, unprecedented though ineffably ‘poetic’ erotica and miraculous flights of language.” Although Joyce’s Ulysses is often compared to Kazantzakis’s sequel to Homer’s Odyssey, she prefers to compare Joyce and Ritsos.

She describes Ulysses as an expression of the “miraculous kinship” between Ireland and Greece, and believes Joyce and Ritsos would have enjoyed each other’s company. She speaks of Joyce “the Ulyssean” and Ritsos “the Odyssean” as “kindred spirits from two opposite poles of Europe”, yet “two writers with certain essential points in common”.

She sees parallels between Joyce and Ritsos in their tremendous variety of styles, the plethora of puns and use of invented words, games with names, superb passages where only the music of sound plays a role, the use of onomatopoetic words appearing as single sounds, the occasional obsession with bodily functions or misfunctions not usually discussed in polite company, and “the aura of ‘poetic obscenity’ … almost always transforming even the rawest sexual scenes into poetry.

“Molly Bloom’s monologue, with her allusions to her sexual life at the end of Ulysses, is transcended and transmuted into a marvellous paean to nature. Ritsos does the same thing. Wherever he has a particularly raw section, it is almost always followed by a lyrical outburst of unparalleled beauty. One of the main motives in my writing the companion was to help dissolve the prejudice against what many people have called the obscenity in the Iconostasis”.

Even Ritsos’s allusions to the Orthodox liturgy parallel Joyce’s outrageous quotations from the Latin Mass. Yet, unlike many critics, she praises Ritsos for “his deep religious themes”. “Many people think that for a Marxist this is impossible”" she admits. However, she insists “he did indeed believe in God and, above all, in the power of love”.

Ritsos’s epic Epitaphios, drawing on the imagery of the Good Friday rituals in the Greek Orthodox tradition, became the anthem of resistance to the colonels in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite its unique place in modern Greek literature, Epitaphios has never been fully translated into English. Mims translated eight of the 20 cantos for MBI’s recording, in 2000, of Epitaphios, but she admits the “translation of 15-syllable Greek verse can never really be at an end” and concedes she is still unhappy with the final work.

Now she is returning to her Irish roots, translating Yeats and Kavanagh into Greek. Having translated The Great Hunger and The Green Fool during two previous visits, she returned to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, the artists’ retreat in Annaghmakerrig, for a third visit earlier this year and continues to work on translating a selection of 28 of his shorter poems. She has persuaded Macdara Woods to write an introduction and hopes the Athens publisher Odos Panos will eventually publish her translations of Kavanagh.

This quarter-page feature was first published on the Arts pages of ‘The Irish Times’ on 25 August 2014

The ancient Greeks are speaking to us across the ages

Homer’s wooden horse in a scene from the film Troy. Some feel that the terrors of the modern era and the war in Iraq have set the stage for a return of Greek tragedy and its continuing lessons for us

The Olympic Games and the success of the movie Troy are inspiring fresh debates about the relevance and value of the classics, writes Patrick Comerford

Wolfgang Petersen’s epic treatment of the Trojan war in takes many liberties with Homer's story. However, after a family viewing, both the Iliad and the Odyssey were dusted down, and Homer became popular reading once more for my two teenage sons, testimony to the continuing power of the classics to stir the imagination.

The Olympic Games have returned home to Greece this month for the first time since 1896 and I am reminded that an important component of the original Olympic tradition was a ceasefire in all conflicts throughout the known world, a tradition now more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Apart from the Olympic hype and the Greek success in Euro 2004, some Greeks were also captivated this summer by the success of The Trojan Women at the Epidaurus Festival, which was marking its 50th anniversary.

If Troy is based on the ultimate war story, then Euripides’s The Trojan Women is one of the greatest anti-war plays, and the critics hailed the Diadromi Theatre production as “majestic yet appropriate for a modern audience”.

The play deals with the imperious Greeks’ brutal treatment of the women of Troy following the Trojan War.

In this compelling tragedy, Euripides shows that in wars the victors often become dehumanised and that the winners in all eras are arrogant. After the Greeks have bullied their way to victory, a young girl is sacrificed to a ghost and an innocent infant is dashed to its death.

The Trojan Women, which finishes its summer tour in Athens next month, was also staged this summer, appropriately, in Troy. There were no fears that the message would be lost on a Turkish audience. “This is an honest play that praises the Trojans’ morals,” said the translator Costas Georgousopoulos, who pointed out that in this tragedy Euripides trivialises the Homeric heroes. To use a Greek play that criticises Homeric values, that points out the immoral politics in Greece during the Trojan wars, and that praises the Trojans is a positive gesture as the political authorities in both Greece and Turkey struggle to find new ways to be good neighbours after generations of mistrust and misunderstanding.

Euripides lived through Athens’ debilitating war against Sparta and eight of his 19 surviving plays deal with the disastrous political and social consequences of the conflict. In The Trojan Women, he presents the tragic fate of the women of Troy who are waiting to be handed over as slaves to their new Greek masters after the sacking of the city.

It challenges the false heroics that were perpetuated in the Homeric tradition – and that are uncritically represented in the film Troy. However, while The Trojan Women appears on the surface to be dealing with Homeric themes, the first audiences must have had a sense of déja vu as they realised that Euripides was demolishing mythology to criticise tragic deeds perpetrated a short while before on the island of Milos during the Peloponnesian War.

Georgousopoulos reminded his audience in Epidaurus that the play was first staged in Athens shortly after the Athenians destroyed Milos. The islanders, who had a tradition of friendship with Sparta, rejected Athens’ demand for a contribution of men or money for the war. But the Athenians were having none of this special pleading – the warning to small states that “you are either with me or against me” is a declaration that has been heard once again with tragic consequences recently.

The Athenians attacked Milos, put to death all male inhabitants, sold the women and children into slavery, and colonised the island, and Euripides’ criticism of a colonial military effort to expand power is clear in The Trojan Women. One of the timeless morals of the play is the corrupting effect that war has on its victors.

Another tragedy by Euripides, Hecuba, is being staged in London next month and in Stratford-on-Avon in January. At one level, Hecuba is a character study of Priam’s widowed queen, driven to murderous vengeance by her suffering. But according to director Jonathan Kent the play is also “one of the most savage indictments of war ever written”.

In Hecuba, both victors, Agamemnon and Odysseus, refuse to consider seriously the ex-queen’s human rights. But Euripides argues that if the justice owed to individuals is sacrificed to political expediency, society will soon disintegrate – a timely reminder to the world in the light of recent revelations about the treatment of captives in Iraqi prisons.

In Iphigenia at Aulis, written 16 years after Hecuba, Euripides took a cynical and satirical look at the actions of public figures.

It was written at a time when he was losing faith in political leaders and realised their inability to extricate themselves from an interminable war.

The Greek critic Spyros Payiatakis reviewed The Trojan Women for the Athens daily, Kathimerini. As he was leaving the theatre at Epidaurus, he overheard someone exclaim: “If Euripides was alive now, he would be suffering from déja vu” – the reference to Iraq was “more than obvious”. At the same time, the drama critic Michael Billington was writing in the Guardian of how the “terror of modern times” has set “the stage for Greek tragedy”.

Billington also saw the current series of revivals on the British stage as “a direct response to the Iraq war” and the tragedy in the Middle East. They include Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender, adapted from Trachiniae by Sophocles, and three plays by Euripides – Ion, Iphigenia at Aulis, and the two revivals of Hecuba.

Of course Greek tragedy is timeless, a permanent part of Western culture. As Crimp recently declared: “Every writer writes/rewrites the Greeks in his or her own image.” But directors have also discovered a metaphor for our own times in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Crimp’s own adaptation of Sophocles is set in a world where cities are pulverised, liberators become aggressors and violence is justified in terms of expedience. “If you want to root out terror there is only one rule: kill,” says a government minister.

“Coming at a time when even an independent US commission has denied the Bush regime’s linkage of Saddam Hussein’s regime to al-Qaeda, the words have an ominous ring,” Billington observes. But in the end, he says, “it is the Greek understanding of the human consequences of war and the gulf between public rhetoric and private feeling that makes these plays seem shockingly relevant to our own divided world”.

Rev Patrick Comerford is Regional Co-ordinator of the Church Mission Society Ireland (CMS Ireland).

This half-page feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 18 August 2004.

Cautious welcome to Holy Mountain

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Cautious welcome
to Holy Mountain

Scenes of Mount Athos: the wildlife and beaches remain unspoiled ...

... small hermitages and monasteries are almost hidden in the landscape (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2004)

The monks of the theocratic republic of Mount Athos resolutely defend their isolation – and the complete exclusion of women, writes Patrick Comerford

Mount Athos, in eastern Macedonia, is one of the most isolated parts of Greece, and reaching the peninsula is difficult, even for the most determined pilgrims. There is no direct road access from the Greek mainland and there are strict limitations on who can board the two ferries that ply daily from the small ports of Ouranóupoli and Ierissós to the coastline of this monastic mountain.

The monks of Mount Athos robustly defend their isolation and autonomy, and the number of arrivals is strictly limited each day. Most visitors may stay for only three or four days, and non-Orthodox visitors must demonstrate a genuine interest in Orthodoxy, theology or Byzantine studies before receiving a special permit. Known to Greeks as Ághion Óros, or the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos is a monks’ republic whose autonomy has been guaranteed for generations and is written into Greek constitutional law. Since 1926, Mount Athos has had the unique status of a theocratic republic, with its own government, elected by the 20 monasteries on the mountain.

There are no roads connecting the Holy Mountain with the rest of Greece, ensuring its continuing isolation. Sailing from Ouranóupoli or Ierissós, visitors have a feeling of leaving the world behind. Visas and passports are checked thoroughly before the two-hour journey, and large signs at both ports warn visitors to Mount Athos that the entrance of women and the approach of visitors and crafts without special permits are “entirely forbidden”, and that “any violation” of these prohibitions “involves serious penal sanctions”.

Since 1060, when the Byzantine emperor, Constantine IX, issued a decree banning women from living on or even visiting the peninsula, the population of Mount Athos has been exclusively male. The ban extends even to female animals – with the single exception of cats, which are needed to control rodents. Isolation has its benefits: because tourism and industry have made no inroads, the ecosystem and wildlife of Mount Athos are unspoiled. There are few paved roads, just a handful of trucks and buses, and no electricity pylons or telegraph poles. Beaches that any travel brochure would boast of have not been blighted by beach bars, banana boats or sunbathers.

At Vatopedi, the feeling is of a traditional Greek village ...

... (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2004)

Each of the 20 monasteries on Mount Athos has its own atmosphere and ethos, and the peninsula is speckled with smaller monastic dependencies, small houses and solitary hermitages. Although 20,000 monks were living on the Holy Mountain in its heyday, monastic life reached its lowest level in the 1960s, when numbers dropped to barely 1,000. In the past decade, however, there has been a dramatic revival, so that today there are more than 2,000 monks, with new young novices arriving in large numbers at monasteries such as Simonopetra, Philotheou and Vatopedi, along with a growing number of pilgrims.

This revival is hard to imagine at Esphigmenous, where even Orthodox visitors find anything but a warm welcome. At the strictest foundation on Athos, the monks have revolted against the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople because of his ecumenical reputation, and daring monks have hung out a banner greeting visitors with the slogan “Orthodoxy or Death”.

By contrast, Vatopedi, a three-hour walk away, is Athos’s most welcoming monastery. Once described by Osbert Lancaster as “the Christ Church of Athos”, Vatopedi is like an intimate, hospitable Greek village with its cobbled courtyard, cascading buildings, hanging balconies and gently ageing belltowers and fountains. Vatopedi was facing serious decline a decade ago but has recently doubled its numbers to 90 monks, making it one of the fastest-growing monasteries on the peninsula – a revival which has confounded those who predicted that monastic life on the mountain was in terminal decline.

At Vatopedi, pilgrims are welcomed ...

... by Abbot Ephraim, one of the leading figures in the revival of the monastic tradition (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2004)

The welcome at Vatopedi is an exuberant expression of traditional Greek hospitality. Guests are warmly greeted by the guestmaster with a glass of raki and large dollops of loukoúmi – known to most Irish people, unfairly, as “Turkish delight” – and any efforts to pay for bed and board are politely spurned. At some monasteries, the monks are said to leave visitors standing in the rain outside the main church and the refectory and send them packing early in the morning. But at Vatopedi, pilgrims are welcome to take part in the liturgy with the monks and invited to dine with them in the refectory.

Staying at a monastery is no easy escape from the secular world. The monks follow the Julian calendar, which is a fortnight behind the rest of the world, and the clocks keep an eccentric Byzantine time - although the monks' wristwatches are more worldly. Each morning I was woken at 3 a.m. by the call that “Christ is Risen” to join the monks for Morning Prayer, followed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Only much later, at 7.30 a.m., is breakfast served: generous portions of cheese, bread, olives, beans, eggs, and even a glass of wine, as a monk reads from scripture and delivers a short homily.

As the monks pray and work during the day, pilgrims can easily find time to read, pray and be silent. The call to prayer comes again at 4 p.m. with Vespers, and later, after a simple dinner that bears a marked similarity to breakfast, the monastery’s relics and special icons are put on display. Without a hint of doubt, Father William, an American-born monk, points out portions of the True Cross, the girdle of the Virgin Mary entrusted to the apostle Thomas at her Dormition, the skull of St John Chrysostom, with a blackened ear still attached, and the skull of St Gregory Palamas, the 14th-century monk who became Archbishop of Thessaloniki.

During my stay, Greek businessmen taking their sons on their first pilgrimage questioned me about the ordination of women and the consecration of gay bishops. Villagers from Cyprus could not understand why a priest visiting the Holy Mountain was not wearing a cassock. A group of Romanian seminary students gently tried to convert me to Orthodoxy. There was a handful of Russians, Ukrainians and Bulgarians, and a small party of Greek-Americans. But everyone left me with time for prayer and solitude.

On the ferry back to Ouranóupoli, I gazed up at the onion domes and copper roofs of Panteleimon, the last Russian monastery on Mount Athos, but was starkly interrupted by a reminder of ugly reality from the outside world. A group of Serbs, who had visited Chilandar despite a devastating recent fire, wondered why the new Europe was forgetting their plight and failing to embrace Serbia. Mount Athos was no retreat from worldly politics.

A fountain inside a monastic courtyard in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2004)

Rev Patrick Comerford is southern regional co-ordinator of CMS Ireland, a Christian mission and development agency.

This feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 19 June 2004.

Alexander’s descendants languish in the city that bears his name

Letter from Alexandria
Patrick Comerford

Lawrence Durrell once described Alexandria as “a broken-down version of Naples”, and Michael Palin was more disparaging when he said it felt like “Cannes with acne”. But, despite the shortage of seafront tavernas and bars, a stroll along the Corniche can leave the visitor in no doubt that this is a Mediterranean city, full of mystery, myth and enchantment.

This is the city of Alexander the Great and of Cleopatra, of the Pharos Lighthouse, once one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World, and of the greatest library of the classical world. Alexandria is at the crossroads of history, the meeting place of Africa, Asia and Europe – the Ptolemies, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Napoleon, Montgomery, King Farouk, and even the al-Fayed brothers, all marched through this city in their own ways.

Its Muslim conqueror Amr described a city of “4,000 palaces, 4,000 baths, 1,200 greengrocers and 40,000 Jews”. But Alexandria has also been described as the “city of the literary cross-references”.

It is better known in the English-speaking world through its literature and writers than through its minarets and tourist sites. The guest list at the Hotel Cecil includes Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Winston Churchill. But this too is the city where Durrell wrote The Dark Labyrinth and The Alexandria Quartet, and where E.M. Forster worked on A Passage to India, having moved here after A Room with a View and Howard’s End. Durrell based his character Balthazar on Constantine Cavafy, and Forster introduced the English-speaking world to Alexandria’s greatest modern poet.

Cavafy (1863-1933) lived most of his life in Alexandria, working as a clerk in the Ministry of Public Works in a cramped office above the Trianon patisserie.

Although he was gay, he could joke that there was a brothel below his apartment in the narrow alley. The Patriarchal Monastery of Saint Sava can still be seen from his balcony, and there was a hospital at the end of the street. “Where could I live better?” he once asked. “Below, the brothel caters for the flesh. And there is the church which forgives sins. And there is the hospital where we die.”

Cavafy died of throat cancer from drinking and was buried in the Greek cemetery in Shatby.

Today, his apartment houses the Cavafy Museum. The collection includes family memorabilia, drawings and photographs, the poet’s personal possessions, his icons, his bed and the desk where he wrote Waiting for the Barbarians (1904), The City (1910) and Ithaki (1911) and an exhibition of translations of his work into dozens of languages, including English versions by W.H. Auden and the Irish poet Desmond O’Grady.

Cavafy’s poetry encapsulated the lives of Alexandria’s vibrant Greek community a century ago, with the city inspiring many of his poems, including The City and The god abandons Antony (1911).

For thousands of years there have been Greeks in Alexandria. The city takes its very name from the greatest Greek hero of all, Alexander the Great, known to Egyptians today as Iskander Akbar. The city’s Greek Orthodox community trace the Church of Alexandria back to Saint Mark the Evangelist, who made his first convert here in AD 45.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria has survived through the centuries, despite schisms, heresies, turmoil and the arrival of Islam.

Indeed, the Muslims came to respect the prophets and saints of their Greek Orthodox neighbours: many Muslims continue to believe the Mosque of Nabi Daniel, featured in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, is built on the grave of the Old Testament prophet; and the Attarine Mosque is built on the site of a church named after the champion of orthodoxy, Athanasius – Napoleon even believed he found the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great here.

The Suez Crisis in 1954 dealt a severe blow to Alexandria’s Greek community. Seen as foreigners, despite their presence in the city for millennia, many accepted the offer from the Greek government to leave what Cavafy called “this small corner” to “find a new country … another shore”.

The Greeks of the city numbered 300,000 half a century ago; today they are no more than 1,000. The Greek coffee shops, tavernas and bars littered around Alexandria 50 years ago have all but disappeared, and the notable exceptions are no longer in Greek hands. The dark-panelled Pastroudis, a coffee shop founded by Greeks in 1923 and immortalised by Durrell and Cavafy, had become a sad parody of itself before it closed recently.

Havana, a nearby bar, was difficult to find even before its recent closure: there was no sign on the door, and the owner, Nagy, whose father bought it from departing Greeks in 1954, maintained the old rules: “No entry in pyjamas, and no spitting on the floor.”

Nearby, Trianon, a coffee shop favoured by Cavafy when he worked in the offices above, is now a fashionable haunt for Egyptian lovers. But Athenios, once the grandest of the coffee houses, has been reduced to a cake shop and has gaping holes in the classical motifs and mirrors of its art nouveau decor.

Alexander the Great is about to become a popular hero once again with two epic movies. But the fate of his descendants in the city he named is a sad tale. Having survived so much turmoil, division, persecution and revolution, the Greek community in Egypt’s second city is now in such rapid decline that within two generations Alexandria may be without a Greek community for the first time since 332 BC.

This feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 20 April 2004

Legacy of an Irishwoman who loved a Greek writer

Letter from Crete
Patrick Comerford

Crete is the island of myth and literature. It is the island of the Minotaur, El Greco and Theodorakis. And it is the island of Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece’s most celebrated modern writer.

Kazantzakis was born in Iraklion in 1883. His works include translations of Homer, Aeschylus and Dante, the epic poem Odyssey, and the novels that earned him acclaim in the West, especially Zorba the Greek. By one vote, he lost the Nobel Prize for Literature to Albert Camus a few days before he died in 1957.

Manolis Chrysakis and his family are proud of their kinship with Kazantzakis. One balmy summer's evening with the Chrysakis family in Crete, Manolis’s uncle, the late Kostas Chrysakis, pored over old family photographs, postcards and letters, sharing childhood memories of his famous “Uncle Nikos”. Kostas treasured his photographs of his uncle's funeral, attended by older Cretans dressed in traditional island costumes, like Dirk Bogarde in Ill Met by Moonlight. The author’s grave is marked by a plain cross and the simple epitaph: “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free.”

In Report to Greco – an autobiographical novel edited by Eleni Kazantzakis and published four years after her husband’s death – Nikos Kazantzakis described falling in love with “an Irish girl” in the summer of 1902. She had arrived in Iraklion four years earlier as an English language teacher and they shared a love for music and poetry. “What joy when I began to saunter through English lyric poetry with this Irish girl! The language, its vowels and consonants, had become so many warbling birds,” he wrote.

Early one September morning, the couple climbed Mount Psilorítis, and he told a village priest they met that she was “the daughter of a pastor on a distant, verdant island”. As they talked, “the priest ... wagered that if the girl’s father had been with us, he would have converted him to Orthodoxy in one night.”

The pair separated the day before Kazantzakis left to study in Athens that autumn – he was 19 and she was 26. However, the Irish teacher’s identity remained a secret, even years later when he recounted the affair in Report to Greco. Kostas Chrysakis once told me his family knew about her but had no clues to her identity. The writer’s widow, Eleni, was aware of all her husband’s previous lovers and met many of them, but for most of her life she too never knew the identity of this Irish woman. Many researchers thought she was another Cretan myth, a romantic figure invented as a literary device by the writer himself.

Eleni’s goddaughter, Niki Stavrou of the Kazantzakis Foundation in Athens, also doubted whether she could ever establish her identify: “She seemed to me like a character drawn out of an Irish fairy tale, or at least an imagined dream-lover made up by the wishful imagination of a young author.” When Kazantzakis left Crete for Athens, his young Irish teacher “disappears a short while afterwards without leaving behind her the slightest trail. It sounded too magical to happen to anyone, even to a charmed spirit like Kazantzakis.” Now, however, new clues have identified this long-anonymous lover as Kathleen Forde, a rector’s daughter from Ireland. Niki’s father, Patroklos Stavrou, the adopted son of Eleni Kazantzakis, recently found notes this Irish woman sent to Kazantzakis and naming her as Kathleen Forde.

As he removed the notes tenderly from their protective wrapping, he said to his daughter: “If only we could find her!” At first, Niki’s search proved fruitless. “I am sure you can imagine how many Kathleen Fordes I found in Ireland.” Then an unexpected email arrived from Cathy Scaife in Western Canada, a descendant of Lewis Ogilby Forde, brother of a Kathleen Forde who was born in Ireland in 1876 and whose father was a Church of Ireland rector.

Kathleen left Crete soon after that tender summer, taking with her a secret she never revealed to her family. She followed her brothers to Canada before settling, around 1928 in California, where she may have found happiness in marriage to August Eberhardt. In an old family recipe box, Cathy Scaife found a recipe written by Kathleen and a little note with Christmas and New Year greetings to her brother Lewis and his wife Dorothy: “I find being married has done so much in settling me down and making me stick to things.” Comparing the handwriting with the notes found by Patroklos Stavrou, Greek police graphologists confirmed the handwriting was the same as that of Kazantzakis’s Kathleen.

Did Kathleen ever recover from her tempestuous affair with Nikos? “I can only imagine a young woman with a broken heart, having to hear people talk about him everywhere she went,” says Niki Stavrou. Kathleen died alone in a psychiatric hospital in Santa Cruz on October 8th, 1963. “Life can often outshine fiction in the most beautiful and tragic way,” says Niki.

For decades, Kathleen Forde’s identity had escaped me. Returning to the search, I found she was born on February 1st, 1876, in Kilcronaghan Rectory, Tobermore, Co Derry, the eldest daughter of Canon Hugh Forde (1847-1929). Unlike Kathleen’s Greek lover, Dr Forde never became a celebrated writer, but he wrote at least three books, travelled as far as Canada, Gibraltar and Morocco, was a senator of the University of Dublin, and had a doctorate in laws – the sort of priest who would have enjoyed theological debates with the village priest who was once host to Kathleen and Nikos.

When Eleni Kazantzakis died in Athens this February at the age of 102, she was brought to Crete to be buried beside her husband on the old Venetian walls of Iraklion, close to the spot where Kathleen Forde found love and romance on her Greek island generations before Shirley Valentine.

This feature was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 1 April 2004

Byzantine Studies, Kilkenny, 2004: 8: Icons and Byzantine spirituality

Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Visitation of Abraham, also known as the Old Testament Trinity

Patrick Comerford

Liberal Studies Group,

Maynooth University Campus

Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny,

Monday, 1 March 2004

8, icons and Byzantine spirituality

This morning [1 March 2004] we are looking at Byzantine theology and schisms, icons and spirituality.

Earlier this morning, we discussed, we look at Byzantine theology and Church life; the Councils of the Church; schisms and heresies; iconoclasm; and the intrigues in the Patriarchates.

Now, we are looking at Icons and Byzantine spirituality.

Icons and Byzantine spirituality

Orthodox liturgical music:

In popular culture, movies such as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or My Big Fat Greek Wedding have shown many people the difference in the Christian heritages of the west and those churches that have a Byzantine heritage. How did you react to the reliquary of Aghios Gerasimos being brought out to heal the demented in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin? Or to the actual wedding scene itself in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

An understanding of the spiritual heritage of the Byzantine world is needed for some aspects of popular culture, and for understanding the religious mindset of many of our new immigrants in Ireland today, as well as helping you to understand what is happening to you when you visit churches during your holidays on a Greek island or in Cyprus.

It is often forgotten, that Orthodoxy is so much part of the current cultural, economic and political climate in Europe.

Orthodoxy today:

The Christianity of Byzantium today is organised in five main groupings, embracing perhaps 150 million or more people:

1, The Orthodox Churches of the four ancient Patriarchates, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. We traditionally call these churches Greek Orthodox.

2, The Greek Orthodox Churches of Greece and Cyprus.

3,The Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe most notably, Romania, with the second largest, and Russia with the largest Orthodox Church in the world.

4,The rapidly growing Orthodox churches of East Africa, East Asia and other places, where Byzantine culture is inter-mingling with a variety of ethnic cultural identities.

5, The churches of the diaspora, including the Greek, Romanian and Russian churches in this island.

The gifts Orthodoxy has been offering us in recent decades:

In recent decades Orthodoxy has given the churches in the west a number of insights into worship, liturgy, spirituality, theology, ecclesiology (understanding the nature of the Church), and a sense of our church history: where we are coming from, what we are doing today, and where we are going to.

Worship and liturgy
The word Orthodoxy not only describes a large section of Christianity, it also means ‘right worship,’ or ‘right praise.’ The beauty of Orthodox liturgy is, to Orthodox, a sign that their theology is right, and that their faith is right. We have learned so much from eastern liturgy, and Orthodoxy has informed so much liturgical reform in the 20th century.

Their fasts longer and stricter, they celebrate name days and ignore birthdays, and, more importantly, Easter, not Christmas, is the pre-eminent Christian festival in every community.

Their priests may marry before ordination, but not after, and bishops are chosen from among the ranks of celibate monks, although they may be widowed men, who join a monastery.

Monasticism is a gift of the Byzantine Church to the western church. The first monks were in the Egyptian Desert, when Alexandria and Egypt were still part of the Byzantine world, and the monastic tradition has been handed down as an important part of Christian literature in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

Today, the Byzantine monastic tradition is most culturally energetic on Mount Athos, where there are over twenty monasteries and sketes on a peninsula in northern Greece that is autonomous and that may only be visited by men, and may only be visited by non-Orthodox men who have a particular interest in Orthodoxy and Byzantine culture. There, Byzantine culture and Orthodox spirituality are woven together in a seamless garment. But it is also possible to visit Orthodox monasteries throughout the Greek islands and in Cyprus to find women’s convents.

Monks and nuns in the Byzantine world, and in the Orthodox world to this day, belong to a monastery or convent, and not to a monastic order, such as the Benedictines. After joining, they remain members of their monastery for the rest of their lives, even if their work takes them somewhere else. [Metropolitan] Kallistos Ware lives in Oxford, and is a bishop in England, but remains a monk of Patmos. All monks on Mount Athos automatically become Greek citizens.

Spirituality

Particular examples are: the Jesus Prayer, Iconography, and writings such as the Philokalia.

The words of the Jesus Prayer are simple: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.’

The Philokalia is an anthology of ascetical and mystical texts, from the 4th to the 15th centuries. It was edited by two Greek monks, now regarded as saints, and was intended for both laity and clergy. It was eventually published in Venice in 1782, and it made the Jesus Prayer popular once again. It has since been translated and published in four volumes in English, reintroducing many aspects of Orthodox spirituality to the West.

In Orthodoxy, we also find a Patristic tradition of concern for the poor and the oppressed, expressed by Saint John Chrysostom. Saint John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria (died 619) spoke of ‘my brothers and sisters, the poor.’ He used to say ‘that if, without ill-will, someone were to strip the rich right down to their shirts in order to give to the poor, he would do no wrong.’

‘Those whom you call poor and beggars, these I proclaim my masters and helpers. For they, and they alone, can really help us and bestow upon us the Kingdom of Heaven.’

Iconography:

Icons are familiar to the Irish experience. Some examples include:

The Redemptorists and the Icon of Our Mary Lady of Perpetual Succour, popular in many Irish kitchens and living rooms because of the nation-wide Redemptorist missions;

The Glenstal Book of Icons;

The icons at Bellinter (Sisters of Our Lady of Sion);

Irish icon writers including a nun in Tallow, Co Waterford, and a staff member of the Bon Secours Hospital in Glasnevin.

But from Orthodox experience, many may already be familiar with:

Rublev’s icon, the Visitation of Abraham;

the image of Christ the Pantocrator in the dome of Orthodox churches.
Rethym
How do the Orthodox use icons?

Pray through the icon rather than to an icon.

They are not painted; an icon is written; like a book, it is there to teach and to enlighten, entering into it is not worshipping it.

Icons and frescoes in church are not to distract but to tell the salvific story, with the climax in the Dome, Christ the Pantocrator, the one through whom all things are made.

[Tell the Story of Andreas Theodorakis of Rethymnon in Crete, an icon painter trained on Stavronikita, who was hurt when I wanted to buy one of his icons.]

The earliest icons were believed to have been written or painted at the time of Christ, the most famous examples being the many icons of the Virgin Mary said to have been painted by the Evangelist Luke.

However, scholars are still debating when Byzantine Christians began to use and venerate icons, which mostly took the form of holy figures painted on wooden panels.

Some argue that the practice began in the late sixth century, a time when the population as a whole began to sense the breakdown of the civilised Roman world and a need to turn to God. Others suggest that the veneration of icons began later and that holy relics were still viewed in the late sixth and early seventh centuries as the main channels of divine power.

In any case, the veneration of icons was developing in the seventh century, and at the time was drawing criticism from Byzantium’s non-Christian neighbours, especially Muslims and Jews.

The word icon (εἰκών, eikon in Greek) simply means ‘image.’ In other words, a representation in any medium of the artist’s vision of reality. In its restricted sense, the word came to be used for a religious image that plays a unique role in the Orthodox Church, in its worship, and in its doctrine.

In strict theological terms, these are not objects of devotion in themselves, but windows into the divine realm. They are kissed and venerated at the beginning and at various points during the liturgy and other services. But it is incorrect to venerate an icon when the holy elements are being carried in or consecrated, for example.

After the iconclast controversy was settled, icons played a more-and-more central role in the spiritual life of the church in the Byzantine world. Some churches and monasteries in Byzantium possessed special icons for special occasions, sometimes carrying them in public processions through the streets of Constantinople. And when the city was sacked in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, many of these precious icons were looted and taken to the West, especially to Venice, but also to Rome, Genoa and other cities.

Today, icons are one of the most noticeable gifts in spirituality that all our churches have received as part of our heritage from Byzantium and from the Byzantine world. So, let us spend some time looking at some prints of icons.

Next week (8 March 2004): The other Byzantiums and the end of history:

9, The other Byzantiums: Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus: the world of Dalrymple in the past and today.

10, Wrapping up loose ends in Byzantine history.

Byzantine Studies, Kilkenny, 2004: 3: A brief history of Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire

Patrick Comerford

Liberal Studies Group,

Maynooth University Campus

Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny,

Monday, 9 February 2004

3, A brief history of Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire

Introduction:

Recap of last week’s introduction:

Last week we had an introduction to Byzantium as a great civilisation:

1, It is often depicted as the El Dorado of the East, the Tír na nÓg of the Classical world, the Hidden Gateway to the Orient, a civilisation and empire that lasted for 11 centuries.

2, It is the cultural bedrock for many of our new immigrants, including Russians, Belarussians, Romanians and Bulgarians, and the new member states of the EU.

3, It is the world view that shaped and formed the paintings of El Greco, the writings of Dostoevsky, or in today’s world the music of John Tavener.

Refer to handouts (map, reading list, outline history). Any questions?

3, A brief history of Byzantium and the Byzantine Empire:

Introduction:

When we speak of the fall of the Roman Empire, we should not forget that only the western portion of the empire succumbed to the Germanic invaders. In the Greek-speaking east, the eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire stood for over 1,000 years as a citadel against the threat of expansion firstly by the Persians and then by the Muslims – Arabs, and later Turks.

During those 11 centuries, the Byzantine Empire made great contributions to civilisation:

• Greek language and learning were preserved for posterity;

• The Roman imperial system was continued and Roman law codified;

• The Greek Orthodox Church converted the Slavic peoples, especially the Russians;

• And Orthodoxy fostered the development of a splendid new art dedicated to the glorification of the Christian religion.

Situated at the crossroads of east and west, Constantinople acted as the disseminator of culture for all peoples who came in contact with the empire.

Called with justification ‘The City,’ this rich and turbulent metropolis was to the early Middle Ages what Athens and Rome had been to classical times. By the time the empire collapsed in 1453, its religious mission and political concepts had borne fruit among the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, and especially among the Russians. The Russians were to lay claim to the Byzantine tradition and to call Moscow the ‘Third Rome.’

The beginnings of Byzantium

Historians disagree about the real date at which we can begin to introduce Byzantine studies. The end, in 1453, is less contentious date – although it marked only the end of Byzantium as the capital of an empire and not the end of Byzantine culture.

But what point marks the transition from the later Roman to the Byzantine Empire? Of course, the Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, and Romanians and Greeks both see themselves today as continuing the culture of Rome in the East.

I suppose a good starting point comes soon after Constantine the Great finally gained sole authority as Roman Emperor when he defeated Licinius in 324. Constantine’s dramatic conversion to Christianity ended the period of persecution of Christians in the Empire, and marks the beginning of both the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantine Empire

At the southern extremity of the Bosphorus stands a promontory that juts out from Europe toward Asia, with the Sea of Marmares to the south and a long harbour known as the Golden Horn to the north. On this peninsula, the Hellaspont, stood the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, which Constantine the Great enlarged considerably and formally named the ‘New Rome’ in AD 330.

Constantine’s decision to found an administrative capital, or ‘New Rome,’ at the site of the ancient city of Byzantion shifted the centre of gravity eastwards in the empire. Constantine had chosen the site for his new capital with care and appears to have been motivated by a number of ideas:

• He placed Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) on the frontier of Europe and Asia, dominating the waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Black seas, so that Constantinople represented a link between all the territories of the Roman world.

• Nature protected the site on three sides with cliffs, and on the fourth side, the emperors fortified the city with an impenetrable three-wall network, so that during the fourth and fifth centuries Visigoths, Huns, and Ostrogoths unsuccessfully threatened the city. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, first Persians, then Arab forces, and finally the Bulgarians besieged – but failed to take – Constantinople. Until 1453, with the exception of the Fourth Crusade’s treachery, the city withstood all attacks.

• Constantine probably saw political advantages in distancing himself from the power structures and traditions of the Old Rome. In the New Rome he was able to establish a new order, with a newly-appointed senate and administration.

Henceforth, Constantinople would represent the centre of the largely Greek-speaking, Eastern Roman Empire, which slowly and inexorably became separated, both culturally and politically from the Latin West.

But the security and wealth provided by its setting helped Byzantium survive for more than 1,000 years. Constantinople was a state-controlled, world trade centre that enjoyed the continuous use of a money economy – in contrast to the localised systems found in the west.

The city’s wealth and taxes paid for a strong military force and financed an effective government. Excellent sewage and water systems supported an extremely high standard of living. Food was abundant, with grain from Egypt and Anatolia and fish from the Aegean. Constantinople could support a population of a million, at a time when it was difficult to find a city in Europe that could sustain more than 50,000.

Unlike Rome, Constantinople had several industries producing luxury goods, military supplies, hardware, and textiles. After silkworms were smuggled out of China about AD 550, silk production flourished and became a profitable state monopoly. The state paid close attention to business, controlling the economy: A system of guilds to which all tradesmen and members of the professions belonged, set wages, profits, work hours, and prices and organised bankers and doctors into compulsory corporations. Security and wealth encouraged an active political, cultural, and intellectual life. The widespread literacy and education among men and women of various segments of society would not be matched in Europe until, perhaps, eighteenth-century France.

Until its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire remained a shining fortress, attracting both invaders and merchants.

Constantinople after Constantine

The Christianisation of the Roman Empire continued after the death of Constantine. Laws that date back to Constantine’s successors, such as his son Constantius, reveal increasing restrictions on pagans and more favourable conditions for Christians. The conversion of the masses to Christianity did not happen immediately, however, and the Emperor Julian, known as Julian the Apostate (361-363), initiated a brief return to paganism as the official state religion.

By the end of the fourth century, and with the return of Christian rulers, legislation in favour of Christianity became increasingly pronounced. The Codex Theodosianus, published between 429 and 438, but incorporating laws promulgated during the reign of Constantine the Great and his successors, reveals an ever-increasing attempt on the part of the emperors to promote Christianity and eradicate paganism. Sundays and important Christian feast days were declared holidays, with the prohibition of secular lawsuits and business transactions.

The Latin Phase

Constantine and his successors had struggled to renew the Empire. Rome collapsed under the pressure of the Germanic invaders in 476. Thanks to its greater military and economic strength, Constantinople survived for almost another 1,000 years, despite revolutions, wars, and religious controversy.

Justinian (527-565) was the last emperor to attempt seriously to return the Roman Empire to its first-century grandeur. Aided by his forceful wife Theodora and a corps of competent assistants, he made lasting contributions to Western civilisation and gained short-term successes in his foreign policy.

The damage caused by devastating earthquakes – a perennial problem in the area – in the 520s and 530s gave Justinian the opportunity he needed to carry out a massive project of empire-wide urban renewal.

The ruler as builder was one of the oldest ideals of a sovereign. Public buildings and other structures were, in principle, gifts to be used by the ruler's subjects, but also monuments of the greatness of the ruler. Justinian strove hard to realize this ideal. The greatest buildings he erected or rebuilt were in Constantinople, the city that was now the embodiment of the civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Numerous magnificent and artistically beautiful structures were constructed or rebuilt during his reign. They included statues, churches and various other monuments. His crowning achievement was the building of Aghia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom.

[How many of you saw Christy Kennealy’s programme on television last night, where Aghia Sophia was the ‘eighth wonder of the world’?]

This building was considered by many an architectural wonder of the Middle Ages, and is still standing strong today. Its design, size, artwork, name and its significance made it a building that symbolised the religious and philosophical epicentre of Constantinople and Byzantine civilisation.

Even before he came to power, during his uncle’s reign, Justinian had already set about to rehabilitate and rebuild many churches in Constantinople and its suburbs. This work began mostly in a private capacity and reflected the piety that was to show itself further when Justinian became emperor.

The reign of Justinian would have been incomplete if it had not brought with it some new monuments to the glory of the empire, and Justinian was eager to have a permanent literary record of his building achievements. To this end Justinian had at his disposal the famous historian Procopius who wrote, at the Emperor’s command in the years 559-560, the famous panegyrical treatise On the Buildings of the Emperor Justinian.

Far from being displays of megalomania, Justinian’s works constituted a well-balanced plan. First, he wished to provide the people of the capital with much needed public buildings. Second, to create a new architectural setting for the institutions that represented the chief political and spiritual resources of the empire and its civilisation. Justinian surpassed the work of Constantine, who up to that point had been the greatest builder among the Christian emperors of the Empire.

One of Justinian’s best-known benefactions was the rebuilding of a hospital for the poor, which had been constructed in the early days of Constantinople. Well outside Constantinople, at a place called Argyronium, on the shore of the Bosphorus, there had been a free hospital for people with incurable diseases. This hospital had been neglected until Justinian rebuilt it. Procopius tells us of three other hospitals reconstructed by the Justinian and the Empress Theodora, acting together.

Justinian improved numerous other public works. For example, work was done for the water supply into the city. The most difficult problem was to maintain an adequate supply of water in the city year round. In the area of the Augustaeum, general repairs were undertaken of the colonnades, which lined the main street leading from the Augustaeum to the palace of Constantine. The public bath of Zeuxippus was embellished. In Justinian’s day this bath, going back to the Greco-Roman days of Byzantium, was one of the show places of the city. It had a collection of eighty classical statues, which were described by poets and copied by various artists.

In the suburbs, a general programme of development was carried out at Hebdomon, on the shore of the Sea of Marmara. A market place, public baths, and colonnades – some of the chief needs of municipal life in a city very much in contact with its classical roots – were built.

As well, the emperor had an artificial harbour built at Hebdomon, which, along with the artificial harbours of Julian and Theodosius, provided refuge to ships in stormy weather.

Great as all these building operations were they still were small in comparison to Justinian;s churches. Architecturally, Justinian’s churches illustrate the final development of a design in church building that was to be typical of Greek Christianity. In none of the churches of Constantinople could the mind reach a greater sense of spiritual depth and nobility than in the ‘Great Church’ of Aghia Sophia. This was almost certainly Justinian's greatest architectural achievement.

Near Aghia Sophia stood Aghia Eirene, representing the peace of God. Like Aghia Sophia, Aghia Eirene was built originally by Constantine the Great. It is highly indicative of the Eastern Roman Empire’s connection with its Classical Greek roots, that when both Aghia Sophia and Aghia Eirene were burnt down and rebuilt, Wisdom was given first place.

Just as Justinian had found skilled legal scholars (Tribonian) to recodify the laws, as well as skilled generals to recapture lost lands (Belisarius), so too he was fortunate enough to have found two builders of the highest talents to build Aghia Sophia. They were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Melitus.

As well as builders they were also noted mathematicians, which was to be of basic importance in the accomplishing the task Justinian set for them. When the building was consecrated, Justinian entered the building alone and walked to the pulpit, where he stretched his hands to heaven and cried, ‘Glory be to God, who has thought me worthy to finish this work! Solomon, I have surpassed thee!’

Justinian and the Law

Perhaps the most lasting monument of Justinian’s reign was his codification of Roman law. By this time, it had become necessary to rewrite many of the laws as they had become obsolete since their last codification by Theodosius is 348. In an absolute monarchy the people ceased to be the source of the laws. It was now the monarch, by virtue of his office, who was responsible for putting into effect a new law, as well as the way in which it was interpreted and enforced.

The heritage of Roman law represented an unbroken tradition that continued down to the time of Justinian. Preservation and renewal of the laws, Justinian felt, offered the possibility of emphasising one of major roots of the empire’s strength. This immense accomplishment far outlasted the Byzantine Empire and survived to form the basis of European jurisprudence.

On 13 February 528, Justinian appointed 10 jurists to compile a new codification of the statute law. The commission appointed to the task of compiling the new code included two men of particular significance: Tribonian, a jurist in the civil service; and Theophilus, a professor of law at the university of Constantinople. Under their diligent supervision, the new Codex Iustinianus was published in little over one year, on 7 April 529. With the writing of this code, the administration of the law was put on a new basis.

However, no sooner was this work completed than an even more ambitious undertaking was begun. This was the compilation of a digest of the jurisprudence of the great Roman lawyers of the second and third centuries AD, something never before attempted on such a scale.

The order to start work on the Digest was given on 15 December 530. In December 533, the Digest, the Digesta Iustiniani Augusti was completed. It was expected to take 10 years but was finished in less than three. Its writing involved the reading of 2,000 books, representing 39 authors. The final code was reduced from 3 million to 150,000 lines. Many of the authors read came from Tribonian’s private library.

With both law and jurisprudence now established, any further commentary on the law was forbidden. The Code and the Digest represented the whole of the valid law, along with its interpretation – with the exception of imperial legislation.

The old teaching manuals, now obsolete, were replaced by new ones. While the Digest was being compiled Tribonian started work on an introductory manual, the Institutes, which was to take the place of the classic manual of Gaius. The new manual was published on 21 November 533, and came into effect on the same day as the Digest, 30 December 533.

The teaching of law was also overhauled. To ensure better control of instruction, the teaching of law was allowed only at the universities in Constantinople and Beyrouth and the schools at Alexandria and Caesarea were closed, their teaching declared unsatisfactory.

By the end of 533, it was apparent that the original Code of April 533 had already been rendered obsolete by the publication of a large amount of legislation. As a result, Tribonian and his colleagues were once again summoned, after the completion of the Digest, to compile a new Code.

This work was to be done by Tribonian, Dorotheus of Beyrouth and three lawyers, all of whom had been engaged on the Digest. The work was published on 16 November 534 and went into effect of 30 December of the same year. This edition of the Code is divided into 12 books. Book I deals with ecclesiastical law; the sources of the law; and the duties of higher officials. Ecclesiastical law was given a place of honour it did not have in the Code of Theodosius. Books 2-8 deal with private law, Book 9 with criminal law, and Books 10-12 with administrative law. There are 4,652 laws in total in this collection.

Following this, any new legislation, when needed, was from that point onward issued in the form of ‘New Constitutions,’ known as ‘Novels.’ These dealt with such issues as ecclesiastical and public affairs, private law, and one very long Novel in particular constitutes a code of Christian marriage law.

A sign of the change between the Roman Empire of old and the Eastern Roman Empire at the time of Justinian was the fact that all Novels were now written in Greek. While the Codes were in Latin, the traditional language of the law, this was not the natural language of judges, lawyers, litigants, and the general populace in the Eastern Roman Empire.

Also, while Justinian was guided by old tradition in the recodifying of the law, he saw that he could not automatically perpetuate all laws of the old Roman Empire. Many Roman laws had never been popular in the Greek East, and local preferences, both Hellenic and oriental in origin, were now brought within the new legal system to replace old Roman doctrines.

The influence of Greek philosophical thought, which was at the heart of the educational system, was manifest in many of the classifications and reasonings of Justinian’s legislation. A definite Hellenic and oriental shade in the new legislation can also be seen in the laws concerning family, inheritance and dowry. The power of the father, traditional in old Roman thought, was now considerably weakened.

Also attesting to the difference in the times was the fact that the new laws had a definite Christian sense about them. There was a desire to make the laws more humane in some ways, in line with the emperor’s current emphasis on the concept of Philanthropia, or love of mankind. There was a marked increase in laws aiming to protect persons of weaker social position against persons whose position gave them increased power. Justinian’s law, for instance, favoured slave against master, debtor against creditor and wife against husband.

Of course, there still existed laws that seem, by today’s standards quite cruel, and there were still laws that differentiated between different classes of society, but it was a definite advance in the legal system since the days of the old Roman Empire.

Justinian’s Expansion

Justinian’s expensive and ambitious projects triggered outbreaks of protest among the political gangs of Constantinople, the circus crowds of the Greens and Blues. Much like contemporary urban gangs, members of the circus factions moved about in groups and congregated at public events.

In Constantinople, the Circus took place in the Hippodrome, a structure that could hold 80,000 spectators at contests of various types, including chariot races. The Blues and Greens backed opposing drivers and usually neutralised each other’s efforts. In 532, however, the Blues and Greens united to try to force Justinian from the throne.

The so-called Nike rebellion, named after the victory cry of the rioters, nearly succeeded. In his Secret Histories, Procopius relates that Justinian was on the verge of running away, until Theodora stopped him and told the frightened emperor: ‘I do not choose to flee. Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss. Never shall I see the day when I am not saluted as empress. If you mean to flee, Caesar, well and good. You have the money, the ships are ready, the sea is open. As for me, I shall stay.’

Assisted by his generals, the emperor remained and put down the rebellion.

Justinian momentarily achieved his dream of re-establishing the Mediterranean rim of the Roman Empire. To carry out his plan for regaining the lost half of the empire from the Germanic invaders, he first had to buy the neutrality of the Persian kings who threatened not only Constantinople but also Syria and Asia Minor. After securing his eastern flank through diplomacy and bribery, he took North Africa in 533 and the islands of the western Mediterranean from the Vandals.

The next phase of the conquest was much more exhausting, and Justinian had a difficult time taking the Italian peninsula. After 20 years, he gained his prize from the Ostrogoths, but at the cost of draining his treasury and ruining Rome and Ravenna. Justinian’s generals also reclaimed the southern part of Spain from the Visigoths, but no serious attempt was ever made to recover Gaul, Britain, or southern Germany.

By a decade after Justinian’s death, most of the reconquest had been lost. The Moors in Africa, Germanic peoples across Europe, and waves of Asiatic nomadic tribes threatened the imperial boundaries. Ancient enemies such as the Persians, who had been bribed into a peaceful relationship, returned to threaten Constantinople when the money ran out.

In addition, the full weight of the Slavic migrations came to be felt. Peaceful though they may have been, the primitive Slavs severely strained and sometimes broke the administrative links of the empire. Finally, the empire was split by debates over Christian doctrine. Two of Justinian’s successors succumbed to madness under the stress of trying to maintain order in the empire.

Heraclius: The Empire Redefined

Salvation appeared from the west when Heraclius (610-641), the Byzantine governor of North Africa, returned to Constantinople to overthrow the mad emperor Phocas. Conditions were so dismal, and the future appeared so perilous when Heraclius arrived in the capital, that he considered moving the government from Constantinople to Carthage in North Africa.

The situation did not improve soon. The Persians marched through Syria, took Jerusalem – capturing the ‘True Cross’ – and entered Egypt. When Egypt fell to the Persians, the Byzantine Empire lost a large part of its grain supply. Two Asiatic invaders, the Avars and the Bulgars, pushed against the empire from the north. Pirates controlled the sea-lanes and the Slavs cut land communication across the Balkans. At this moment of ultimate peril, the emperor decided to throw out the state structure that had been in place since the time of Diocletian and Constantine.

Heraclius created a new system that strengthened his army, tapped the support of the church and people, and erected a more efficient, streamlined administration. He determined that the foundation for the redefined empire would be Anatolia (present-day Turkey) and that the main supply of soldiers for his army would be the free peasants living there, rather than mercenaries. In place of the sprawling realm passed on by Justinian, Heraclius designed a compact state and administration to deal simultaneously with the needs of government and the challenges of defence.

Heraclius’ system, known as the theme system, had been tested when the emperor had ruled North Africa. Acting on the lessons of the previous four centuries, he assumed that defence was a constant need and that free peasant soldiers living in the theme (district) they were defending would be the most effective and efficient force. He installed the system first in Anatolia, and his successors spread it throughout the empire for the next two centuries.

Heraclius’ scheme provided sound administration and effective defence for half of the cost formerly required. As long as the theme system with its self-supporting, land-owning, free peasantry endured, Byzantium remained strong. When the theme system and its free peasantry were abandoned in the 11th century, the empire became weak and vulnerable.

Heraclius fought history’s first holy war to reclaim Jerusalem from the Persians. By 626 he stood poised to strike the final blow and refused to be distracted by the Avar siege of Constantinople. He defeated the Persians at Nineveh, marched on to Ctesiphon, and finally reclaimed the ‘True Cross’ and returned it to Jerusalem in 630.

Heraclius was unable to savour his victory for long, because the Muslim advance posed an even greater threat to Byzantium. The Muslims took Syria and Palestine at the battle of Yarmuk in 636. Persia fell the following year, and Egypt in 640. Constantinople's walls and the redefined Byzantine state withstood the challenge, enduring two sieges in 674-678 and in 717.

When Byzantium faced a three-sided invasion from the Arabs, Avars, and Bulgarians in 717, the powerful Leo the Isaurian (717-741) came forward to save the empire. The Byzantines triumphed by using new techniques such as Greek fire, a sort of medieval equivalent of napalm. The substance, a powerful chemical mixture whose main ingredient was saltpetre, caught fire on contact with water and stuck to the hulls of the Arabs’ wooden ships.

Over the next 10 years, Leo rebuilt those areas ruined by war and strengthened the theme system. He reformed the law, limiting capital punishment to crimes involving treason. He decreed the use of mutilation for a wide range of common crimes, a harsh but still less extreme punishment than execution.

The Iconoclastic Controversy

From the beginning, the Byzantine emperors played active roles in the calling of church councils and the formation of Christian doctrine. Leo the Isaurian took seriously his role as religious leader of the empire. He vigorously persecuted heretics and Jews, ordering that the latter must be baptised.

In 726, he launched a theological crusade against the use of icons, images or representations of Christ and other religious figures. The emperor was concerned that icons played too prominent a role in Byzantine life and that their common use as godparents, witnesses at weddings, and objects of adoration violated the Old Testament prohibition of the worship of graven images. Accordingly, the emperor ordered the army to destroy all icons.

This image-breaking, or iconoclastic, policy sparked a violent reaction in the western part of the empire, especially in the monasteries. The government responded by mercilessly persecuting those opposed to the policy. The eastern part of the empire, centred at Anatolia, supported the breaking of the images. By trying to remove what he considered an abuse, Leo split his empire in two.

In Byzantium’s single-centred society, this religious conflict had far-reaching cultural, political, and social implications. In 731, Pope Gregory II condemned iconoclasm. Leo's decision to destroy icons stressed the fracture lines that had existed between east and west for the past four centuries, expressed in the linguistic differences between the Latin West and the Greek East.

Leo’s successors continued his religious and political policies, and in 754 Pope Stephen II turned to the north and struck an alliance with the Frankish king Pepin. This was the first step in a process that half a century later would lead to the birth of the Holy Roman Empire and the formal political split of Europe into the east and west.

There was a brief attempt under the regent, later empress, Irene (797-802), in 787, to restore icons. Irene became the first woman to rule the empire in her own name, but as she spent the treasury into bankruptcy, her enemies increased. Finally, in 802, they deposed her and exiled her to the island of Lesbos.

The conflict over iconoclasm and Irene's ineptitude placed the empire in jeopardy once again. Her successor, Nicepherous (802-811), after struggling to restore the bases of Byzantine power, was captured in battle with the Bulgarians in 811. The Khan Krum beheaded him and had his skull made into a drinking mug. Soon the iconoclasts made a comeback, but this phase of image-breaking lacked the vigour of the first, and by 842 the policy had been abandoned.

The iconoclastic controversy marked a period when the split between east and west became final. Eastern emperors were strongly impressed by Islamic culture, with its prohibition of images. The Emperor Theophilus (829-842), for example, was a student of Muslim art and culture, and Constantinople’s painting, architecture, and universities benefited from the vigour of Islamic culture. This focus on the east may have led to the final split with the west, but it also produced an eastern state with its theological house finally in order and its borders fairly secure by the middle of the ninth century.

The Golden Age: 842-1071

For two centuries, roughly coinciding with the reign of the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056), Byzantium enjoyed political and cultural superiority over its western and eastern foes. Western Europe staggered under the blows dealt by the Saracens, Vikings, and Magyars. The Arabs lost the momentum that had carried them forward for two centuries. Constantinople enjoyed the relative calm, wealth, and balance bequeathed by the theme system and promoted by a series of powerful rulers. The time was marked by the flowering of artists, scholars and theologians as much as it was by the presence of great warriors. It was during this golden age that Constantinople made its major contributions to Eastern Europe and Russia.

Missionaries from Constantinople set out in the 860s to convert the Bulgarian and Slavic peoples and in the process organized their language, laws, aesthetics, political patterns, and ethics, as well as their religion. But such transformation did not take place without struggle. Conflict marked the relationship between the Roman and Byzantine churches. The most significant indication of this competition was seen in the contest between the Patriarch Photius and Pope Nicholas I in the middle of the ninth century.

Photius excelled both as a scholar and religious leader. He made impressive contributions to universities throughout the Byzantine Empire and worked to increase the area of Orthodoxy’s influence. Nicholas was his equal in ambition, ego, and intellect. They collided in their attempts to convert peoples such as the Bulgarians, who were caught between their spheres of influence.

The Bulgarian Khan Boris, as cunning and shrewd as either Photius or Nicholas, saw the trend toward conversion to Christianity that had been developing in Europe since the sixth century and realised the increased power he could gain by the heavenly approval of his rule. He wanted his own patriarch and church and dealt with the side that gave him the better bargain.

Between 864 and 866, Boris changed his mind three times over the issue of which holy city to turn to. Finally, the Byzantines gave the Bulgarians the equivalent of an autonomous church, and in return the Bulgarians entered the Byzantine cultural orbit. The resulting schism between the churches set off a sputtering sequence of Christian warfare that went on for centuries.

The work of the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius was more important than Bulgarian ambitions or churchly competition. The two brothers were natives of Thessaloniki, a city at the mouth of the Vardar-Morava waterway that gave access to the Slavic lands. They learned the Slavic language and led a mission to Moravia, which was ruled by King Rastislav. The king no doubt wanted to convert to Orthodoxy and enter the Byzantine orbit in order to preserve as much independence for his land as he could in the face of pressure from his powerful German neighbours.

Cyril and Methodios went north, teaching their faith in the vernacular Slavic language. Cyril devised an alphabet for the Slavs, adapting Greek letters. The two brothers translated the liturgy and many religious books into Slavic. Although Germanic missionaries eventually converted the Moravians by sheer force, the efforts of Cyril and Methodius profoundly affected all the Slavic peoples, whose languages are rooted in the work of the two brothers.

Byzantium continued its military as well as its theological intensity. Arab armies made continual thrusts, including one at Thessaloniki in 904 that led to the Byzantine loss of 22,000 people through death or slavery. But during the tenth century the combination of the decline in Muslim combativeness and the solidarity of Byzantine defences brought an end to that conflict.

Basil II (963-1025), surnamed Bulgaroctonus, or Bulgar-slayer, stopped the Bulgarians at the battle of Balathista in 1014. At the same time, the Macedonian emperors dealt from a position of strength with western European powers, especially in Italy, where their interests clashed. Western diplomats visiting the Byzantine court expressed outrage at the benign contempt with which the eastern emperors treated them, but this conduct merely reflected Constantinople’s understanding of its role in the world.

By the 11th century, succession to the Byzantine throne had degenerated into a power struggle between the civil and military aristocracies. On the other hand, the secular and theological universities flourished despite the political instability, and the emperors proved to be generous patrons of the arts. Basil I (867-886) and Leo VI (886-912) oversaw the collection and reform of the law codes.

Leo, the most prolific lawgiver since Justinian, sponsored the greatest collection of laws of the medieval Byzantine Empire, a work that would affect jurisprudence throughout Europe. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-959) excelled as a military leader, lover of books, promoter of an encyclopaedia, and surveyor of the empire's provinces. At a time when scholarship in Western Europe was almost nonexistent, Byzantine society featured a rich cultural life and widespread literacy among men and women of different classes.

The greatest contribution to Western civilisation made during the golden age was the preservation of ancient learning, especially in the areas of law, Greek science, Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and Greek literature. Unlike the West, where the church maintained scholarship, the civil servants of Constantinople perpetuated the Greek tradition in philosophy, literature, and science. Byzantine monasteries produced many saints and mystics but showed little interest in learning and teaching.

Decline and Crusades

As long as Constantinople strengthened the foundations laid by Heraclius – the theme system and reliance on the free peasant-soldier – the empire withstood the military attacks of the strongest armies. When the Byzantine leaders abandoned the pillars of their success, the empire began to falter.

Inflation and narrow ambition ate away at the Heraclian structure. Too much money chased too few goods during the golden age. Land came to be the most profitable investment for the rich, and the landowning magnates needed labour. As prices went up, taxes followed. The peasant villages were collectively responsible for paying taxes, and the rising tax burden overwhelmed them. In many parts of the empire, villagers sought relief by placing themselves under the control of large landowners, thus taking themselves out of the tax pool and lowering the number of peasant-soldiers.

Both the state treasury and the army suffered. Until the time of Basil II, the Macedonian emperors tried to protect the peasantry through legislation, but the problem was not corrected. Even though the free peasantry never entirely disappeared, and each free person was still theoretically a citizen of the empire, economic and social pressures effectively destroyed the theme system. Exacerbating the problem was the growth of the church's holdings and the large percentage of the population entering church service, thus becoming exempt from taxation.

In the 50 years after the death of Basil II in 1025, the illusion that eternal peace had been achieved encouraged the opportunistic civil aristocracy, which controlled the state, to weaken the army and ignore the provinces. When danger next appeared, no strong leader emerged to save Byzantium. Perhaps this was because no enemies appeared dramatically before the walls of Constantinople.

Instead, a new foe arose, moving haphazardly across the empire. Around the sixth century, the first in a series of waves of Turkish bands appeared in southwest Asia. These nomads converted to Islam and fought with, then against, the Persians, Byzantines, and Arabs. When the Seljuk Turk leader Alp Arslan (‘Victorious Lion’) made a tentative probe into the empire’s eastern perimeter near Lake Van in 1071, the multilingual mercenary army from Constantinople fell apart even before fighting began at the battle of Manzikert. With the disintegration of the army, the only limit to the Turks’ march for the next decade was the extent of their own ambition and energy.

Byzantium lost the heart of its empire, and with it the reserves of soldiers, leaders, taxes, and food that had enabled it to survive for the past four centuries. From its weakened position, the empire confronted Venice, a powerful commercial and later political rival. By the end of the 11th century, the Venetians took undisputed trading supremacy in the Adriatic Sea and turned their attention to the eastern Mediterranean. The Byzantines also faced the challenges of the Normans, led by Robert Guiscard, who took the last Byzantine stronghold in Italy.

In 1081, the Comnenus family claimed the Byzantine throne. In an earlier time, with the empire in its strength, this politically astute family might have accomplished great things. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though, the best they could do was play a balance-of-power game between east and west. Fifteen years later, in 1096, the first crusaders appeared, partially in response to the Council of Clermont, partially in response to the opportunity for gold and glory.

Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) had appealed to Pope Urban II for help against the Turks, but the emperor had not bargained on finding a host of crusaders, including the dreaded Normans, on his doorstep. Alexius sent them quickly across the Dardanelles where they won some battles and permitted the Byzantines to reclaim some of their losses in Asia Minor. Subsequent crusades, however, failed to bring good relations between east and west, whose churches had excommunicated each other in 1054.

By the time of the Fourth Crusade, the combination of envy, hatred, and frustration that had been building up for some time led to an atrocity. The Venetians controlled the ships and money for this crusade and persuaded the fighters to attack the Christian city of Zara in Dalmatia – a commercial rival of Venice – and Constantinople before going on to the Holy Land. Venice wanted a trade monopoly in the eastern Mediterranean more than a fight with the Muslims. Constantinople was paralysed by factional strife, and for the first time, an invading force captured the city and devastated it far more than the Turks would 250 years later.

A French noble described the scene: ‘The fire ... continued to rage for a whole week and no one could put it out ... What damage was done, or what riches and possessions were destroyed in the flames was beyond the power of man to calculate ... The army ... gained much booty; so much, indeed, that no one could estimate its amount or its value. It included gold and silver, table-services and precious stones, satin and silk, mantles of squirrel fur, ermine and miniver, and every choicest thing to be found on this earth ... so much booty had never been gained in any city since the creation of the world.’

The Venetians made sure they got their share of the spoils, such as the bronze horses now found at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, and played a key role in placing a new emperor on the throne. The invaders ruled Constantinople until 1261. The Venetians put a stranglehold on commerce in the region and then turned their hostility toward the Genoese, who threatened their monopoly.

Decline and fall

The Paleologos Dynasty (1261-1453), which ruled the empire during its final two centuries, saw the formerly glorious realm become a pawn in a new game. Greeks may have regained control of the church and the state, but there was little strength left to carry on the ancient traditions. The free peasant became ever rarer, as a form of feudalism developed in which nobles resisted the authority of the emperor and the imperial bureaucracy. The solidus, the Byzantine coin that had resisted debasement from the fourth through the eleventh century, now fell victim to inflation.

The Church, once a major support for the state, became embroiled in continual doctrinal disputes. Slavic peoples such as the Serbs, who had posed no danger to the empire in its former strength, became threats. After the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century destroyed the exhausted Seljuk Turks, a new, more formidable threat appeared – the Ottoman, or Osmanli, Turks.

Blessed after 1296 with a strong line of male successors and good fortune, the Ottomans rapidly expanded their power through the Balkans. They crossed the Straits into Europe in 1354 and moved up the Vardar-Morava valleys to take Serres (1383), Sofia (1385), Nish (1386), Thessaloniki (1387), and finally Kosovo from the South Slavs in 1389. The Turks won their victories by virtue of their overwhelming superiority in both infantry and cavalry. But their administrative effectiveness, which combined strength and flexibility, solidified their rule in areas they conquered.

In contrast to the Christians, both Roman and Byzantine, who were intolerant of religious differences, the Turks allowed monotheists, or any of the believers in a ‘religion of the book’ (the Bible, Torah, or Koran), to retain their faith and be ruled by a religious superior through the millet system, a network of religious ghettoes.

In response to the Ottoman advance, the west mounted a poorly conceived and ill-fated crusade against the Turks at Nicopolis on the Danube in 1396 that led to the capture and slaughter of 10,000 knights and their attendants. Only the overwhelming force of Tamerlane (Timur the Lame), a Turko-Mongol ruler who devastated the Ottoman army in 1402, gave Constantinople and Europe some breathing space.

The end came finally in May 1453. The last emperor, Constantine XI, led his forces of 9,000, half of whom were Genoese, to hold off the 160,000 Turks for seven weeks. Finally, the Ottomans, with the help of Hungarian artillerymen, breached the walls of the beleaguered city. After 1123 years, the Christian capital fell.

Next: 4, Heroes, anti-heroes and the women of Byzantium: some biographical sketches.