A Short History of Christianity by Stephen Tomkins

Author:Stephen Tomkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lion Hudson
Published: 2005-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

10

Protest (1443–1516)

If elephants can be taught to dance… surely preachers can be taught to preach.

Erasmus

The Byzantines’ visit to Florence, the hub of the Renaissance, was a boon for humanists, who had little difficulty persuading some to stay and teach Greek. Finally, westerners read the New Testament in the original language, and it was, so to speak, a revelation. Lorenzo Valla condemned the Vulgate of Jerome, which had been read in every Catholic service for a millennium, as inaccurate and inelegant. He also proved that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery (along with other vital texts of theology and canon law) and that the Apostles’ creed was not by the apostles. He was investigated by the Inquisition, but he enjoyed the surprising rescue of becoming apostolic secretary to the Pope Nicholas V. The church had been predictably hostile to humanism, but it offered good career prospects to people who spoke Greek, which is how the humanist Nicholas gained the papacy in 1447. He used its wealth to draw new art and architecture to Rome, and he collected 1,200 manuscripts, the start of the Vatican library. The papacy became the patron of the Renaissance: for the arts, it was a jackpot; for church finances, it was a money bonfire.

While Nicholas’s clerics were busy copying out the writings of the Church Fathers and philosophers, the Gutenberg family in Germany unveiled the revolutionary invention that would make such copiers redundant and transform the western mind: printing. Suddenly, limitless copies could be made of every book, cheaper than ever and infinitely quicker. Humanist ideas spread around the reading public at unprecedented speed – and the reading public grew almost as quickly.

Just as this brave new world was being born, a brave old world passed away. On 28 May 1453, Orthodox and Catholic Christians in Constantinople met in the church of Hagia Sophia for an unprecedented joint service. For seven weeks, the Turks had besieged the city, outnumbering them twenty to one. The Byzantine defence had been heroic, resourceful and utterly hopeless. The emperor took wine and leavened bread, and went out to die. That afternoon, the city fell, and the Byzantine empire was at long last finished.

Islamic law allowed three days of looting. The fact that the sultan called an end after one day may reflect the poverty of the half-empty city; it certainly reflects the ferocity of the day’s pillage. One witness talks of mountains of corpses, nuns and girls dragged by the hair from churches, ‘men groaning and women screaming, amid looting, enslaving, separation and rape’. As the sun set, the 21-year-old sultan entered Constantinople and went straight to the church, declaring it would be the chief mosque of Istanbul. The imam mounted the pulpit and proclaimed, ‘There is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger.’

In the long term, the sultan tolerated the Christians of Istanbul, but he made them pay heavier taxes and wear special clothes, and he forbade them to evangelise or marry Muslims. He appointed the patriarch of Constantinople and resold the job every few years to the highest bidder.

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