Tuesday, May 29, 2012

“Is there no Christian who will take my head?”


Byzantium: The Fall of Constantinople, 1453
In memory of the loss of Constantinople to the Christian world
May 29th 1453

by Anestos Canelides

Prologue: Constantinople! O Constantinople!

“How lonely is the city that was full of people! How like a widow is she, who was great among the nations! The Princess among Provinces has become a slave!”
— Lamentations 1:1
The battle raged within the gates, on the high towers; the trenches swam deep in blood.[1]

A lone refugee, who had taken flight on a Venetian galleon wept at the unfortunate sight of Constantinople, shrouded in flames. A reflection in her teardrop captured the black smoke rising like the dark hand of death over the city’s blood-drenched streets.

These Hellenized Romans were forced to flee from their ancient capital just as during the Trojan War the innocents of the house of Priam had fled the proud city built by Neptune.

Smoke arose from the ruined ground while the city’s inhabitants fled in different directions [1] from the pursuing Turkish hoard.

Her teardrop, in slow motion, gently struck the salty waters of the Marmara Sea causing tiny ripples to form in the still water, moving towards the four corners of the Earth. Like the ripples the refugees of the vanquished city fled with winged feet to foreign lands. In those last hours of the siege, the valorous right arm of the Emperor Constantine Palaeologus XI held his sword high in defiance of the Turks, who were swarming through the city’s broken walls.

His very soul crushed within, and feeling abandoned, Constantine XI uttered his final words:

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