Roman Church in the time of Eugenius IV; Nicholas V was chiefly busied in opposing the sect of the Patarenes, who were in alliance with the Turks. The monastic and secular clergy, building on the Emir's favour, sought to lay hands on the Church property of Bosnia; at a later date the Bosnian, that is, the Slavonic magnates embraced Mohammedanism with enthusiasm. But of Slavonic race also was the famous Christian hero George Kastriota, who had begun his struggle against the Turks in 1444 with the victory in the Dibra, and kept the standard of freedom flying in Albania for twenty years with unbroken courage and supported by the Pope. The same Pope supported with utmost sympathy and self-sacrifice the course of the struggle for Rhodes, and also that for the island of Cyprus, which was threatened by the Turks shortly afterwards; he placed half of the French indulgence money at the disposal of the king of Cyprus. Between 1454 and 1455 a German popular book was printed for the first time with the movable types of the Mainz Bible, "Eyn manung der cristenheit widder die durken" (in the Hof- und Staatsbibliothek at Munich), an appeal to take the field against the Turks and to exterminate them. The pamphlet is in direct connection Iwith the Cypriote indulgence.

2. THE OSMAN EMPIRE AT THE ZENITH OF ITS POWER

(1451-1566)

A. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

WHEN Murad died on February 5, 1451, he left a heritage of war to his powerful son Mohammed II (1451-1481; see the plate facing p. 149), who ascended the Osman throne at the age of twenty-one. The Duke of Athens, Nerio II, also died in the same year as Murad. Mohammed II had no intention of allowing Attica to fall into the hands of the Venetians, who had seized the island of Ægina in the summer of 1451. For the moment he sent the son of Antonio Acciajuoli to Athens; this was Franko (Francesco II), who was living at the Sultan's court and was received with enthusiasm by the orthodox population who favoured the Turks.

Mohammed also solemnly renewed the pledges of peace and friendship with Byzantium as with other petty States. While, however, he was occupied in Asia with the subjugation of the refractory Emir Ibrahim of Karaman, the emperor Constantine XI Dragases conceived the unhappy idea of demanding twice the ransom offered by the Turks for the Osman prince Urkhan, who was then a prisoner in Constantinople. The Grand Vizier, Khalif Pasha, who befriended the Greeks, was horrified at the presumptuous folly of this demand, which the Greek ambassadors brought to the camp of Akshehir. Mohammed immediately concluded peace with the ruler of Karaman and satisfied the Janissaries with monetary gifts, with the object of gaining freedom to concentrate the whole of his strength upon Constantinople. Making Adrianople his base of operations, he cut off the revenues on the Strymon (now Vardar), which were destined for the maintenance of Urkhan. In the spring of 1452 he began the construction of a fortress at a spot where the Bosphorus is narrowest, its breadth being only five hundred and fifty metres, and where a strong current, still known to the Turks as scheitan akyntysy ("the devil's stream "), carries ships from the Asiatic side to the promontory of

EXPLANATION OF THE PLANS OF THE CITY OF
CONSTANTINOPLE OVERLEAF

A. Constantinople a generation before the Turkish Conquest; from the "Liber insularum archipelagi," editus per presbyterum Christoferum de Bondelmontibus de Florentia, 1422. The oldest plan in existence.

The old artist painted the sea dark green, the city walls and the houses sepia brown, the towers rose colour, most of the roofs red, and the corbels blue.

(Drawn in facsimile by Franz Etzold, after the photographic reproduction of the manuscript,
measuring 28.5 × 21 centimetres, in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.)

EXPLANATION OF THE LEGENDS.

1. Porta lacherne Porta Blachernarum.

2. Porta messe = μéon.

3. Porta piscaria (MS. piscarie).

4. Porta iudaea (MS. iudea).

5. Arsana = arsenal.

6. (Sanctus) Demetrius (MS. Dimetrius). Below in the MS. Oriens; this denotes the orientation of the map.

7. S(anctus) Georgius de mangana (in manganis; monasterium).

8. Hodigitria = ὁδηγητρία.

9. Port(us) di(vi) palatii imp(er)ator(um) [scil.
Bucoleontis].

10. Receptac(u)l(u)m fustar(um), d(i)c(tu)m Con-
doscalae (MS. candoscalli) =
tascali.

portus Hep

11. Portus V(o)langa, from modern Greek aðλaKas (in the MS. porto valanga).

12. S(anctus) Joh(annes) de studio.

13. Porta a(n)tiq(ui)ssi(m) a pulc(h)ra = porta aurea, lapidea.

14. Hic thurci semper p(roe)liant(ur), q(ui)a locus est debilior.

15. Apostoli (Church of the Apostles; replaced 1463-1469 by the mosque of Mohammed II Fâtih).

16. S(ancta) Sophia (from 1455 the chief mosque of Stamboul under the name of Aja Sofia). In addition, on the upper border: Pera; on the right, above: Scutari; on the left side, below: Constantinopolis.

Cf. J. Mordtmann, Esquisse topographique de Constantinople (Lille, 1892); E. Legrand, Description des îles de l'Archipel par Chr. Buondelmonti, I (Paris, 1897); E. Oberhummer, the article "Constantinopolis" in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Enzyklopädie des klassischen Altertums IV, pp. 963-1013 (printed separately: Stuttgart, 1899).

B. Constantinople two generations after the Conquest; drawn (and published) by Giovanni
Andrea Vavassore detto Vadagnino, Venice, 1520 (?).

(Drawn in facsimile by Franz Etzold, after the photographic reproduction of the original,
measuring 37 × 52 centimetres, in the German National Museum at Nuremberg.)

The superiority of Vavassore's plan, on which were based the plans of Balthazar Jenichen and Sebastian Münster, is made clear by comparison with the plan in "four despatches of Augerius Gislenius of Busbeck, of the Turkish embassy, which were committed to him for Solimann, then Turkish emperor, by the Roman emperor Ferdinand I" (German; Nuremberg, 1664); or by comparison with the bird's-eye view of Michael Wolgemut or Wilhelm Pleydenwurf, which, though more than half a metre in breadth, is characterised by clever compression (in Hartman Schedel's "Buch der Croniken und Geschichten," Nuremberg, Koberger, 1495); this latter depicts the chief buildings of Constantinople from the (new) arsenal to the Golden Horn. No useful object would have been served in reproducing these two views together with the Paris and Nuremberg plans, as Schedel's is only valuable to collectors of woodcuts and curiosities, and Busbeck's is entirely valueless; cf. V. v. Loga, Die Städteansichten in Hartman Schedel's Weltchronik (Jahrbuch der könig. preuss. Kunstsammlungen ix, 194). More interest belongs to the view given by Merian in the Archontologia cosmica (Frankfort-on-Main, 1695).

Mou