0 00:00:01,935 --> 00:00:06,133 This is the story of the ending of a civilization 1 00:00:06,272 --> 00:00:09,935 of the breaking of a way of life, 2 00:00:10,076 --> 00:00:13,671 the story of a nation facing extinction and of the choices 3 00:00:13,813 --> 00:00:18,443 that its people made the story of the ending of the Empire 4 00:00:18,585 --> 00:00:23,613 of Byzantium and of the beginnings of the modern world. 5 00:00:53,453 --> 00:00:54,112 The last years 6 00:00:54,254 --> 00:01:00,420 of the Empire of Byzantium were filled with stress and beauty. 7 00:01:02,262 --> 00:01:09,634 Faced with enemies looking for friends and always waiting for the ending. 8 00:01:13,506 --> 00:01:17,499 As it fell, Byzantium's ornaments its arts and peoples 9 00:01:17,644 --> 00:01:24,345 settled on the West like sparks from a burning forest parks 10 00:01:24,484 --> 00:01:27,942 that lit the Western World. 11 00:01:49,042 --> 00:01:53,911 I'm standing high above the Golden Horn in Istanbul, in modern Turkey. 12 00:01:54,047 --> 00:01:56,174 I'm standing right on the edge of Europe, too. 13 00:01:56,316 --> 00:01:58,648 That's Asia over there. 14 00:01:58,785 --> 00:02:03,688 Now, eight hundred years ago from here to the great blue sea 15 00:02:03,823 --> 00:02:06,656 was the most famous palace in the world 16 00:02:06,793 --> 00:02:08,226 lts wealth, its beauty 17 00:02:08,361 --> 00:02:14,061 its sacredness was the envy of people from Iceland to China. 18 00:02:17,737 --> 00:02:21,503 Only the angels in heaven the Byzantines had said 19 00:02:21,641 --> 00:02:24,906 knew the date of the ending of this dazzling city 20 00:02:25,044 --> 00:02:30,710 the capitol of the Empire Byzantium which they called Constantinople. 21 00:02:33,953 --> 00:02:36,080 Late in the Middle Ages 22 00:02:36,222 --> 00:02:39,020 though in the last two centuries of Byzantium 23 00:02:39,159 --> 00:02:41,855 when the Crusaders had half destroyed the city 24 00:02:41,995 --> 00:02:46,989 and with the armies of the Turkish Sultans closing in upon its walls 25 00:02:47,133 --> 00:02:53,003 you didn't need to be an angel to know the end was very close 26 00:02:53,139 --> 00:02:59,703 The broken Empire of Byzantium prepared to face its destiny. 27 00:03:01,514 --> 00:03:07,282 The emperors moved their palace here to Vlackany, right on the city walls 28 00:03:07,420 --> 00:03:12,722 Here, they could face all their enemies the Turks, the Westerners. 29 00:03:12,859 --> 00:03:16,795 Here, too, was a great church and a most sinister prison 30 00:03:16,930 --> 00:03:20,161 where half a dozen emperors were executed or blinded 31 00:03:20,300 --> 00:03:23,599 in terrifying family feuds. 32 00:03:34,047 --> 00:03:36,811 Just like the emperors, Jesus, Mary and all the saints 33 00:03:36,950 --> 00:03:39,748 had also moved out onto the city walls 34 00:03:39,886 --> 00:03:42,684 This is the great Monastery Church of St. 35 00:03:42,822 --> 00:03:44,483 Savior Ankora, St. 36 00:03:44,624 --> 00:03:48,890 Savior in the fields In the last centuries of Byzantium, 37 00:03:49,028 --> 00:03:51,861 the city's greatest icons were in this church 38 00:03:51,998 --> 00:03:56,594 waiting to be paraded around the walls in times of siege. 39 00:04:08,147 --> 00:04:12,550 St. Savior's was Byzantium's last master work 40 00:04:12,685 --> 00:04:17,179 the jewel box set beside the city walls. 41 00:04:18,858 --> 00:04:23,795 Inside these little city churches many people found their individual 42 00:04:23,930 --> 00:04:28,526 answers to the most terrible dilemma that any culture has to face, 43 00:04:28,668 --> 00:04:33,503 the threat of annihilation of the death of a nation. 44 00:04:35,475 --> 00:04:40,811 The imperial crown was stored, here alongside the holy pictures. 45 00:04:42,949 --> 00:04:49,582 It's said that on the last night of Byzantium, on the 28th of May, 1453, 46 00:04:49,722 --> 00:04:54,386 as the Emperor Constantine Palaiologos was praying, 47 00:04:54,527 --> 00:04:57,325 the Virgin Mary came down from heaven 48 00:04:57,463 --> 00:05:00,489 and asked him to return the crown to her, 49 00:05:00,633 --> 00:05:04,797 as God withdrew protection from his holy city. 50 00:05:12,745 --> 00:05:19,082 Above the door, in shining gold an image of the church's greatest benefactor 51 00:05:19,218 --> 00:05:25,987 Theodore Methokitis, Prime Minister and High Chancellor of Byzantium. 52 00:05:27,126 --> 00:05:28,320 Look at him, with his turban 53 00:05:28,461 --> 00:05:34,696 and his caftan - the very model of an Eastern gentleman. 54 00:05:37,737 --> 00:05:42,572 Yet, Theodore and the Byzantines were a very ancient people, 55 00:05:42,709 --> 00:05:46,839 the living remnants of the world of Greece and Rome. 56 00:05:53,653 --> 00:05:58,317 Even by Theodore's day though by the 1320s, the great Chancellor had come to 57 00:05:58,458 --> 00:06:05,022 the conclusion that Byzantium's ancient heritage was quite exhausted. 58 00:06:05,164 --> 00:06:12,036 But, all one really had to do, was to wait and pray and silently endure. 59 00:06:14,540 --> 00:06:19,910 His church was a meditation on eternity. 60 00:06:23,816 --> 00:06:28,719 Theodore's artists have given us one of Byzantium's finest images, 61 00:06:28,855 --> 00:06:32,188 perhaps one of the greatest paintings ever made. 62 00:06:32,325 --> 00:06:34,054 I say that, because it's a painting 63 00:06:34,193 --> 00:06:38,857 about humanity about the value of humankind. 64 00:06:38,998 --> 00:06:40,295 What's going on? 65 00:06:40,433 --> 00:06:43,459 That's Christ in the middle, resplendent, white. 66 00:06:43,603 --> 00:06:46,902 He's burst through the gates of hell he's got the hands of Adam 67 00:06:47,039 --> 00:06:48,336 and Eve that's all of us. 68 00:06:48,474 --> 00:06:51,910 And he's pulling them from the grave. 69 00:06:53,846 --> 00:06:55,473 It's the hands. Look at the hands. 70 00:06:55,615 --> 00:06:57,515 It's the hands that's got the urgency in them 71 00:06:57,650 --> 00:07:00,676 the hands that are insisting upon this resurrection. 72 00:07:00,820 --> 00:07:06,315 Not from earthly empires, but from the value of humankind, itself. 73 00:07:06,459 --> 00:07:10,327 It was those ideals that drove Byzantium in its final years. 74 00:07:10,463 --> 00:07:13,557 The idea that like the kingdom of heaven, 75 00:07:13,699 --> 00:07:18,033 Byzantium was not a kingdom of this world. 76 00:07:18,171 --> 00:07:21,436 It was a belief in the inevitability that the world came, 77 00:07:21,574 --> 00:07:24,065 had a beginning, will come to an end. 78 00:07:24,210 --> 00:07:26,735 So when the emperor went onto to the walls and took with him 79 00:07:26,879 --> 00:07:30,781 the most ancient icons of his faith, and he knew that he would die, 80 00:07:30,917 --> 00:07:34,250 he also knew that he was right. 81 00:07:40,860 --> 00:07:44,352 Many Byzantines believed that if an enemy ever broke through 82 00:07:44,497 --> 00:07:48,957 these vast old city walls the very statues of the ancient emperors would 83 00:07:49,101 --> 00:07:52,935 come alive and drive the invaders from the city. 84 00:07:53,072 --> 00:07:59,307 For them, Constantinople was a sacred city, the center of the world. 85 00:07:59,445 --> 00:08:01,845 Inviolable. 86 00:08:03,049 --> 00:08:06,712 Yet, they, too, could see the Turkish armies drawing ever closer, 87 00:08:06,853 --> 00:08:10,846 and their ancient city descending into ruin. 88 00:08:16,095 --> 00:08:20,259 By the 1400s, many of Byzantium's brightest minds had left 89 00:08:20,399 --> 00:08:24,699 the gathering gloom and darkness of the crumbling city, 90 00:08:24,837 --> 00:08:31,140 and settled in a fresh, new town beneath the mountain tops of southern Greece. 91 00:08:31,277 --> 00:08:36,374 A sparkling town, on a hilltop, close to the ruins of ancient Sparta, 92 00:08:36,516 --> 00:08:39,917 a town called Mistra. 93 00:08:41,821 --> 00:08:45,552 A miniature kingdom ruled by the Emperor's brother, Theodore, 94 00:08:45,691 --> 00:08:51,561 and Queen Caliope his Italian wife, where Jews, and Greeks, Byzantines 95 00:08:51,697 --> 00:08:56,999 and Italians; Greek and Latin could live happily together. 96 00:09:02,408 --> 00:09:08,745 One of the lovely things about Mistra is how small it is, how tiny, how human. 97 00:09:08,881 --> 00:09:12,442 Everything, here, is democratic. As you walked down the street, 98 00:09:12,585 --> 00:09:14,610 you'd have bumped into everybody. 99 00:09:14,754 --> 00:09:17,018 You might have seen Italian merchants. 100 00:09:17,156 --> 00:09:19,454 You might have seen beautiful Queen Caliope, 101 00:09:19,592 --> 00:09:21,219 walking amongst the flowers. 102 00:09:21,360 --> 00:09:25,296 And you might have seen the retired Emperor John, here to visit his family, 103 00:09:25,431 --> 00:09:29,868 now a monk buzzing busily from church to church. 104 00:09:31,537 --> 00:09:34,700 But, the hub of Mistra's life was a charismatic teacher, 105 00:09:34,840 --> 00:09:40,676 from Constantinople, a follower of Plato the ancient Greek philosopher, 106 00:09:40,813 --> 00:09:44,146 a man called Plethon. 107 00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:49,351 In Plethon's time, 108 00:09:49,488 --> 00:09:53,151 Mistra was already fineness, it was a little paradise, they said. 109 00:09:53,292 --> 00:09:55,920 The men were handsome, the women were beautiful 110 00:09:56,062 --> 00:09:59,930 and the stones were from ancient Sparta, itself. 111 00:10:00,066 --> 00:10:03,035 But, everybody knew that they were doomed. 112 00:10:07,573 --> 00:10:13,011 Here, Plethon founded the last academy of Greek philosophy. 113 00:10:13,145 --> 00:10:16,376 Here, he taught future patriarchs of Constantinople, 114 00:10:16,515 --> 00:10:21,009 and future cardinals of the Church of Rome, as well. 115 00:10:22,188 --> 00:10:27,592 As they mingled with philosophers of late Byzantium, for a brief while, 116 00:10:27,727 --> 00:10:30,252 Western visitors to Mistra witnessed 117 00:10:30,396 --> 00:10:34,958 the last flowering of the living world of ancient Greece. 118 00:10:36,235 --> 00:10:41,434 This is the estate of a grand Byzantine nobleman. Not much left of the garden, 119 00:10:41,574 --> 00:10:47,171 just a few wild herbs, a little spinach. 120 00:10:48,681 --> 00:10:52,173 But, you know, Plethon must have lived in a house, like this. 121 00:10:52,318 --> 00:10:56,846 It really corresponds to the old philosophers way of thinking about things; 122 00:10:56,989 --> 00:11:01,392 upstairs, the noble family, downstairs, the servants and the animals. 123 00:11:01,527 --> 00:11:03,552 The third class would have been merchant classes, 124 00:11:03,696 --> 00:11:05,220 they would have built a smaller house. 125 00:11:05,364 --> 00:11:06,888 But this, this is grand. 126 00:11:07,033 --> 00:11:11,595 Look at the fireplace; great big flue going up through the wood ceiling, 127 00:11:11,737 --> 00:11:14,001 and the tiles, to the outside. 128 00:11:14,140 --> 00:11:17,007 Just like a modern fireplace with a big canopy coming down the front, 129 00:11:17,143 --> 00:11:21,307 those two holes, there, supporting the wood that held the cooking chain, 130 00:11:21,447 --> 00:11:24,644 that hung right down there with a big pot on it, 131 00:11:24,784 --> 00:11:26,513 and two great stones underneath. 132 00:11:26,652 --> 00:11:28,244 Everything was cooked there. 133 00:11:28,387 --> 00:11:31,914 If they wanted to roast anything they'd send it out to a local bread oven 134 00:11:32,058 --> 00:11:32,922 Now, 135 00:11:33,059 --> 00:11:38,258 all the rest of the activity of this house went on in one big room. 136 00:11:38,397 --> 00:11:39,830 What you gotta think of, here, 137 00:11:39,965 --> 00:11:45,232 is little cubicles with curtains around, the lavatory, the beds, 138 00:11:45,371 --> 00:11:47,498 any little private areas that people wanted. 139 00:11:47,640 --> 00:11:51,838 This was a very simple life, because these were leading men of Byzantium. 140 00:11:51,977 --> 00:11:53,535 Plethon was very proud of it. 141 00:11:53,679 --> 00:11:56,170 He said that even great Queen Caliope, 142 00:11:56,315 --> 00:12:00,376 herself, would have lived in a house like this, actually had given up 143 00:12:00,453 --> 00:12:04,355 the soft and decadent ways of the Italians and taken up our own 144 00:12:04,490 --> 00:12:07,891 innocent behavior, he said. 145 00:12:08,027 --> 00:12:12,054 So, you gotta think, old Plethon sitting, 146 00:12:12,198 --> 00:12:15,224 perhaps in the evening light, looking out over the valley of Sparta, 147 00:12:15,367 --> 00:12:16,095 what would he have done? 148 00:12:16,235 --> 00:12:18,829 Well, he scribbled letters to the Duke. 149 00:12:18,971 --> 00:12:22,407 Plethon was very worried about the condition of Byzantium. 150 00:12:22,541 --> 00:12:25,101 He thought the world needed reformation, 151 00:12:25,244 --> 00:12:27,439 and he came out with all these amazing ideas, 152 00:12:27,580 --> 00:12:29,980 from ancient Greece, he was a bit of an old fascist, really. 153 00:12:30,116 --> 00:12:33,347 A lot of his ideas were terrible, but he was a magnetic character. 154 00:12:33,486 --> 00:12:34,748 People loved him. 155 00:12:34,887 --> 00:12:37,287 Like all professors, they loved listening to him, 156 00:12:37,423 --> 00:12:41,120 and didn't take a word of notice of what he said. 157 00:12:55,708 --> 00:12:59,769 At the heart of Mistra was the court. 158 00:12:59,912 --> 00:13:04,246 And, at the heart of the court, this little pretty church, 159 00:13:04,383 --> 00:13:10,549 named after the great old court Church of Constantinople, St. Sofia. 160 00:13:17,863 --> 00:13:21,993 There's not much left, here, now, just Christ, up there on the wall, 161 00:13:22,134 --> 00:13:24,159 and a few beautiful fragments of marble. 162 00:13:24,303 --> 00:13:27,101 Most of the church has been stripped out completely. 163 00:13:27,239 --> 00:13:29,730 There's even a little double-headed eagle still up there, 164 00:13:29,875 --> 00:13:34,539 a double-headed eagle of the last Emperors of Byzantium. 165 00:13:34,680 --> 00:13:38,673 But, the real treasure is, here, on the floor. 166 00:13:38,818 --> 00:13:44,757 Look at this. You see that? 167 00:13:44,890 --> 00:13:52,854 That stone, there, that purple stone, that's Imperial porphyry. 168 00:13:52,998 --> 00:13:56,957 That's a stone, well, it's a whole magical stone of Byzantium. 169 00:13:57,102 --> 00:14:00,367 When this church was built, it hadn't even been mined for a thousand years, 170 00:14:00,439 --> 00:14:03,431 yet little chippings of it were taken, around the world, 171 00:14:03,576 --> 00:14:05,544 and set in floors, like this. 172 00:14:05,678 --> 00:14:09,944 It was the stone in which Roman emperors had been born in rooms 173 00:14:10,082 --> 00:14:12,277 that were covered in it. 174 00:14:12,418 --> 00:14:17,481 This stone, was probably the very stone where the last Emperor of Byzantium 175 00:14:17,623 --> 00:14:20,751 was crowned, Constantine Palaiologos. 176 00:14:20,893 --> 00:14:28,163 The last ruler of Mistra was crowned, here, on the sixth of January 1449. 177 00:14:28,300 --> 00:14:31,963 Three years later, he died fighting on the walls of Constantinople 178 00:14:32,104 --> 00:14:35,335 as the Turks took the city. 179 00:15:00,366 --> 00:15:05,599 In the 13th Century, a family of nomad turkish shepherds, called the Ottomans, 180 00:15:05,738 --> 00:15:10,675 packed their tents and rode out of Central Asia. 181 00:15:10,809 --> 00:15:15,143 Two centuries later, the Islamic armies of the Ottoman Turks, 182 00:15:15,281 --> 00:15:18,478 commanded by members of that same family conquered 183 00:15:18,617 --> 00:15:25,181 most of the territory of Byzantium, and a large part of Southeast Europe, too. 184 00:15:25,324 --> 00:15:26,348 The center of this enlarging 185 00:15:26,492 --> 00:15:31,361 Turkish empire was a city at the borders of modern Greece and Turkey, 186 00:15:31,497 --> 00:15:37,129 the city of Edirne, the capital of the turkish sultans. 187 00:15:43,876 --> 00:15:47,505 In those days, Edirne was a hectic, international city, 188 00:15:47,646 --> 00:15:50,638 the city of great mosques, hospitals, concert halls, 189 00:15:50,783 --> 00:15:55,117 munitions works and grand bazaars. 190 00:15:58,891 --> 00:16:02,657 This is one of the colleges of learning, at Edirne. 191 00:16:02,795 --> 00:16:05,923 In sultan Mehmet's time, there were many of them, here, 192 00:16:06,065 --> 00:16:09,626 and they formed a circle like a university around the court. 193 00:16:09,768 --> 00:16:11,429 It was an international university. 194 00:16:11,570 --> 00:16:16,064 There were Italians, here, teaching the sultan's children how to speak Greek. 195 00:16:16,208 --> 00:16:20,235 Byzantine nobles sometimes sent their children here for a good education. 196 00:16:20,379 --> 00:16:22,347 Old Plethon came here, as a young man. 197 00:16:22,481 --> 00:16:25,780 Here it was he met Persian fire worshippers who taught him 198 00:16:25,918 --> 00:16:28,045 all about their strange religion. 199 00:16:28,187 --> 00:16:32,886 Here it was, too, he first read the works of the ancient Greek, Aristotle. 200 00:16:33,025 --> 00:16:37,291 Clearly, this dynamic, international, rich, powerful society 201 00:16:37,429 --> 00:16:42,526 was far more than a match for the poor old Empire of Byzantium. 202 00:16:45,337 --> 00:16:50,297 It was also clear that the ancient city of Constantinople had been engulfed 203 00:16:50,442 --> 00:16:53,036 by this adolescent, multinational empire 204 00:16:53,178 --> 00:16:57,444 But Constantinople lay at the strategic center of its trade routes, 205 00:16:57,583 --> 00:17:00,313 and on the supply lines of the Turkish armies 206 00:17:00,386 --> 00:17:03,753 that were eating into Eastern Europe. 207 00:17:03,889 --> 00:17:07,791 That is why Byzantium was doomed. 208 00:17:12,865 --> 00:17:16,858 In 1438, the Emperor, John VIII, sailed out of Constantinople 209 00:17:17,002 --> 00:17:20,597 in a last attempt to beg aid from the reluctant West, 210 00:17:20,739 --> 00:17:23,105 in his struggle with the Turks. 211 00:17:25,077 --> 00:17:28,808 After seventy-seven days at sea, the imperial convoy arrived 212 00:17:28,947 --> 00:17:33,111 at the friendly port of Venice. 213 00:17:42,728 --> 00:17:46,323 The West had always said that military aid for Constantinople 214 00:17:46,465 --> 00:17:51,596 was dependent upon Byzantium's reunion with the Church of Rome. 215 00:17:51,737 --> 00:17:53,068 The churches of the East and West, 216 00:17:53,205 --> 00:17:57,505 Greek and Latin, were split apart six centuries before. 217 00:17:57,643 --> 00:18:01,670 So, the Emperor John had sailed with his theologians and his bishops, 218 00:18:01,814 --> 00:18:06,274 not his generals or his admirals. 219 00:18:06,418 --> 00:18:13,449 In all, some seven hundred people on the sea, the scholars of Byzantium. 220 00:18:15,661 --> 00:18:18,221 Plethon, too, had come especially from Mistra, 221 00:18:18,363 --> 00:18:23,665 in Greece, as had many of his pupils. 222 00:18:28,540 --> 00:18:31,373 The most extraordinary thing about this gathering, that there were 223 00:18:31,510 --> 00:18:34,809 bishops and priests from all the cities of the ancient East, 224 00:18:34,947 --> 00:18:37,438 all the cities founded by Greece and Rome the cities of Alexander the Great, 225 00:18:37,583 --> 00:18:40,848 the cities of the Seven Wonders of the world, 226 00:18:40,986 --> 00:18:43,784 all had their representatives at the council, 227 00:18:43,922 --> 00:18:46,220 all at once and all together. 228 00:18:46,358 --> 00:18:50,886 It was as if the old world had come to meet the new. 229 00:18:54,199 --> 00:18:58,295 But, there was plague abroad, in Northern Italy. 230 00:18:58,437 --> 00:19:04,467 Two Byzantine bishops perished in the first weeks of negotiations. 231 00:19:08,147 --> 00:19:11,048 The emperor, and his retinue, rode away from danger, 232 00:19:11,183 --> 00:19:16,587 over the mountains and down to the central plain of Italy. 233 00:19:17,256 --> 00:19:20,885 Here, perhaps, at Florence, they might forge their union 234 00:19:21,026 --> 00:19:25,827 with the West that Byzantium so desperately needed. 235 00:19:30,369 --> 00:19:36,239 And, here, too, they were memorialized in the frescos of the Benozzo Gozzoli 236 00:19:36,375 --> 00:19:39,071 painted in the townhouse of the Medici family, 237 00:19:39,211 --> 00:19:43,978 the bankers who were sponsoring this council of the churches. 238 00:19:46,218 --> 00:19:53,147 That's John VIII, John Palaiologos from Mistra, Emperor of Byzantium, 239 00:19:53,292 --> 00:19:59,720 come to the West to seek aid. He'd ruled twelve years, at this point. 240 00:19:59,865 --> 00:20:04,131 And, when he got here, the Florentines, those dedicated followers of fashion, 241 00:20:04,269 --> 00:20:09,605 thought he was a knockout. They had never seen turbans like that, 242 00:20:09,741 --> 00:20:10,799 or crowns like that. 243 00:20:10,943 --> 00:20:14,106 The jewelers liked it; the, the Florentine weavers liked it; 244 00:20:14,246 --> 00:20:15,508 the painters liked it. 245 00:20:15,647 --> 00:20:19,139 This was a man whose dress and demeanor influenced fashion, here, 246 00:20:19,284 --> 00:20:22,048 almost for a century. 247 00:20:22,187 --> 00:20:24,018 They didn't like him much, though. 248 00:20:24,156 --> 00:20:27,751 They thought all the Greeks were haughty sarcastic people who seemed 249 00:20:27,893 --> 00:20:31,226 to be laughing at jokes they wouldn't share with the Florentine, 250 00:20:31,363 --> 00:20:32,990 the untaught, really. 251 00:20:33,131 --> 00:20:35,292 What they were experiencing, actually, 252 00:20:35,434 --> 00:20:43,102 was a typical Greek thing, it was the full force of the divine right of kings. 253 00:20:43,242 --> 00:20:45,142 See, in the West, that had rather diminished. 254 00:20:45,277 --> 00:20:49,077 The West, that had pinched the idea that the Emperor had, now, 255 00:20:49,214 --> 00:20:51,774 taken to electing Western emperors, they were confirmed by popes. 256 00:20:51,917 --> 00:20:57,355 There was common law, power in the West that seeped down, and down, 257 00:20:57,489 --> 00:20:59,787 and down away from the man who, now, 258 00:20:59,925 --> 00:21:02,894 was like only at the top of a vast pyramid of power. 259 00:21:03,028 --> 00:21:09,126 In Byzantium everything resided in the one man. 260 00:21:09,268 --> 00:21:13,932 Now, in the West, here it is, after a stroll in the country, Cosimo, 261 00:21:14,072 --> 00:21:18,031 and the other seven hundred Medici, all on their horses, 262 00:21:18,176 --> 00:21:22,738 this is entirely reversed. I mean, here you've got a man who is a banker, 263 00:21:22,881 --> 00:21:26,977 a politician, a multinational businessman, you might say, 264 00:21:27,119 --> 00:21:30,611 the West was entirely different. 265 00:21:32,457 --> 00:21:35,654 The central disagreement, then, was about these different attitudes 266 00:21:35,794 --> 00:21:37,955 to power in East and West, 267 00:21:38,096 --> 00:21:43,466 about power and precedence amongst the lords of earth and heaven. 268 00:21:43,602 --> 00:21:44,899 Most of the Byzantines, though, 269 00:21:45,037 --> 00:21:48,404 were insulted at the very idea of arguing about God, 270 00:21:48,540 --> 00:21:53,671 whose majesty and dignity was beyond all human understanding. 271 00:21:53,812 --> 00:21:57,248 They thought that the clever Roman clerics they faced each day 272 00:21:57,382 --> 00:22:01,842 were simply impertinent and immature. 273 00:22:05,123 --> 00:22:09,583 After a year of recrimination and debate the Emperor John, 274 00:22:09,728 --> 00:22:14,961 still desperate for military aid, simply ordered his delegation to agree 275 00:22:15,100 --> 00:22:18,831 to most of the West's arguments. 276 00:22:24,743 --> 00:22:29,407 On the sixth of June, 1439, the great Act of Union was signed 277 00:22:29,548 --> 00:22:32,517 in Florence Cathedral, right under the huge, beautiful, 278 00:22:32,651 --> 00:22:37,179 brand new dome, an act of union between two churches, 279 00:22:37,322 --> 00:22:39,916 between the Pope of Rome, and his assembled clergy, 280 00:22:40,058 --> 00:22:41,685 the Emperor of Byzantium, 281 00:22:41,827 --> 00:22:45,991 and whichever of his Greeks decided to turn up that day. 282 00:22:50,168 --> 00:22:53,501 The real buzz, in Florence, though, wasn't in the great cathedral, 283 00:22:53,638 --> 00:22:59,270 it was in the streets. The Byzantines were here. 284 00:22:59,411 --> 00:23:00,878 These weren't the old school teachers 285 00:23:01,012 --> 00:23:04,209 that rich Florentines paid to teach their kids. 286 00:23:04,349 --> 00:23:07,944 These were the geniuses, the brightest minds of Byzantium, 287 00:23:08,086 --> 00:23:12,386 and here they were carrying all the wisdom of the ancient world, it seemed. 288 00:23:12,524 --> 00:23:15,960 Now, the brightest of all these Greeks, was Plethon. 289 00:23:16,094 --> 00:23:19,222 He taught practically all the people in the Greek delegation. 290 00:23:19,364 --> 00:23:20,626 He came straight from Mistra. 291 00:23:20,766 --> 00:23:24,395 He was very old; he was eighty, and he was as charismatic as ever. 292 00:23:24,536 --> 00:23:29,872 He gave lectures, here, and the effect was amazing. 293 00:23:37,149 --> 00:23:42,587 Back at Constantinople, though, the union with Rome caused riots. 294 00:23:42,721 --> 00:23:47,624 Italian priests were insulted in the city's churches. 295 00:23:47,759 --> 00:23:51,559 And Western Europe sent no aid. 296 00:23:53,765 --> 00:23:59,533 Disillusioned, disappointed, the Emperor John died a few years later. 297 00:23:59,671 --> 00:24:03,539 He was buried here, in the monastery of Christ Pantecrat, 298 00:24:03,675 --> 00:24:07,441 Christ Lord of Earth and Heaven. 299 00:24:10,215 --> 00:24:14,481 And at the same monastery, Genadius, the theologian, preached that the union 300 00:24:14,619 --> 00:24:20,649 with Rome would bring down the wrath of God upon Byzantium. 301 00:24:30,602 --> 00:24:36,040 Meanwhile, at Edirne, the new, young Turkish sultan, Mehmet, 302 00:24:36,174 --> 00:24:39,940 had taken up the Ottoman throne. 303 00:24:41,847 --> 00:24:46,284 In Constantinople, the new emperor, John's brother, Constantine, 304 00:24:46,418 --> 00:24:52,618 soon discovered that he now had a dangerous and most impatient neighbor. 305 00:24:58,163 --> 00:25:05,069 In April 1452, there was a huge row at the court of sultan Mehmet II. 306 00:25:05,203 --> 00:25:09,765 Byzantine ambassadors had turned up complaining that the young man was breaking 307 00:25:09,908 --> 00:25:12,069 all his father's treaties. He was, too 308 00:25:12,210 --> 00:25:16,271 He was building a huge castle right next door to Constantinople, 309 00:25:16,414 --> 00:25:18,006 called the Cutthroat. 310 00:25:18,149 --> 00:25:21,744 It was the first stages in his planned attack upon the city. 311 00:25:21,887 --> 00:25:24,287 And now, in his reply to these ambassadors, 312 00:25:24,422 --> 00:25:25,889 he tried to scare the pants off. 313 00:25:26,024 --> 00:25:30,620 Listen to this, these are his very words "Have you the right, or the power, 314 00:25:30,762 --> 00:25:33,822 to control my actions on my own territory? 315 00:25:33,965 --> 00:25:36,126 Inform your king that I am very different 316 00:25:36,268 --> 00:25:41,262 from my father, that my resolution surpasses all my ancestors. 317 00:25:41,406 --> 00:25:44,000 This time, you can return in safety. 318 00:25:44,142 --> 00:25:50,206 But, the next man who delivers a similar message to me, will be flayed alive." 319 00:25:59,824 --> 00:26:01,883 Back in Constantinople, the new emperor, 320 00:26:02,027 --> 00:26:06,589 Constantine XI reluctantly composed his reply. 321 00:26:06,731 --> 00:26:08,858 "It is clear," he said to the sultan, 322 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:11,161 that you desire war more than peace. 323 00:26:11,303 --> 00:26:13,703 So, let that be your desire. 324 00:26:13,838 --> 00:26:16,898 I release you from all your oaths and treaties with me, 325 00:26:17,042 --> 00:26:18,907 and in closing the gates of my city, 326 00:26:19,044 --> 00:26:24,482 I tell you, I will defend my people to the last drop of blood. 327 00:26:24,616 --> 00:26:27,380 The Turkish mosques in Byzantium were shut. 328 00:26:27,519 --> 00:26:31,387 The Turkish troops who were sightseeing in the city were thrown out the gates. 329 00:26:31,523 --> 00:26:33,753 Byzantium was at war. 330 00:26:44,703 --> 00:26:47,900 Mehmet was actually very touched by Constantine. 331 00:26:48,039 --> 00:26:50,872 After all, the Ottomans and Byzantines had lived side by side 332 00:26:51,009 --> 00:26:52,943 for a very long time. 333 00:26:53,078 --> 00:26:56,275 They'd fought together in wars, they'd intermarried. 334 00:26:56,414 --> 00:26:58,575 But, Mehmet was also very determined. 335 00:26:58,717 --> 00:27:01,481 Listen to his reply. "I shall take your city," 336 00:27:01,620 --> 00:27:05,078 he tells Constantine, "or the city will take me. 337 00:27:05,223 --> 00:27:07,748 If, however, you admit defeat, and withdraw, 338 00:27:07,892 --> 00:27:12,158 I will give you Mistra and its province and we shall be friends. 339 00:27:12,297 --> 00:27:17,496 If you deny me peaceful entry, however, I shall slay you and all your nobles. 340 00:27:17,636 --> 00:27:21,265 I shall slaughter the inhabitants of your city and allow my troops to plunder it. 341 00:27:21,406 --> 00:27:26,844 The city, itself, is all I want, even if it is empty." 342 00:27:30,248 --> 00:27:32,648 Constantine's reply was brief, 343 00:27:32,784 --> 00:27:36,276 "You may have anything you want of me, other than the city. 344 00:27:36,421 --> 00:27:39,549 I will not flee from it, nor will I evacuate. 345 00:27:39,691 --> 00:27:41,420 You may have anything but the city. 346 00:27:41,559 --> 00:27:45,222 For the city, I would rather die than live." 347 00:27:53,204 --> 00:27:56,731 On the evening of the twenty-eighth the sultan Mehmet addressed his armies 348 00:27:56,875 --> 00:28:00,276 standing assembled outside the city walls. 349 00:28:00,412 --> 00:28:03,575 "I give you," he said, "the capital of the ancient Romans, 350 00:28:03,715 --> 00:28:06,741 the summit of power and glory, the center of the world 351 00:28:06,885 --> 00:28:10,719 I give over to you, the men, women, and children of the city, 352 00:28:10,855 --> 00:28:13,824 its gold and silver, its silks and furs. 353 00:28:13,958 --> 00:28:17,155 All I want are the buildings and the walls. 354 00:28:17,295 --> 00:28:20,924 It really was the standard offer of a medieval commander to his troops 355 00:28:21,066 --> 00:28:22,693 before the final assault. 356 00:28:22,834 --> 00:28:24,301 And they roared in agreement. 357 00:28:24,436 --> 00:28:29,499 "There is but one God," they said, "and Mohammed is his prophet." 358 00:28:42,887 --> 00:28:45,549 On the fringe of empire, 359 00:28:45,690 --> 00:28:48,557 high in the mountains of Northern Romania, 360 00:28:48,693 --> 00:28:50,923 contemporary Byzantine artists 361 00:28:51,062 --> 00:28:55,863 made precious records of the fall of Constantinople. 362 00:29:02,373 --> 00:29:05,570 Here's the Turkish armies waiting for Mehmet to order 363 00:29:05,710 --> 00:29:09,373 the final assault upon the city. 364 00:29:10,749 --> 00:29:13,582 The cannons, large as dragons, it was said, 365 00:29:13,718 --> 00:29:20,146 bore down from Edirne to pulverize the city's vast, old walls. 366 00:29:20,291 --> 00:29:23,658 The Turkish navy, fighting all along the Golden Horn, 367 00:29:23,795 --> 00:29:26,229 forcing the tiny armies of the Byzantine's 368 00:29:26,364 --> 00:29:29,925 to fight on two fronts at once. 369 00:29:32,137 --> 00:29:37,040 On the city walls, the Byzantines parade the holy icon of the virgin, 370 00:29:37,175 --> 00:29:44,377 the city's sacred shield, just as they had done for a thousand years and more. 371 00:29:47,552 --> 00:29:51,283 Every hall, each crack of weakness in the ancient walls, 372 00:29:51,422 --> 00:29:57,122 were strengthened by the prayers of priests, the women and the children. 373 00:29:58,563 --> 00:30:03,591 There's the emperor ordering the wall's repair with rocks and stones, 374 00:30:03,735 --> 00:30:09,696 and the Empress, too, with her ladies. Here, though, the artist is in error. 375 00:30:09,841 --> 00:30:12,674 There was no queen. 376 00:30:12,811 --> 00:30:18,772 Constantine XI, Constantine of Mistra, was childless and a widower, 377 00:30:18,917 --> 00:30:23,047 the last emperor would leave no heir. 378 00:30:27,292 --> 00:30:32,787 On the last day of Byzantium, an eerie quiet fell over the city. 379 00:30:32,931 --> 00:30:37,868 Mehmet had told the Turks to rest, for a whole day, before the last assault. 380 00:30:38,002 --> 00:30:42,405 He gave the emperor time to walk with all that was left of the armies 381 00:30:42,540 --> 00:30:47,637 and nobles of Byzantium, once again into the great church, and there, 382 00:30:47,779 --> 00:30:49,940 after all their arguing in Florence, 383 00:30:50,081 --> 00:30:53,448 the Greeks and the Latins joined together in a last service. 384 00:30:53,585 --> 00:30:57,885 And the emperor went to the altar and was given the last rites. 385 00:30:59,891 --> 00:31:02,325 Then, he walked back to the palace, 386 00:31:02,460 --> 00:31:04,928 and there he made a speech to his commanders. 387 00:31:05,063 --> 00:31:10,797 A speech, you might say that it was the last speech of the ancient world. 388 00:31:11,469 --> 00:31:15,667 He encouraged them not to be frightened when the Turks attacked. 389 00:31:15,807 --> 00:31:19,368 He said that their ancestors, the ancient Romans, were terrified 390 00:31:19,510 --> 00:31:24,573 when Hannibal's elephants had charged towards them, but they hadn't run away. 391 00:31:25,683 --> 00:31:29,175 Because they were human beings, people with will and mind 392 00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:33,416 and not given to animal desires and that he, and his commanders, 393 00:31:33,558 --> 00:31:38,495 had mind and will and God and belief upon their side. 394 00:31:38,630 --> 00:31:42,259 It was those beliefs of mind that stem back to Greece and Rome 395 00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:44,834 and fueled the modern world. 396 00:31:44,969 --> 00:31:48,769 And, then, Constantine, the eleventh of that name, 397 00:31:48,907 --> 00:31:52,570 went with his men back to the outskirts of his empire, 398 00:31:52,710 --> 00:31:58,171 to the walls now of his city, and there he died, the ruler of Rome, 399 00:31:58,316 --> 00:32:02,616 the king of Christendom and the Emperor of Byzantium. 400 00:32:05,290 --> 00:32:08,054 What actually happened to him is a mystery. 401 00:32:08,192 --> 00:32:13,687 Turkish historians tell us only that the Emperor was very brave. 402 00:32:13,831 --> 00:32:19,463 But, Constantine died fighting by the city gates. 403 00:32:19,604 --> 00:32:23,665 "The city is taken," he's supposed to have cried, "And I'm still alive." 404 00:32:23,808 --> 00:32:30,111 But he ran off, towards the battle, and into the flash of legend. 405 00:32:30,248 --> 00:32:33,775 The man, then, killed ten pashas and sixty soldiers with his lance. 406 00:32:33,918 --> 00:32:36,887 And, at the end, poor Constantine was toppled from his horse 407 00:32:37,021 --> 00:32:40,980 and cried to God Almighty, the Creator of the Universe. 408 00:32:41,125 --> 00:32:45,391 And the Turks cut off his head and stuck it on a pole. 409 00:32:59,477 --> 00:33:01,877 As he rode through the streets of Constantinople 410 00:33:02,013 --> 00:33:07,747 on the first day of the Turkish conquest, sultan Mehmet found whole districts 411 00:33:07,885 --> 00:33:13,755 of the sacred city derelict and abandoned saw hovels and graveyards built 412 00:33:13,891 --> 00:33:18,260 amongst the ruins of its legendary palaces. 413 00:33:22,133 --> 00:33:25,591 He was awed, though, by the imperial church of St. 414 00:33:25,737 --> 00:33:32,336 Sofia and declared its venerable shell to be a building made for God. 415 00:33:38,750 --> 00:33:43,084 So, the church of St. Sofia, the Church of the Divine Wisdom, 416 00:33:43,221 --> 00:33:45,951 was converted to the Mosque of Al-el Sofia, 417 00:33:46,090 --> 00:33:49,025 the Mosque of the Divine Wisdom. 418 00:33:53,931 --> 00:34:00,268 Images of old Byzantium had glimmered at the edge of Asia for a thousand years. 419 00:34:00,405 --> 00:34:08,176 Now, new ghosts, new legends, and new peoples came to haunt its fabled stones. 420 00:34:10,048 --> 00:34:14,610 Legend tells that Mehmet rode into St. Sofia on his war horse 421 00:34:14,752 --> 00:34:17,186 and placed his finger in this magic column 422 00:34:17,321 --> 00:34:22,850 and spun the church around to face Mecca, for the call to prayer. 423 00:34:29,901 --> 00:34:34,929 History tells that the sultan ordered the tomb of Constantine the Great, 424 00:34:35,073 --> 00:34:38,270 the founder of Byzantium, to be demolished along 425 00:34:38,409 --> 00:34:41,207 with the burial church of the ancient emperors. 426 00:34:41,345 --> 00:34:45,714 And this great mosque, the funerary mosque of Mehmet the Conqueror, 427 00:34:45,850 --> 00:34:48,318 was put up in its place. 428 00:34:57,595 --> 00:35:00,587 Yet, Mehmet, a humane and sympathetic man, 429 00:35:00,731 --> 00:35:07,000 still wondered at this ancient, ruined city and its unyielding inhabitants. 430 00:35:11,909 --> 00:35:15,367 The most eminent Byzantine left alive inside the city, 431 00:35:15,513 --> 00:35:20,177 was Genadius, the theologian. 432 00:35:20,318 --> 00:35:27,781 Mehmet visited him, here, in the monastery of Christ Pantacret. 433 00:35:27,925 --> 00:35:32,259 "Who were the people of this crumbling, ancient city?" the sultan asked him. 434 00:35:32,396 --> 00:35:36,230 And what, exactly, was their faith? 435 00:35:37,535 --> 00:35:41,801 Like most of the inhabitants of this most stubborn city, 436 00:35:41,939 --> 00:35:47,036 Genadius would only answer for himself "You may not call me a Greek," he said, 437 00:35:47,178 --> 00:35:51,581 "because I do not believe as those ancient pagan people once believed. 438 00:35:51,716 --> 00:35:56,119 You might call me a Byzantine, because i was born in this city. 439 00:35:56,254 --> 00:36:01,248 But, I prefer, simply, to call myself a Christian." 440 00:36:01,392 --> 00:36:04,190 He might also have added that he considered himself 441 00:36:04,328 --> 00:36:08,856 to be an exclusive member, a leading light of the society 442 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,800 that was Goïs kingdom on this earth. 443 00:36:20,878 --> 00:36:23,676 Mehmet was pleased enough with the old boy's answer 444 00:36:23,814 --> 00:36:29,377 to give the penniless church a bag of gold, made Genadius its leader, 445 00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:32,887 to give him a white mule, and to give him authority, too, 446 00:36:33,024 --> 00:36:35,652 over all the Christians of his empire. 447 00:36:35,793 --> 00:36:39,559 It was an arrangement that lasted for four centuries. 448 00:36:58,749 --> 00:37:00,979 As for Genadius' beloved monastery, well 449 00:37:01,118 --> 00:37:06,954 its church became a medressa, an Islamic public school. 450 00:37:07,091 --> 00:37:11,460 One Zarich became a very famous preacher in this city. 451 00:37:11,596 --> 00:37:14,121 Now, when Mehmet first came to the church, 452 00:37:14,265 --> 00:37:18,429 his quick eye had noticed the great lion of stones sarcophagi 453 00:37:18,569 --> 00:37:20,332 along the aisle, there. 454 00:37:20,471 --> 00:37:23,702 In fact, they were the tombs, the sarcophagi, 455 00:37:23,841 --> 00:37:25,536 of the last kings of Byzantium. 456 00:37:25,676 --> 00:37:27,405 John of Florence was buried here, 457 00:37:27,545 --> 00:37:33,313 his brother, their queens, these he took for his new palace in the city. 458 00:37:33,451 --> 00:37:38,548 He also took a slab of stone, laid in that trench over there. 459 00:37:38,689 --> 00:37:40,987 For centuries pilgrims had believed that 460 00:37:41,125 --> 00:37:43,821 that had been the very slab of stone on which 461 00:37:43,961 --> 00:37:48,227 the body of the Lord jesus Christ had laid, after the crucifixion. 462 00:37:48,366 --> 00:37:56,296 They said you could still see Mary's tears upon it, glistening like pearls. 463 00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,240 Over the centuries, Zarich's school became a mosque. 464 00:38:00,378 --> 00:38:02,642 The district became quite poor. 465 00:38:02,780 --> 00:38:07,547 The mosque sold off its great, white, shining marble pillars 466 00:38:07,685 --> 00:38:11,018 and put in these bulks of stone, instead. 467 00:38:11,155 --> 00:38:16,252 And the great screen, the altar screen, from the church whose golden panels 468 00:38:16,394 --> 00:38:22,196 now stand on the high altar of St. Mark in Venice, were turned into that, 469 00:38:22,333 --> 00:38:26,201 a minvah, a pulpit for reading the Koran 470 00:38:26,337 --> 00:38:28,771 So, it almost seems to have gone doesn't it? 471 00:38:28,906 --> 00:38:31,204 But, there's still something here. 472 00:38:31,342 --> 00:38:38,839 If you lift the carpets of the mosque, and go through to the ancient floor, 473 00:38:38,983 --> 00:38:47,857 underneath... then you'll see a memory of lmperial Byzantium. 474 00:38:58,969 --> 00:39:02,132 There are still descendants of the Byzantines, today, 475 00:39:02,273 --> 00:39:05,242 the dwindling community of the ancient heart of one 476 00:39:05,376 --> 00:39:09,403 of the largest cities in the modern world. 477 00:39:25,429 --> 00:39:29,126 Their worship, in their sole surviving ancient church, is guaranteed 478 00:39:29,266 --> 00:39:34,568 by the proclamations of ancient sultans hanging on its walls. 479 00:39:54,458 --> 00:39:58,189 Their church has survived schism and poverty. 480 00:39:58,329 --> 00:40:03,699 For a while, the deep distrust of Rome led them towards Calvinism. 481 00:40:05,102 --> 00:40:11,666 But, here, they are, still, in their holy city with their own faith. 482 00:40:15,846 --> 00:40:20,977 Scattered, too, from myriads of monasteries of far flung churches, 483 00:40:21,118 --> 00:40:26,818 pale shadows of the ancient, earthly Empire of Byzantium. 484 00:40:43,774 --> 00:40:46,868 Most of Constantinople's ancient churches though, 485 00:40:47,011 --> 00:40:50,913 were soon converted into mosques. 486 00:40:53,217 --> 00:40:57,984 This little mosque was once a chapel in the ancient palace of Byzantium. 487 00:40:59,857 --> 00:41:03,258 Endowed with lands and properties, these converted churches 488 00:41:03,394 --> 00:41:08,457 were transformed into self-financing, charitable trusts 489 00:41:08,599 --> 00:41:13,764 the religious and financial centers of this city's neighborhoods, 490 00:41:13,904 --> 00:41:20,400 and the means by which Constantinople was converted to Islam and revived. 491 00:41:26,250 --> 00:41:31,210 Under Turkish rule, Constantinople was to become a rich and thriving city, 492 00:41:31,355 --> 00:41:35,416 once again, the center of a mighty empire, 493 00:41:35,559 --> 00:41:39,620 just as it had been a thousand years before. 494 00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:46,964 Just before the conquest of Constantinople, a radical young bishop, 495 00:41:47,104 --> 00:41:51,063 called Bessario, Plethon's most brilliant pupil, 496 00:41:51,208 --> 00:41:57,477 had returned to Italy and he been made a cardinal of Rome. 497 00:41:57,615 --> 00:42:00,743 Some historians detect his portrait in this tragic, 498 00:42:00,885 --> 00:42:03,854 bearded figure talking with Italian friends, 499 00:42:03,988 --> 00:42:09,949 chic young men of the Renaissance, painted by Piero della Francesca. 500 00:42:12,363 --> 00:42:16,026 Here, at Rome, Bessario did what Byzantines had done 501 00:42:16,166 --> 00:42:22,127 at Constantinople for centuries, he made a villa by the city walls. 502 00:42:22,273 --> 00:42:28,234 This villa, one of the first in the modern Western world, 503 00:42:28,379 --> 00:42:31,507 memory of old Byzantium. 504 00:42:33,851 --> 00:42:37,810 Bessario spent his life making a memorial for Byzantium, 505 00:42:37,955 --> 00:42:41,755 by founding an academy of scholars. 506 00:42:45,262 --> 00:42:50,029 You know, I suppose Bessario brought his academy, here, 507 00:42:50,167 --> 00:42:53,000 when it got very hot in the summer months. 508 00:42:53,137 --> 00:42:57,005 His academy was a group of people who he'd gathered around him, 509 00:42:57,141 --> 00:43:00,474 some were exiled Byzantines, many of them were Europeans, 510 00:43:00,611 --> 00:43:05,310 but everybody who could help him hold the identity of Byzantium together 511 00:43:05,449 --> 00:43:08,941 for as long as possible, poets, artists, writers, translators; 512 00:43:09,086 --> 00:43:11,111 all sorts of people. 513 00:43:11,255 --> 00:43:13,485 Couldn't have been that difficult to find people, 514 00:43:13,624 --> 00:43:16,684 because this was a really fashionable idea. 515 00:43:16,827 --> 00:43:20,228 Dear old Plethon had introduced Plato to the West. 516 00:43:20,364 --> 00:43:24,824 The Renaissance was beginning, this is early renaissance building. 517 00:43:24,969 --> 00:43:29,997 For a few years, this was the coolest place on the planet. 518 00:43:30,140 --> 00:43:34,839 So, you gotta think, perhaps, this was the place too, 519 00:43:34,979 --> 00:43:42,476 where one day in the summer, 1452, Besarrio sat down to write to Mistra. 520 00:43:42,620 --> 00:43:47,717 He was writing a letter of condolence to Plethon's sons. 521 00:43:49,259 --> 00:43:54,458 The old man had died with the Spring flowers in June, of that year. 522 00:43:54,598 --> 00:43:58,227 Bessario wrote a letter, such a letter. 523 00:43:58,369 --> 00:44:04,535 He said that Plethon had been his teacher, his father, and his friend. 524 00:44:04,675 --> 00:44:08,008 It was one of the last authentic letters of the ancient world. 525 00:44:08,145 --> 00:44:15,551 After that, Byzantium became something to be seen in libraries, and museums. 526 00:44:16,787 --> 00:44:20,917 Above all, Bessario preserved the dream. 527 00:44:21,058 --> 00:44:23,390 He gathered the pure air of Mistra, 528 00:44:23,527 --> 00:44:27,463 the ideals of Constantinople, the energy of ancient wisdom 529 00:44:27,598 --> 00:44:34,026 and made a single, beauteous image of that most complicated empire. 530 00:44:40,110 --> 00:44:45,776 Bessario was an enabler, a producer, a preserver of ideas and images, 531 00:44:45,916 --> 00:44:51,183 the assembler of the largest Byzantine library the world has ever seen. 532 00:44:52,056 --> 00:44:57,153 A collection whose fragments are still stored in the great libraries of the West. 533 00:44:58,362 --> 00:45:01,627 The man was Mr. Byzantium. 534 00:45:01,765 --> 00:45:06,429 He supported huge numbers of fellow exiles. 535 00:45:10,941 --> 00:45:16,641 He also used to place refugees all over Europe in jobs. 536 00:45:16,780 --> 00:45:21,274 This is a handmade Greek text of Homer's lliad, 537 00:45:21,418 --> 00:45:24,751 made by a refugee from Mistra. 538 00:45:26,523 --> 00:45:30,482 And, in the front of this beautiful volume, 539 00:45:30,627 --> 00:45:37,396 is a picture of Homer wearing a Byzantine hat. 540 00:45:40,971 --> 00:45:43,405 The West had seen nothing like this flood of wisdom 541 00:45:43,540 --> 00:45:45,633 that was pouring from Byzantium. 542 00:45:45,776 --> 00:45:51,737 Homer, Ancient Roman Law, and a myriad of other texts. 543 00:45:51,882 --> 00:45:56,512 And they'd seen nothing like Bessario's academy. 544 00:45:56,653 --> 00:46:00,589 Part of the modern world, its science and its scholarship was started 545 00:46:00,724 --> 00:46:04,421 by these exiles from Byzantium. 546 00:46:05,996 --> 00:46:10,490 Plethon and Bessario first taught the West all Plato's heady individualism 547 00:46:10,634 --> 00:46:14,536 that so fills the modern world. 548 00:46:16,707 --> 00:46:21,110 Bessario, too, told a Westerner about an ancient text 549 00:46:21,245 --> 00:46:27,741 that inspired Columbus to sail West from Europe on the East wind to America. 550 00:46:32,623 --> 00:46:37,492 There is, though, a deeper and yet more fundamental legacy, 551 00:46:37,628 --> 00:46:42,190 a vision of the universal order that stretches back through Byzantium, 552 00:46:42,332 --> 00:46:47,395 through Rome and Greece to the Bible in the most ancient East. 553 00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:52,905 A vision that still fills the world, today. 554 00:46:53,043 --> 00:46:58,174 A vision that exiled Byzantine artists drew out for us in dazzling detail, 555 00:46:58,315 --> 00:47:04,584 at Varonets, the most beautiful of Romania's lonely monasteries. 556 00:47:06,690 --> 00:47:08,681 See that cross, there, in the middle? 557 00:47:08,826 --> 00:47:10,157 That's the cross of our Lord, 558 00:47:10,294 --> 00:47:16,062 standing on the holy throne of Byzantium, the center of the world. 559 00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:19,533 To the left, to the left is good, paradise. 560 00:47:19,670 --> 00:47:22,434 There's all the lords and ladies of Byzantium pressing 561 00:47:22,573 --> 00:47:25,098 through the pearly gates. 562 00:47:28,312 --> 00:47:29,836 On the right, hell. 563 00:47:29,980 --> 00:47:34,576 The Turks and everybody else, all the bad people struggling to get out. 564 00:47:35,886 --> 00:47:41,188 Good and bad, plus and minus, past and future, with heaven above, 565 00:47:41,325 --> 00:47:45,853 and hell below, and pure energy in the center. 566 00:47:45,996 --> 00:47:48,021 A structured, universal order that 567 00:47:48,165 --> 00:47:53,159 the modern world still understands and uses every day. 568 00:47:54,004 --> 00:47:58,668 And, if there's nothing there then you can see even the modern world. 569 00:47:58,809 --> 00:48:02,336 Just look at those demons, as black as SS Officers, 570 00:48:02,479 --> 00:48:06,643 prodding their victims towards the ovens. 571 00:48:06,783 --> 00:48:08,478 That's a hell we made reality. 572 00:48:08,619 --> 00:48:10,780 Look at that, over there, in paradise, 573 00:48:10,921 --> 00:48:15,449 the tree of life, the center of man's wisdom, 574 00:48:15,592 --> 00:48:20,029 the very plant of the god Gilgamesh six thousand years ago in ancient Uru and 575 00:48:20,163 --> 00:48:23,257 Mesopotamia searched for. 576 00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:26,460 To him, the elixir of life was understanding. 577 00:48:26,603 --> 00:48:28,730 For us, perhaps, it's penicillin. 578 00:48:28,872 --> 00:48:29,896 Then, again, there's something here 579 00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:32,406 that's unique above all the bustle of the world, 580 00:48:32,542 --> 00:48:34,567 the lords and ladies, the gods and demons, 581 00:48:34,711 --> 00:48:38,647 coming through and behind the very scroll of time, itself, 582 00:48:38,782 --> 00:48:41,945 the lord of the universe. 583 00:48:44,221 --> 00:48:50,285 The heart of the atom, heaven's order in a grain of sand, 584 00:48:50,427 --> 00:48:56,957 Byzantium's fundamental legacy, this image of a universal structure. 585 00:48:57,100 --> 00:49:01,332 The universal order is as basic to the order of the modern world 586 00:49:01,471 --> 00:49:05,999 as is DNA to every individual in it. 587 00:49:13,150 --> 00:49:19,646 Nowadays, Constantinople, heart of old byzantium, is called Istanbul, 588 00:49:19,790 --> 00:49:25,387 an old Byzantine phrase that simply means: The city. 589 00:49:27,831 --> 00:49:34,168 Inside the modern city, though, the past is disappearing. 590 00:49:39,409 --> 00:49:44,711 Ruins are often melancholy, but they should seldom make you angry. 591 00:49:44,848 --> 00:49:47,476 The end of Byzantium wasn't really brought about 592 00:49:47,617 --> 00:49:51,018 by the wicked West or the terrible Turk. 593 00:49:51,154 --> 00:49:53,987 Things pass, as the poet said. 594 00:49:54,124 --> 00:49:56,115 If the cowboys had never shot the Indians, 595 00:49:56,259 --> 00:49:59,023 the Great Plains would not be filled with shining teepees 596 00:49:59,162 --> 00:50:02,188 and herds of buffaloes. 597 00:50:02,332 --> 00:50:07,895 Nonetheless, we should honor the past and cherish it. 598 00:50:08,038 --> 00:50:12,168 It's a memory, a solid memory, of our beginnings. 599 00:50:15,245 --> 00:50:18,874 We think of Byzantium, too as a flash of silver, 600 00:50:19,016 --> 00:50:23,976 as a dream of jewels, as an image of a god sitting on a golden throne, 601 00:50:24,121 --> 00:50:30,526 and of an emperor sitting, in his palace, in his imitation. 602 00:50:30,660 --> 00:50:34,061 Think of the culture that gave us the rule of Roman law 603 00:50:34,197 --> 00:50:40,136 and the image of a Holy Mother, much beloved, caressing a baby child. 604 00:50:41,571 --> 00:50:45,598 And think of Byzantium, too, this extraordinary empire set between 605 00:50:45,742 --> 00:50:51,203 the East and West whose very ending set those two things far apart. 606 00:50:51,348 --> 00:50:57,651 But, in whose own time gave so many good ideas to both of them. 607 00:51:03,693 --> 00:51:09,154 When sailing from Byzantium, listen to the city's fading sounds. 608 00:51:09,299 --> 00:51:16,296 Visit, in your mind, its golden images and all the shadows of its history. 609 00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:18,305 And as you wave goodbye, 610 00:51:18,442 --> 00:51:25,075 you'll discover that you could never really leave the past behind.