§ 49. NICOLAS V. 1447-1455. 411
who was not housed in Noah's ark. Whatever opinion it may have entertained of these claims, the Byzantine court was in too imminent danger to reject the papal condition, and in December, 1452, Isidore, surrounded by 300 priests, announced, in the church of St. Sophia, the union of the Greek and Latin communions^ But even now the Greek people violently resented the union, and the most powerful man of the empire, Lucas Notaras, announced his preference for the turban to the tiara. The aid offered by Nicolas was at best small. The last week of April, 1453, ten papal galleys set sail with some ships from Naples, Venice and Genoa, but they were too late to render any assistance.^
The termination of the venerable and once imposing fabric on the Bosphorus by the Asiatic invader was the only fate possible for an empire whose rulers, boasting themselves the successors of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, Christian in name and most Christian by the standard of orthodox professions, had heaped their palaces full of pagan luxury and excess. The government, planted in the most imperial spot on the earth, had forfeited the right to exist by an insipid and nerveless reliance upon the traditions of the past. No elements of revival manifested themselves from within. Religious formulas had been substituted for devotion. Much as the Christian student may regret the loss of this last bulwark of Christianity in the East, he will be inclined to find in the disaster the judgment realized with which the seven churches of the Apocalypse were threatened which were not worthy. The problem which was forced upon Europe by the arrival of the Grand Turk, as contemporaries called Mohammed IL, still awaits solution from wise diplomacy or force of arms or through the slow and silent movement of modern ideas of government and popular rights.
The disaster which overtook the Eastern empire, Nicolas y^ felt would be regarded by after generations as a blot upon his pontificate, and others, like ^neas Sylvius, shared this view.^
1 Pastor, I. 588 sqq., devotes much space to an attempt to show that Nicolas made an effort to help the Greeks. Infessura blames him for making none.
^^Eneaswrote, July 12, 1453, to the pope: "Historians of the Roman pontiffs, when they reach your time, will write, ' Nicolas V., a Tuscan, was pope for
412 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
He issued a bull summoning the Christian nations to a crusade for the recovery of Constantinople, and stigmatized Mohamm'ed II. as the dragon described in the Book of Revelation. Absolution was offered to those wlio would spend six months in the holy enterprise or maintain a representative for that length of time. Christendom was called upon to contribute a tenth. The cardinals were enjoined to do the same, and all the papal revenues accruing from larger and smaller benefices, from bishoprics, archbishoprics and convents, were promised for the undertaking.
Feeble was the^response which ^urope gave. The time of crusading enthusiasm was passed. The Turk was daring and to be dreaded. An assembly called by Fredeiuck III., at Regensburg in the Spring of 1454, at which the emperor himself did not put in an appearance, listened to an eloquent appeal by jEneas, but adjourned the subject to the diet to meet in Frankfurt in October. Again the emperor was not present, and the diet did nothing. Down to the era of the Reformation the crusade against the Turk remained one of the chief official concerns of the papacy.
If Nicolas died disappointed over his failure to influence the princes to undertake a campaign against the Turks, his fame abides as the intelligent and genial j^atron of letters and the artj. In this role he laid after generations under obligation to him as Innocent III., by his crusading armies, did not. He lies buried in St. Peter's at the side of his predecessor, Eugenius IV. ^
^Thfijiextpontiff, the Spaniard, Calixtus III., 1455-145^, hadi t^wo chief concerns, tlie dislodgment of the Turks from Conso many years. He recovered the patrimony of the Church from the hands of tyrants, he gave union to the divided Church, he canonized Bernardino, he built the Vatican and splendidly restored St. Peter's, he celebrated the Jubilee and crowned Frederick III.' All this will be obscured by the doleful addition, ' In his time Constantinople was taken and plundered by the Turks.' Your holine.ss did what you could. No blame can be justly attached to you. But the ignorance of posterity will blame you when it hears that in your time Constantinople was lost." Gibbon makes the observation that " The pontificate of Nicolas v., however powerful and prosperous, was dishonored by the fall of the Eastern Empire," ch. LXVIII. It was not within Nicolas' power to avert the disaster. ^ His epitaph is given by Mirbt, p. 109.