Căderea Constantinopolului conform lui Ghenadie Scholarul
The Fall of Constantinople according to Gennadius Scholarios

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the dramatic events before and during the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks, from the perspective of Gennadius Scholarios, the first Ecumenical Patriarch after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. First, the author tries to depict the historico-political and religious context of Constantinople in that period of conflict between the two main factions: the pro-Western and pro-Catholic one which promoted church union with Rome as a way of saving the Empire from the Turks and the other one which considered the union with Rome as betrayal of Orthodoxy, taking Westerners promises as empty words and promoting resistance by themselves in front of the Turkish danger. Leader of the latter (according to its teachers, Joseph Vriennios and St. Marcus Eugenicus), Gennadius Scholarios becomes the victim of a systematic campaign of defamation by the Western historiographers and by the writers swayed by it. In this regard, the article tries to answer the accusations brought to this important ecclesial figure, Gennadius Scholarios, especially regarding his attitude of passivity and dissuasion of the people in the fight against the Turks. To do this, the author uses - in addition to several secondary sources - especially stories and testimonies from the writings of Gennadius himself, writings that put into dramatic and eloquent words that tragic period in the history of the Greek people and of Orthodoxy in general.

• Details
• Contents