For old he was, but rascally

For old he was, but rascally. Enrico Dandolo’s part in the Fourth Crusade has been debated ever since, but we may assume that, however moved his people were by the cause, he himself did nothing out of pure religious impulse. It is very unlikely that he ever intended to lead his ships to an assault on Egypt, as the Crusaders thought. Venetian trade with Egypt was extremely valuable to Venice, and some scholars suggest indeed that Dandolo told the Sultan of Egypt all about the Crusaders’ plans.

The chances are that even as that great white hat was placed upon his head, Dandolo was planning to lead the Crusade to a very different destination: not an Islamic objective at all, but the greatest city of Christendom itself, Constantinople. The time had come to humble the arrogant emperors, and ensure once and for all Venetian commercial primacy in the east.

J. Morris, The Venetian Empire (1980), 21

Constantinople is where the pagan world ended, and where Dionysus met his untimely demise

There would be no global Christianity without this city, which later, under the Ottomans, came to be known as The Abode of Happiness. Constantinople is where the pagan world ended, and where Dionysus met his untimely demise. Its stony melancholy is imperial, austere and attuned to the One God, whether that of Justinian or of Mehmet the Conqueror. 'Gong-tormented' and vaporous, as Patrick Leigh Fermor famously described it in Mani, that exquisite meditation on, among many other things, the long drawn-out and misunderstood genius of Byzantium.

L. Osborne, The wet and the dry (2013), 196

To Europe Byzantium is a symbol of its honour

The realm of the last Roman Emperor is only the size of a plate, merely a gigantic circular wall surrounding churches, the palace and a tangle of houses, all of them known as Byzantium. Pitilessly plundered by the crusaders, depopulated by the plague, exhausted by constantly defending itself from nomadic people, torn by national and religious quarrels, the city cannot summon up men or courage to resist, of its own accord, an enemy that has been holding it clasped in its tentacles for so long. The purple of the last emperor of Byzantium, Constantine Dragases, is a cloak made of wind, his crown a toy of fate. But for the very reason that it is already surrounded by the Turks, and is sacrosanct to all the lands of the western world because they have jointly shared its culture, to Europe Byzantium is a symbol of its honour.

S. Zweig,'The conquest of Byzantium' (1940), tr. A.Bell, in Triumph and Disaster: Five historical miniatures (2016), 69-70

Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes

In 1844, the Prime Minister Collettis in a speech to the constituent assembly revealed the place of Constantinople in Greek hearts and minds: 'There are two great centres of Hellenism, Athens and Constantinople. Athens is only the capital of the kingdom; Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes.' Pictures of the Oecuminical Patriarch hung on   Greek walls beside the king and Queen of the Hellenes - and Aya Sofya, without minarets.


P. Mansel, Constantinople: city of the world's desire (1995), 280

Europeans who regarded a country as a career rather than a cause

Like the Mavrocordato, the Testa refused to be imprisoned in one nationality. They were an extreme example of a once common phenomenon: Europeans who regarded a country as a career rather than a cause. Hereditary diplomats, they worked in Constantinople  because it was a centre of diplomacy as, in the eighteenth century, foreigners worked in Paris because it was a centre of fashion (intellectual, artistic and vestimentary). The Testa's primary loyalties were to the city [Constantinople], the Catholic religion, and whichever power they were serving at the time.

P. Mansel, Constantinople: city of the world's desire (1995), 211