Gone Medieval - The Rise of Constantinople with Bettany Hughes

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

The city of Constantinople, founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 324 AD, was a glittering jewel in the eastern Mediterranean for more than a thousand years. Its dazzling cathedrals, ambitious emperors and mixing pot culture were the stuff of legend throughout Christendom. But how did it come to tower over medieval Europe as one of the continent’s foremost cities? And why did it earn such a lofty reputation? In today’s episode of Gone Medieval, Dr Eleanor Janega is joined by Bettany Hughes, author of Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities to discover how Constantinople came to rise, came to rule and came to ruin. This episode was produced and edited by Joseph Knight. Senior Producer was Elena Guthrie.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. It's the year 312, a fateful year, a year in which the seeds of a city that would come to tower over medieval Europe are planted. The Roman Empire is gripped by crisis. Four different emperors from four different Roman provinces lock horns for control of the empire. On the banks of the river Tiber at a crossing known as Milvian Bridge, a battle rages. Emperor Constantine meets the forces of his imperial rival, Maxentius in fierce, bloody combat. Swords collide and shields splinter. Horns used to

signal orders on the battlefield echo over the din of much slaughter. But for Constantine, this is no ordinary battle. Amidst the bloodletting, the emperor allegedly witnesses an extraordinary vision. Blinded by radiant light, he sees a cross in the heavens, bearing the inscription, in this sign, you shall conquer. A signal of divine providence, portending a glorious future under the protection of the Christian God. With their strength renewed by this heavenly intervention, Constantine and his men push Maxentius headlong into the rushing waters of the river, where he and his army are swept away. The impact of Constantine's victory at Milvian Bridge is far-reaching. For Nearly 10 years, he has struggled against rival claimants who sought to pick apart the empire like a pack of vultures.

Now, he has total control of Rome's western half. More importantly, however, his divine experience on the bankside battlefield convinces him to convert to Christianity. It is a momentous sea change for the Roman Empire. No longer are Christians considered rogue pagans fit only for relentless enslavement, humiliation, and torture. but the spiritual kin of the emperor. The door is ajar for this once lowly offshoot of Jewish thought to become the emperor's dominant religion. Although the civil war between Constantine and his rivals

continues for another 13 years, his decisive victory in 312 lays the foundations for the triumph to come. To mark his ascension and stamp his authority on his newfound imperial possessions, Constantine proposes the foundations of a newfound imperial possessions, foundations of a new city in 324 that would embody both the new emperor and his new religion. It was duly called Constantinople, and over the next thousand years, it becomes a glittering jewel

of the eastern Mediterranean, a hub of magnificent church building, revolutionary intellectual thinking, and dazzling ambition. The question we're asking today is, how? I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and in this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm delighted to be joined by. a historian, broadcaster, and author of Istanbul, a tale of three cities, Bettney Hughes, to discover how Constantinople came to rise, came to rule, and came to ruin. Bettney, thank you so much for being here. Oh, it's such a pleasure. And the fact that we've got 40 minutes or so to talk about Constantinople, obviously, also known as

Istanbul, also known as Byzantium or Byzantion, is my happy place. So I wouldn't want to be anywhere else on earth other than talking to you about that city right now. Okay, fantastic. So, you know, you can't start talking about Constantinople in general if we don't talk about the man who started it, right? So it's our boy, your friend and mine, Emperor Constantine. So he sits out to found this new city. Any idea on his part, do you think that it would be what it becomes? You know what? I think he probably did know because he goes there for a very particular reason. So basic kind of whistlestop, ancient slash late antiquity, slash early. medieval history. The Roman Empire is in trouble. There's been this tetrarchy, this rule of four emperors. It's a time of chaos and churn. And Constantine, who's acclaimed emperor in York, in England, comes glittering into the scene in the early 300s. You know, he is a man with ambition. You probably all know the stories, you know, he becomes adored as a saint, but he's definitely

not saintly. There's a possibility that he murdered his wife and, you know, his son. So he's a guy who's got his eye on the prize. But he's also coming to a city. It's very interesting that we talk about him founding Constantinople. He obviously found it, gives it his name. But this is a really ancient city. So this is a city that has prehistoric roots. There's incredible archaeology there now. We know that there remains going back 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 years of these early settlements there. Of course, it was then a Thracian city. It was a Greek city. It was a Roman city. And this is really key to Constantine. I think people forget this.

You know, the many Roman emperors from around 200 CE onwards, they really thought of Constantinople as it would become Byzantium, as it was then, as the kind of centre of the world. And we know this because Septimia Severus and 200 built this amazing, beautiful monument, which you can still go and see the remains of in Istanbul today, very close to the hippodrome, called the Million, which is like the mile marker. And it looks pretty skanky now, to be honest,

but it's one of the most kind of important monuments in the story of the world. Because he was kind of saying, this in a sense is kind of ground zero for civilization. All measurements of the Roman world, all the miles, started from that point. And that was in Byzantium. It wasn't in Rome.

So already, by the time that Constantine comes on the scene, Roman emperors are thinking about the East. They're thinking about this as the central. of their power. They're particularly thinking about this city as being incredibly important. So it's not just chance that Constantine rucks up. He has this huge battle with one of his arch-enemies Lachinnius just across the waters from what is now Istanbul that he renamed as Constantinople. He comes back to the city. There's a moment where he actually, we know that he went to Troy. And we know that he was thinking like, oh, maybe everybody's heard of Troy, you know,

Maybe that would be the place to start my new headquarters. But he was quite right not to do it because it's got a rubbish harbour Troy. The winds around there are really, really tough. You wouldn't be able to make a big military and commercial success. So he comes back to this incredible site of Byzantium that he has besieged. He's besieged his enemy, Lachinia's there. He knows it's a really tough city to crack. And then from around 3 to 4 CE onwards, he starts to rebuild it in his.

his image. And there's all kinds of stories about that, how he walked around the city with a lance making it bigger and bigger, that he was following a kind of Christian guide as he did so. I love this detail, but with a pagan priest behind him plowing a furrow. So he's like keeping all his options open, you know, whatever God is, he's around. So it's this extraordinary city that becomes his new headquarters and it's officially founded in 330 CE with all these ceremonies. It's renamed There are bloodless sacrifices rather than bloody sacrifices because, again, it's this incredible sort of cusp world, really, between the pagan world and what will be this new Christianized world. And he builds it as the new Rome, the second Rome, as well as calling it after himself Constantinople. And I mean, I think that this is just such a brilliant piece of propaganda, right?

Because he's coming through this really kind of contested time when no one's really sure who's in control of Rome, right? I was like, well, who's the boss around here? And he's like, not only is it your boy, please see my works, see my varying battles, but I can renegotiate what the meaning of being Roman is. You know, I can make Rome wherever it is because wherever my power is centered, that's the thing that is Roman. I think people really struggle with that now. We think, oh, you know, Rome is Rome. Rome means a toga and you're standing outside the forum or something like that. But that's not how someone like Constantine would see it. so totally true and you're absolutely right. So there's been this kind of turmoil and, you know,

torrent of rulers. And he's basically going, okay, there's now one ruler. It's me. There's one emperor. We've got one territory. And by the way, let's just make things simple. There's probably one God who's in charge of all of this too. So there's a kind of oneness that happens. And again, you're absolutely right. I mean, I say this the whole time, you know, controversially, I think in a way Rome never fell. It just moved 800 miles further east. You know, It moves to what is now Istanbul. And it's very much a Roman city there. So there's a capital, there's a Senate House, there are chariot races. It's got a different kind of vibe. Thank goodness, as you probably know, and as people listening might know, I quite like the Romans, love the Greeks.

I've got a problem with a lot of the things that Romans do, as did Constantine. So he bans gladiator fight, gladiatorial combat. He bans crucifixions. So it's kind of, you know, he's inheriting this Roman mantle, but he is definitely tweaking it. He's definitely kind of changing the mood of the moment. One of my just favorite, favorite monuments in this city, which is just full of incredible monuments, is the column of Constantine, which if you go and visit Istanbul today,

you can still see. It's still there. It's this porphyry column. It's kind of lost 30 feet of its height. It was originally like 160 foot high. I know incredible beautiful porphyry that was brought from Egypt, this incredible purple stone. And on top of it, there was this statue of somebody that could have been Constantine. So it could have been Constantine doing that Roman emperor thing of having a branch of himself. It could have been a statue, maybe even of Jesus.

It could have been a statue of Sol Invictus, you know, the favorite pagan gods of the army, the kind of God of the Sun or Apollo. he's certainly got this crown, like solar crown, around his head, and he's holding an orb. Or is it just like a little bit of a mixture of all of those things? It's saying we love the old gods, we love the new gods, we love old Rome, we love New Rome. And I kind of love the fact it's just like it's the most magpie monument that you ever get, that what they said is when he founded it, he also buried underneath it the very ads, the very axe that Noah used to build the ark, no less.

Of course. If that wasn't enough, you'll obviously love this. This is the beginning of the relic world, Constantine and Helena really start this obsession with relics. There are the baskets, the panniers that Jesus used to feed the 5,000, are kind of squashed in there. Amazing. Down the bottle of color. And then, because, you know, that's all feeling a bit Christian, there's also the Palladium, which is this wooden statue of palace, Athena, of the goddess, Athena, of wisdom that was said to have been stolen from Troy by the hero Aeneas and taken to Rome and then comes back to Constantinople. So it's this fantastic mash-up monument. And exactly as you say, this is him giving a lot of messages to the world, both east and west, north and south.

But he personally, right, is quite famously someone who converts to Christianity, right? You have the Battle of Milvan Bridge and 312. And some of our sources say, oh, well, this, massive a success that I have is inspired by the Christian God. Here's my guy. That's what I'm doing. But he definitely has these throwbacks, as you say, too. Well, there you go. There's Athena, everybody. They're here to get some pagans on board. But he certainly converts. And I mean, would you say that his conversion itself, the origin of Christianity in the city more generally or in the empire? I mean, how important is one guy doing it when he's also saying, by the way, it's okay to be pagan? Yeah, I mean, he is critical. There is definitely a turning point here. I think inevitably,

because a lot of our sources are later Christian sources, the Christian flavour of that particular Constantine soup is definitely kind of raised up. It's given the top note. I'm always a bit suspicious as you are. When you have too many versions of a story, you think, well, you know, if there's a good story, the good story is the true one. And we hear these different versions that he had a dream before he went to fight at the Battle of Milvian Bridge against with arch enemy Maxentius that was sort of inspiring him in a spiritual way. Some people say that he saw this incredible sign in the sky. You know, was it a crucifix, which said, you know, under this sign, you will conquer? Some people say that he saw these sort of strained crucifix like shapes all around.

Again, there's really interesting things that could be going on there. It could be a sort of solar halo over the alpine passes. It could be a version of the cross-like snakes' heads that you've got on the shields of the auxinia, the citizens and barbarians, barbarians, I'm putting in inverted commas, that fought for him. So there's a sort of Christianised element. But there are things that happen. You know, he helps with this edict of toleration in 313 CE. He allows people to have Christian rights in their communities.

So he's definitely edging that way. And he's baptized on his deathbed. So it's not fully Christian through his life, but he's put a marker down. And even though you have famously Julian the Appostate, who comes after him, who's an emperor of Constantinople, who actually reverts, he de-Christianizes Constantinople and he reverts to pagan worship, the genie is out of the bottle. And there's an idea throughout the empire that Christianity is now something that's okay to practice. And this is happening all over the empire at this time. So you get Christian symbols right the way at the edges in as far south as Yemen and right in the West in Britannia. So there's very much a sort of sense that this is a turning point.

And Constantinople is very, very clearly, as I said, the headquarters of this big, new, massive, game-changing, world-changing religious experiment. I suppose speaking of game-changing, right? One of the big things that shifts a lot of the power of Rome over to Constantinople is, of course, the sack of Rome itself in 410. And then you kind of have this sort of sloughing towards the quote-unquote fall of the Roman Empire, which, again, like you, I am a Rome truther. It doesn't fall until Caled Stantonople falls. It just moves far east.

I don't believe in the fall of the Roman Empire. But, you know, around about the 5th century, we certainly have the last Roman emperor in Rome, right? So in this period, my argument would be that Constantinople certainly does become the new Rome, right? And it's got this mixing pot identity. You have all sorts of different religious practice happening there. Do we see a lot of clash within this? Or do we see people kind of getting on with it for the most part? I mean, frankly, for the most part, getting on with it because they have to, because as you say, different where the power is now. If you've got a new Rome, a second Rome, it means you've got an old Rome and nobody wants to be associated with an old crumbling thing.

It's just that, and it's so fascinating this. I mean, it's why, love this city so much. It's why I love thinking about it, talking about it, going there, being there, you know, researching it, is because it's been so politicised, it's history as well. And if you look at how people have written about Constantinople, as I said, this extraordinary success story flourishing, envy of the world. It's given all these beautiful names through time, you know, the greatest city on earth, the queen of cities, the world's desire, you know, the list goes on, but for later Western authors, so authors particularly based in Rome and then beyond that, the sort of Western tradition, it's just a bit too far east for their liking. It's got this

eastern tinge. There are practices that they don't understand. Obviously, once there's a splits of the church in the 11th century, it's on the wrong side of history, but just culturally as well. You know, this is a city where the eunuchs are completely regular. Anybody, I think, from Constantinople, who was kind of reincarnated now and would go to Istanbul, go like, where are all the eunuchs?

How are you running this city without... How can you even have a society without eunuchs? Come on. Literally, you know, so they were absolutely plugged in. But that is one of the things in this idea of it being luxurious and opulent and, you know, dark and labyrinthine. we use that word Byzantine, when we mean something difficult to decode, all of that is imprinted

on, as I said, the success story that is Constantinople, the second Rome, the new Rome. So I think at the time it's much clearer to people that this is where it's at. And it's just that there's a lot of later writing that turns it into somewhere, which is, as said, sort of problematic and dark and somehow, sort of slightly dubious. But the people who lived in the city didn't think that. They knew that they lived in the greater city on that. Part of, I think, what makes it the greatest city on Earth is a little bit later on, you know, when we hit the mid-sixth century, right? And we've got the rule of Justinina, you know, I think it's fair to say that this is a real golden age for the city, I would say.

And so can you talk us through a little bit about how that happens? Yes. Well, I mean, talk about a medieval power couple. So Justinian and his wife and Empress Theodora, who just bring this extraordinary. extraordinary energy. They're both from very much not senatorial class. Justinian has an uncle who's a pig farmer. He seems to come from kind of peasant stock. Theodora famously is the daughter of a bear tamer and it's said that she's the daughter of a prostitute. And she starts out life basically as a kind of erotic dancer in the hippodrome in Constantinople. We hear that she did these incredible acrobatic performances in between the chariot races because this is still the second Rome. So this is still chariot. in the hippodrome, and to kind of entertain the crowd, and it's described that she did this incredible act where she reenacted the myth of Lida and the swan,

so the ancient Greek myth, you know this story. So Lida being the Queen of Sparta, Zeus adores the Queen of Sparta, turns himself into a swan so that he can rape her, you know. Typical Zeus stuff, you know. Typical Zeus can't keep it in trousers, whether he's in male form or swan form. Anyway, so this is a very kind of popular myth of the Greek

and then the Roman world. And we're told that Theodora reenacted this, but she couldn't afford a swan, so she uses a goose and a grain of corn, and I'll leave the rest to everyone's imagination. So she is not posh, Theodora, but somehow she leaves the city, she converts to Christianity,

she makes her way back into the court. And clearly Justinian, the soon-to-be emperor, who's declared the heir of Justin, is enraptured by her, and he actually changes the law in AD 512. so that an emperor can marry an actress in inverted commerce, you know, and that basically means a

prostitute. So he just changes society so that they can become a couple. And then once he ascends to the imperial throne, she is by his side at every point. Justinian describes her as our most reverent partner granted to us by God. And they are catnip to each other. So they just think, we are going to change the world. I love her. I love her so much. She's one of my favorite people who ever lived. I think she's so brilliant, so smart, so cool. And frankly, I think being a sexy dancer makes her cooler. Yeah. Well, no, I listen, I completely agree. And what she's done, I mean, talk about social mobility. And what I love about her is that as soon as she has power, she really puts her money where her mouth is. So together with Justinian, they initiate reforms, the outlaw

pimping and infanticide. And she sets up a safe house for single mother. and for abused women. This is in the sixth century. You know, this is 1400 years ago. It's so ahead of its time. And I'm certain that she was doing that because of her own experience before she became his wife. A lot of these laws then become part of the Justiniac Code,

which is the foundation for European law. So, I mean, it really, really, really matters what she and Justinian did. You know, they increased the penalties for race. So it's an incredible sort of genuinely proto-feminist intervention in history. So they're kind of changing laws, they're changing society, they're providing sanctuary for people who claim that they are refugees. I love this fact. There's a Quistor who's a refugee specialist in the Byzantine court whose role it is to look after refugees. I mean, it's so cool. And there's this fantastic letter we've got from a kind of builder who's complaining that Theodora is invited in so many refugees and religious refugees to her quarters of the palace that the floors are beginning to warp and break. He's got to come and mend them again, you know,

let's in the palace. That's not in some camp on the outside of the city. So they change things. They change the mood of the city. But they're also, it's Justinian redefining the edges of empire. It's him saying Rome is back. We're back in charge. And they do brilliant things like they send these emissaries out right to the edges of empire, so to places like Britain.

And this is the most fantastic, you know, patronising thing that they send out to Britain when they give us subsidies for the barbarians of Britannia. And I just... Get them. Get them. Exactly. Exactly. I just love it. I love it.

They're sitting there in this most beautiful city in the world, you know, going, oh, these poor, poor people. Think about them. Oh, out there, just on the fringe. I mean, are they wrong? Well, no. No. No.

Not at that time. And so even in Tintagel, we find all these pots, you know, that came out at the time of Justinian and Theodora, stamped with a cross. They're very Christian. They really elevate the adoration of Mary, the Virgin Mary as Mary Theo Tocos, Mary the mother of God.

So they kind of massively promote her. So it's a really grand, exciting project. And we know from the archaeology and from written sources that the city was beautified in the 6th century. It's this fantastic place where people describe, you know, the hum of bees and the smell of lavender and all these kind of, you know,

fruit and vegetable gardens sort of surround in these beautiful imperial walkways. And of course, they build their Iya Sophia, the extraordinary church, which still stands with their initials inscribed in the capitals of the columns there. So it's an incredibly exciting time to be in Constantinople and to witness, as I said, their sort of just determination to change it and to make the city great. I mean, I think that one of the things that is really interesting about them as a couple and this period as well, Of course, you have Ayes Sophia, you have all of these huge projects going on. But at the same time, there's a lot of terrible things that are happening as well. You've got the Justinian plague that they managed to kind of steer everyone through.

And then, of course, you have one of my favorite things that ever happens. Again, just because Theodora comes up trumps in this so well. You've got the Nika riots. Yeah, exactly. So this incredible Nika meaning victory, the Greek for victory. So there's a moment where society looks like it's breaking down. So this is in 532, so just 10 years before that terrible plague of 542, which again decimates the city. But there are trouble at the borders for Byzantium at this point.

There's been a rise in taxes. And, you know, they're big figures, Justinian and Theodora. And as I said, they're not popular with a lot of people because they're not the right class. They're definitely a bunch of courtiers around them who are troubled. trying to provide an alternative to power who are spreading disinformation about them, saying, look, you know, should they really be on the imperial throne anyway? And there's a kind of escalating series of circumstances where there are protests, where people are killed, where protesters take back to the streets again.

And we have a point where we think we have tens of thousands of protesters on the streets of Constantinople torching the place. But there are huge, huge fires. Justinian brings in the Goths, who are the kind of, stormtroopers of the day to try to put down this rebellion. He tries to negotiate with the people from his imperial platform, the kind of royal box above the hippodrome called the chathisma. But it doesn't work.

And as you say, there's this incredible moment that we're told about in history where Justinian just gets up. He just thinks, I've been outmaneuvered, I'm outnumbered. I've got to leave. And Theodora, we're told, goes, hang on a second, lady. you are wearing purple, you are an emperor and surely the imperial purple should be our shroud. You know, she's saying it's better to stand and to fight than to die

rather than to sneak away in the ships, which it seems from her speech were just like there, moored, waiting for them to escape. You know, if somebody made a film about it, they would say you're exaggerating. Yeah, this is born and completely, right? Yeah, you know, I think it was the most extraordinary time. So she said, you know, the ships are waiting.

you're right, we could go. We could just knelt away in the nights, but really what kind of a man would you be? What kind of a woman would I be if we did that? So she's the kind of lady Macbeth figure, you know, she says, screw your courage to the sticking place in effect. And they stay and they survive. And 40 days later, they start to rebuild the city. And this is when the extraordinary I. Sophia starts to be built. So it's definitely not an easy time. But it's also definitely a joint project. And it's pretty extraordinary. that once Theodora dies, so she dies young, she dies in her 40s, and he never remarried and told that every Friday he travels to her tomb in a sort of candlelit procession and speaks of his love for her. So, you know, remarkable, a remarkable pair.

Okay, well, I hate moving on from them, but we're going to have to because that says to know, it just kind of remains the center of rule for ages, you know, as we move into the medieval period, You know, you get to the 8th century, up to the 11th century. And because it's so important and incredible, there are just kind of like constant threats to it, right? You know, whether it's like the Bulgars or the Petchineggs or varying kind of Arab invasions or the Vikings, right? People are constantly outside the gates of Constantinople trying to get in. So it gets through all of these varying sieges. And, I mean, how does it do that?

Is it just because of the walls? Is it because, you know, being out there on the peninsula, you know, you kind of got to come through sea on a couple of sides? Like, what is it that means that it still gets to stand? Yeah, it's a brilliant place for a city. So Constantine was right to go there rather than Detroit. As you say, you've got this kind of rhino horn of land that sticks out into the Sea of Marma with the golden horns surrounding it, the Bostrus on one side. So it's very, very well protected. It's a brilliant, commercially and militarily strategically.

It's the most perfect position for a city. So it is relatively easy to defend. They've been very obsessed with their water supply in Pontchamptonople because there aren't many natural springs in the city. So they've been very, very careful to have these massive systems that they build, these underground storage systems of water storage. They have aqueduct so they can survive siege. And of course, they also have their secret weapon, Greek fire,

which appears in loads of medieval illustration. as you know, this sort of squirt of flame coming out of a kind of nozzle from a ship or from the tops of the walls. And it was obviously petrifying this thing. We don't know exactly what the recipe was for Greek fire. It almost certainly uses Napsa. And again, you've got to think, you know, they're very well positioned to get these kinds of killer chemicals. So whether they're getting it from what is now modern day Albania or further to the east or the south.

So they've got access to these lethal raw materials. materials. But they fight back sieges again and again and attacks again and again, as you say, you know, if you think of the 7th century, you've got the Arab armies massing at the walls of the city at the Golden Gate, you know, three or four times, exactly as you say, the petchen eggs come. I just got to tell you this one thing about petchen eggs. I love them so much. They were pretty ferocious, I think, the petch. They cut off people's heads and use them as wine cups. But when I was writing the Istanbul book, my spell checks kept on turning them from the petting eggs into the peachy ones.

Oh, I love that. Fantastic. It was so fantastic. Like, they're really not the peachy ones. I wouldn't. I mean, say that to their face. I dare you. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. See where that gets you. Exactly. And as you say, the Vikings, you know. So this is a city. Jules like these really attract thieves. And the Vikings, the Rus, how Russia gets its name, are absolutely obsessed, it seems to

me with Constantinople. They come down, they want to sack it, then they absolutely adore the silk. You know, and people don't think of the Vikings in this way, but they have this beautiful Byzantine silk sails for their ships. They have lovely purple silk scarves. And then sometimes at kind of moments in their history from the 10th century, they convert to Christianity. So they sort of briefly become allies of the Byzantine Empire as well, which is why we get

all these fantastic bits of evidence. So runes, Viking runes carved into the marble of Aesphere. And then relatively recently somebody identified, everybody has to go to see if they go into Aesphere onto one of the columns. A sort of bored Viking, obviously in a really long church service, had used his pin to scratch into long ships, Viking long ships on the marble. I mean, it's appalling. I love it. Rangelism and graffiti, yeah, but they're great. So the Vikings, as I said, sort of sometimes they sack it.

sometimes they want to protect it. And there's a fantastic edict passed. I think it's in the 10th century, if I'm remembering right, I might be the 11th, I'd need to check that. But saying, you know, okay, Vikings can come in if they come through a particular gate and there's only a certain number. And if they promise not to rape or kill anybody,

then you can come in and trade. So it's like, I didn't you remember they're sort of in sweet shops in the UK. They always used to be little signs up saying like school children can only come in. Oh, yeah. At a certain time, if they don't. Nick anything, you know, they're allowed back. So the Vikings are there as well. And then the Vikings end up being the main suppliers of the Varanian guards, you know, there's the crack squad, almost like the Praetorian Guard or the special troops who are there to defend the emperor.

So they become knitted in to the fabric of Byzantine life. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the story of incredible cities like this, right? I mean, sure, people are going to show up and try to rob things. But also, you get there and it's like, hey, well, got here on a long ship, which can carry a lot of goods, might as well just trade, may as well just hang out. And, you know, if I can get a job here, I'll silk all the time, baby, right? Exactly. Although, you know, there's a terrible thing about the silk there, because they're so smart, they're Byzantines. And they go, okay, the Vikings love silk, but we think they're a bit rough. So let's just give them the worst examples, the kind of lowest grade. And they actually say this. This is like a law. You know, they're not going to get their posture.

So it's like when people buy, like, fresh tea, or you can get the tea bags, which is basically just the kind of tea dust that's wept up from the floor of a tea factory. They don't get the top, top dollar silk, but they are obsessed with it. But you're right, exactly. You know, who would not want to get into bed with that city? It's just so, so beautiful. It becomes one of the biggest and most important cities in the world at this point. It's very cosmopolitan. It's very multinational. It's multi-ethnic. It's multi-faith in many ways. The time that we're talking about, these are really the glory days of the city. So, you know, you've got this. this amazing city. Everyone agrees. It's kind of like the place to be. But then you get the first

crusade called, right? And partially this is on them, right? They said, hey, can we get a little bit of help? We like to retake our territories in the Holy Land. So anyone want to come over here, right? But then suddenly there's all these Frankish soldiers outside. And you're like, uh, how does that go down? Well, that's right. I mean, you know, this crusading period, so yeah, the first crusade. and then by 1204, you've got the fourth crusade, which is, you know, you're the same. It's a weird thing being a historian. You're swimming in this sort of sea of human experience, and some of it is so inspiring and so hopeful and remarkable. And, you know, these sort of stories of human ingenuity and spirit and bravery and resilience.

And then you have these terrible kind of swamp-like moments like the one I've said that we're living through right now. when you think how can people behave like this and how can they not understand that all they're doing is laying down generations' worth of hatred and retribution. And this is what happens in 1204. So we mustn't forget, like on paper what the Crusades are exactly said, are Christian forces, so-called reclaiming the Holy Land from Muslim and Arab forces. But you suddenly have these Franks, so Western nobles, most of whom are illiterate, massing around the walls of Constantinople, and they attack it because they say, okay, you conveniently, we think are the wrong kind of Christian. Basically, it's they want that wealth that's in the city. And Constantinople has incredible rates of literacy.

So we get these absolutely kind of heart-rending accounts of people saying, you know, we were there on the walls looking at down on the plains below our Christian soldiers with their red crosses. These are supposed to be our brothers in arms, but they're attacking us. And initially, I think they're really kind of confused. by what's going on. And the Fourth Crusaders are very determined. They wait outside the city walls. They're not going to leave. And then after many, many, many months, those inside the city are weakened. So you can't resist a siege forever. And the Frankish Crusaders attack. And by all accounts, it's a bloodbath. These terrible stories of sort of once they've got in, of people jumping on

donkeys to go and loot cathedrals and monasteries and private homes and stacking up these donkeys with jewels and icons and the donkeys skidding in the human blood that there is roundabout. They sort of ripped the jewels out of icons of Mary Theatocos. They burn piles and piles and piles of parchments and some papyri that we think there was as well. But, you know, they just destroy this kind of incredible library of antiquity that there was in Constantinople. There's no question that we've lost Greek tragedies, incredible Arabic documents on medical advances, possibly highly important Christian texts, other gospels, because they were burnt in those fires, or they were looted and then taken to Venice, which sort of helps to spark the Renaissance.

But it's a terrible, terrible time. And as I said, they're just sort of stunned. They just can't believe what's happening. So they say the son witnessed what it should not. We hear that they're tearing children from mothers and mothers from children, treating the Virgin with wanton shame in holy chapels, viewing with fear neither the wrath of God nor the vengeance of men. The crusades in the name of God destroyed what they found in their past.

And for me, that's when I think that the city kind of loses its sense of itself. It's so traumatized. And there's a brief reflourishing in the 14th century. But then, of course, in the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire, having basically taken a lot of the lands around Constantinople itself, in 1453, they finally take over the city. And then, as we all know, it's an Ottoman city for the next 500 years. And it feels to me that that 1204 crusade is, that's really the moment. That's the killer blow. That's when, as I said, they're so psychologically traumatized by what's happened to them and have sort of lost their sense of self that it is never the same city again. I suppose that if what your story about yourself and your understanding of your place in the world is as Rome, as the great jewel of Christianity, to have other Christians show up and attack you is going to be a really destabilizing event, fundamentally.

Yeah, fundamentally. And I just think it was a. beautiful city. And it was a city that loved beauty and loved crafts women and men. And as I said, loved literacy. You know, there's an extraordinary rates of female literacy in the city and people share poems. And so everything that made them who they are, as I said, they see ripped and burned and destroyed and defiled. And just as I said, this kind of deep depression about what people can do. I mean, they are, you know, they're not saints themselves. You know, they've affected terror. suffering on those outside the city too. But yeah, no, it's definitely one of the kind of lowest points, I think,

in the story of human history, the 1204 Crusades. Well, I hate to kind of wrap up on such a low point, but it's an obvious place to sort of stop, right? If what we're talking about is sort of like medieval Constantinople, this is just such a shearing-off point that I think that by the time you've got crusaders affecting conquest in the streets, that's time for us to go too. Oh, it is, it is. What I would just say, everybody you can go to Istanbul now.

You will be able to breathe, feel, walk, smell, hear the sound of the medieval city around you. So it's a place that you can be in two times at once. Thank you so much, Bethany, for joining me. Thank you everyone out there for listening. This has been Gone Medieval from History Hit. And if you've liked what you've heard, please don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast, tell your friends about it. Tell your friends to go to Istanbul. And buy my book.

And by Betty's book. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can always drop us an email at gone medieval and history hit.com. Otherwise, I'll be back again next Tuesday for another episode, and my co-host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Friday. Until next time.