“New Barbarian” or Worthy Adversary? Humanist Constructs of the Ottoman Turks in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Abstract

Such was the Florentine humanist’s reaction to news that Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Empire, had fallen to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The loss of Byzantium meant many different things to humanists. It represented the end of a great and glorious empire, a major blow to Christendom, and the loss of a rich heritage of art, architecture, and scholarship. Many humanists equated the siege to the fifth-century sack of Rome. The fall of Constantinople also stands as the turning point that awakened Europeans to the threat the Turks posed to their security.² By mid- 1453, the Ottomans not only controlled Constantinople, but also much of Asia Minor, and large portions of the Balkans. Calls for crusade were issued by the papacy and secular powers alike. A large number of humanists supported efforts toward crusade, often pointing to the example of early drives to the Holy Land, like the First Crusade. Still, the rhetoric employed by humanists in discussing crusade, and particularly the Turks, was generally not medieval in inspiration, but rather classical.³ A new secular vision of the Turks and crusade began to compete with, and, in some places, replace the rhetoric of holy war and “enemies of the faith.”

“I fear lest the times of the Vandals and the Goths return.”¹

—Poggio Bracciolini