The brilliant Aaron Taylor has a wonderful post on the fall of Constantinople which I highly recommend taking the time to read and explore the various links that he has provided. Another very intelligent blogger at Biblicalia has also written about the last day of the great and often forgotten empire that many western history books fail to recognize.
O, city, city, head of all cities! O, city, city, center of the four quarters of the world! O, city, city, pride of the Christians and ruin of the barbarians! O, city, city, second paradise planted in the West, including all sorts of plants bending under the burden of spiritual fruits! Where is thy beauty, O, paradise? Where is the blessed strength of spirit and body of thy spiritual Graces? Where are the bodies of the Apostles of my Lord? . . . Where are the relics of the saints, where are the relics of the martyrs? Where is the corpse of the great Constantine and other Emperors. . . .
-The lamentation of Michael Ducas from the History of the Byzantine Empire by A.A. Vasiliev.
