Decline and Fall of Byzantium

In 1994 or 1995, a few years before I began to read chronologically, and before I paired that with reading the Cambridge Ancient History, I found this little book in the college library and read it for fun.

(These are just notes, notes of a common man, nothing profound, and in those long ago years, even rougher than the ones I write these days.)

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Harry J. Magoulias has translated the writings of an eyewitness to the digestion of Byzantium and the fall of Constantinople, one Doukas.

Doukas details the bickering between Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity that weakened Constantinople [today Istanbul in Turkey] even as the Turkish threat washed against its bulwarks.

City by city, the [Byzantine]empire,[the last remnant of the once great Roman empire] is taken, in a period from 1360 to 1450 A.D., when Mehmed II finally brings down the walls of Constantinople and the sickly empire dies. Doukas rightly blames the myopic inhabitants for it.

Details in the book: the failed attempt to [reunify] the Christian church. A [Christian] traitor designs the lethal cannon which brings down Constantinople's walls. False prophets played a part in helping to [destroy the city].