Prophecies About the Fall of Constantinople

Before leaving the Panorama 1453, I bought a book from the museum shop.

I love to read different accounts of the Siege of Constantinople. Whether they are Ottoman, Byzantine or other sources, I like to read the words of eye-witnesses who lived 650 years ago. So I was happy to find such a book in the museum that I didn't read before.

The book was written by Nicolo Barbaro, who was a Venetian ship surgeon. He has been in Constantinople during the whole siege, so his diary is really interesting, even though it's strongly biased and subjective. Not only he reviles against the "infidel pagans" who were the Turks, but he is also angry at the Greeks and Genoese who were also defending the city.

After I bought the Turkish translation and finished reading it, I discovered that there is a free English version on the web. You can read it here in full, but I would like to quote the passage that I underlined with my red pencil. It tells about three Byzantine prophecies on the Fall of Constantinople with a desperate mood of religious submission:

"On the twenty-ninth of May, the last day of the siege, our Lord God decided, to the sorrow of the Greeks, that He was willing for the city to fall on this day into the hands of Mahomet Bey the Turk son of Murat, after the fashion and in the manner described below; and also our eternal God was willing to make this decision in order to fulfill all the ancient prophecies, particularly the first prophecy made by Saint Constantine, who is on horseback on a column by the Church of Saint Sophia of this city, prophesying with his hand and saying, "From this direction will come the one who will undo me," pointing to Anatolia, that is Turkey. Another prophecy which he made was that when there should be an Emperor called Constantine son of Helen, under his rule Constantinople would be lost, and there was another prophecy that when the moon should give a sign in the sky, within a few days the Turks would have Constantinople. All these three prophecies had come to pass, seeing that the Turks had passed into Greece, there was an Emperor called Constantine son of Helen, and the moon had given a sign in the sky (an eclipse), so that God had determined to come to this decision against the Christians and particularly against the Empire of Constan­tinople, as you shall hear."