Lessons for the West: Black Tuesday May 29, 1453: The “Last Day” of the Eastern Roman Empire, By James Reed

On May 29, 1453, the sun rose on a city that had stood as the jewel of Christian civilisation for over a thousand years, and by nightfall, it was lost. That morning, the city of Constantinople, the ancient heart of Eastern Christendom and the last remnant of the Roman Empire, fell to the armies of the 21-year-old Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. For many Greek Orthodox Christians and others across the former Byzantine world, it remains a date of cosmic catastrophe, a day they still refer to with sorrow and awe as "the last day of the world."

The fall of Constantinople was not merely the military defeat of a city. It was the death knell of an entire civilizational order, a shattering of Christian dominion in Asia Minor, and the final extinguishing of a flame that had burned since the days of Constantine the Great. That flame was not just political or military, it was theological, philosophical, and cultural. Constantinople was not just a capital; it was the spiritual stronghold of Eastern Orthodoxy, the second Rome, the bastion of faith and empire fused into one radiant legacy.

But on that fateful Tuesday, it became a slaughterhouse.

The siege had dragged on for weeks. Inside the battered walls of the city, the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, fought alongside citizens, monks, and mercenaries, vastly outnumbered and surrounded by cannon, cavalry, and the relentless will of Mehmed II, who believed himself destined to fulfill a prophecy: that the city of Heraclius, the Roman emperor, would fall to Islam. And so it did.

When the Ottomans finally breached the defences, a torrent of violence was unleashed. Churches were raided, altars desecrated, relics stolen, and the proud Christian citizens, who had huddled in monasteries and convents, desperately praying, were slaughtered or sold into slavery. The Hagia Sophia, the most magnificent cathedral in the Christian world, where priests were said to have vanished into the walls with the Eucharist still in their hands, was transformed into a mosque before the blood on the floor had dried. From its once-Christian pulpit rang out not liturgy, but the shahada, the Islamic proclamation that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.

In the words of the Byzantine scholar Bessarion, written shortly after the sack, Constantinople had been destroyed by "the most inhuman barbarians and the most savage enemies of the Christian faith." Women were raped, virgins taken as trophies, children torn from their mothers' arms. The treasures of centuries were hauled away. And an empire, one that had once ruled from Britain to Syria, was extinguished like a candle in a hurricane.

To many in the modern West, this is ancient history, perhaps vaguely remembered from a textbook or a video game. But to others, particularly Orthodox Christians, and also many in the Islamic world, it is not forgotten. In Turkey today, May 29 is celebrated with fireworks and nationalist speeches. The fall of Constantinople is still hailed as a glorious triumph, the symbolic high point of the Ottoman age. State-run Turkish media call it "a shining jewel in the crown of the empire." President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose neo-Ottoman aspirations are no secret, has played heavily on this legacy, even restoring Hagia Sophia's status as a mosque in 2020.

And beyond Turkey, there are those who look to the conquest of Constantinople as a blueprint for what's to come.

In 2008, Jordanian cleric Sheik Ali Al-Faqir declared on Al-Aqsa TV, "We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like Constantinople was conquered once." Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Islamic theologian, cited hadiths predicting the conquest of Rome as the next step after Constantinople. And Hamas MP Yunis al-Astal echoed this sentiment, celebrating the old dream of completing what began in 1453.

What does this mean today?

It means that for some, the fall of Constantinople is not a relic of the past, it is a roadmap. It is a symbol of triumph over the Christian West, and a warning that religious and civilisational conflict is not as dead as some woke white libtards would like to think.

For those of us in the West, and particularly those who still cherish the freedoms, religious diversity, and democratic order that emerged out of Christendom's long struggle, May 29 should not be forgotten. It should not be allowed to fade into a "who cares?" moment of medieval trivia.

Because on May 29, 1453, the world ended, at least, for one civilisation. That day, in the minds of many, the light of Rome was finally extinguished, and the long twilight of Eastern Christianity began. But if there's a lesson to be drawn, it's not only one of loss, it's of vigilance.

Civilisations die when they forget who they are. Cities fall when they no longer believe in the sacredness of their mission. If we forget what Constantinople stood for, not just militarily but spiritually, artistically, theologically, we may one day soon find ourselves reliving its fate.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/05/29/may-29-the-last-day-of-the-world-n4940270

"On May 29, 1453," the state-run Turkish broadcaster TRT World reported happily on Thursday, the 572nd anniversary of the fateful day, "a 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II led the Ottoman army to a decisive victory over the Byzantine Empire. The conquest of Istanbul remains a shining jewel in the crown of the Ottoman Empire." Recep Tayyip Erdogan's desire to restore the lost glory of that empire is well known, but those who are the children and heirs of the victims of its bloody expansion look on this anniversary with somewhat less enthusiasm than TRT World displayed.

Some Greek Orthodox Christians to this day refer to May 29, 1453, as "the last day of the world." In a very real sense, that is exactly what it was: the end of over two thousand years of the Roman Empire, the end of what had for centuries been the world's foremost power and leading Christian state. The conquest of Constantinople meant the eclipse of Christianity in Asia Minor, which had been such an important center of the faith that three of Paul's New Testament epistles — Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians — were addressed to Christian congregations there.

Constantinople had been the center of Christianity in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, and the second see in the Church, after only Rome. After the East/West schism of 1054, Constantinople was the heart of Orthodox Christianity. As "The History of Jihad" recounts in detail, however, on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II finally broke through Constantinople's defenses after a long siege, marking the end of the great Christian Roman Empire.

The conquerors were extraordinarily brutal, raiding monasteries and convents, emptying them of their inhabitants, and plundering private houses. They entered Hagia Sophia, which for nearly a thousand years had been the grandest church in Christendom. The faithful had gathered within its hallowed walls to pray during the city's last agony. The Muslims halted the celebration of Orthros (morning prayer), while the priests, according to legend, took the sacred vessels and disappeared into the cathedral's eastern wall, through which they shall return to complete the divine service one day. Muslim men then killed the elderly and weak and led the rest off into slavery.

The Byzantine scholar Bessarion wrote to the Doge of Venice in July 1453, saying that Constantinople had been "sacked by the most inhuman barbarians and the most savage enemies of the Christian faith, by the fiercest of wild beasts. The public treasure has been consumed, private wealth has been destroyed, the temples have been stripped of gold, silver, jewels, the relics of the saints, and other most precious ornaments. Men have been butchered like cattle, women abducted, virgins ravished, and children snatched from the arms of their parents."

When the slaughter and pillage were finished, Mehmed II ordered an Islamic scholar to mount the high pulpit of the Hagia Sophia and declare that there was no God but Allah, and Muhammad was his prophet. The magnificent old church was turned into a mosque; hundreds of other churches in Constantinople and elsewhere suffered the same fate. Millions of Christians joined the ranks of the dhimmis; others were enslaved, and many were killed.

Once the Muslims had thoroughly subdued Constantinople, they set out to Islamize it. According to the Muslim chronicler Hoca Sa'deddin, tutor of the sixteenth-century Sultans Murad III and Mehmed III, "churches which were within the city were emptied of their vile idols and cleansed from the filthy and idolatrous impurities and by the defacement of their images and the erection of Islamic prayer niches and pulpits many monasteries and chapels became the envy of the gardens of Paradise."

It has come to be known as Black Tuesday, the Last Day of the World. Ever since, many Greek Christians regard Tuesday as unlucky. The world has forgotten what happened on Black Tuesday and on so many other days like it from India to Spain, and today persists in the fantasy that Islam does not contain an imperialist impulse and that Muslims can be admitted without limit into Western countries without any attempt to determine how many would like ultimately to subjugate and Islamize their new countries, the way their forefathers did to Constantinople so long ago.

There are, however, some people who remember, and they want to do it again. Back in 2008, Sheik Ali Al-Faqir, former Jordanian minister of religious endowment, said this on Al-Aqsa TV: "We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like Constantinople was conquered once…" Hamas MP and Islamic cleric Yunis Al-Astal said this, also on Al-Aqsa TV several years ago: "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesied by our Prophet Muhammad."

The man who was the most popular Islamic TV preacher until his death several years ago, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, also remembered. In writing about "signs of the victory of Islam," he referred to a hadith: "The Prophet Muhammad was asked: 'What city will be conquered first, Constantinople or Romiyya?' He answered: 'The city of Hirqil [that is, the Roman emperor Heraclius] will be conquered first,' that is, Constantinople… Romiyya is the city called today 'Rome,' the capital of Italy. The city of Hirqil [that is, Constantinople] was conquered by the young 23-year-old Ottoman Muhammad bin Morad, known in history as Muhammad the Conqueror, in 1453. The other city, Romiyya, remains, and we hope and believe [that it too will be conquered]."

Mehmed the Conqueror was motivated by exactly the same religious ideology that motivates the Islamic warriors of the contemporary era. They remember, and still celebrate, what happened in Constantinople on May 29, 1453. For free people in the West and elsewhere, May 29 should be a day for all those threatened by Islamic jihad and Sharia oppression to redouble our efforts to resist, so that more such catastrophes may never again destroy the lives of free people."