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Laonikos Chalkokondyles and the rise of the Ottoman Turks*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Jonathan Harris
Jonathan Harris*
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Abstract

While most Christian writers who described the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 regarded the disaster as divine retribution for the sins of its inhabitants, carried out through the agency of the barbaric and infidel Turks, the historical work of Laonikos Chalkokondyles takes a very different approach to the problem. It argues that nations rose or fell partly through luck, but also according the virtue they possessed, so that the Turks, rather than being mere agents, could in fact take the credit for their success. In this approach, Chalkokondyles reflects not classical Greek literature, but a western tradition to be found in Livy and Cicero, a strand of thought that he may have adopted as a result of contacts with Renaissance Italy.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 27 , 2003 , pp. 153 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2003

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Michael Jeffreys, Joseph Munitiz, Rhoads Murphey, Diotima Papadi and the anonymous readers for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies for their comments, help and suggestions on this article.

References

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22. B 15-16; D I. 13; N 103.

23. B 32; D I. 28-9; N 125.

24. B 48, 55-6; D I. 44, 51; N 145, 153-5.

25. B 162; D I. 152; N 329.

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50. B 4; D I. 2; N 89.