When Constantinople was all that was left of the Byzantine Empire, a kingdom and people that had survived great challenges for a millennium seemed about to fall to its greatest foe. It needed allies and it needed them badly. The Emperor looked to the West, but disunion between the Eastern and Western churches was a difficulty.
The Council of Florence (@1439) appeared to solve this problem. At this desperate meeting the Eastern Churches folded on almost every issue and submitted to the Pope in Rome.
One man, Mark of Ephesus, refused to go along with the compromises. This saintly man incarnated the best of his Empire with his classical education and political savvy. He fought for what he thought was true and the people of the failing Empire agreed. They overturned the decision of the Emperor and the clerics at great cost. There is something great in a people spitting in the face of the compromise of their basic values even though it meant their doom.
It is likely that nothing could have stopped the Ottoman conquest in any case. The region was already in their grip and it is difficult to see how the city could have survived as an isolated enclave. The Western army sent to “save” Constantinople was too small for the purpose and failed.
Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453), the Ottoman Empire had a new chief city, and the Church of the Holy Wisdom became a mosque. The “worst” had happened after one thousand years. Yet the worst was not the worst. The Ottomans were in some ways better for the Church than periodic captivity to Venice or Genoa. Mark of Ephesus had saved what mattered in his culture at a great cost, but the cost was worth paying.
The best of Byzantine culture survived, indeed flourished all over the world. A resolute and purified Greek community was prepared for what was to come and prepared for reality. The world they created in their defeat made much of the modern era possible.
The interest in Greek thought that had always been part of the Byzantine Empire took root in Florence and helped spur the Renaissance. The religious ideas of the Greek Christians survived under Ottoman rule and in some ways were purified by being disassociated with Imperial power. The Russian state allowed for a continuation of all three of the aspects of Byzantine power in a “reboot” of the idea with a different people group expressing the old Greek ways in their new language and ways.
Mark of Ephesus helped the culture he loved survive by refusing to give up on what was essential to it in order to “save it.” Doing the politically expedient thing at the cost of the soul of a nation is not good politics! He is a good reminder to Americans that there are worse things that losing a battle. If a culture keeps its soul, then the best of it will find a way to survive.