the shifting borders of europe |
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In 1521 the Ottoman Turks conquered Belgrade and began an invasion of Hungary. By 1526, Hungary was defeated at the battle of Mohacs, and the city of Buda was taken. In 1529, the Turkish army advanced into Austria and laid siege to Vienna. These rapid advances struck terror in the hearts of Europeans as they exposed the vulnerability of European states and conveyed an image of invincibility on the Ottoman forces. A sense of dread and foreboding pervaded European consciousness, even as Spanish forces a world away were conquering American civilizations. Many believed that the Turks would continue their advance until all of Europe fell under Islamic rule. |
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[15] The Fall of Constantinople
Hartmann Schedel. Liber chronicarum. (Nuremberg: 1493). Constantinople, the center of the Christian church from the fall of Rome and the capital of the storied Byzantine Empire, finally fell to Turkish forces under the Ottoman Sultan Muhammed II in 1453, just 40 years before this publication. The Church of Hagia Sophia, the sacred palace of the emperors, was refashioned as a mosque, with minarets added and its wall decorations covered. The Ottoman emperors built a new beautiful city of their own, filled with mosques, palaces, and other public structures. Western Europeans, even including Lutherans, continued their adulation of what the Eastern Church had represented, and maintained some contact with those in the surviving church structure there. Saint Sophia in modern Istanbul is neither a church nor a mosque, but a museum of great renown, visited even by Popes. This view of Constantinople, as imagined by a central European artist in the year Columbus returned from the West Indies, is from the 1493 Latin edition of the Nuremberg Chronicles. |
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[16] Luther and Islam
Martin Luther. Supputatio annorum mundi. (Paris: 1545). Luther composed this chronology in a millennial context, citing all the most important dates in religious history as he understood them. In the 1490s he noted the arrival of a plague of syphilis (the “French or Spanish disease”) from the newly discovered lands in the west (America). Under the year 630 A.D. he wrote “Mahomet incipit an. 630”, or ‘Mohammed begins’, perhaps referring to the Prophet’s triumphant march into Mecca. Other dates of Islamic importance are cited, including the capture of Constantinople in 1453. Luther understood the Ottoman Turkish invasion of Europe to be part of a Divine plan to spur more fervent devotion by Christians. However, he did not subscribe to a common belief that the European states should therefore submit to an impending invasion as the acceptance of God’s Plan. He warned against hysteria and counseled continued Christian resistance. |
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[17] The Fate of Budapest Hartmann Schedel. Register des Buchs der Chroniken und Geschichten. (Nuremberg: 1493). The German 1493 edition of the Nuremberg Chronicles presents two imaginative facing views of the town of Buda or Ofen on the right bank of the Danube in Hungary. Buda and Pest on opposite banks were both devastated and occupied by the Turkish army in 1541. They remained under Ottoman rule until 1686, when Charles of Lorraine secured them for the Habsburgs. With their original populations largely gone, Buda was resettled with Germans, and Pest with Serbs. The towns were formally united as Budapest in 1873. |
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[18] Freedom of Conscience
Joannes Honter. Rudimenta cosmographica. (Kronstadt: 1542). Shown in this map is part of the Balkan region between Turkey and the rest of Europe. At the top center between Hungary and Moldavia lies the mountainous principality of Transylvania, which gained a measure of independence as a tributary of Ottoman Turkey and played it off against Austria. Transylvania became a kind of microcosm of the Protestant Reformation as the court church and hundreds of other churches turned from Roman Catholic successively to Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist), and Unitarian belief and practice. In 1568, King John proclaimed the Edict of Torda, authorizing free practice of Roman Catholicism and the three forms of the Reformation that had progressively swept through the country. The Turkish Sultan maintained a policy of toleration, but was wary of any further signs of interdenominational strife or innovation. When Austria later resumed influence over Transylvania, the edict continued some level of protection for the churches. The statutory acceptance of multiple forms of religion, seemingly so revolutionary in colonial Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, and in the new United States, had an antecedent in this remote region. Joannes Honter was a native son of multi-lingual Kronstadt / Brasov / Brasso in Transylvania, now part of Romania. He studied at the universities of Vienna and Cracow and lived in Basel, learning wood engraving in addition to his academic studies. His accomplished geographical work was published in 39 editions in several cities, and he also promoted the Reformation ideals of Martin Luther. |
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[19] Suleyman the Magnificent
Cornelis Hazart, S.J.Kerckelycke historie van de gheheele werelt naemelyck van Turckyen, Palestynen, Syrien Griecken-lant, Moscovien Persien, Fez Marocco, ende Tartarien het iv deel. (Antwerp: 1682). Drawing on a large number of sources in Latin, Spanish, French and Dutch, this Flemish Jesuit prepared a comprehensive history of Christianity and its missions throughout the world in four folio volumes. The present one is dedicated to the lands from Morocco to Tartary, most of them ruled by Muslims. Hazart writes at length on Islam, detailing the religious customs and facilities. Special attention is given to the state of various Christian groups in Islamic countries in the seventeenth century. Presented at the left is an artist’s conception of Süleyman I, Sultan of the Turks, 1494/5 to 1566. Continuing the expansion of his father, Selim I, Suleyman the Magnificent brought the Ottoman Empire to the pinnacle of its prestige and power. He defeated the Hungarians at Mohacs in 1526, took the city of Buda, and besieged Vienna in 1529. In 1536 he forged an alliance with King Francis I of France against the Holy Roman Empire, a pattern of foreign policy that endured for three centuries. Süleyman was a generous patron of the arts and literature. He died in 1566 during the siege of Szigetvár in western Hungary. . |
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[20] The Seige of Vienna
Eberhard Happel. Thesaurus Exoticorum, oder eine ... Schatz-Kammer. (Hamburg: 1688). A selling point for this ethnographic collection is its promise to deliver information on all the “exotic” peoples at the borders or Europe and beyond the seas, including no fewer than 15 indigenous peoples of the Americas. However the principal focus of the book is on the Islamic peoples, from North Africa to Mesopotamia and Persia. Vienna was originally settled by Celts and became an important center for the Romans. Its importance grew in the course of the Crusades. The Turks reached the Holy Roman imperial capital in 1529, but were repelled after a three-week siege. A much greater threat was presented by the siege in July 1683, portrayed in the engraving (page 52). Individual portraits of principals in the campaign are provided in the upper and lower borders: Count Ernst Rudiger of Starenberg, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, Ottoman Emperor Mohammed IV, and Turkish Grand Vizier Ahmed Bassa; below, the Prince of Waldeck, the Elector of Saxony, the King of Poland, the Elector of Bavaria, and the Duke of Lorraine. King John Sobieski of Poland led the defeat of the Turkish army in September 1683. The Grand Vizier of Ottoman Turkey, Ahmed Bassa (from the same book), is also shown at the left. |