Constantinople 1453: Beginning or End?

Our Faculty Member, Dr Andrew Mellas, recently participated in the ‘Byzantine Month’ at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Resurrection (Kogarah) on ‘The Legacy of Byzantium: Theology, Hellenism and Civilisation’. On 9 May, Dr Mellas delivered a guest lecture exploring the reception of Alexander the Great in Byzantium and focusing on how the Byzantine imagination sometimes saw Alexander as a bloodthirsty tyrant, but at other times regarded him as a noble and heroic philosopher king. One example of the positive reception of Alexander the Great is how St Gregory of Nyssa highlights Alexander in a letter of recommendation to his friend Antiochus.  Gregory introduces Alexander in his letter as a prototype of ideal friendship. According to Gregory, the main reason wise people admire Alexander the Great is not his victories over the Persians and Indians, but “for his saying that his treasure was in his friends”.

On 29 May, Dr Mellas was one of three guest panelists who reflected on the fall of Constantinople. Ms Olympia Nelson (a PhD candidate in the Department of Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Sydney), considered how 1453 changed the way emotions are depicted in sacred art and the way icons seek to arouse emotions in the faithful. Dr Dimitri Koubaroulis (a chanter and teacher of the folk and chant traditions of Byzantium, as well as the founder and director of Melisma Ensemble), discussed the music of Byzantium and what 1453 signified for this art form. Dr Mellas reflected on the liturgy of Byzantium and the blessed emotions liturgical life evokes, even after the fall of Constantinople. The evening ended with a special performance of four songs by Melisma Ensemble: ‘Songs of Lament’.

While the fall of Constantinople marked a tragic end to the Byzantine Empire, it became the phoenix from which modern Greek consciousness eventually emerged. Indeed, 1453 was not the end of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which today engages with the contemporary context of an ancient faith, offering its voice to the social, environmental and political debates of the third millennium. Today, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is a way of being and a way of seeing the universe. It is the spiritual heir to Byzantium and the centre of Orthodoxy.