Loukas Notaras

Loukas Notaras ( Middle Greek Λουκάς Νοταράς ; † June 3 or 4, 1453 , executed) was the last Megas Doux of the Byzantine Empire . This office (literally Grand Duke , but rather Grand Admiral in terms of function ) was expanded under the paleologists dynasty and functioned as that of an unofficial "Prime Minister", who headed the imperial bureaucracy instead of the Megas Logothetes , who had previously held this position.

Notaras was a Greek and came from Monemvasia , where his family had become wealthy through numerous commercial activities.

Because of his famous saying "I would rather see a Turkish turban in the middle of the city (ie Constantinople ) than a Latin miter ", he is often attributed to the Synaxis and the Orthodox resistance against the church union decided in the Council of Florence . However, this is not the case, since he and his emperor Constantine XI. Palaiologos did everything to get help from the Catholic West and at the same time to avoid unrest in the Orthodox population. However, his pragmatic stance towards the center resulted in his memory being condemned by both sides of the conflict. The attacks on his course were intensified by the political tactics within the imperial administration. Konstantin's close friend and personal secretary Georgios Sphrantzes rarely says anything positive about Notaras. This setting was later adopted by Edward Gibbon .

During the siege of Constantinople , Notaras commanded the troops at the northwestern sea wall, as well as the amazingly successful operations to prevent the city wall from being undermined near the Blachernen Palace . According to some sources, Notaras fled his post after the Turkish flag was hoisted on the tower over the Kerkoporta ; but this representation could be politically motivated defamation. In any case, he succeeded in holding the sea wall through which the Venetians had conquered the city in 1204 against the Turkish fleet until the breakthrough along the Mesoteichon rendered his resistance futile.

Notaras, his wife (a palaeologina ) and his son were captured by the Turks. Initially, they were granted grace to help restore law and order and in exchange for most of the notarial property. Nevertheless, shortly after the fall of the city, he was executed along with his son and the stepson of Kantakouzenos . This could be because the Sultan had reconsidered the wisdom of his decision to keep alive an important noble of the Byzantine Empire with ties to the Vatican and Venice; Gibbon suspects that Notaras was already involved in an intrigue to that effect. The more well-known representation, however, is that of Runciman :

The grace which Mehmet had bestowed on the emperor's surviving ministers was short-lived. Five days after conquering the city, he gave a banquet. During this, when he had already drunk a lot of wine, someone informed him that Notara's fourteen-year-old son was a boy of extraordinary beauty. Immediately the Sultan sent a eunuch to the house of the Megas Doux to demand that the boy be sent to serve him. Notaras, whose older sons had been killed in battle, refused to leave the boys to such a fate. Guards were sent to bring Notaras with his son as well as his son-in-law, the son of the army master Andronicus Kantakouzenos, to the sultan. When Notaras continued to oppose the Sultan, the latter gave the order to execute him and the two boys on the spot. Notaras merely asked that they be killed before him so that the sight of his death would not make them shudder. After they were both executed, he bared the back of his neck. The following day nine other Greek dignitaries were captured and executed. (Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople , p. 151)

This story was originally recorded by Doukas (XL, 381), a Greek who lived in Constantinople at the time of the fall of the city, but does not appear in the accounts of other Greeks who witnessed the conquest. However, Doukas was often hostile to notaras, so there was no reason for him to make up such a story about his honesty.

Notara's wife died as a slave on the way to Adrianople , the then capital of the Ottoman Empire, in the city of Mesene. Two members of his family were on the passenger list of a Genoese ship that escaped the fall of the city. His daughter Anna and her aunt became the center of the Byzantine exile community in Venice. Anna Notaras founded the first printing company for Greek texts in Venice with Zacharias Kallierges and Nikolaos Vlastos .

A collection of Loukas Notaras' letters has been published under the title Epistulae . The book contains Ad Theodorum Carystenum, Scholario, Eidem, Ad eundem, & Sancto magistro Gennadio Scholario. He also serves as a character in the book Johannes Angelos by the Finnish author Mika Waltari .

literature

• Donald Nicol : The Immortal Emperor . Cambridge 1992.
• Steven Runciman : The Fall of Constantinople 1453 . Cambridge 1965 (several NDe).
• Thierry Ganchou: Le rachat des Notaras apres la chute de Constantinople ou les relations "étrangères" de l'élite Byzantine au XVe siecle . In: Migrations et diasporas méditerranéennes (Xe-XVIe siecles) . Paris 2002.
• Sebastian Fleming: Byzantium . Cologne 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Federica Cicolella: Donati Graeci. Learning Greek in the Renaissance. New York 2008, p. 207.