THE destruction of Smyrna by the Turks was an
event of great significance in Church history. At the time of the birth of the Prophet, about A. D. 570, Christianity
had covered, in addition to the area known in general to-day as “Europe,” the
ancient province of Asia, extending as far east as the Caspian Sea, a broad
strip of Syria, and a wide belt of North Africa clear across to the Atlantic
Ocean.
In A. D. 30, according to Kurtz, historian of the
Christian Church, there were five hundred Christians in the world; they had
increased to five hundred thousand by A. D. 100, and they numbered thirty
million in the year 311.
Asia Minor and Africa are famous in the history of the
Church as the habitat of many of the most famous Christian fathers and martyrs,
such as Polycarp of Smyrna, Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria,
Chrysostom of Antioch, Origen of Tyre, Cyprian of Carthage and a host of
others. Saint Paul was born in Tarsus of Cilicia.
In the eighth century, Timotheus sent a band of
missionaries from Mesopotamia to convert the Tartars, who went as far as the
Caspian Sea, and oven penetrated into China, “planting and reviving in those
parts a knowledge of the gospel.” The Seven Churches of
Revelation were in Asia Minor, and the fact that Smyrna was the last of these,
and kept her light burning until 1922, emphasizes the significance, in Church
history, of her destruction by the Turks.
The object of the Emperor Constantine in founding his
capital was to build a distinctly Christian city that should be the metropolis
of Christendom. Its splendors, its refinement, its art and culture, its wealth,
its power, its fame as a center of learning and of piety are unforgettable
even to-day. In the presence of its gentlemen and great dames, the knights and
ladies of Western Europe were mere boors and hoydens. Wrecked, plundered and
mismanaged by the Latin knights, a calamity from which it never recovered,
there was enough of its culture left, when the Turks finally laid hands on it,
to scatter over Europe and regenerate the West. The Renaissance, that wonderful
awakening from the darkness of the Middle Ages, was largely due to the learning
brought into Europe by the scholars of Constantinople, fleeing from the Turk.
Those scholars had kept the light of the old classic culture burning during all
the years of European darkness and ignorance.
If Constantinople could have been spared and Christianity
saved in the Near East, the results to civilization would have been
incalculable. What a glorious city a Greek Constantinople would be today, if
it had always stayed Greek, with its long traditions and its immense treasures
of ancient culture! Another and more beautiful Paris, bestriding the
Bosphorus, great in commerce, learning, science and all the graces and
influences of Christian civilization.
Thus says Sir Edwin Pears, in his well-known history:
“The New Rome of Constantine Augustus passed under the
power of a horde of Oriental adventurers, Turanians by original descent,
mongrels by polygamy. This was the greatest victory ever won by Asia in her
debate with Europe. For many decades thereafter there seemed at least a
possibility that the East might destroy all the fruit of Marathon.”
Quoting again from the same author:
“Under the rule of its new masters Constantinople
was destined to become the most degraded capital in Europe, and became
incapable of contributing anything whatever of value to the history of the
human race. No art, no literature, no handicraft even, nothing that the world
would gladly keep, has come since 1453 from the Queen City. Its capture, so
far as human eyes can see, has been for the world a misfortune almost without
any compensatory advantage. Poverty as the consequence of misgovernment is
the most conspicuous result of the conquest affecting the subjects of the
Empire. Lands were allowed to go out of cultivation. Industries were lost.
Mines were forgotten. Trade and commerce almost ceased to exist. Population
decreased. The wealthiest state in Europe became the poorest; the most
civilized the most barbarous. The demoralization of the conquered people and of
their churches was not less disastrous than the injury to their material
interests. The Christians lost heart. Their physical courage lessened.”
This description of the condition of Asia Minor
as the result of the capture of Constantinople continued down to the ultimate
complete destruction of the Christians by the Turks. Nothing changed in the
nearly five centuries that have passed. The Turk has not altered either in his
character or his methods. The scenes described by Pears as following the
taking of the Queen City, the massacres and violation of women, were duplicated
at Smyrna, with the added horror of the sufferings of the Christians on the
quay.
After Constantinople, Smyrna, “Ghiaour Smyrna,” became
the last stronghold of Christianity and Greek culture in the Near East. It had
its great and valuable libraries, its learned men, its famous schools. The Greeks and Armenians could at any time have attained
safety by abjuring their faith. Yet, though there have been apostates, they
have, in general, kept the faith and have suffered.
The only civilization that has existed in
Turkey since that black year, 1453, has been that supplied to it by the
Christian remnant of the old Byzantine Empire. For that reason the work of the American and other missionaries took on
a great importance. They went out originally to Turkey to convert Moslems.
They found that they could not do this, but that their real mission was with
the Christians, who were eager to be uplifted and enlightened. The recent rapid
development of the latter in advanced agriculture, industries, commerce,
education, was restoring Christianity in the Orient and reknitting the wasted
and torn fabric of the old Byzantine Empire. To the
great Christian Powers was given a tardy and last opportunity of repairing the
wrong that was done the world when St. Sophia, the Temple of the Eternal
Wisdom, fell into the hand of the Turk.
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