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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