Thus Constantinople was the Christian outpost of Europe.  For hundred of year the Byzantine Empire stood as a barrier against the Saracen hosts of Asia.  It might have stood still longer, but sad to say, this barrier was first broken down by the Christians themselves.  For in 1204 the armies of the fourth Crusade, which had gathered to fight the heathen, turned their swords, to their shame be it said, against the Christian people of the Greek Empire.  Constantinople was taken, plundered, and destroyed by these “pious brigands,"* and the last of the Byzantine Emperors was first blinded and then flung from a high tower, so that his body fell shattered to pieces on the paving-stones of his own capital.

George Finlay, History of Greece.

Baldwin, Count of Flanders, one of the great leaders of the Crusade, was then crowned by his followers and acknowledged Emperor of the East.  But the once great Empire was now broken up, and out of it three lesser Empires, as well as many smaller states, were formed.

Baldwin did not long rule as Emperor of the East, and the Greeks after a time succeeded in regaining Constantinople from the western Christians.  But although for nearly two hundred years longer they kept it, the Empire was dying and lifeless.  And by degrees, as the power of Greece grew less, the power of Turkey grew greater.  At length in 1453 the Sultan Mohammed II attacked Constantinople.  Then the Cross, which for a thousand years and more had stood upon the ramparts of Christendom, went down before the Crescent.

Constantine XI, the last of the Greek Emperors, knelt in the great church of St. Sophia to receive for the last time the Holy Sacrament.  Then mounting his horse he rode forth to battle.  Fighting for his kingdom and his faith he fell, and over his dead body the young Sultan and his soldiers rode into the ruined city.  Then in the church, where but a few hours before the fallen Emperor had knelt and prayed to Christ, the Sultan bowed himself in thanks and praise to Allah and Mohammed.

And now we come to the point where the taking of Constantinople and the fall of the Greek Empire touches our literature.

In Constantinople the ancient learning and literature of the Greeks had lived on year after year.  The city was full of scholars who knew, and loved, and studied the Greek authors.  But now, before the terror of the Turk, driven forth by the fear of slavery and disgrace, these Greek scholars fled.  They fled to Italy.  And although in their flight they had to leave goods and wealth behind, the came laden with precious manuscripts from the libraries of Constantinople.

These fugitive Greeks brought to the Italians a learning which was to them new and strange.  Soon all over Europe the news of the New Learning spread.  Then across the Alps scholars thronged from every country in Europe to listen and to learn.