68 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 274. 



terrors of divine judgment and irresistible fate ; 

 and spreading from mind to mind with a rapidity 

 proportioned to its plausibility, gathers strength 

 from its very diffusion, till at length with the ac- 

 cumulated impetus of the avalanche, it crushes its 

 victim in its resistless course. Thus the pro- 

 phecies which relate to this city, and which seem 

 to have been adopted by its successive occupiers 

 as a baneful charge upon the inheritance, testify, 

 from their number and their purport, how uncer- 

 tain, whether Greek, Latin, or Turk, they felt 

 their tenure to be. That, for instance, may be 

 cited of the Emperor Heraclius, related by B,i- 

 gord ( Vie de Philippe- Auguste, collection Guizot, 

 torn. xi. pp. 29, 30.), that the Roman dominion 

 would be destroyed by a circumcised nation, erro- 

 neously supposed by him to be the Jews ; and that 

 this nation, who turned out to be the Saracens, 

 should, as farther predicted by the martyr Me- 

 thodius, make another irruption at the time of the 

 coming of Antichrist, and overspreading the face 

 of the world, punish the perverseness of Christians, 

 by the perpetration of unheard-of atrocities for 

 the period of eight octaves of years. Then there 

 is the cloud of sinister predictions which darkened 

 the reign of the last emperor Constantine Dra- 

 goses ; the portentous oracle of the Erythraean 

 sybil adduced by Leonard of Chios, and cited by 

 Hammer ; and the answer given by a soothsayer 

 to Michael Palaeologus, who was anxious to know 

 if the empire which he had usurped would be 

 peacably enjoyed by his descendants : 



" L'oracle lui repondit, Mamaini, mot qui ne sigmfie 

 rien par lui-meme, mais qui fut expliqu^ par le devin de 

 cette sorte : L'empire sera posse'd^ par autant de vos de- 

 scendants qu'il y a des lettres dans ce mot barbare. Puis il 

 sera 6t^ de votre post^rit^ de la ville de Constantinople." 

 — Diicas, ch. 42. 



Finally the predicted event took place, and the 

 Turks seized upon the doomed city, accomplishing 

 a prophecy in the manner of their triumphant 

 entry : 



" Par suite d'une proph^tie analogue on avait bouch^ la 

 porte du Cirque. La veille de la prise de Constantinople 

 par Mahomet II. I'empereur Constantin I'avait fait ouvrir 

 pour faciliter une sortie, et par une fatale impr^voyance, 

 elle n'avait pas ^te' refermee. Ce fut par 1^ que les Turcs 

 86 precipitferent dans la ville." — Lalanne, Curiositis de 

 Traditions, §-c., Paris, 1847, p. 36. 



The same author records another prediction, 

 which possesses a present interest, inasmuch, 

 though once supposed to bode evil to the Greeks, 

 it is now, as is asserted, applied by the Turks to 

 themselves : 



" Suivant Raoul de Dicet, historien anglais, dent la 

 chronique ne s'^tend pas au-delk de 1199, la porte d'Or k 

 Constantinople, par laquelle entraient les triomphateurs, 

 portait cette prophetie: Quand viendra le roi blond 

 de rOccident, je m'ouvrirai de moi-meme ! Ce ne fut 

 pourtant pas par cette porte que les Latins p^n^trferent 

 dans la ville en 1204, car la crainte des propheties qui la 

 concemaient I'avait fait murer depuis longtemps. Au- 



jourd'hui les Turcs se sent appliqu^ la tradition, qui, 

 jadis, effrayait les Grecs; ils croient fermement que la 

 porte d'Or livrera un jour passage aux Chretiens qui 

 doivent, comme ils en sont persuades, finir par reconquerir 

 laville." — JWd., p.36. 



"We now come to the celebrated prophecy of 

 the equestrian statue in the square of Taurus, so 

 emphatically recorded by the sceptical Gibbon as 

 of unquestionable purport and antiquity. la 

 chap. Iv. of the Decline and Fall, we read, — 



" The memory of these Arctic fleets, that seemed to de- 

 scend from the polar circle, left a deep impression on the 

 imperial city. By the vulgar of every rank it was as- 

 serted and believed, that an equestrian statue in the 

 square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with a prophecy, 

 how the Russians in the last days should become masters 

 of Constantinople " 



To this the historian adds a conjecture, the verifi- 

 cation of which we trust is still distant : 



" Perhaps the present generation may yet behold the 

 accomplishment of the prediction, — of a rare prediction, of 

 which the style is unambiguous, and the date unquestion- 

 able." — Declint and FaU, Milman's ed. 1846, vol. v. 

 p. 312. 



A reference to the Byzantine and monkish au- 

 thorities cited by Gibbon in his note to the above, 

 may lead, so far as their obscure phraseology can 

 be understood, to a different opinion as to the 

 purport of this prophecy ; as, however, its value 

 and meaning have already been discussed in 

 Fraser's Magazine, July, 1854, p. 25., to which 

 the reader is referred, farther remarks are here 

 unnecessary. It is doubtless the same prophecy 

 that Dr. Walsh records in his Journey from Con~ 

 stantinnple to England, London, Svo., 1828, p. 50. 



The opinion of a Frenchman a century ago will 

 appear in striking contrast with those of his coun- 

 trymen at the present day ; whose future co-ope- 

 ration in preventing the fulfilment of his prediction 

 was a circumstance which he did not foresee in 

 his philosophic previsions. In a letter to the 

 Empress of Russia, dated 21st Sept. 1770, Vol- 

 taire writes, — 



"J'ai dit il y a longtemps, que, si jamais l'empire 

 Turc est d^truit, ce sera par la Russie ; men auguste Im- 

 p^ratrice accomplira son prediction. . . . Je ne suis 

 pas surpris que votre ame, faite pour toutes les grandes 

 choses, prenne gout h, une pareille guerre. Je crois vos 

 troupes de debarquement revenues en Grfece, et vos flottes 

 de la Mer Noire menaijant les environs de Constanti- 

 nople ? " 



In a subsequent letter : 



" Pour peu que vous tardiez h vous asseoir sur le trone 

 de Stamboul, il n'y aura pas mo}'en que je sois t^moin de 

 ce petit triomphe. . . . J'espfere que votre Majesty 

 chassera bientot de Stamboul la paste et les Turcs." 



To this the imperial correspondent briefly re- 

 marks : 



" Pour ce qui regarde la prise de Constantinople, je ne 

 la crois pas si prochaine. Cependant il ne faut, dit-on, 

 d^sesperer de rien." 



