The Fall of Constantinople 1453 by Steven Runciman

For it is here, that the faithful of Constantinople gathered to thank the Mother of God for protecting the City from the Avars. At the Church of the Panaghia (Most Holy Virgin) of Blachernae the Greek words to this hymn are posted on the wall of the Church. This is part of the service of the Akathist Hymn that is sung during Great Lent in the Greek Orthodox Church. Mother of God, have delivered me from terrors But as you have invincible power, Do youįree me From Every Kind of Danger, So that to You I May Cry: Hail, O Bride Unwedded'. 'To you, the Champion leader, Do I, Your City, Ascribe thank offerings of Victory, For you O There is a hymn of the Greek Orthodox Church that is said to have been sung during this crisis,

Led in prayer and devotion by the Patriarch of Constantinople (who was named Sergius) the people of the City rallied around their beloved Patriarch who carried an Icon of the Theotokos (Mother of God) and urged her to preserve the freedom of the City. In 626 AD when Heraclius was away fighting the Persians, another foreign people, the Avars attempted to capture Constantinople. In addition, the True Cross that Christ had been crucified on was liberated from the pagan Persians. Heraclius liberated Jerusalem and avenged the desecration of the site where Jesus Christ had been buried and then resurrected. Having lost Jerusalem to the Persians, and with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre having been desecrated, the Emperor's task was to liberate the Holy Land. This former African General was brought to power in Constantinople and in time restored what had been a declining Empire. The Emperor Heraclius (610-641) who had lost these territories had once been a great and noble man. The Turkish invasion of Anatolia had been a sequel to the original Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire between 632 AD and 641 AD when Egypt, Syria, and Palestine were forever lost to Christendom and subject to the process of Islamicization. The fifty seven year occupation of Constantinople by the Crusaders destroyed the Empire politically and economically.

The second devastating blow occurred in 1204 when the Knights of the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople, massacred its population, and desecrated its Churches in unspeakable ways.

The Fall of Constantinople 1453 by Steven Runciman