Riding on rolling platforms and pulled by many oxen, the ships slid over the hill that separated the Bosporus from the Golden Horn, up one side and down the other in the silence of the night. At dawn, sentries in the port discovered to their horror that the Turkish fleet, by some form of magic, was sailing the outlawed waters right under their noses.
From that point forward, the siege, which had been by land, was also by sea, and the final massacre reddened the rain.
Many Christians sought refuge in the immense cathedral of Saint Sophia, which nine centuries previous had sprung from Empress Theodora’s delirium. That throng of Christians expected an angel to come down from heaven and chase the invaders out with his fiery sword.
No angel came.
Sultan Mehmet did. He entered the cathedral mounted on his white horse and turned it into the main mosque of the city now known as Istanbul.
THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE
A number of years had passed since the fall of Constantinople when Martin Luther warned that Satan resided not only among the Turks and Moors, but “in our own home: in the bread we eat, in the water we drink, in the clothes we wear, and in the air we breathe.”
Thus it was and thus it remains.
Centuries later, in the year 1982, the devil, in the form of a housewife who howled and slithered along the floor, dared to visit the Vatican, obliging Pope John Paul II to wage hand-to-hand combat with the evil one. He warded off the intruder by reciting the demon-killing exorcisms of another pope, Urban VIII, who chased from the head of Galileo Galilei the devilish notion that the arth revolved around the sun.
When the devil appeared in the form of an intern in the Oval Office, President Bill Clinton spurned such an antiquated Catholic methodology. He frightened off the evil one by unleashing a three-month torrent of missiles on Yugoslavia.
SHE WALKS LIKE AN ANGEL
Venus turned up one morning in the city of Sienna. They found her lying naked in the sun.
The city paid homage to the marble goddess buried during the Roman Empire, who had favored them by emerging from the depths of the earth.
She was offered the pinnacle of the city’s principal fountain as her home.
No one tired of gazing at her; everyone wanted to touch her.
But soon came war and its horrors, and Sienna was attacked and looted. In its session of November 7, 1357, the municipal council decided Venus was to blame. God had sent misfortune as punishment for the sin of idolatry. And the council ordered Venus, that invitation to lust, destroyed, and the pieces buried in the hated city of Florence.
In Florence, a hundred and thirty years later, another Venus was born from the hand of Sandro Botticelli. The artist painted her rising from the foam of the sea, with no more clothing than her skin.
And a decade later, when the monk Savonarola built his great bonfire of purification, it is said that Botticelli himself, repenting the sins of his brushes, fed the flames with some of the diabolical pranks he had painted in his youth.
With Venus, he could not.
DEVILCIDE
The great beak of a bird of prey crowned his figure wrapped in a long black cloak. Underneath the cloak, a horsehair shirt tormented his skin.
God’s wrath roared in his sermons. Father Girolamo Savonarola terrified, threatened, punished. His eloquence set the churches of Florence ablaze: he exhorted children to inform on their sinning parents, he denounced homosexuals and adulterous women hiding from the Inquisition, and he demanded that carnival be turned into a time of penance.
Pulpits burned with his holy ire, and in the piazza of the seigniory burned the bonfire of the vanities, stirred up night and day by his words. Ladies renounced pleasure and threw their jewelry, perfumes, and potions into the fire, alongside lascivious paintings and books that exalted the libertine life.
At the end of the fifteenth century, Savonarola too was tossed into the flames. Unable to control him, the Church
From that point forward, the siege, which had been by land, was also by sea, and the final massacre reddened the rain.
Many Christians sought refuge in the immense cathedral of Saint Sophia, which nine centuries previous had sprung from Empress Theodora’s delirium. That throng of Christians expected an angel to come down from heaven and chase the invaders out with his fiery sword.
No angel came.
Sultan Mehmet did. He entered the cathedral mounted on his white horse and turned it into the main mosque of the city now known as Istanbul.
THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE
A number of years had passed since the fall of Constantinople when Martin Luther warned that Satan resided not only among the Turks and Moors, but “in our own home: in the bread we eat, in the water we drink, in the clothes we wear, and in the air we breathe.”
Thus it was and thus it remains.
Centuries later, in the year 1982, the devil, in the form of a housewife who howled and slithered along the floor, dared to visit the Vatican, obliging Pope John Paul II to wage hand-to-hand combat with the evil one. He warded off the intruder by reciting the demon-killing exorcisms of another pope, Urban VIII, who chased from the head of Galileo Galilei the devilish notion that the arth revolved around the sun.
When the devil appeared in the form of an intern in the Oval Office, President Bill Clinton spurned such an antiquated Catholic methodology. He frightened off the evil one by unleashing a three-month torrent of missiles on Yugoslavia.
SHE WALKS LIKE AN ANGEL
Venus turned up one morning in the city of Sienna. They found her lying naked in the sun.
The city paid homage to the marble goddess buried during the Roman Empire, who had favored them by emerging from the depths of the earth.
She was offered the pinnacle of the city’s principal fountain as her home.
No one tired of gazing at her; everyone wanted to touch her.
But soon came war and its horrors, and Sienna was attacked and looted. In its session of November 7, 1357, the municipal council decided Venus was to blame. God had sent misfortune as punishment for the sin of idolatry. And the council ordered Venus, that invitation to lust, destroyed, and the pieces buried in the hated city of Florence.
In Florence, a hundred and thirty years later, another Venus was born from the hand of Sandro Botticelli. The artist painted her rising from the foam of the sea, with no more clothing than her skin.
And a decade later, when the monk Savonarola built his great bonfire of purification, it is said that Botticelli himself, repenting the sins of his brushes, fed the flames with some of the diabolical pranks he had painted in his youth.
With Venus, he could not.
DEVILCIDE
The great beak of a bird of prey crowned his figure wrapped in a long black cloak. Underneath the cloak, a horsehair shirt tormented his skin.
God’s wrath roared in his sermons. Father Girolamo Savonarola terrified, threatened, punished. His eloquence set the churches of Florence ablaze: he exhorted children to inform on their sinning parents, he denounced homosexuals and adulterous women hiding from the Inquisition, and he demanded that carnival be turned into a time of penance.
Pulpits burned with his holy ire, and in the piazza of the seigniory burned the bonfire of the vanities, stirred up night and day by his words. Ladies renounced pleasure and threw their jewelry, perfumes, and potions into the fire, alongside lascivious paintings and books that exalted the libertine life.
At the end of the fifteenth century, Savonarola too was tossed into the flames. Unable to control him, the Church
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