Note 373 — Chapter XV

The accounts of this light (or darkness), which alarmed both sides, are somewhat conflicting. Perhaps here also Critobulus is the safest guide. In chapter xlvi. he mentions the religious procession already described, where the statue of the Virgin falls, and says it was ‘three or four days before the attack.’ Immediately after came torrential rains with vivid flashes of lightning. Then, ‘the next day,’ there was a thick fog lasting till evening. Barbaro speaks of a darkness, due, judging from his description, to an eclipse of the moon, lasting from the first to the sixth hour after sunset, as being on the 22nd. This alarmed the Greeks, he says, because of an ancient prophecy which declared that Constantinople should not be lost until the moon should give a sign in the heavens. Phrantzes (page 264) says: φῶς ἀστράπτον καταβαῖνον ἐξ οὐρανῶν καὶ δι’ ὅλης τῆς νυκτὸς ἄνωθεν τῆς πόλεως ἑστὸς διέσκεπεν αὐτήν. Possibly both Phrantzes and Barbaro have the same atmospheric night effects in view: that is, that there were frequent flashes of lightning during the night so long as the eclipse lasted. The statement of Pusculus, who was in the city at the time, has already been quoted. See p. 297, ante. The account of Critobulus appears clear, but it does not eliminate the miraculous, for he declares that many persons, both Romans and foreigners, declared that they had seen the Divinity hiding Himself in the clouds.