in 1453 Had Constaninople NOT fallen do you think that Christian Orthodox would be...?

Question

more influential today than the Roman Catholic Church is?

This is not a question of if you believe in God or not, it is a question of factual historical probability. What do you think would have happened if the Turks had lost and Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire did not dissolve?

I am asking this is both History and R&S to see the differences in answers.

I do not thumb down unless you are rude and cruel other wise I thumb up or not at all.

Thanks for your opinions.

Yes but imagine if they had NOT and they were pushed back and defeated and Constantinople regained its territories and the Turks defeated totally not just keeping their city, their whole empire!! That is what I mean. What do you think then if the Ottomans never went further and lost totally and were destroyed totally? It is a what if, but I am curious.

Answer 1

No, it would have made no real difference. The Muslim states had spread to the gates of south east Europe and were being pushed out of Spain at the time of the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The Empire was a small nation, and the Eastern Church already held sway in Russia.
The bottom line was this. Spain and Portugal went empire building and with it went the Catholic Church. The Eastern Church had no where else to grow.

Answer 2

I see a lot of arguments here about the "inevitability" of the Byzantine Empire's collapse. Whether these arguments are correct or not, I think they miss the point. The Eastern Church did a huge job of evangelizing in its first millennium, with its biggest success being the conversion of the Slavs (Russia, Serbia, etc.) I think this process would have continued if the Ottoman Empire had not moved in. The Ottomans were an impediment to the spread of Orthodoxy because of their religion (Islam), not because of their status as occupiers per se. If they hadn't invaded, the Byzantine lands likely would have been divided among new Roman Catholic and Orthodox dependencies, and Orthodox petty states. This is essentially how the western Europeans responded to invasion from Goths and others. There's no reason to believe that small Orthodox petty states wouldn't eventually organize themselves into regimes capable of large regional influence.

The real irony, though, is that Ottoman occupation is often seen as a major factor to explain the remarkable lack of change of Orthodox theology over the last millennium. It has been argued that the Orthodox focused too much on the preservation of the faith against Islamic influence to have time for major theological wrangling. Also, the Ottoman practice of dividing the administration of ethnic groups would have made it more difficult for new theologies to spread from one ethnic group to another, and thus from one ethnic church to another, further putting the brakes on change. What this all means is that the Orthodox Church may have lost its chance to spread during Ottoman rule, but today it is gaining unlikely converts who find it appealing to stick to ancient traditions in a modern world.

Answer 3

Absolutely not.
If Constantinople had not fallen in 1453 it would have fallen ten years or so later. The geohistorical realities of a feeble Byzantium, a divided Europe, a great and growing ottoman sultanate and a not yet ready Muscovy can't be bucked.
This question is a non-starter.

Answer 4

I'm an Eastern Orthodox convert who has studdied Russian and Blakain history. Since Orthodoxy has never been centralised like Rome the cities don't matter much but as for imperial history I would like to know your scenerio.
First are you talking about the turkish invaders ebing stopped an Anatolia during the Middle ages? In this case there would be very litttle differnce as the trade routes that build constantinople were being cut when trade routes around africa and later the Americas were discovered. The differnce is the Balkains would have become Russian vassel states and history would have been filed with wars between Russia and Hungary. The other way would be if the Coptic schism did not happen as this crippled the Eastern Roman Empire internaly during the Muslim invation and led to the mideastern provines falling to the Muslims like dominos. Now if they had sayed united and kept the Muslims pinned in Arabia and maintained Orthodoxy would be way influential the Greeks and Russians would have had basicly absolute control of the most profitable trade routes in the Midle ages.

Answer 5

1. Constantinople's fall was virtually inevitable. The Byzantine "empire" had long since become pretty much the sick man of Europe (as their successors would become by the nineteeth century). It would probably have fallen fifty years earlier if not for the defeat of the Turks in the east by Timur (Tamerlane). The last emperor pretty much sealed Constantinople's fate by supporting a rival to the Ottoman throne (at least from one source I read). The defenders of the city faced nearly impossible odds in manpower.

2. If by some miracle it had not fallen, it would not have affected the colonization of the Americas and elsewhere by the Spanish, Portuguese, and French -- all Catholic, the Spanish especially and aggressively so, nor the missionary activities of both the colonizers and the Jesuits.

Answer 6

historically, it would have probably made a difference. Had the empire survived, Christian Orthodox would have spread further over a longer period of time.

Answer 7

If you're interested, this is a popular forum for Orthodox Christians, you may find more answers here...

http://christianforums.com/f145-the-ancient-way-eastern-orthodox.html