The Ottoman empire, Byzantium and Western Christianity the implications of the siege of Belgrade, 1456

The siege of Nándorfehérvár/Belgrade, the key stronghold of the southern defence system of mediaeval Hungary, was not an “ordinary” battle between the Ottomans and Hungarians; rather, it was a decisive clash which essentially influenced the subsequent history of Europe and Islam. As such, it can be seen as a symbolic point of contact and impact of three “civilisations”: the Ottoman/Islamic, the Byzantine (which by then had been largely incorporated into the former) and the Latin common-wealths. The importance of the Ottoman threat notwithstanding, only the remains of the Latin respublica christiana attempted to halt the conquerors’ intent of devouring the entire respublica . By their victory, the defenders rendered enormous service to the entire Latin world by allowing it to pursue its history by its own inner logic rather than by the logic of compulsions and threats such as those that governed Hungary.