The culture war is no place for cartoons and comic heroes
In 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror set out to do what no other Ottoman Sultan had done: capture Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire’s capital had been besieged numerous times, but had only been captured once before by Christians during the Fourth Crusade of 1204. For days, the Turks threw everything at the city, but the heavily fortified walls would not fall. Meanwhile, a strange debate was taking place inside the imperial city. Byzantine senators and philosophers were engaged in a heated debate: not about how to shore up their defences and protect the public, but something rather different: the sex of angels. Were they male or female? A few days later, the walls were breached and everyone was killed, effectively marking the end of the last remains of the Roman empire.
