1456, Popes, Dukes and Soultans

1456 Kingdom of Hungary
An unknown star lead the Magi halfway across the Orient
to the little town of Bethlehem, a past mystery, and also the present.

Was the star of Bethlehem, the Halley's Comet or not?
The astronomers studied the matter a lot...

Nobody was able to confirm this until today,
every study and research ended up in complete dismay.

The first known observation of Halley's took place in 239 B.C.
Chinese astronomers recorded its passage in the Chi Shih.

It is a "periodic" comet and returns
to Earth's vicinity about every 75 years, (causing concerns)
making it possible for a human
to see it twice in his lifetime, third if superhuman !

In 1456 mathematicians declared that there would follow grievous pestilence...
Pope Calixtus said this is wrath of God and this star is the evidence.

It was the year of Halley's apparition....

This year Turks invaded
       [the Kingdom of Hungary with ambition,
to dominate all of Europe,
              [forever and absolutely,
and to enforce obedience brutally....

Calixtus, to avert the wrath of God, ordered
                [supplications with purpose and aim
turn all evils upon the Turks, the enemies of the Christian name....

A Cardinal had been sent by the Vatican to preach a crusade.

The Turks rather surprised by the crusaders raid,
retreated in panic and very dismayed.

Belgrade was saved and the besieged with gratitude prayed...

Later that year, a Papal fleet under the command of the Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan,
arrived in the northern Aegean Sea and defeated and chased each Turκ and Asian.

   1456 The Duchy of Athens

In 1456, after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire,
they attacked the Crusader States that were set up after the conquest
                                                                [of the Eastern Roman Empire...

Duchy of Athens was one of the Crusader States...

The Turks easily defeated Duke of Athens,
                            [Francesco Acciaioli and his mates,
who barricaded themselves in the Acropolis where
                           [they were besieged for three years.

Acciaioli's surrender to the Ottoman conquerors
                                                             [just veers...

                                                              to be continued

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''COULD IT BE OTHERWISE  in verse''  
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//

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* The Duchy of Athens, The Acciaioli, Acciaiuoli, Accioly or Acciajuoli was an important family of Florence.
Family name is also written Acciaioli, Acciainoli, or Accioly, Accioli and Acyoly in Portugal and Brazil, where there are branches of it. Descent can be traced in an unbroken line from one Gugliarello Acciaioli in the 12th century; family legend says that Gugliarello (a name possibly derived from It. guglia, needle) migrated from Brescia to Florence in 1160 because they were Guelphs and fled Barbarossa's invasion of Northern Italy. The Acciaioli founded a powerful bank in the 13th century (Compagna di Ser Leone degli Acciaioli e de' suoi consorti) which had branches from Greece to Western Europe. Bishop Angiolo Acciaioli briefly ruled Florence in the mid-14th century after the deposition of Gauthier de Brienne. Later they associated themselves to the Albizzi and then to the elder Medici in the 15th century. From about 1390 to 1460 they ruled the Duchy of Athens and kept close ties with the younger branch of the Medici through the marriage of Laudomia Acciaioli to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, from which the later Grand Dukes of Tuscany are descended, as well as several royal houses. In Florence, the Lungarno degli Acciaioli borders the Arno from the Ponte Vecchio to the Ponte Santa Trinita.
Simone di Zanobi Acciaioli migrated before 1512 to the island of Madeira where he represented the family's commercial interests. The Portuguese and Brazilian Accioly or Accioli family is descended from him.


* Kingdom of Hungary, The siege of Belgrade by Ottoman Sultan Mehmet (Mohammed) II the Conqueror in the summer of 1456 aroused considerable contemporary attention and has remained an event of great interest to historians ever since. The fall of that fortress city, less than three years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, could have opened the gates of the European heartland to the Turks, and that would certainly have changed the history of the world. The battle for Belgrade also witnessed the emergence of the first peasant movements in Hungary, then one of the most powerful states of Christendom. The appearance of large numbers of armed peasants in Transylvania in 1437­-1438 signaled both a peak in the cycle of peasant discontent and a prelude to several minor rebellions–and one major one.
Peasants had taken up arms soon after the disastrous crusade of Sigismund, emperor of Germany and king of Hungary, against the Turks in 1396. Sigismund’s army had been annihilated by a numerically superior–and better led–Ottoman force. That defeat pointed to the elementary need for Hungary to increase the size of its armies. But the pool from which soldiers had generally been recruited in the past, the mass of lesser nobility, was already reduced in size–partly by the Black Death, and partly due to the gradual impoverishment of that stratum of Hungarian society. Many of the lesser nobles could no longer afford the expensive armor, weapons and horses necessary for late-medieval warfare. The Hungarians thus recognized that they had to turn to a relatively untapped source, the peasantry, to reman their armies.
So it was that an army comprised mostly of peasants defended Belgrade and Christendom in the summer of 1456 against Mehmet II’s Turkish host. The leader of that hodge-podge army was legendary Hungarian General János Hunyadi.
Hunyadi’s name may not be widely known in the West, but his memory has been honored since 1456, albeit unknowingly, in Catholic countries all over the world, by the ringing of church bells every day at noon.

 ELEGHOS... at history