A castle on a hill.

You may know that I like castles about as much as Mark likes ballet, i.e. not very much. This castle, however, interests me and for a change, its me who is itching to go and see it. It's hard to make out on this photo, but the castle, successively built by the Hittites, the Galatians, the Romans, the Byzantines and finally the Otomans, is in the middle of the picture on the top of the hill. The morning sun has caught the outlying castle walls at least half way down the hill, just behind the blocks of flats on the right half of the picture. I kind of wandered into Byzantine studies during my master's degree in medieval studies. Apparently no one sets out to study Byzantium or the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, the capital of which was Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul. The Western half of the Empire fell, but in the East, the Empire continued for another thousand years. We refer to it as the Byzantine Empire; they called themselves Romans. I needed to find a dissertation topic and Mark suggested that as we were going to Turkey, I might as well researach something Byzantine. My interest was originally caught by a work of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, whose sons were the last Byzantine Emperors, called 'Dialogue with a Persian'....it is more of an argument with a Persian Muslim against his religion. My supervisor advised against it as most of it hasn't been translated into English. I ended up studying Manuel's letter collection of sixty-six letters and discovered a latent love for Byzantine literature. Manuel actually wrote his Dialogue and about eight of his letters in the castle in Ankara at the end of the fourteenth century. At the time he was being forced to fight with the Ottomans against other Turkish tribes. Unfortunately I have had to return my beloved copy of Manuel's letters, but what I most remember about the ones written from Ankara, was Manuel's terrible sadness at the destruction of a previously spectacular Empire. Cities that had been renowned at the height of the Empire had been razed to the ground and could hardlly be found. What resonates with me is that Manuel was living at the change of an era, the medieval period was just about to give way to the Renaissance. I have heard it said recently that we are not living in an era of change but rather the change of an era. Manuel did everything he could to revive Byzantium, but something bigger was going on. I believe that the modern world as we know it is passing away and something new is coming that we can't see yet. Manuel did not perceive that the Renaissance would lead to movements that would produce vibrant renewed faith, neither could he foresee the possibility of continuity of worship in the Greek Orthodox Church under Islamic rule. With regards to Christian faith worldwide, who could have perceived the possibility of fast-growing vibrant churches in persecuted lands, especially as it had been expected that with the removal of Western dominance, Christian faith would decline. The Church worldwide is beginning to look very different from the Church of the British Empire and here in Turkey I may be able to get a glimpse of something that is coming but hasn't yet fully taken shape.