On the third day of the conquest, Mehmed II ordered all looting to stop and sent his troops back outside the city walls.[28] Byzantine historian George Sphrantzes, an eyewitness to the fall of Constantinople, described the Sultan's actions:[88][89]
“
On the
third day after the fall of our city, the Sultan celebrated his victory
with a great, joyful triumph. He issued a proclamation: the citizens of
all ages who had managed to escape detection were to leave their hiding
places throughout the city and come out into the open, as they to were
to remain free and no question would be asked. He further declared the
restoration of houses and property to those who had abandoned our city
before the siege, if they returned home, they would be treated according
to their rank and religion, as if nothing had changed.
”
The Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, but under Ottoman millet system, the Greek Orthodox Church remained intact and Gennadius Scholarius appointed Patriarch of Constantinople.
Following the city's conquest, the Church of the Holy Wisdom (the Hagia Sophia) was converted into a mosque.
The Morean (Peloponnesian) fortress of Mystras, where Constantine's brothers Thomas and Demetrius
ruled, constantly in conflict with each other and knowing that Mehmed
would eventually invade them as well, held out until 1460. Long before
the fall of Constantinople, Demetrius had fought for the throne with
Thomas, Constantine, and their other brothers John and Theodore.[90]
Thomas escaped to Rome when the Ottomans invaded Morea while Demetrius
expected to rule a puppet state, but instead was imprisoned and remained
there for the rest of his life. In Rome, Thomas and his family received
some monetary support from the Pope and other Western rulers as
Byzantine emperor in exile, until 1503. In 1461 the independent
Byzantine state in Trebizond fell to Mehmed.[90]
Constantine XI
had died without producing an heir, and had Constantinople not fallen
he likely would have been succeeded by the sons of his deceased elder
brother, who were taken into the palace service of Mehmed after the fall
of Constantinople. The oldest boy, rechristened as Murad, became a
personal favorite of Mehmed and served as Beylerbey (Governor-General)
of Rumeli (the Balkans). The younger son, renamed Mesih Pasha,
became Admiral of the Ottoman fleet and Sancak Beg (Governor) of the
Province of Gallipoli. He eventually served twice as Grand Vizier under
Mehmed's son, Bayezid II.[91]
With the capture of Constantinople, Mehmed II had acquired the
"natural" capital of its kingdom, albeit one in decline due to years of
war. The conquest of the Byzantine Empire removed a foe to the rear of
the Ottoman advance into Europe. The loss of the city was a crippling
blow to Christendom, and it exposed the Christian west to a vigorous and
aggressive foe in the east. Pope Nicholas V
called for an immediate counter-attack in the form of a crusade. When
no European monarch was willing to lead the crusade, the Pope himself
decided to go, but his early death stopped this plan.
For some time Greek scholars had gone to Italian city-states, a cultural exchange begun in 1396 by Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence, who had invited Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine scholar to lecture at the University of Florence.[92] After the conquest many Greeks, such as John Argyropoulos and Constantine Lascaris, fled the city and found refuge in the Latin West, bringing with them knowledge and documents from the Greco-Roman tradition to Italy and other regions that further propelled the Renaissance.[93][94] Those Greeks who stayed behind in Constantinople mostly lived in the Phanar and Galata districts of the city. The Phanariotes, as they were called, provided many capable advisers to the Ottoman rulers.
The fall of Constantinople and general encroachment of the Turks in that region also severed the main overland trade link between Europe and Asia, and as a result more Europeans began to seriously consider the possibility of reaching Asia by sea,[95] as was the case with Columbus’s travel to the Americas in 1492, and Vasco da Gama’s circumnavigation of India and Africa in
