Constantinople E-Book

William Holden Hutton

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A word of introduction is necessary to explain the nature of this sketch of the history of Constantinople. It is the holiday-task, very pleasant to him, of a College don, to whom there is no city in the world so impressive and so fascinating as the ancient home of the Caesars of the East.

Leseprobe

William Holden Hutton

Constantinople

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG80331 Munich

Constantinople

The Story of the old Capital of the Empire

By

William Holden Hutton

Illustrated by

Sydney Cooper

Interior of S. Sophia. Showing the Sultan's pew and the stairs to the pulpit.

This superb successor of the earth's mistress, as thou vainly speakest, stands 'midst these ages as, on the wide ocean, the last spared fragment of a spacious land, that in some grand and awful ministration of mighty nature has engulfed been, doth lift aloft its dark and rocky cliffs o'er the wild waste around, and sadly frowns in lonely majesty.

I was the daughter of Imperial Rome, crowned by her Empress of the mystic east: Most Holy Wisdom chose me for her home sealed me Truth's regent, and High Beauty's priest. Lo! When fate struck with hideous flame and sword, far o'er the new world's life my grace was poured.

PREFACE

A word of introduction is necessary to explain the nature of this sketch of the history of Constantinople. It is the holiday-task, very pleasant to him, of a College don, to whom there is no city in the world so impressive and so fascinating as the ancient home of the Caesars of the East.

It is not intended to supersede the indispensable Murray. For a city so great, in which there is so much to see, a guide-book full of practical details is absolutely necessary. For this I can refer the reader, with entire confidence, to Murray's Hand-book—and to nothing else. But I think everyone who visits Constantinople feels the need of some sketch of its long and wonderful history. I have myself often felt the need as I wandered about the city, or spent a long evening, during the cold spring, in the hotel. I have endeavoured, as best I could, to supply what I have myself wanted. I do not pretend to have written a history of the city "from the earliest times to the present day" from the mass of original authorities of which I know something. I have used the works of the best modern writers freely, and I should like here, once for all, to express my obligations. I may venture to say that the list of books I here insert will be found useful by anyone who wishes to go further into the history than my little book is able to take him. The ordinary standard books are Professor Bury's edition of Gibbon; Mr Tozer's edition of Finlay's History of Greece; Professor Bury's History of the Later Empire; Von Hammer's History of the Turks; and the Vicomte de la Jonquière's sketch of the same subject.

The authorities, in detail, for the history and topography of the city are admirably summed up in Herr Eugen Oberhummer's contribution to the Pauly-Wissowas Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, band iv., which can be purchased separately as a "Sonder-Abdruck." Among the books which I have found especially useful I must mention first Professor van Millingen's Byzantine Constantinople, The Walls, etc.; the Broken Bits of Byzantium, by Mrs Walker and the late Rev. C. G. Curtis, to whose kindness I owe very much, a book which is now very rarely to be met with, and ought certainly to be republished; Bayet, L'Art Byzantin; Kraus, Geschichte der Christlichen Kunst; Lethaby and Swainson, S. Sophia; Grosvenor, Constantinople; Paspates, The Great Palace of Constantinople. Among histories of particular periods there are none more useful than Pears' Conquest of Constantinople, and Mijatovich, Constantine the last Emperor of the Greeks. Among a mass of interesting and important articles I should like to note that on Les Débuts du Monachisme à Constantinople, by M. Pargoire in the Revue des questions historiques, Jan. 1899.

The texts of the original authorities may be read in the Bonn edition, and some of them, happily, in Professor Bury's admirable collection of Byzantine texts, of which I have found the three volumes already published most useful. I have referred in Chapter VII. to the work of Gyllius, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of the mediaeval city.

I have referred to a great number of books of travel, as may be seen; it is impossible here to particularise them all.

The limits of the series have compelled me to confine myself chiefly to the story of Constantinople as a mediaeval town. Thus I have been reluctantly compelled to leave out much that I should have liked to say about Skutari, the Bosphorus and its palaces, and the present social life and religious observances, the Dervishes, the "Sweet Waters," and many familiar names.

For the same reason, I have dwelt very briefly on much that is of great interest. I would gladly, for instance, have said more about Iconoclasm, and something about that great theologian, S. Theodore of the Studium.

Practically, I may add that the advice of Murray's Guide is always to be taken; personally I have always found the Hotel Bristol most comfortable in every way, and I have no occasion to commend any other hotel, because I have never felt tempted to leave it. It has had varied fortunes, but it is at its best, I think, as managed by Herr H. Güllering. I have myself found a dragoman, except for the first day, unnecessary; but I can strongly recommend Eustathios Livathinos as a most pleasant companion. Jacob Moses has also much experience.

I should add that in my spelling of names I have usually adopted, for simplicity, the common use; but I fear I have not even been uniform.

I owe very much to the kind offices of Lord Currie and of Sir Nicholas O'Connor, Her Majesty's Ambassadors in 1896 and 1899, and to several members of the Embassy, with a very special debt of gratitude to Mr Fitzmaurice, C.M.G. I can never forget the kindness of the late Canon C. G. Curtis, whose death in 1896 was so great a loss to the British community in Constantinople, to archaeology, and to religion.

In several instances photographs taken by my friend, Mr J. W. Milligan, who was in Constantinople in 1896, have been of not a little use to my friend, the Rev. Sydney Cooper, to whose illustrations this book will owe very much more than half its interest.

W. H. HUTTON.

The Great House, Burford, Oxon, S. Mark's Day, 1900.

TABLE OF EMPERORS

CHAPTER I. The History of the City in ancient and mediaeval times

1. Byzantium Before Constantine.

It is impossible to approach Constantinople without seeing the beauty and the wonder of its site. Whether you pass rapidly down the Bosphorus, between banks crowned with towers and houses and mosques, that stretch away hither and thither to distant hills, now bleak, now crowned with dark cypress groves; or up from the Sea of Marmora, watching the dome of S. Sophia that glitters above the closely packed houses, till you turn the point which brings you to the Golden Horn, crowded with shipping and bright with the flags of many nations; or even if you come overland by the sandy wastes along the shore, looking across the deep blue of the sea to the islands and the snow-crowned mountains of Asia, till you break through the crumbling wall within sight of the Golden Gate, and find yourself at a step deep in the relics of the middle ages; you cannot fail to wonder at the splendour of the view which meets your eyes. Sea, sunlight, the quaint houses that stand close upon the water's edge, the white palaces, the crowded quays, and the crowning glory of the Eastern domes and the mediaeval walls—these are the elements that combine to impress, and the impression is never lost. Often as you may see again the approach to the imperial city, its splendour and dignity and the exquisite beauty of colour and light will exert their old charm, and as you put foot in the New Rome you will feel all the glamour of the days that are gone by.

SERAGLIO POINT AFTER SUNSET

So of old the Greeks who founded the city dwelt lovingly on the contrast of sea and land here meeting, and hymned the nymphs of wave and spring, the garden by the shore.

"Where ocean bathes earth's footstool these sea-bowers bedeck its solid wavelets: wise was he who blended shore with deep, with seaweed flowers, and Naiads' rivulets with Nereids' sea."

Strictly speaking the peninsula on which the city stands is of the form of a trapezium. It juts out into the sea, beating back as it were the fierce waves of the Bosphorus, and forcing them to turn aside from their straight course and widen into the Sea of Marmora, which the ancients called the Propontis, narrowing again as it forces its way between the near banks of the Hellespont, which rise abrupt and arid from the European side, and slope gently away in Asia to the foot of Mount Ida. Northwards there is the little bay of the Golden Horn, an arm as it were of the Bosphorus, into which run the streams which the Turks call the Sweet Waters of Europe. The mouth of the harbour is no more than five hundred yards across. The Greeks of the Empire spanned it by a chain, supported here and there on wooden piles, fragments of which still remain in the Armoury that was once the church of S. Irene. Within is safe anchorage in one of the finest harbours of the world.

South of the Golden Horn, on the narrow tongue of land—narrow it seems as seen from the hills of the northern shore—is the city of Constantine and his successors in empire, seated, like the old Rome, on seven hills, and surrounded on three sides by sea, on the fourth by the still splendid, though shattered, mediaeval walls. Northwards are the two towns, now linked together, of Pera and Galata, that look back only to the trading settlements of the Middle Ages.

The single spot united, as Gibbon puts it, the prospects of beauty, of safety, and of wealth: and in a masterly description that great historian has collected the features which made the position, "formed by Nature for the centre and capital of a great monarchy," attractive to the first colonists, and evident to Constantine as the centre where he could best combine and command the power of the Eastern half of his mighty Empire.

THERAPIA

"Situated in the forty-first degree of latitude, the imperial city commanded, from her seven hills, the opposite shores of Europe and Asia; the climate was healthy and temperate, the soil fertile, the harbour secure and capacious, and the approach on the side of the continent was of small extent and easy defence. The Bosphorus and Hellespont may be considered as the two gates of Constantinople, and the prince who possessed those important passages could always shut them against a naval enemy and open them to the fleets of commerce. The preservation of the eastern provinces may, in some degree, be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the barbarians of the Euxine, who in the preceding age had poured their armaments into the heart of the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and despaired of forcing this insurmountable barrier. When the gates of the Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed, within their spacious enclosure, every production which would supply the wants, or gratify the luxury, of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coast of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of the Turkish oppression, still exhibits a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens, and of plentiful harvests; and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of the most exquisite fish, that are taken in their stated seasons without skill, and almost without labour. But when the passages of the straits were thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and artificial riches of the north and south, of the Euxine, and of the Mediterranean. Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and Scythia, as far as the sources of the Tanais and the Borysthenes; whatsoever was manufactured by the skill of Europe or Asia; the corn of Egypt, and the gems and spices of the farthest India; were brought by the varying winds into the port of Constantinople, which for many ages attracted the commerce of the ancient world."

There is no wonder that legend should surround the beginnings of the imperial city of the East. Men from Argos and Megara under the navigator Byzas founded it about 657 B.C. But mythology made the founder the son of Neptune the sea god, and said that Io, changed into a heifer, swam across the narrow strait that divides Europe from Asia, and so gave it the name of Bosphorus, which means literally Oxford. The Delphic oracle told men to settle "opposite the land of the blind," for blind were those men of Megara who some years before had chosen Chalcedon on the Asiatic shore instead of the matchless site on which rose the city of Byzantium.

The early history can be briefly told. Byzantium was the first of the cities of Europe to fall into the hands of Darius. It was burned to the ground by the Persians, rescued and rebuilt by Pausanias, was threatened by the Ten Thousand on their retreat, and saved by the eloquence of Xenophon. Two years it was besieged by Philip of Macedon, and was saved by the Athenians. When Rome first showed her power in those lands Byzantium was her ally; but her chequered fortunes ended their first epoch with destruction at the hands of Septimius Severus in 196 A.D. She waited then for a century till her real founder came. Byzantine coins go back as far as the fifth century B.C., and there were in the early Middle Ages many surviving memorials of pre-Christian times; of these there are now left only the striking Corinthian column standing on a high granite base in the garden of the old Seraglio, which almost certainly commemorates a victory of the Emperor Claudius Gothicus, some parts of the foundations of the Hippodrome, an inscription in the Doric dialect which formerly stood in the Stadium, and that wonderful serpent column, which only came, it is true, to the city after Constantine rebuilt it, but which was centuries before in the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

2. From Constantine to Justinian.

The true history of the city begins with Constantine the Great. It is said that he hesitated at first, like the men of Megara, between Byzantium and Chalcedon, when he came to choose a spot from which to rule the East. But when he chose aright he founded a city which has endured to this day, and which it is inconceivable should ever be deserted again. The site on which he built is about four miles long, broadening from less than a mile where it fronts the Bosphorus to four miles from where the Marble Tower now stands to the Golden Horn. Seven hills and six valleys diversify the ground. The seven hills as we see them now stretch thus from east to west. First is that irregular elevation ending at Seraglio Point, on which stand the buildings of the old Seraglio, S. Irene, S. Sophia, the great mosque of Sultan Ahmed, and the Hippodrome. Second, and north-west of it, is the hill on which stands the column of Constantine himself, now burned and broken. On the third stands the great tower by the War Office (Seraskierat), the mosques of Bayezid and Suleiman. A valley descends northwards to the Golden Horn; and across it runs the Aqueduct of Valens, and on the other side is the hill marked by the mosque of Mohammed the Conqueror. The fifth hill stretches from the fourth almost to the Golden Horn, and on it stands the mosque of Selim. The sixth hill, divided from the fifth by a valley ascending from the Golden Horn, has now the ruins of the palace called by the people "the House of Belisarius," and the seventh extends from the south of the Adrianople Gate to the Sea of Marmora. As the old foundation, so the new planning of Constantine has its legend. It is said that he traced the boundary of his city himself, walking spear in hand and marking the line of the walls; and when his courtiers asked him how far he could go he answered, as though he saw a sacred vision, "Until He tarries who now goes before." He ascribed in his laws the founding to the command of God.

He did not cover the whole ground of the Seven Hills. It is difficult to trace with certainty the line of the walls, but it would seem probable that they extended from what is now the inner bridge across the Golden Horn to a point on the Sea of Marmora about midway between the gate of Daoud Pasha and the Psamatia Gate. This would exclude part of the fifth, sixth, and seventh hills; but it is improbable that they were left entirely unprotected or completely excluded from the city of Constantine. By the sixth at any rate already stood the Blachernae, later to be the famous palace of the Byzantine emperors. Sycae, across the Golden Horn, was the name of what is now Galata. It was at one time the quarter where the Galatian mercenaries dwelt, and quite early in history it had another division named Pera, or "across the water." The seaward walls remained as they had been in old Byzantium, and they were repaired, and brought forward to the point whence the new land walls started. Of the remains of Constantine's time there are none that are not half destroyed or wholly altered, but the Church of S. Irene still recalls the days of its first founder, and the serpent column from Delphi still stands in the Hippodrome where he placed it.

The divisions of Constantine's city are not easy to recover. For municipal government it had, like Rome, fourteen regions, two of which were outside the walls, those (xiii.) of Sycae and (xiv.) of Blachernae. From the Golden gate, which was not far from the Marmora end of the land walls (the name Isa Kapou Mesjidi still recalls the Holy Name of Jesus which it bore), a road led to the Augusteum. The Forum of Constantine stood outside where the old Byzantine walls had been, and west of the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome extended south-west from the Forum of the Augusteum. North-east at some distance stood the Church of S. Irene. The Augusteum which, as Mr Bury says, we may translate place impériale, had the Church of S. Sophia, begun probably by Constantius, on the north; on the east the Senate house, and some buildings of the Palace; on the south the great Palace itself, built eastwards of the Hippodrome and commanding the magnificent view over the Marmora islands to the shores of Asia and the snows of Olympus.

THE HIPPODROME AND MOSQUE OF AHMED

Of the splendour of the city of Constantine many 11 hints of description remain. Constantinople was enriched, says one writer, by the spoils of all other cities: Rome and Athens, Sicily and Antioch, were robbed of treasures. Of all these treasures the most wonderful, almost if not quite alone, survives. For eight hundred years it had already stood in the Sanctuary of Delphi, the serpent column with its triple head, inscribed with the names of the Greek city states which had triumphed on the field of Plataea. Through all the changes of the sixteen centuries since Constantine lived the column has still remained where he set it. Its heads are now broken off, and one may be seen in the museum; but parts of the inscription on the coils might still be traced fifteen years ago when rubbings were taken. The name of the Tenians, whose trireme brought the news to the Greeks of the Persian approach, may still be seen. "For this service," says Herodotus, "the Tenians were inscribed in Delphi, on the tripod, among those who had overthrown the barbarian." Thus for nearly two thousand four hundred years this memorial has endured. Of all the wonders of the city of Constantine there is none like it.

From Constantine to Justinian the history of the city may be rapidly traversed, for no great builder came between them to rival their work. It was on May 11, 330 A.D., that the city of Constantine was dedicated and received the name of New or Second Rome. Throned in the Hippodrome, ever after to be the centre of Byzantine life, Constantine gave thanks to God for the birth of this fair city, the daughter (so wrote S. Augustine), as it were, of Rome herself. Grandeur, riches, dignity, he could give to his new city: but before he died it was plain that he could not bequeath to her a legacy of peace.

The early history of Constantinople is largely concerned with the defence of the true Christian faith, handed down from the Apostles, against the errors of Arius. The Council of Nicaea (Isnik) in 325, summoned by Constantine at a place not more than a day's journey from Constantinople, defined the being of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity as , of one essence (substance), with that of the Father, but centuries passed before the false teaching was overcome. It was natural that at Constantinople, the seat of imperial government, the strife should be concentrated. Thither the Arian leaders went to denounce the great S. Athanasius of Alexandria to the Emperor. It was there that Constantine gave his order to the aged bishop Alexander that Arius should be admitted to communion. There the bishop lay in prayer before the altar in the apse of S. Irene, beseeching God to spare him the profanation. There that very day Arius met his awfully sudden death.

Under the sons of Constantine the imperial city witnessed scenes of disturbance and persecution. As soon as Constantius freed himself from the danger of civil war, he threw himself warmly into the support of Arianism, and "devoted the leisure of his winter quarters," says Gibbon, "to the amusement or toils of controversy; the sword of the magistrate, and even of the tyrant, was unsheathed to enforce the reasons of the theologian"; and he refers to the happy passages in which Ammianus Marcellinus records the results of his disastrous activity, in language which loses nothing in Gibbon's English.

"The Christian religion, which in itself is plain and simple, he confounded by the dotage of superstition. Instead of reconciling the parties by the weight of his authority, he cherished and propagated by verbal disputes the differences which his vain curiosity had excited. The highways were covered with troops of bishops, galloping from every side to the assemblies which they call synods; and, while they laboured to reduce the whole body to their own particular opinions, the public establishment of the posts was almost ruined by their hasty and repeated journeys." The "opinions" indeed were far from original to Constantius, but his support of Arianism rendered the position of the Church in the imperial city dangerous and uncertain. Five times was the bishop Paul banished from the city. The Catholics rose in tumult, and the streets of Constantinople saw for the first time what they have often since witnessed, a massacre in which not even the churches preserved those who fled to them for refuge. Another fatal precedent had already been set when Constantine died, by the murder of many princes of his house. One of the few survivors ascended the throne in 361, on the death of the last of Constantine's sons. This new Emperor was Julian, whom later ages have named the Apostate.

Julian had been baptized and had "followed the way of the Christians" till he was twenty. He had even, it seems, taken minor orders as a reader. But he was greatly attracted by the old Greek ideals, and had not patience to study the Christian religion perfectly. As Emperor he set himself seriously to revive Paganism, which had received its death-blow from Constantine.

The pagan Emperor was above all things a pedant and a doctrinaire. It is impossible to study his life or his writings without a sense of his extraordinary self-conceit. He was moral in life, sound and excellent even to weariness in his platitudinarian sentiments; but he was obstinate, and blind, and abnormally self-conscious, as men of his mould always are. He was so convinced that he was right that he was utterly blind to the good deeds of Christians and deaf to their arguments, even from the clearest thinkers. We see in him not a trace of intellectual progress, even on his own lines; we find him throughout intensely superstitious and fond of dabbling in occult arts. As a student, he somewhat hastily accepted certain conclusions, and found himself a marked man in consequence. From that moment he clung to his philosophy with the tenacity of a limited mind; and we may be quite sure the story is legendary that such a man admitted on his deathbed the triumph of a religious system which he had combated all his life.

Julian was brought up probably in Constantinople. As Emperor he did not a little to increase the pride and beauty of the city. Especially interesting to him were the constitutional rules which Constantine had set up in imitation of the old Rome, and he paid notable respect to the office of the Consul, and enlarged the powers of the Senate. Art and science he endeavoured to foster by endowments for teaching in the schools of the city, and in this he was followed by his successors. Julian died a disappointed man in 363, and his successors inclined to the Catholic party; but still Arianism was strong, and its strength was felt not least in Constantinople. Jovian proclaimed toleration, Valentinian followed him, Valens professed Arianism. While religions contended, the material prosperity of the city continued to grow. In 378, when the Goths drew near to besiege the imperial city, they turned back, it is said, at the sight of its increased size. Already people of every kindred and tongue poured into the great mart for commerce and pleasure. At length, says Sozomen, it far surpassed Rome both in population and riches, and Eunapius thus describes its importance in his day:—"Constantinople, formerly called Byzantium, allowed the ancient Athenians a liberty of importing corn in great quantities; but now not all the ships of burden from Egypt, Asia, Syria, Phœnicia, and many other nations can import a quantity sufficient for the support of those people whom Constantine, by unpeopling other cities, has transported thither." Already there began the custom, which has lasted so many centuries, of building houses on wooden piles thrust out into the sea. As the incursion of the barbarians became more dangerous many took refuge in the capital; and yearly the churches grew in importance, and the monasteries attracted more religious.

"There were many structures which Constantine had only commenced; and the completion of the fortifications of the city had been left to Constantius; Julian found it necessary to construct a second harbour on the side of the sea of Marmora;[1] Valens was obliged to improve the waterworks of the city by the erection of the fine aqueduct which spans the valley between the fourth and fifth hills. And how large a number of hands such work required appears from the fact that when the aqueduct was repaired, in the ninth century, 6000 labourers were brought from the provinces to Constantinople for the purpose."[2]

But while the magnificent aqueduct of Valens (364-378) still towers over the city, as one views it from the heights of Pera, no other great building was added till the reign of Theodosius the Great (378-395), which marks the triumph of Catholic Christianity and the great increase in the splendour of the patriarchal and imperial abode. A contemporary, Gregory of Nyssa, quaintly describes the results of the theological interests which now surrounded the throne. Not only did great preachers fill the churches with attentive crowds, but the poor took up the tale. "The city is full of mechanics and slaves who are all of them profound theologians, and preach in the shops and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of money for you he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf you are told by way of reply that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you enquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is that the Son was made out of nothing." This was in the time of the Arian triumph. It was the work of great preachers, as well as of the orthodox Emperor, to recover the Church from the blows she had received in the house of her friends.

The three great saints of the Eastern Church in the fourth century were in different ways associated with Constantinople. S. Basil of Caesarea in Cappadocia, (brother of S. Gregory of Nyssa) was a fellow-student of the Emperor Julian, and died in 379. He knew very little directly of the seat of empire; he probably only twice passed through it; but his writings, full in every page of lucid order and perspicuous exposition, did much to vindicate the position which the orthodox in Constantinople were struggling to retain. Probably it was before his death that the great preacher, S. Gregory of Nazianzus, was pleading in the imperial city, and vindicated by his great oration the worship of the Holy Trinity. The site of his first preaching was commemorated by the building of the Church of Anastasia, a name given to denote the rising again of the Catholic faith of Nicaea. The sixteenth century mosque of Mehmed Pacha, south-west of the Hippodrome, preserves the position of the church, which was destroyed in 1458. At first the mission of S. Gregory was conducted amid scenes of the greatest disturbance and at great danger to his own life. His church was profaned, he himself was stoned. But when Theodosius entered the city in triumph he gave to S. Gregory the great church of the Twelve Apostles, and himself sought to seat him upon the episcopal throne. Humble, and weakened by suffering, it was with reluctance that the saint entered upon the heritage of the church; but he records that when he entered the sanctuary the light that burst forth on the chill November day cheered him to give thanks before all the people for the benefits which the Blessed Trinity had bestowed. After a month of reluctance he was at length installed as bishop. In May 381 the second General Council of the Church was assembled by the order of the Emperor Theodosius at Constantinople. It reasserted the creed of Nicaea, emphasised the Catholic teaching of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, and condemned the heresy of Apollinaris. Its claim to be ecumenical rests on its unanimous acceptance of "all the nations and all the churches of the Christian world."

By this council the precedence of the bishop of Constantinople in the Church was assigned as next after that of the Roman bishop, "because it is the new Rome."

S. Gregory, attacked by critics for his acceptance of the see, which he had so reluctantly received, withdrew to Nazianzus. "The title of a saint had been added to his name, but the tendencies of his heart, and the elegance of his genius, reflect a more pleasing lustre on the memory of Gregory of Nazianzen," says Gibbon in his inimitable way. The consecration of his successor, a senator named Nectarius, who when elected had not yet been baptised, is described by the same classic as "whimsical," but it served to bring peace to the Church of Constantinople. The conquests of Theodosius confirmed the security of the imperial throne, and under the rule of the orthodox Emperor the Church in the East regained her peace. By his order all churches were given up to the orthodox, and his edict condemned all those who taught heretical doctrines, and "who, though possessing a sound faith, form congregations separate from the canonical bishops." Under Theodosius the security of life and property in the imperial city tended to a great increase of wealth and population; and with that to a considerable extension of the area occupied.

"Should the zeal of the Emperor to adorn the city continue," said the orator Themistius, "a wider circuit will be required, and the question will arise whether the city added to Constantinople by Theodosius is not more splendid than the city which Constantine added to Byzantium."

"No longer is the vacant ground in the city more extensive than that occupied by buildings; nor are we cultivating more territory within our walls than we inhabit; the beauty of the city is not as heretofore scattered over it in patches, but covers the whole area like a robe woven to the very fringe. The city gleams with gold and porphyry. It has a [new] Forum, named after the Emperor; it owns baths, porticos, gymnasia; and its former extremity is now its centre. Were Constantine to see the capital he founded, he would behold a glorious and splendid scene, not a bare and empty void; he would find it fair, not with apparent but with real beauty."[3]

The beginning of the fifth century witnessed the great extension of the city which the orator so grandiloquently describes in anticipation. Anthemius, who ruled during the earlier part of the minority of Theodosius II., built the great wall, a mile or in parts a mile and a half to the west of Constantine's wall, which still extends from the Sea of Marmora to the so-called "palace of Belisarius." It was within the city now rapidly growing, that the greatest preacher of the early Church, began at the end of the fourth century to exercise his marvellous influence over the crowds that thronged the great church of the capital. Arcadius, the son and successor of Theodosius I., having heard of the splendid eloquence of John, a preacher of Antioch, whom men came to call Chrysostom (the golden-mouthed), nominated him to the throne of Constantinople on the death of Nectarius in 397.

He set an example, which the clergy sadly needed, of simplicity and asceticism; he was not only a reformer but an organiser of missions, and above all a preacher of righteousness. The Emperor and Empress, Arcadius and Eudocia, were among his most ardent admirers. He owed his nomination to the imperial minister Eutropius; yet he denounced his vices at the height of his power, and when he fell preserved him in sanctuary from the rage of the people. But the Empress and the courtiers soon grew restless under his searching exposure of vice and worldliness. He was a severe disciplinarian: bishops were ready to turn against him, and the ladies of the court were determined to avenge themselves on their censor. When he denounced the Empress almost openly as Jezebel, it was clear that peace could not long be maintained even in appearance. Charges of heresy, complicated by his charitable succour of some Eastern monks whom the bishop of Alexandria had ill-treated and banished, led to his condemnation by a council of his enemies at Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus. When the citizens heard this they surrounded the palace of their beloved bishop and kept watch all night lest he should be seized, but he gave himself up and was banished to Hieron (now Anadoli Kavak) at the mouth of the Black Sea on the Asiatic side. The people assembled round the imperial palace with threats; an earthquake shook the resolution of the Empress, and Chrysostom was brought back in triumph to his throne. His position seemed stronger than ever. Always ready to believe the best, he accepted the Empress's assurance of friendship and repaid it with courtierlike expressions of respect. But it was soon apparent that the friendship could not be continued without a sacrifice of principle. Eudocia envied, it would seem, the divine honours of the pagan emperors; and the dedication of her statue in September 403 was made the occasion of blasphemous and licentious revelry. From the ambo of the great church S. John Chrysostom denounced the wickedness of the festival, while the sound of the disturbance could be heard as he spoke. Men declared that he compared the Empress to Herodias—"Again Herodias dances: again she demands the head of John on a charger."

The Empress demanded the punishment of the bold preacher. Intrigues won over the Emperor, time-serving bishops brought up ingenious distortions of Church rules through which Chrysostom could be punished. It was pretended that he was not legally bishop, and at last the timid Emperor gave the order to arrest him, an act which was accomplished, in a scene of brutal disorder and violence, in the great church itself on Easter Eve 404, when the sacrament of baptism was being ministered to three thousand catechumens.

Two months later he was sent into banishment, and his adherents underwent a bitter persecution. They appealed to the churches of the West for aid: Chrysostom himself wrote to Rome, Milan, and Aquileia. But the Emperor was not to be moved. In his banishment at Cucusus, on the borders of Cilicia and Armenia, the Saint exercised as wide an influence as on his throne. Constant letters to Constantinople cheered the loyal clergy, comforted penitents, aroused faint hearts to devoted service of God. But his sufferings in exile were at length made fatal by the brutality with which he was hurried from place to place, and he gave up his soul on September 14, 407, a martyr to his zeal for righteousness. Thirty years afterwards in 438 his body was translated to the city where his memory was still cherished. It came in triumphal procession down the Bosphorus followed by crowds of boats, and was laid in a tomb by the altar in the Church of the Holy Apostles; the Emperor, Theodosius II., praying for the pardon of God on the sins of his parents.

Thus briefly the tale of Chrysostom may be told. It is characteristic of the struggles through which the Church of Constantinople had to pass during the years of unchecked imperial power, when it was dependent on the arbitrary authority of a sovereign who might be weak and led by evil counsellors, or wicked and resentful of any criticism of his deeds, but who had always at his command a body of brutal soldiery, often pagan and retaining of the old Roman tradition only the implicit obedience to the commands of their ruler. The name of S. John Chrysostom, loved and honoured by the people in his life, has remained the chief glory of the Church of Constantinople. It is said that his tomb was rifled by the Crusaders in 1204, and his head is shown among the relics of the Cathedral of Pisa; but in countless ways his memory is still preserved by the Church which he ruled. At the Cathedral Church of the Patriarchate in the Phanar they point to-day to a pulpit and a throne (of much later date) as his; and the ancient liturgy of the East, used from time immemorial in the Church of Constantinople, has been given his name, as that of the most famous of the holy prelates who used it.

The troubles of the Church, which centred round the persecution and martyrdom of S. Chrysostom, were followed by at least outward peace in religious matters. The chief clergy of Constantinople became the mere officers of the Court. But the dangers of the times, when again and again the barbarian was at the gates, turned men's minds to the repair of the fortifications and the completion of their circuit around the now greatly extended city.

The work of Anthemius, regent during part of the minority of Theodosius II., was eulogised by Chrysostom himself. The office of Praetorian Praefect of the East which he held, was honoured, said the great preacher, by his holding it. He restored the defences of the Empire after the weakness of Arcadius, "and to crown the system of defence he made Constantinople a mighty citadel. The enlargement and refortification of the city was thus part of a comprehensive and far seeing plan to equip the Roman State in the East for the impending desperate struggle with barbarism; and of all the services which Anthemius rendered, the most valuable and enduring was the addition he made to the military importance of the capital. The bounds he assigned to the city fixed, substantially, her permanent dimensions, and behind the bulwarks he raised—improved and often repaired indeed by his successors—Constantinople acted her great part in the history of the world."[4]

The two greatest interests of Constantinople have always been the military and the ecclesiastical. The Eastern churches have always looked, and look to-day, on the New Rome as the centre of true religion and sound learning. The theology of the Councils is the theology of the great Church of Constantinople and its patriarchs; and in the days of its bitterest persecution, in the times when the infidel has ruled, the strongest sentiment of the Greek people, who feel that the city is still truly their own, is that of loyalty to the unalterable faith and the immemorial liturgies of the holy Orthodox Church preserved by the successors of S. Chrysostom. But while the intense intellectual keenness of the East and the chivalrous conservatism of the ancient Greek families preserves undisputed the dominion of religion, and the thronged churches witness to a devotion which is perhaps more conspicuous than in any city which lives on to our day from the centuries of the Middle Ages, the great city of Constantine can never cease to be the home of a military power, where military science is cultivated and the soldier's life is the most prominent before the eyes of the people. Even at the lowest point of the Empire, the great city of the Caesars was always a military stronghold of the first class. The streets have never ceased to be thronged with soldiers, and the military pageants of to-day look back for their origin and their necessity to the days of Constantine and Theodosius and Anthemius the wall-builder. It is said that to-day the city is more completely defended than any other in Europe. More than sixteen centuries ago it was the strength of the walls of Anthemius and the size of the army and the fleet that he gathered that turned back the army of Attila. Just as the whole city was concerned in the doings of the Church, its buildings, its festivals, its councils, so were all the citizens bound to take part in its military defence. The walls, like the churches, belonged to all. Strict laws, from which no one was exempt, and the power of levying special taxes besides the due proportion of the city land-tax, made every man liable to contribute. Characteristically the Hippodrome had its share in directing the work. The two factions of the Circus, the blues and the greens, were charged with the direction; and it is said that in 447 they furnished no less than sixteen thousand labourers for the work.

The reign of Theodosius II. was the great age of the construction of defences. The walls of Anthemius were built in 413; in 439 the sea walls were extended to include the part of the city now enclosed. In 447, an earthquake, always the greatest enemy of the fortifications and responsible even now for more destruction than any other force, overthrew much of what had been so lately built, with fifty-seven towers. Attila was almost at the gates, and was dictating an ignominious treaty of peace. But, as an inscription which may be read to-day on the gate now called Yeni-Mevlevi Haneh Kapoussi tells—

"In sixty days, by order of the sceptre loving Emperor, Konstantinos the Eparch added wall to wall."

A Latin inscription makes the same record almost in the words of the contemporary chronicler Marcellinus Comes—

"Theodosii jussis gemino nec mense peracto constantinus ovans haec moenia firma locavit tam cito quam stabilem Pallas vix conderet arcem."

This addition was a new wall, in front of that of Anthemius, with 192 towers, and a moat without, forming tiers of defence. It was this magnificent series of bulwarks which, in the words of the historian of the walls, "so long as ordinary courage survived and the modes of ancient warfare were not superseded, made Constantinople impregnable, and behind which civilisation defied the assaults of barbarism for a thousand years."[5]

Theodosius II. reigned till 450. The later part of his reign was disturbed by the Nestorian controversy, in which the bishop of Constantinople himself involved the Church. The denial by this prelate of the title Theotokos (Mother of God) to the Blessed Virgin Mary was no obscure attack upon the reality of the Incarnation as the Church had always received it; and the people of the city as well as the clergy received the new teaching with disgust. Eastern and Western bishops united against the heresy, and in 431 the third General Council of the Church at Ephesus condemned it and its author, and again defined the Catholic faith. The party of Nestorius was not suppressed, though he was himself deposed, and in the sixth century it became the great agent of Christian missions in the East.

Hardly was this false teaching rejected before a new heresy arose. Eutyches, a monk of Constantinople, denied the existence of two natures in Christ, and after a dispute which shook the Church for twenty years his teaching was at last condemned by the fourth General Council, which met at Chalcedon, just across the Bosphorus. The Council also emphasised the importance of the position now held by the New Rome by enacting that it should be "magnified in ecclesiastical matters even like the elder imperial Rome, as being next to it." This rule was accepted by the Emperor Marcian, and the power it gave to consecrate the metropolitans of Thrace, Asia, and Pontus was supported by the State as a badge of supremacy. The emperors who followed Marcian were all more or less concerned in the theological strife which the opinions of Eutyches had raised. The Monophysites, as the party which rejected the decisions of Chalcedon came to be called, was constantly rising into power in the Court. The imperial crown was worn in turn by four adventurers, who deposed prelates and attempted to reconcile parties at their will. In 482 the Emperor Zeno, with the advice of the patriarch Acacius, put forth the Henoticon (form of union), which was intended to reconcile the Monophysites to the Catholic Church. The controversy was far from stilled by this inept document; and when in 484, Felix, the pope of Rome, with other Western bishops, wrote to the patriarch Acacius, declaring him deposed from his office, and separated from the communion of the faithful, a schism was caused in Constantinople itself. While the majority of the clergy and people treated the Roman decree with contempt, some of the monks, and especially the Akoimetai (an order which kept up perpetual worship by succession of worshippers, and thus received the name of "sleepless"), refused communion with their own patriarch. The Henoticon had divided the Church. The patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria were Monophysite; Jerusalem and Constantinople were orthodox.

The reign of Anastasius, the son-in-law of Leo, whose wife was the widow of his predecessor Zeno, was regarded by the orthodox as an era of persecution. Himself a man of piety and virtue, he was greeted by the people in the Circus on his accession with the cry, "Reign as you have lived!" He added to the defences of the city a great wall stretching from the Marmora to the Euxine, some thirty-five miles from Constantinople; but he unhappily turned to theology, and widened the gulf which the Henoticon had made between the Emperors and the Church. In November 512, the streets again ran with blood shed by the people for the cause of religious truth. Amid these years stained by crime and folly, the imperial city was again and again in danger from external as well as internal foes. At the beginning of the reign of Anastasius the Isaurians who had been driven from the city rebelled, and for five years there was war, ended only when, in 498, Isaurian captives were led in triumph through the streets. Eleven years before, Theodoric the Goth had stood before the gates, but turned back from the massive strength which he could not overthrow. He was now ruler of Italy. And even in the East, Huns, Romans and Goths again and again threatened the capital. Anastasius dabbled in theology to the end, made overtures to Pope Hormisdas which came to nothing, and died at the age of eighty-eight, regretted by none.

He was succeeded by an illiterate but honest Thracian soldier, Justin. Orthodox and straightforward, he was welcomed by the people as a saviour and a second Constantine. Under his rule peace was made with the orthodox West, and the Church again had rest.

With the death of Justin, 527, we reach the second great epoch of the history of the imperial city. Constantinople before the days of Justinian, when Theodoric, about 461, was sent as a hostage to the Imperial Court, et quia puerulus elegans erat meruit gratiam imperialem habere, was the most glorious city of Europe. Jordanes, the historian of the Goths, tells how he marvelled at the wondrous sight. "Lo! Now I behold," said he, "what I have often heard, but have never believed, the glory of so great a city!" Then turning his eyes this way and that, beholding the situation of the city and the concourse of ships, how he marvels at the long perspective of lofty walls. Then he sees the multitude of various nations like the stream flowing forth from one fountain which has been fed by many springs; then he beholds the soldiers in ordered ranks. "A god," said he, "without doubt a god upon earth is the Emperor of this realm, and whoso lifts his hand against him, that man's blood be on his own head." Thus the barbarian may well have spoken when he had his first sight of the majesty of the Empire and its civilization in its Eastern home.