Lyceum & Book Club - Week 12 - Lecture Notes on Constantine the Great and Constantinople

Constantine the Great and Constantinople

Constantine the Great first came across the tiny fishing village of Byzantium in 324.The small walled village sat on the tip of a peninsula on the Bosporus strait between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea.

Thus, it was perfect for a trade hub because you had merchant ships who traveled from the Black Sea and those who approached from the Aegean Sea, in addition to the land routes.

Like Rome,Constantinople was built on seven hills divided into 14 districts. Unlike Rome, it was more easily defended, being surrounded by water all sides(3) but one.

Of the five patriarchs of organized Christianity, four of them resided in the east (Egypt,Israel,Turkey and Greece) and only one resided in the west (Rome). Of course at the time of Constantinople's founding in 330AD, this reality was still a ways off, but it illustrates why Constantinople was drawn eastward.The east was where ancient, classical,(cerebral) civilization still reigned supreme and where the young energized Christian movement was strong, while Rome was under constant attack from northern Germanic tribes, was more pagan than Christian and increasingly hedonistic and chaotic.

Constantinople fit the emperor's desire for reform.

Emperor Constantine had torn down the existing wall in 324 AD, but now he immediately built up a new wall along with other improvements to its infrastructure. In 330 AD, he moved his capital to the new location. People called it Constantine’s city - Constantinople.

Constantinople became the wealthiest city in the Roman Empire, surpassing Rome.

When the Roman Empire split into east and west centers of power in 395 AD, Constantinople became the capital of the newly created eastern Byzantine Empire.

The city of Constantinople was a cosmopolitan trading hub with people from a multitude of lands residing in the city. It was considered more advanced than any city in western Europe.

The old (western) Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD. If the western Roman Empire was of the Ancient World, the Byzantine Empire was the medieval incarnation of the same ideals.

The term "Byzantine Empire" was not used until later.The citizens of the Byzantine Empire referred to themselves as Romans and thought of themselves as the successors of an unbroken line straight from Augustus to their current Emperor.

The rest of the world referred to them as "the Greeks".

Until the advent of gunpowder and cannons,Constantinople's triple set of thick limestone walls, built by Emperor Theodosius in the 5th century, were imperious to attacks from both east and west. If Rome had been the brass ring everyone wanted to conquer as their own,Constantinople now became the same - the anointed crown that every competing empire wanted to possess and recast in their own image.

When the Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire was originally established, the energy was in the East, near the Holy Land as opposed to dying pagan Rome.

But at some point that power locus shifted as the west became more industrialized, denser population centers evolved and governments developed with the resources to support a powerful religious center in Rome, while the region that remained open for the eastern orthodox church did not have the potential for the same growth.

It was an unequal competition. Eventually, lacking the resources of the western Christian church, the Eastern Orthodox Church might well have been forced to compromise and merge just to stay alive.

But in the meantime, religious differences between the two sides got entangled with ethic identity and that compounded the schism between east and west Christendom. The battle for who would be the highest authority for Christendom got personal and Constantinople, as the center for the Eastern Orthodox church was the face and nexus on every issue.

In the west, you might be at odds with the Vatican, but could still connect with the secular centers of power. In the east - Constantinople was everything - assist the secular government and you empower the religious authority, defeat the city and you weaken the faith's authority figure.