Patriarch of Constantinople

“ Roman ambition would not allow outlying communities to formulate new doctrines or to revise old ones. In everything the adherents of the Eastern and Western Churches found points of disagreement. It needed but a small pretext to bring about a schism, small at this period of time but great and momentous to those who struggled through the controversy. A pretext was not long wanting. About the middle of the ninth century Photius, a layman, captain of the guards, was promoted by merit and favour to the office of Patriarch of Constantinople. ”

“ If Constantinople should fall into the hands of any of the great powers of Western Christendom, of course the Cara-Casan, or system of mixed ecclesiastical and civil despotism, will be overturned, the patriarch will become a mere primate among the other metropolitans of the nation, and the patriarchate be reduced to a simply honorary dignity like that of the Western patriarchs of Venice and Lisbon. ”

“ Works of art were brought from afar, the most skillful artists and builders were assembled from all the cities of Europe and of the East, enormous sums of money were spent, Christian churches were built; but Constantine could not give to his Imperial city what was wanting to himself—a pure and steadfast faith. Constantinople was destined to be the home of every heresy.
In the meantime the holy Patriarch Alexander had gone to his rest. As he lay on his deathbed he called for his beloved Athanasius, but there was no reply. ”

“ Its emperor still thought himself the lord of the world; its bishop assumed the title of Ecumenical Patriarch. Both emperor and bishop cast but a disdainful glance on the widowed rival which threatened to sink into the grave of waters brought down by her own river. Constantinople could raise and pay armies from all the races of the North and East. A single imperial regiment was quartered at Rome, which, being ill-paid, became disaffected and neglectful of its charge, and could not be counted upon by the Pope for vigorous defence against the ever-pressing danger of a Lombard inroad. ”

“ Constantine actually made Nicetas, a man of Slavonic race, patriarch, and it is said that his clergy mocked at his pronunciation of the Greek of the Gospel. Armenians had already become almost as prominent in the city as they are to-day; at the beginning of the ninth century one of them actually became Emperor. As early as the reign of Justin II. a large colony of traders from Central Asia was established in the city. When communication became easier and the power of the Roman State, reviving under Heraclius, more wide spread, the riches of the city increased. ”

“ No jealousy is entertained of the Patriarch of the old Rome by the Patriarch of the new. The interference of Innocent is courted, a certain primacy is accorded him, but at the same time he is not addressed as a supreme arbitrator; assistance and sympathy are solicited from him as from an elder brother, and two other prelates of Italy are joint recipients with him of the appeal. The effect of this letter will shortly be related; for the present, the course of events at Constantinople must be followed. ”

“ On questions of faith it should not have been impossible for candid men, as the history of Veccus shows, to bring the churches into essential union, but the claim of the Popes to supremacy, which they emphasised by the mission of legates, was one which the Church of Constantinople has never admitted. Michael died in 1282. Already his attempt had failed, and he died excommunicated by pope and patriarch. The restorer of the Empire was unworthy to rank among its heroes, and the historian of the Greek people has described him in language of severity that is well deserved. ”

“ Unless the eagerness, the passion, the deadly Asiatic earnestness of the religious discussions or wranglings be realised, no true conception can be formed of fourteenth and fifteenth century life in Constantinople.
Contemporary writers supply abundant and indisputable evidence that, from the patriarch downwards, the members of the Greek Church attached overwhelming importance to the correctness of their orthodoxy. The utmost care about correct definitions was taken by the Church to check paganism. The miscreant was a worse offender than the man who disregarded the ordinary laws of morality. ”

“ Able, courageous, and patriotic, he was soon recognised by the notables as the fittest man to have rule among them, and, though without hereditary claim to the imperial throne, he aspired to be emperor and was accepted as best suited to receive that dignity. Two years after the capture of Constantinople, a new patriarch was elected, who consented to live at Nicaea and who amid as much ceremony as if the coronation had taken place in St. Sophia placed the crown on the head of Theodore in the church of the same name at Nicaea. ”

“ The possession of Constantinople by the Russians would, we are convinced, be followed by the destruction of the independence of the Eastern Church, the substitution of some Russian general or admiral, Prince Menschikoff perhaps, or Prince Gortschakoff, or whoever may happen to be the favourite of the day, for the venerable Patriarch; and by the most cruel persecution, not perhaps so much from religious intolerance, as for the same reasons assigned by Peter the Great for his abolition of the patriarchal dignity. ”

“ Of all the churches in Constantinople, including also the Patriarchal Church, there is not one so ancient as the times of the Christian Emperors, save this in the Mahalleh Caraman.
↑ "The City of Constantinople is built on a triangular promontory, projecting into the Sea of Marmora: two sides are washed by the sea; and the third is that which connects the triangle with the main land, and may be called its base. These sides are well fortified with walls; which still remain, though in several places so dilapidated as to be incapable of any defence, without great reparation. ”

“ Many persons fell victims to their opinions. Some were cruelly tortured in the house of the Patriarch himself, and others were imprisoned or utterly ruined in Constantinople and the provinces. Through the exertions of the English minister at Constantinople, a firman was obtained from the Sultan, placing the new Protestant community on the same footing as the other Churches of the empire, assigning to it a head, or agent, through whom it could apply directly to the ministers, and extending to it other privileges enjoyed by the Roman Catholics and Greeks. ”

“ The emperor of Constantinople appoints the patriarch, the archbishops, and the bishops, and gives the dignities and the benefices of churches, and deprives those who deserve it, when he finds any cause ”

“ But the prospect of beauty, of safety, and of wealth, united in a single spot, was sufficient to justify the choice of Constantine. But as some decent mixture of prodigy and fable has, in every age, been supposed to reflect a becoming majesty on the origin of great cities, the emperor was desirous of ascribing his resolution not so much to the uncertain counsels of human policy as to the infallible and eternal decrees of divine wisdom. In one of his laws he has been careful to instruct posterity that, in obedience to the commands of God, he laid the everlasting foundations of Constantinople ”

“ The organisation of the Eastern church is far less centralised than that of the Western, and the political relations of the countries in which it holds sway have tended to keep it so. There are three other Patriarchs within the Turkish empire—in Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—while the churches of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Roumania, Russia, and Servia, as well as of the Orthodox populations of Austria-Hungary, are independent of Constantinople. ”

“ Emperor Constantine was a good man, and efficient, but it seems he was not strong enough to bring his people to the pitch of self-sacrifice necessary to those who have to sustain a siege. The citizens of Constantinople were as keen about religious controversy as ever, and the times provided food for violent discussions, for the ruler of the Empire realized the dangers that beset him and tried to make diplomacy a substitute for efficient military preparations. ”

“ By a sort of compromise between his European origin and Asiatic tastes, the emperor Constantine, after many struggles with his competitors, having attained the sole authority, transferred the seat of empire from Rome to a city he had built on the extreme limits of Europe, and only divided from Asia by a narrow sea. All succeeding ages have agreed in extolling the situation of this city, called, after its founder, Constantinople, as the finest that could have been chosen. ”

“ A column in honour of the emperor Marcian still stands in the valley of the Lycus, below the mosque of Sultan Mahommed the Conqueror. Many beautiful statues, belonging to good periods of Greek and Roman art, decorated the fora, streets and public buildings of the city, but conflagrations and the vandalism of the Latin and Ottoman conquerors of Constantinople have robbed the world of those treasures.
The imperial palace, founded by Constantine and extended by his successors, occupied the territory which lies to the east of St Sophia and the Hippodrome down to the water’s edge. ”

“ At Constantinople the Emperor was ever present, ever reigning; where he dwelled and reigned there was no room for any other power to take to itself the slightest fragment of Imperial rule. Never was any line of princes more deeply impressed with a religious character than the Eastern Cæsars; none more constantly made the Faith, the advancement of the Faith, the humiliation of its enemies, the abiding objects of their policy ”

“ The fall of Constantinople marked the definite establishment on European soil of a power alien and hostile to all that was characteristic of European civilization. It was a power, moreover, which could live only by expanding; and for over two hundred years to come the dread of Ottoman aggression was a dominant factor in the politics of eastern Europe. The tide of Turkish advance could have been arrested by a union of Europe; but the appeals of Pope Nicholas V. fell unheeded upon a sceptical age, intent only on its dynastic and particularist ambitions. ”

“ It was in vain that the warriors of the West heard it for ever repeated that Constantinople was the barrier of Christendom; they could not consider a city which was unable to provide for its own defence, and was always in want of succour, as a barrier capable of arresting the course of a powerful enemy. When Gregory XI. solicited the emperor of Germany to assist Constantinople, that prince replied sharply that the Greeks had opened the gates of Europe to the Turks, and let the wolf into the sheep-fold. ”

“ In respect of influence over the course of human affairs, its only rivals are Athens, Rome and Jerusalem. Yet even the gifts of these rivals to the cause of civilization often bear the image and superscription of Constantinople upon them. Roman law, Greek literature, the theology of the Christian church, for example, are intimately associated with the history of the city beside the Bosporus.
The city was founded by Constantine the Great, through the enlargement of the old town of Byzantium, in A.D. 328, and was inaugurated as a new seat of government on the 11th of May, A.D. 330. ”

“ Constantine immediately abandoned all thought of continuing the campaign, and employed his whole army in alleviating the calamity to the survivors, and in securing Christian burial and funeral honours to the dead. A truce was concluded with the enemy, and the Roman army beheld [213] the emperor as eager to employ their services in the cause of humanity and religion, as he had ever been to lead them to the field of glory and conquest. His conduct on this occasion gained him as much popularity with the people of Constantinople as with the troops. ”

“ It would have been the greatest possible mistake for Constantine the Great to have chosen either Sardica, Thessalonica, the territory of Ilium or Chalcedon, between which places he hesitated some time, to be the new Rome of the East, for however richly nature may have endowed them all, to elect any one would have seemed but the satisfying of a princely caprice; as Constantinople on the straits of the Bosporus was then and always will be the one natural city commanding the whole of the Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, and the numerous seas and rivers uniting at this spot. ”

“ In Constantinople an immense body of idle inhabitants had been collected, a mass that had long formed a burden on the state, and acquired a right to a portion of its resources. A numerous nobility, and a permanent imperial household, conceived that they formed a portion of the Roman government from the prominent part which they acted in the ceremonial that connected the emperor with the people. ”

“ The light of Greek civilisation, which Byzantium had kept burning for nearly nine centuries after Constantine had chosen it as his capital, was suddenly extinguished. The hardness, the narrowness and the Hebraicism of western civilisation were left to develop themselves with little admixture from the joyousness and the beauty of Greek life. Every one knows that the Turkish conquest of Constantinople dispersed throughout the West a knowledge of Greek literature, and that such knowledge contributed largely to the bringing about of the Reformation and of modern ways of thought. ”