Thessaloniki

“ Thessalonica vied with Constantinople as a new Athens in the brilliancy of its classical culture. The rudeness of the crusaders threatened during the sixty years’ interregnum of the Latin dynasty, to undo the work of the Comneni. But when in A.D. 1261 the Palæologi again obtained possession of Constantinople, learning rose once more to the front and won an ever increasing significance. And when the Turks took it in A.D. 1453 crowds of learned Greeks settled in Italy and spread their carefully fostered culture all over the West. ”

“ This case of Thessalonica is an interesting illustration of Bishop Lightfoot's statement:—"The government of the Roman provinces at this time was peculiarly dangerous ground for the romance-writer to venture upon" (Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 291) . If the Roman provinces were a dangerous ground for a romance-writer, such as some critics would make the author of the Acts, the government of the large Græco-Roman towns and cities was still more dangerous, as scarcely any two successive ones were alike. Thessalonica is a good instance of this. ”

“ The reign of Robert of Courtenay marked the rapid decline of the Eastern Empire. It witnessed the complete destruction of the Kingdom of Thessalonica. In 1223, when King Demetrius was abroad, seeking in vain Western help, Theodore Angelus took possession of his capital, and henceforth ruled without a rival from the Adriatic to the Ægean; and, like the lords of Nicæa and Trebizond, assumed the pompous style of Emperor of the Romans. |Fall of Thessalonica, 1223.| John Vatatzes, the successor of Theodore Lascaris at Nicæa, renewed the war with the Latins of Constantinople. ”

“ So that Paul, a few weeks, or at most a few months, after the formation of the church, could say, 'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia,' your own province and the one next door to it, 'but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad.' No man knows how far his influence will go. No man can tell how far his example may penetrate. Thessalonica was a great commercial city. ”

“ And Thessalonica, renowned as a pattern of Christian purity and zeal, now languishes under its modern name of Saloniki, a victim of Turkish despotism, and professing a spurious religion the first founders of the Church there, could they revisit the spot, would certainly repudiate. But the true Church lives, grows, and triumphs. ”

“ Macedonia is a notable case. We have already pointed out how the Acts give their proper title to the magistrates of Philippi and recognise its peculiar constitution as a colony. Thessalonica forms an interesting contrast to Philippi. Thessalonica was a free city, like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus, and Athens, and therefore, though the residence of the proconsul who ruled the province of Macedonia, was governed by its own ancient magistrates and its own ancient laws, without any interference on the part of the proconsul. St. Luke makes a marked distinction between Philippi and Thessalonica. ”

“ Salonika, “the Athens of Mediæval Hellenism” and second to Athens alone in contemporary Greece, has been by turns a Macedonian provincial city, a free town under Roman domination, a Greek [269] community second only to Constantinople, the capital of a short-lived Latin kingdom and of a brief Greek empire to which it gave its name, a Venetian colony, and a Turkish town [425] . There, in 1876, the murder of the consuls was one of the phases of the Eastern crisis; there, in 1908, the Young Turkish movement was born; there, in 1913, King George of Greece was assassinated ”

“ The most important vassal state was the kingdom of Thessalonica, including Thessaly, which was assigned to Boniface of Montferrat. But it was conquered by the Greeks of Epirus in 1222. The chief of the territories taken by Venice was Crete. For the Latin states in Greece and the Aegean see Greece. The first Latin emperor, Baldwin of Flanders, was captured and put to death by the Bulgarians in 1205. He was succeeded by his brother Henry, an able statesman, after whose death (1216) the decline began.
Three Greek states emerged from the ruin of the Roman Empire. ”

“ If certain accidents have in any degree corrected those errors, I shall be less sorry that I preserved my life then and am still living. Owing to the constant traffic along the road [1] and the daily expectation of political change, I have as yet not removed from Thessalonica. But now I am being forced away, not by Plancius—for he, indeed, wishes to keep me here—but by the nature of the place, which is not at all calculated for the residence of a disfranchised man in such a state of sorrow. ”

“ Besides Constantinople itself, there was Smyrna, Thessalonica, Patras, and in the early days, Alexandria. There were several others, many of which are very good seaports even today.
The Byzantines also knew how to promote business. We are apt to think of a world’s fair as something modern, but the Byzantines knew all about them. Every year, in October, they held an enormous trade fair on the Vardar plain outside Thessalonica. There they built a huge temporary wood-and-canvas city of booths and bazaars, and even amid the troubled Middle Ages, merchants and peddlers flocked to it from all over. ”

“ Ye are not ignorant how large and important is the city of Thessalonica. Presbyters and deacons often come to it from other regions, and are not content to remain a short time, but either make their residence there or at least are with difficulty compelled to return after a long interval to their own place. ”

“ Not far from the city of Thessalonica flows the river Rhechius, which passes through a fertile and rich country, and empties itself into the sea at that place. This river flows with a gentle current: its waters are calm and sweet. The neighbouring country is low-lying, well-watered, and forms rich pasture; but was sadly exposed to the inroads of the barbarians, having no fort or place 100 of strength of any kind for a distance of forty miles ”

“ The Latin state had had a few years of breathing time through the rivalry of the Angeli of Thessalonica and the house of Ducas, to which, after the death of Theodore Lascaris, had passed the Empire of Nicæa. |Union of Thessalonica and Nicæa.| John III. Ducas ended the strife in his own favour by the conquest of Thessalonica in 1241. Henceforth, the Angeli had to be contented with 354the title of Despot of Epirus, and were confined to the uplands of the west. A single strong Greek power now threatened Constantinople, both from the side of Asia and the side of Europe. ”

“ It is not intimated that he had denied the faith, but simply that he had left the apostle and gone into Thessalonica; for which this reason is given, that he loved the present world. Now, if αγαπησας, having loved, can be applied to a desire to save the souls of the Jews, and that he went into Thessalonica, where they abounded, for this very purpose, then we shall find all three - Demas, Crescens, and Titus, one at Thessalonica, another at Galatia, and the third at Dalmatia, doing the work of evangelists, visiting the Churches, and converting both Jews and Gentiles. ”

“ After the battle of Angora, Suleiman sought safety in Constantinople, where he concluded a treaty with the emperor Manuel in the year 1403, by which he yielded up Thessalonica, the valley of the Strymon, Thessaly, and the coast of the Black Sea, as far as Varna, to the Greeks. Joannes of Selymbria was recalled from Lemnos, and established at Thessalonica with the title of emperor; but the control of the government was vested by Manuel in the hands of Demetrius Leontaris, a Byzantine noble. ”

“ Nor was St Demetrios the only Thessalonian saint. The city also cherished the tomb of St Theodora of Ægina, who had died at Salonika in the ninth century. Its walls contain the name of Pope Hormisdas.
Like Constantinople, Salonika was devoted to the sports of the hippodrome; and, in 390, the imprisonment of a favourite charioteer on the eve of a race, in which he was to have taken part, provoked an insurrection, punished by a massacre. Theodosius I, then on his way to Milan, ordered the Gothic garrison to wreak vengeance upon the inhabitants ”

“ There is something about the atmosphere of Salonica which makes it seem a fitting place to be the birthplace of a great movement. One feels freer on its broad quay and in its clean, well-paved streets than in the narrow, ever muddy lanes which imprison one in Constantinople. The climate for the greater part of the year is most exhilarating, and the inhabitants of this white city, “ever delicately99 walking through most pellucid air,” seem more vivacious and brisk, and are said to be more enlightened, more industrious, and shrewder than those of the capital. ”

“ Yet there comes a time in the history of great nations when a spirit of proselytism takes possession of them, and they are irresistibly moved to stamp their institutions and ideas on only half-reluctant peoples. The Athenian colonies planted by Cimon and Pericles, when the queenly city was at the height of her power, were to some extent of this description. More truly propagandist were the five hundred urban communities, with the imperial cities of Alexandria, Antioch, and Thessalonica at their head, founded by conquering Alexander and his victorious generals. ”

“ The granting of Italian rights certainly took place only to gild for the veterans their settlement abroad. That it was never intended to draw Macedonia into the development of Italian culture is evinced, apart from all else, by the fact that Thessalonica remained Greek and the capital of the country. By its side flourished Philippi, properly a mining town, constituted on account of the neighbouring gold mines, favoured by the emperors as the seat of the battle which definitively founded the monarchy, and on account of the numerous veterans who took part in it and subsequently settled there. ”

“ From the very beginning the Latin settlers had to contend against dissension within and invasion from without. Boniface of Thessalonica married the widow of Isaac Angelus, Margaret of Hungary (called by the Greeks Irene) , and posed as an independent prince and the protector of the Greek population. He refused homage to the Emperor, and war broke out between the Flemings of Constantinople and the Lombards of Thessalonica. No sooner were his pretensions rudely shattered than the Emperor was called away to meet the danger of Bulgarian invasion. ”

“ But the riot was easily put down, and then the inhabitants began to be in great anxiety and terror as to the punishment which Theodosius might inflict on them. For although the frightful massacre of Thessalonica [22] had not at that time taken place, they knew that the emperor was not to be trifled with, and that his fits of anger were terrible. They expected that they might be given up to slaughter, and their city to destruction. For a time, few of them ventured out of their houses; and those few slunk along the streets as if they were afraid of being seized. ”

“ There were no unnatural laws as there were at Sparta; people might live at home as they pleased; but there were schools, and all the youths were to be taught there, both learning and training in all exercises. And whether it was from Solon’s laws or their own character, there certainly did arise in Athens some of the greatest and noblest men of all times. ”

“ The cost of feeding such a multitude brought many cities to the brink of ruin. At Acanthus his fleet sailed through the isthmus of Athos and after doubling the promontories of Sithonia and Pallene joined him at the city of Therma, better known by its later name of Thessalonica. Thence he continued his march through the southern part of Macedonia and Thessaly, meeting with no opposition till he reached the celebrated pass of Thermopylae. ”

“ Nevertheless, the Turks were even then virtual masters of the situation; Thessalonica had fallen, sacked by Amurath II, and nothing but the Imperial City and a small tract of country round it was left to the Eastern Empire.
The travellers have witnessed the growth of the city which Byzas founded, and seen how, according to the utterance of the oracle, it prospered. They have watched the city expand under the fostering care of the earlier Emperors, and have noted how the security its walls afforded led to a mode of life which unfitted the populace for their own defence. ”

“ The ancient Thessalonica; the modern Saloniki, contained, at our author's time, more Jewish inhabitants than any town in Greece, Thebes alone excepted. It is stated by good authorities to contain at present 20,000 Israelites, a large proportion of the whole population, amounting altogether to but 70,000 souls. Some popular tradition probably induced our author to ascribe the origin of the city to Seleucus. The favourable situation of Saloniki, which has made it one of the most commercial towns of the Turkish empire, was probably the cause of its considerable Jewish population. ”

“ Athens, the capital, with its port city of Piraeus, was the nucleus of the Greek maritime system; Salonika was a center of land transportation and an important seaport for the more northerly of the Balkan countries. With an economy based chiefly on ocean commerce and processing of goods mainly to olive oil, currants, and tobacco. Cereals led among heavy food imports, since Greece could not feed its own population on its domestic production. ”