Читать книгу Constantinople - William Holden Hutton - Страница 7

THE HIPPODROME AND MOSQUE OF AHMED

Of the splendour of the city of Constantine many 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 Platæa. 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 Nicæa (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 Ὁμοούσιον , 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 Cæsarea 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 Nicæa. 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 Nicæa, 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 Prætorian Præfect 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 Cæsars 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.

YERI BATAN SERAI (CISTERN)

Within a few years there was a great change. Earthquakes, rebellions, fires, compelled the rebuilding of a great part of Constantinople, and Justinian the Great, lawyer, theologian and organiser of victory, left monuments as enduring in architecture as in the other spheres of his activity. With the exception of the churches of S. John of the Studium and S. Irene, and the walls of Theodosius, there are to-day no great works of the Christian period, save a very few of the later Emperors, remaining in Constantinople except those which Justinian built. His architects created the Byzantine style which reached its magnificent completion in S. Sophia. The finest of the cisterns which astonish the traveller to-day are the work of his age; and as we walk by the splendid walls that extend from the Marmora to the Golden Horn, it is along his triumphal way that we tread. The first book of the "Aedifices" of Procopius, written to commemorate his achievements in building, is even now a handbook in little to the glories of Constantinople.

Leaving to our description of the city the still standing work of the great Emperor, we must here shortly sketch the reign which was for nine centuries the most glorious memory of the Eastern Empire. Born in 482 or 483, Justinian was the son of a Dardanian peasant, and was born at Scupi (Üsküp), "at the crossing-point of great natural routes across the western part of the Illyrian peninsula." When his uncle Justin raised himself to the throne in 518 he was sent for and trained to succeed to, if not already to exercise, supreme power. So long as Justin lived Justinian was his chief adviser. When Vitalian, the orthodox Goth, whose troops in the neighbourhood of the city seemed to threaten the new dynasty, was murdered in the palace, it was Justinian, for whose concern in the crime no valid evidence has been produced, who rose to the highest place in military as well as civil affairs. In 523 he married the beautiful Theodora, whose earlier life has been covered with shame by historians whose veracity is open at least to suspicion. She is described by the bitter Procopius as everything that is vile; it is probably true that her youth was disreputable; but it is certain that she made the noblest atonement for the past by the charity and piety of her later life and by the courage and wisdom which were of profit even to the Empire.[6] Of her beauty there is no doubt. Small, pale as marble, but with brilliant eyes, the bitterest of her enemies describes her; and when he uses the language of compliment he declares of the statue erected in her honour by the baths of Arcadius that "the face is beautiful but falls short of the beauty of the Empress, since it is utterly impossible for any mere human workmen to express her loveliness." Four years after the marriage, which was one of unbroken affection till the Empress died in 548, Justinian was associated with his uncle on the imperial throne. On April 1, 527, he became sole Emperor, and he reigned till 565.

Constantinople under Justinian became again the centre of Christian Europe. But before his power was fully established it was threatened by the gravest of the great insurrections with which the populace showed its independence and its fickle levity. The sedition arose in the Circus, and it was long the fashion to believe that Constantinople was ruled entirely under the sway of the factions of the Hippodrome. A more critical investigation has shown that the demes (δῆμοι) or parties were organised bodies intimately connected with the court and the municipality. The demes had two parts, military under democrats, and civil, or political, under demarchs. The heads of each faction were officers of the court and the army, and the demes were fully organised for military purposes. Not only were they, as we have seen, intrusted with the building of the wall, but they provided, under the Emperor Maurice, troops for the guarding of the long walls; and Justinian himself, at the end of his reign, used them in a similar way. It was to the demes, one writer seems to show, that Justin owed his throne. But while their military and political importance is now fully recognised, we are still without an explanation of how they became connected with the parties and colours of the Circus.

However that may be, we find in the reign of Justinian two large Circus parties, the Blues and the Greens, with whom were merged as sub-divisions the Reds and the Whites, who organised the races and had so much liberty allowed them by the laws, that they were able to defy emperors and set public order at defiance. But the madness of their riot was not without a method. To the demes or factions were allowed privileges which seemed the last relics of the ancient freedom of the Greek cities. "In the sixth century," says Professor Bury, "the outbreaks of the demes represent a last struggle for municipal independence, on which it is the policy of imperial absolutism to encroach. The power of the demarchs had to give way to the control of the præfects of the city."

THE IMPERIAL QUARTER

On January 13, 532, there began an insurrection called ever after the "Nika" (conquer), from the watchwords of the insurgents, which threatened the imperial throne, and went nigh to destroy the whole city. The præfect of the city led to execution some criminals belonging to both parties, three days before. The Greens, during the celebration of public games in the Hippodrome on Sunday, January 11, appealed to the Emperor against Calapodius, the imperial minister, and the most extraordinary dialogue occurred. "Be silent, Jews, Samaritans and Manichæans," cried Justinian's mandator, uttering imperial commands, but they renewed their complaints, and finally passed into insults, calling the Emperor tyrant and murderer. Justinian determined to show his indifference to the mob by the execution that night of criminals of both factions. Two were rescued, and the two factions determined to procure their pardon, and on the 13th, when the great games took place, they appealed to Justinian, but in vain. The two demes then declared themselves united, and having no answer from the præfect whose house they surrounded, they set fire to the prætorium, and then in the night spread the fire over the imperial quarter. The portico of the Palace, the Baths of Xeuxippus, the Senate-house, and the wooden church of S. Sophia were set on fire. Next morning they marched to the Palace and demanded the dismissal of the unpopular ministers. Justinian was about to yield, and indeed had given the order, when the insurgents determined to depose him. Anastasius had left three nephews, Probus, Hypatius and Pompeius. Failing to find the first the mob burned his house. The two other brothers remained in safety in the palace. Next day the greatest general of the age, Belisarius, who had but recently returned from a victorious campaign against the Persians, sallied forth from the palace with a body of barbarian troops, Goths and Heruls—for the garrison of the city could not be trusted—and fierce fighting occurred for two days in the streets. The clergy did their utmost to restore peace, but were utterly unheeded, and in the evening of the 16th the Church of S. Irene, built by Constantine, was burnt, though not to the ground, and the Hospice of Samson, which stood between it and S. Sophia, were also destroyed. On the 17th, Saturday, the fire spread still further, and almost all the centre of the city was reduced to ashes. At night Justinian determined to give up Hypatius and Pompeius to the mob, hoping no doubt that if they were conspiring against him they would be less dangerous outside than within the palace. In spite of their reluctance he drove them forth to their own houses. Next day, early on the Sunday morning, the Emperor himself went down to the Hippodrome and made what was little better than an abject submission. He swore on the gospels to forgive all that had been done, if order were now restored. "The blame is not yours but all mine. For the punishment of my sins I did not grant your requests when first you spoke to me in this place." Some cried out that he swore falsely, and no heed was taken of his words. A few hours later Hypatius was proclaimed Emperor, and as the mob surrounded the palace it seemed that there was nothing for the Emperor but flight. It was then, when Justinian was ready to yield and cross the Bosphorus to the safety of Chalcedon, that Theodora showed herself worthy of the purple. "No time is this," she cried, "to ask whether a woman should be bold before men or valiant when men are afraid. They who are in extremest peril must think of nothing but how best to meet what lies before them. To fly, if ever it be expedient, would now not be so, I declare, even if it preserved us. For a man born into this light not to die is impossible; but for one who has been Emperor to become an exile is not to be endured. Let me never come to be without this purple robe nor live that day when men shall cease to call me their sovereign Lady. If you, Emperor, wish to escape, it is no hard matter. Here is the sea, and there lie the ships. But consider whether you may not one day wish that you had exchanged your mean safety for a glorious death. For me I love the ancient saying, 'How brave a sepulchre a kingdom is!'"

Thus Theodora proved herself fit mate for a Cæsar, and worthy of her crown; and those who had counselled flight now found courage to resist. While Justinian's men planned an attack, the followers of Hypatius agreed upon delay, and he himself sent, it would seem, to make peace with the Emperor. As his messenger went, he was told that the Cæsar had fled, and then the unhappy pretender took upon him the dignity of Emperor. In a few hours Belisarius led his troops upon the multitude assembled in the Hippodrome, and before nightfall they forced their way in with fire and sword, and of all the citizens gathered in the Circus not one left it alive. Justinian was not told till too late that Hypatius had been willing to submit. The two brothers were dragged out with contumely, and the next morning before daylight they fell under the swords of the barbarian soldiers. The Emperor, it is said, would have spared them, but Theodora, "swearing by God and by him, urged him to have them killed." Zachariah of Mitylene says that more than 80,000 persons perished in the riot.

At midday on Monday, January 19, Constantinople was at peace; but it was in ruins. Three distinct conflagrations had reduced the grandest monuments of the city of Constantine to ashes. On the first two days of the riot all the buildings of the Augusteum were destroyed, and with them S. Sophia, the "Great Church," only its baptistery, it would seem, being saved. Two days later the buildings north-west of S. Sophia were in flames, and among them the Hospice for poor and sick folk, "founded in ancient times by a holy man whose name was Samson," and Constantine's Church of S. Irene. On the 17th the buildings round the Mesê, the street which connected the forum of Constantine with the Augusteum, and the "great porticoes leading up to the agora named from Constantine, and many houses of rich men, and large property, were burned." Thus, a great part of what had been the first Byzantium, which was adorned with the finest buildings of Constantine, was utterly destroyed. To one who saw the blackened ruins, they seemed like the masses of molten lava round the crater of a volcano. To Justinian, already a great law-giver, came the task of building anew the imperial city.

THE BURNT COLUMN

The Emperor began at once with the rebuilding of the Great Church of the Divine Wisdom. On the 23rd of February the work was begun: on December 26, 537, the new church was dedicated. "The procession," says Theophanes, who wrote from older materials in the eighth century, "started from the church of the Anastasia," where S. Gregory of Nazianzus had long preached to the men of Byzantium, "Menas, the patriarch, sitting in the royal chariot, and the King walking with the people." In 558 the eastern part of the dome with the apse was destroyed by an earthquake and was rebuilt. Agathias, a contemporary historian, thus describes the building and the restoration:

"Now the former church having been burnt by the angry mob, Justinian built it up again from the foundations, as great, and more beautiful and wonderful, and this most beautiful design was adorned with much precious metal. He built it in a round form, with burnt brick and lime. It was bound together here and there with iron; but they avoided the use of wood, so that it should no more be easily burnt. Now Anthemius was the man who devised and worked at every part. And when by the earthquake the middle part of the roof and the higher parts had been destroyed, the Emperor made it stronger, and raised it to a great height. Anthemius was then dead, but the young man Isidorus and the other craftsmen, turning over in their minds the earlier design, and comparing what had fallen with what remained, estimated where the error lay, and of what kind it was. They determined to leave the eastern and western arches as they were. But of the northern and southern they brought towards the inside that portion of the building which was upon the curve. And they made these arches wider, so as to be more in harmony with the others, thus making the equilateral symmetry more perfect. In this way they were able to cover the measurelessness of the empty space, and to take off some of its extent to form an oblong design. And again, they wrought that which rose up above it in the middle, whether cycle or hemisphere or whatever other name it may be called. And this also became more straightforward and of a better curve, in every part agreeing with the line; and at the same time not so wide but higher, so that it did not affright the spectators as before, but was set much more strong and safe."