Constantinople Part 1

Constantinople.

by William Holden Hutton.

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 ma.s.s 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 Jonquiere'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 _Realencyclopadie der cla.s.sischen 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 ma.s.s of interesting and important articles I should like to note that on _Les Debuts du Monachisme a 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.

Gullering. 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 Amba.s.sadors in 1896 and 1899, and to several members of the Emba.s.sy, with a very special debt of grat.i.tude 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 ill.u.s.trations this book will owe very much more than half its interest.

W. H. HUTTON.

THE GREAT HOUSE, BURFORD, OXON, _S. Mark's Day, 1900_.

Constantinople

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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+pping and bright with the flags of many nations; or even if you come overland by the sandy wastes along the sh.o.r.e, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 sh.o.r.e.

"Where ocean bathes earth's footstool these sea-bowers Bedeck its solid wavelets: wise was he Who blended sh.o.r.e 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 h.e.l.lespont, 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 sh.o.r.e--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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THERAPIA]

"Situated in the forty-first degree of lat.i.tude, the imperial city commanded, from her seven hills, the opposite sh.o.r.es 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 h.e.l.lespont may be considered as the two gates of Constantinople, and the prince who possessed those important pa.s.sages 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 h.e.l.lespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed, within their s.p.a.cious 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 pa.s.sages 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 G.o.d, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 G.o.d.

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 munic.i.p.al 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 imperiale_, 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 sh.o.r.es of Asia and the snows of Olympus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 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 G.o.d 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 ????s???, of one essence (substance), with that of the Father, but centuries pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sages in which Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus records the results of his disastrous activity, in language which loses nothing in Gibbon's English.