"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—