ROMA NOVA
_The City of the Constantines,_
_The rising city of the billow-side,_
_The City of the Cross--great ocean’s bride,_
_Crowned with her birth she sprung long ages past,_
_And still she looked in glory o’er the tide_
_Which at her feet barbaric riches cast,_
_Pour’d by the burning East, all joyously and fast._
Our journey through the park and palace-fringed Bosphorus had duly
prepared us for the culmination of these beauties and wonders, when, as
we neared Seraglio Point, the Imperial Capital of the Byzantine Cæsars
burst upon our view in all its glory and magnificence.
From the time of Tournefort travelers have vied with one another in
their attempts to convey in words their impressions on their first view
of the superb capital of the Ottoman Empire. Poets and artists have
essayed to depict the splendors of what they regarded as the queen city
of the world. There are pen-pictures of innumerable writers who came
under the spell of this city of the Cæsars and who were unable to find
language which would adequately express their sensations of ecstatic
trance and rapturous delight. Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Edmondo De
Amicis, Gautier, Gerard de Nerval, Edmond About, the Countess de
Gasparm, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Robert Hichens, and Pierre Loti
all are overcome with wonder at the marvelous spectacle and despair of
finding language to express their surprise and emotion in the presence
of such an enchanting spot.
It is at Constantinople [writes Lamartine], that God and man,
nature and art have created and placed the most marvelous point
of view which the human eye can contemplate on earth.[37]
Chateaubriand expresses almost the same sentiment when he declares
“_On n’ exagère point quand on dit que Constantinople offre le plus
beau point de vue de 1’univers._”[38] But notwithstanding this
almost extravagant statement, the distinguished _littérateur_
does not hesitate to add in a footnote, “I, however, prefer the bay of
Naples.”
Like Lamartine and Chauteaubriand, I, too, was greatly impressed by my
first view of Constantinople when seen from the deck of our steamer as
it glided towards the mast-thronged harbor of the Golden Horn, but, as
I have stated elsewhere,[39] the prize, for the World’s City Beautiful,
must, _me judice_, be awarded to Rio de Janeiro, the incomparable
capital of Brazil.
It is not within the scope of this chapter to give even a brief
description of Constantinople. That is rendered quite unnecessary
by the scores of valuable books which have been written on this
fascinating subject. This, however, does not mean that I was not
intensely interested in its countless attractions or that they
did not make deep impressions on me and give rise to serious
reflections. Far from it. I spent every available hour in visiting its
churches, mosques, schools, museums and in contemplating its hoary,
lichen-covered ruins, its battlemented walls and ivy-festooned towers
which, for long ages, cast their trembling shadows on the glimmering
waters of the Sea of Marmora and served, for more than eleven hundred
years, as effective bulwarks against the fierce assaults of Avars and
Goths, Arabs and Persians, Slavonians and Bulgarians and Mongols.
And, as I threaded my way through its narrow and devious streets and
inspected the picturesque and tumble-down houses, I found special
pleasure in scrutinizing the letters and inscriptions and epitaphs
engraved on slabs of marble or on blocks of granite, some of which
were in their original position while others had been used in the
construction of some now crumbling wall or building. If they could
speak, what stories could not these disconnected letters and incomplete
inscriptions tell of the shadowy past--stories of dark and strange
events connected with sieges and conquests--stories of intrigue and
deeds of violence and tyranny in which ambitious eunuchs, heartless
pashas, and bloodthirsty sultans were the chief actors--stories, too,
of exalted virtue and heroism displayed by noble men and women that
time the fanatic followers of Mohammed boastfully announced their
intention to plant the Crescent over the Cross and to remove from the
devoted city of Constantine the last vestiges of Christian art and
culture.
The first object to claim my attention after arriving in Constantinople
was the majestic and solemn church, now a mosque, of Santa Sophia. To
the Greeks it is known as the church of Hagia Sophia--Divine Wisdom.
More frequently, however, it is called ’Η Μεγάλη Εκκλησία--“The Great
Church--the church _par excellence_.”
Exteriorly this masterpiece of Byzantine basilicas has the aspect of
a massive, irregular time-worn fortress. Surrounded by all kinds of
low, unsymmetrical buildings--shops, storehouses, baths, schools,
turbehs--one can have no idea of its original design or external
appearance as it came from the hands of its architects, Anthemius of
Tralles and Isidore of Miletus.
The beauty of Santa Sophia, like that of so many of the famous churches
of the Old World, is within. But even within, the first impression
of the ordinary visitor is one of disappointment. But its surpassing
beauty and grandeur quickly reveal themselves and then one stands in
awe and amazement. Its marvelous harmony of design, its wealth of
ornamentation, its lavish display of the finest marbles, porphyries,
jaspers, serpentines, granites, alabasters, gold mosaics are
bewildering in their effect and one can easily realize what must have
been the splendor and magnificence of this august temple when, on the
day of consecration, the emperor Justinian exultantly exclaimed: Glory
be to God, who has deemed me worthy to accomplish such an undertaking.
Σολομὼν, νενíκησá σε--Solomon, I have conquered thee!
And his exclamation of triumph was justified. For never before had the
spoils of paganism’s great sanctuaries contributed so much towards the
erection and embellishment of any single Christian edifice. Among the
massive columns which support the great arches of the basilica are
eight of verdantique which were brought from the celebrated Temple of
Diana at Ephesus. There are eight of porphyry which belonged to the
Temple of the Sun in Baalbek. These were the gifts of the noble Roman
lady, Marcia, who, with characteristic piety, offered them, as she
expressed it--Υφὲρ τῆς ψυχíκῆς μον σωτηρíας--for the salvation of my
soul.
In addition to these splendid monoliths there are columns from the
Temple of the Sun, at Palmyra; from the Temple of Jupiter at Cyzicus;
from temples in Greece and Italy, Egypt, and the Cyclades. Its floor,
walls, piers, arcades are overlaid with precious marbles of every
hue--snow-white marble from Paros and Pentelicus, azure marble from
Lybia, green marble from Laconia, flecked, rose, yellow, and golden
marbles from Marmora, Synnada, Phrygia, and Mauritania. On all sides
is a magnificent display of wonderful shafts, capitals, cornices,
lintels, and panels of colors as variegated as their provenience is
manifold. In them we see grayish marbles from sea-girt Proconnesus,
verdantique from Thessaly, cipollino from Eubœa, Pavonazzetto from
Synnada, lumachelle from Chios, Brocatel from Spain, Fior di Persico
from Dalmatia, Bardiglio from the Apennines, giallo antico from distant
Numidia and bianco and nero-antico from the far-off Pyrenees, while
from the still-worked quarries of Egypt are marbles of emerald green
and imperial purple.
Nor is this all. Besides marbles of every hue and from every clime
there are borders of green serpentine, columns and panels of jasper
of every shade, bands of oriental alabaster of clear honey color from
the land of the Nile, exedras of porphyry from the Thebes of the
Pharaohs--all arranged so as to produce the most perfect harmony of
color and the most impressive effect on the beholders.[40]
When, even in its present defaced and despoiled condition, Santa Sophia
is still one of the greatest, if not the greatest, triumphs of Church
architecture, what must it not have been when “its domes and vaultings
resplendent with gold mosaic interspersed with solemn figures” made it,
what is in many respects the most magnificent temple of worship that
the world has yet known.
The Grand Opera House of Paris boasts of the beauty of its interior
which is adorned with thirty-three varieties of marble and other
ornamental stones. It is indeed beautiful, but it cannot compare
with the matchless interior of the Church of Holy Wisdom which is
embellished by the spoil of the most superb temples of antiquity and
the treasures of the richest quarries of the civilized world.
No other monarch has ever had at his disposition such rare and
precious building materials as had Justinian for the construction
of Santa Sophia and it is safe to say that no one will ever again
have materials of such uniqueness and value. When one, therefore,
considers all their richness and the admirable manner in which they
have been utilized, we can easily understand how the legend soon arose
which declares that while the Church of Holy Wisdom was building, the
workmen were specially instructed by an angel from heaven. Nor need
we go far for the origin of the story according to which Justinian
set up a statue “representing Solomon as looking at the Great Church
and gnashing his teeth with envy.” And one is not surprised at the
rapturous expressions of Corippus, a poet-bishop of the sixth century,
when he declares, “Praise of the temple of Solomon is now silenced and
the Wonders of the World have to yield the preëminence. Two shrines
founded by the wisdom of God have rivaled Heaven, one the Sacred
Temple, the other the splendid fane of Santa Sophia, the vestibule of
the Divine Presence.”[41]
But the most striking feature of this magnificent structure is its
dome. As viewed from below, it seems, as Madame de Staël says of the
dome of St. Peter’s, “like an abyss suspended over one’s head,” or as
the Byzantian historian, Nicetas Acominatus, declares “an image of the
firmament created by the Almighty.”
The eminent architectural authority, Fergusson, speaking of Justinian’s
masterpiece, avers, “Internally, at least, the verdict seems inevitable
that Santa Sophia is the most perfect and most beautiful church which
has yet been erected by any Christian people. When its furniture
was complete the verdict would have been still more strongly in its
favor.”[42]
But the Ottomans, in taking possession of this unique sanctuary,
removed or destroyed its priceless furniture and decorations and
concealed its matchless mosaic pictures--pictures which Ghirlandajo
declares are “the only paintings for eternity”--with a layer of
white-wash! And although in its present condition, it is still,
despite Moslem desecration, the delight of the artists and architects
of the world, its interior is as far from exhibiting the glories of
its pristine state as is the exterior of the Parthenon, since its
mutilation by Lord Elgin--an act of vandalism denounced by Byron as “a
triple sacrilege”--from displaying the peerless beauty of the sublime
creation of Ictinus and Phidias.
Is it then any wonder that Saint Sophia was, from its completion,
regarded as the very heart of the Byzantine Empire--that it has ever
held the same place in the affections of the Greeks as St. Peter’s, the
Cathedral of Rheims, and Westminster Abbey occupy in the hearts of the
peoples of Italy, France, and England? And is it a matter of surprise
that,
_Though turbans now pollute Sophia’s shrine_
the Greeks of to-day still cherish the hope that it will, in the
designs of Providence, eventually be returned to them and that
Christian worship, with all the pomp of the Grecian liturgy, will again
be restored under Santa Sophia’s wondrous dome?
It is related that when Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople,
took possession of Santa Sophia, he observed an Ottoman soldier
destroying the mosaics of the church with his mace. “Let those things
be,” Mohammed cried, and with a single blow he stretched the fanatical
vandal at his feet. And then, in a lower tone, he added, so the
historian avers, “Who knows but in another age they may serve another
religion than that of Islam?” God grant it!
Nor have the Greeks ever abandoned the hope of one day regaining
possession of the City of Constantinople. They claim it as their
heritage, which was lost to them by the fortunes of war, and they
patiently await the turn in fortune’s wheel when
_The city won for Allah from the Giaour,_
_The Giaour from Othman’s race again may wrest._[43]
After leaving Santa Sophia, I spent some time in the extensive grounds
of the Seraglio,[44] which, since the young Turks have come into power,
have been used as a public park. About the buildings and the occupants
of the Seraglio much has been written--the greater part of it based on
imagination rather than on fact. But I have no desire to dwell on
_That spacious seat_
_Of Wealth and Wantonness_,
which, for three centuries, was “the heart of Ottoman history” and
which for ten generations was the home of palled votaries of pleasure,
but too often, alas! the hated prison of innocent victims who were
condemned to pander to the basest passions of heartless minotaurs of
lust and crime.
To the south of Santa Sophia is all that remains of the Hippodrome
which, in its heyday of splendor, was regarded as one of the wonders
of the world. Modeled after the Circus Maximus of Rome, it served as
a forum, as a race course, and a museum in which were collected the
choicest sculptures of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. Here were statues
of Phidias and Praxiteles and other master sculptors of the ancient
world. Among them were an exquisite statue of Helen of Troy, “whose
beauty of form and feature drove brave men distraught,” and the famed
bronze horses of Lysippus--which were carried off by Dandolo to Venice,
where they now adorn the cathedral of San Marco--and countless other
masterpieces of scarcely less value and beauty.
Besides serving as a race course the Hippodrome, which had, it is
estimated, a seating capacity of a hundred and twenty thousand people,
was used for every purpose that could attract a large multitude of
people. The _Spina_--a low wall dividing the Hippodrome into two
sections--was, in common parlance, “the axis around which the Byzantine
world revolved.” It was the favorite place for athletic sports and
for the exhibition of wild animals. It was here that distinguished
emperors and generals, like Heraclius and Nicephorus and Belisarius,
celebrated their victories over the enemies of the empire. It was here
that were witnessed not only the pride, the power, and the glories of
New Rome, but also its tragedies, its massacres, its decadence, and
ruin. In the acme of its magnificence this historic circus, with its
forty tiers of marble seats and its superb promenade which surmounted
all, was resplendent with the most beautiful works of Greek and Roman
art--spoils from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Mauritania.
Of this marvelous Hippodrome only a part of the site is now visible,
while of its ornaments but three are still extant. These are a bare
column of masonry once covered with bronze plates which caused it “to
gleam like a column of light”; an Egyptian obelisk that antedates the
time of Moses, and one of the most ancient relics of Greece. This is
the Serpent column from Delphi which, with the bronze Wolf of the
Capitol in Rome, “may count as the most precious metal relic which
remains from the ancient world.” It bears witness to the final defeat
of Xerxes at Platæa, the first great triumph of the West over the East.
For eight centuries it served as a pedestal for the golden tripod of
the priestess of the god, and during long centuries it was for the
Greeks an object of pilgrimage. When, nearly two thousand years later,
the East, under Mohammed the Conqueror, was victorious over the West,
this secular monument was permitted to remain on the base which has
supported it for sixteen centuries that it might continue “to bear
witness to the link of New Rome with Old Greece” and endure as a
vivid reminder of the pomp of Byzantine rule and of the continuity of
civilization.
Scarcely less interesting to me than the age-old remnants of the
Hippodrome were the massive and crumbling walls that for a thousand
years were the city’s palladium against the barbarian hordes of Asia
and Europe. What visions crowd upon the memory as one stands upon
this hoary rampart and surveys the scene around one! It was thanks to
the impregnable walls of Constantinople no less than to the unique
strategic position of the city that Roma Nova was able so long to hold
her place as the home of art and letters, history and philosophy; that,
in spite of desolating wars which everywhere raged in the rest of the
world, and which at times carried their ravaging effects to her very
gates, she continued to be the world’s one sure refuge of law, justice,
and freedom; that, notwithstanding internecine strife, and changes of
dynasties, her government was the one that for centuries afforded the
greatest security for life and property; the one under which commerce
and civilization were most fostered and most flourishing.
If the walls of Constantinople could speak, what thrilling stories
could they not relate of the score of sieges to which they were
exposed! For vivid color and breathless interest they surpass the siege
of Tyre by Alexander, the siege of Carthage by Scipio, the siege of
Jerusalem by Godfrey de Bouillon as described in the glowing epic of
Tasso. Unlike the last-named sieges, those directed against the city
on the Bosphorus “stand out on the canvas of history by the magnitude
of the issues involved to religion, to nations, to civilization.”
This is particularly true of the sieges by Saracens, Turks, and
Mongols, for, if these barbarians and sworn enemies of the Christian
name had succeeded in piercing the walls of this greatest bulwark
of civilization before the dawn of the reconstructive work of the
fifteenth century, the results to learning, art, Christendom would have
been disastrous beyond conception, while progress and social order
would have been retarded for untold centuries.
Never, probably, in the history of our race has the possession of any
city led to more devastating and longer continued wars, to greater
international rivalries and contentions than has the fair capital on
the Golden Horn. It was in 673--but little more than a generation after
Mohammed’s death--when the Moslems under the Saracen Moawiah laid
siege to Constantinople, which was then the greatest and the richest
city of the known world. They were defeated but not crushed. Knowing
the incalculable treasures the city contained and realizing fully its
supreme importance as the center of a world empire, they determined
never to desist from their purpose until Constantinople was the capital
and sovereign seat of Islam. Not until 1453, after eight centuries of
deferred hopes, were their aspirations realized.
For a much longer period has Russia had her longing eyes on what she
was wont to call “The Sacred City”--the city which had so long been
the goal of the nations of Asia and Europe. From the days of Rurik,
the reputed founder of the Russian monarchy, the Muscovites have
never ceased to look forward to the time when the peerless city of
Constantine would be in the possession of Holy Russia, and when the
strategic channel which links the Euxine with the Mediterranean would
be under her absolute control.
For a thousand years the forces of Russia continued irresistibly to
move toward the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. When Catherine II, “The
Semiramis of the North,” in 1787, made her magnificent progress through
Southern Russia she entered the city of Kherson under a triumphal arch
which bore the inscription “The Way to Byzantium.” As still further
expressive of her faith in Russia’s ultimate destiny there was a gate
in Moscow named “The Way to Constantinople.”
But this was not all. With the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II, she worked
out a scheme for a restored Greek Empire, with Constantinople as its
capital, the throne of which was to be given to her second grandson.
And so sure was she of effectuating her plan that “the boy with
sagacious prescience had been christened Constantine; he was always
dressed in the Greek mode, surrounded by Greek nurses and instructed
in the tongue of his future subjects. That no detail might be lacking
which foresight could devise, a medal had already been struck, on one
side of which was a representation of the young prince’s head and on
the other an allegorical device indicating the coming triumph of the
Cross over the Crescent.”[45]
At the famous conference on the raft anchored in the river Nieman,
when Napoleon and Alexander I discussed plans for the division of the
world’s sovereignty, the Russian monarch demanded, as his share of
the partition, the City of Constantinople together with the Bosphorus
and the Dardanelles. For this he was willing to concede to the French
Emperor the most valuable regions on the Mediterranean littoral and
to aid him with money and men in his projected conquest of India. But
this the ambitious dictator of Europe would not grant. Placing his
finger on the map where Constantinople was indicated, he exclaimed
with passionate emphasis, “Constantinople! Constantinople! Never. That
would mean the empire of the world!” At St. Helena he again gave clear
expression to his estimate of the value of Constantinople when he
declared “_Constantinople est placée pour être le centre et le siege
de la dominion universelle._”[46]
Almost exactly a thousand years after the death of Rurik, Russia’s
victorious army was at San Stephano within sight of the domes and
minarets of the City of Constantine. “At last,” shouted the jubilant
soldiers, “we have reached our goal and Czargrad”--their name for
Constantinople--“is ours!” Only a few hours more, they fondly believed,
and they would see the Greek cross supplanting the Crescent at the dome
of Santa Sophia and the dreams of ten centuries finally realized.
But it was not to be. Russia had indeed advanced nearer the goal on
which her eyes had been fixed for a thousand years, but the coveted
prize, though seemingly so near, was yet far from her grasp. The Treaty
of San Stephano had, it is true, established a dominant Slav state in
the Balkans which it was intended should be but a simple dependency
of Russia and a stepping stone to Constantinople, but the treaty
was scarcely signed before England and others of the Great Powers
insisted on its revision. This was done at the Congress of Berlin. Here
Beaconsfield, in order “to check Russian influence in the Balkans” and
to safeguard “the vital requirements of Britain’s Eastern policy,”
insisted on the restoration of “the position of Turkey as a European
state”--a position which had been practically lost by the treaty of San
Stephano.[47]
The Turk is still in Constantinople and is there notwithstanding the
loud and reiterated declarations of statesmen from Gladstone to Lloyd
George that he was to be cast “bag and baggage” out of Europe for
evermore, but, when one remembers that, since the days of Solyman the
Magnificent, the imminent downfall of Turkey as a European power has
been confidently predicted scores of times; that, since the Osmanlis
reached the Bosphorus nearly six centuries ago, no fewer than a hundred
plans have been made for the partition of their territory[48] and
that recently the English premier, Lloyd George, made the evacuation
of Constantinople by Turkey an essential condition of peace--at
least until he could have time to change his opportunist mind--one
asks oneself how much longer the Sultan will successfully pursue his
time-honored policy of _divide et impera_ and how much longer
diplomats will continue to insist that the maintenance of the City
of Constantine as the capital of the Ottoman Empire is a political
necessity, and when, if ever, Russia’s persistent ambition of a
thousand years will at last be realized.[49] From present indications
there is little likelihood that the jealousies of the more powerful
nations of Europe respecting the matchless capital of the Golden Horn
will abate or that the traditional ability of Turkey’s astute rulers to
play off the Great Powers one against the other will be less marked in
the future than in the past.
If, however, there is to be a transfer of Constantinople to some other
power than that of the Ottoman Empire, poetic justice seems to require
that the aspirations of Greece should receive first consideration.
Greek in language and nationality from the days of Byzas until it
was lost by the fortunes of war to the followers of Mohammed, this
city is claimed by the people that counts among its own a Belisarius,
a Pulcheria, a Tribonian, an Anthemius, a Chrysostom, a Gregory
Nazienzus--men and women who in eminence and achievement were surpassed
by none of their contemporaries west of the Adriatic and who were the
glories of the greatest home of art and literature and culture when
Russia was yet a land of wild nomads and ignorant barbarians. And this
same people claims Constantinople as theirs “by origin and by long
possession, a possession which has in some sort gone on both under
Frankish and under Turkish rule.”[50]
One of the most interesting and picturesque sights in Constantinople,
but of a far different character from those of which I have been
speaking, is to be seen on the lower bridge over the Golden Horn.
Connecting Galata, the part of the city which is chiefly inhabited by
non-Mussulmans, with Stamboul, which is occupied almost entirely by
Turks and Moslems of various nationalities, this bridge is frequently
crowded with people of every color and from every clime. But what a
noisy, jostling, struggling, wrangling, cosmopolitan throng one here
encounters! Here one sees representatives from all parts of Europe,
Asia, and Africa--bright-turbaned Turks, supple and chattering Greeks,
jauntily attired dragomans, gorgeously uniformed kavasses, heavily
burdened hamals, round-browed Montenegrins, white-kirtled Albanians,
bronzed and sun-dried Bedouins from Arabia, shuffling and high-voiced
eunuchs from Nubia and Abyssinia, and high-capped Tartars from the
steppes of Russia and Central Asia--all vociferating in a score of
languages and dialects, all utterly regardless of those who are round
about them.
And such a variety of garbs and partial garbs! And yet they attract
no attention in this motley crowd who here, as elsewhere in the
East, are accustomed to seeing people appareled in garments of every
conceivable style and color. “A man,” as has been observed by one who
knows the Orient well, “may go about in public veiled up to the eyes,
or clad, if he please, only in a girdle; he is merely obeying his own
law”[51]--following a custom which has prevailed among his ancestors
through countless generations.
After a tiresome climb I once found myself on the highest platform
of the lofty Galata tower. From this point one has probably the best
obtainable view of Constantinople and its environment. The panorama
which is disclosed is certainly beautiful, superb; but I am not
prepared to agree with the enthusiastic writer who declares that
“nothing on this globe can surpass it--that it is incomparable in its
panoramic variety and sublimity!”[52] I still contend that the palm for
enchanting scenic beauty and for magnificent natural panoramas belongs
to Rio de Janeiro.
I readily grant, however, that in wealth of legend, romance, and
historic associations of every kind New Rome far surpasses the
fascinating capital of Brazil. And I am inclined to think that most
of those who descant so enthusiastically on the marvelous beauty of
Constantinople unconsciously allow their judgments of the city’s
present beauties to be colored by the magic and the glamour of the
historic past.
Considering the Byzantine capital as the theater of thrilling deeds
and notable achievements, it is probably unsurpassed in human interest
except by Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. And the views one may have
from the height of Galata’s tower are, historically considered,
inferior only to those that so impress the spectator who stands on
the ruin-crowned summit of the Palatine, the majestic portico of the
Parthenon, and the sanctified heights of the Mount of Olives.
As I stood on the dizzy balcony which surmounts the lofty tower and
beheld the magnificent vistas that opened up before me on every side, I
realized as never before what a unique site was occupied by the City of
Constantine. On the north are the cypress and palace-crowned hills of
the winding Bosphorus and the delightful Sweet Waters of Europe, which
are even more attractive than the rival Sweet Waters of Asia. On the
south gleams the silver expanse of the Marmora, in which are mirrored
the picturesque Islands of the Princes, over which hover so many morbid
and voluptuous memories of the past. On the east across the Strait
stand out in bold relief the Maiden’s Tower and the Golden City of
Scutari, both wrapped in an atmosphere of heavy and exotic passion and
“holding their secrets of the Orient closely hidden from the eyes of
Europe.” On the hills laved by the glimmering waters of the Golden Horn
and the Sea of Marmora, and bounded on the west by the historic plain
of Thrace, proudly sits, half veiled by a tremulous amethystine haze,
the peerless Queen of the East in all her majesty and shedding on the
fascinated beholder a strange sense of mystery--seeming not a living,
palpable thing, but rather a brilliant phantasm, or a rainbow dream of
mystic remoteness.
Almost within a stone’s throw of where I stood was the Golden Horn
sprinkled with hundreds of delicate, pointed caiques and bearing on
its sapphire bosom ships of all sizes and flying the flags of all
nations. It was up this famous stream that Byzas, the reputed son of
Neptune, steered his frail craft nearly seven centuries before our
era. And it was on the southern bank of this sheltered haven that the
daring navigator, with his doughty Megarans, laid the foundation of
Byzantium--named after himself--which was to play such a remarkable
rôle in the world’s great drama.
A thousand years later--almost to a day--Constantine the Great abandons
the city of Romulus and selects that of Byzas as the capital of the
great Roman empire. On foot, with a lance in hand, the Emperor leads
a solemn procession, and, under divine command--_jubente Deo_,
as he phrased it--traces the boundary of the future metropolis. His
assistants, astonished at the over-growing circumference of the
destined capital, ventured to observe that the contemplated area of a
great city had already been exceeded. “I shall continue to advance,”
replied the Emperor, “until the Invisible Guide who precedes me bids me
halt.”
It was across the Golden Horn that “blind old Dandolo”--that
marvelous doge of ninety-seven years--led the Venetian forces against
Constantinople and awakened the degenerate Greeks from “a dream of nine
centuries--from the vain presumption that the capital of the Roman
Empire was impregnable to foreign arms.” The marble mausoleum of this
remarkable man--whose physical and mental powers were vigorous to the
last--occupied a place in Santa Sophia until it was transformed into a
mosque, and, even to-day, one may see in one of the galleries of the
venerable fane a marble slab bearing in almost illegible characters the
name of Henricus Dandolo.
And it was across the Golden Horn that Mohammed II passed when he
entered the breached walls through New Rome as conqueror. But he was
not able to effect an entrance into the ill-fated city without passing
over the lifeless body of its noble defender, the valiant Constantine
Paleologus, the last of the Byzantine Cæsars.[53]
For six centuries Constantinople had been an impregnable bulwark
against the forces of Islam. For nearly twice that space of time she
had successfully resisted the menaces and attacks of the barbarians of
the north--Goths, Huns, Avars, Russians, Bulgarians, Chazars--and had
proudly defied the power of Chosroes, Timur, Bayazid, Harun-al-Rashid,
and other leaders of savage hordes from Persia, Arabia, and Central
Asia. Unlike Old Rome, which frequently opened her gates to invaders
from the north of the Danube, New Rome never once yielded to her
Teutonic and Slavonian foes. Although besieged more than a score of
times between the fourth and the thirteenth century[54] she was able
to withstand every assault however furious or long continued. And this
she did after the vast empire which once extended from the Tigris to
the Guadilquivir had been so reduced that little was left of it but the
capital itself, which, at the time of its capture by the Turks under
Mohammed II, was scarcely more than a besieged fortress.
How the occupation of Constantinople by Mohammed the Conqueror, has
complicated the political, military, and economic conditions of Europe
for nearly five centuries is a matter of gloomy history. Owing to
its matchless position it was long the natural center of the world’s
commerce, the clearing house between Europe and Asia. Destined by
nature itself to be the seat of two worlds, Constantinople must, as
Freeman well observes, “remain the seat of imperial rule as long as
Europe and Asia, as long as land and sea keep their places.”[55]
The transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire from the
Tiber to the Golden Horn, the foundation of Constantinople in
330 A. D., was one of the master-strokes in the history of
civilization--indeed from the material and strategic point
of view, I hold it to be the greatest. Rome, Paris, London,
Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, Berlin, Washington, became capital
cities by the gradual acts of the rulers in the course of
years. But in ten years Constantinople remade the center of the
civilized world. Nothing so stupendous in civic origins has ever
been accomplished before or since, for its effects have been
maintained with rare and partial breaks for eleven, nay, for
fifteen centuries. The foundation of Alexandria by Alexander,
of Antioch by Seleucus have some parallels. Mecca, Jerusalem,
Cairo, Delhi have had fluctuating histories. Peter’s creation
of Petrograd was a splendid mistake, which has ended in hideous
failure. But the creation of Constantinople marks Constantine
as one of the truly great, beside Julius, Trajan, Charles and
Washington.[56]
But more remarkable than anything that has yet been said of the Queen
City of the Bosphorus is her marvelous continuity of imperial rule.
From the time when Constantine transferred the capital of the empire
from the Tiber to the Golden Horn, when, in the works of Dante,
_Per cedere al Pastor si fece Greco,_[57]
New Rome--notwithstanding all its wars and vicissitudes, all its
changes of race and religion, all its changes of laws and customs
and institutions--has been the continuous seat of empire for sixteen
centuries. This is something that is without parallel in the history of
our race.
Rome was the local center of empire for barely four
centuries.... The royal cities that once flourished in the
valleys of the Ganges, the Euphrates or the Nile were all
abandoned after some centuries of splendor, and have long
lost their imperial rank. Memphis, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage,
Alexandria, Syracuse, Athens, had periods of glory but no great
continuity of empire. London and Paris have been great capitals
for at most a few centuries; and Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, and St.
Petersburg are things of yesterday in the long roll of human
civilization.[58]
This exceptional continuity in Constantinople may, it has been
asserted, “be ultimately traced to its incomparable physical and
geographical capabilities.”
But while I contemplated the capital of Constantine as it lay bathed
in the tremulous and ethereal atmosphere of an autumn afternoon and
recalled its past history, enveloped in the mist of years--a history
which then seemed more like a confused and troubled dream than a
veritable record of stirring and vivid actualities--I presently lost
sight of the wars and sieges and conquests of which this Castle of the
Cæsars has so frequently been the theater and thought of its rather as
the erstwhile home of art and literature, as the renowned center of
religion and culture.
Among its ecclesiastical rulers were some of the brightest luminaries
of the Eastern Church. There was the scholarly St. John Chrysostom,
“the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit.”[59] There was
the illustrious St. Gregory Nazienzus, whom Villeman calls the greatest
Oriental poet of Christendom. There was Photius, “whose learning and
width of culture was astonishing and whose library-catalogue is the
envy of modern scholars.” And there were those two learned women, the
Empress Eudocia and the Princess Anna Comnena, who, as Gibbon phrases
it, “cultivated in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy.”[60]
It was in Constantinople that, at the command of Justinian, was
framed the famous Code that bears his name--the most important of
all monuments of jurisprudence and which, notwithstanding subsequent
modifications, is still the basis of all legislation throughout the
civilized world.
It was here that Byzantine art took its highest flights. Santa Sophia
was but one of the churches of New Rome from which western artists and
architects drew their inspiration. We see this in the paintings of
Cimabue and Giotto and in the countless Italian edifices which exhibit
the evidence of Byzantine influence.
And it was here, in the libraries and monasteries, that was preserved
that precious heritage of Greek thought and Greek genius, which, at a
later age, was to be transferred to Western Europe, and which, through
the activity of Byzantine scholars, was to be the foundation of the
Renaissance. During the period immediately preceding the Conquest
of Constantinople there was, declares Gibbon, “more books and more
knowledge within the walls of Constantinople than could be dispersed
over the extensive countries of the West.”[61]
“When the arms of the Turks pressed the flight of the Muses” from
the Queen City of the East, Greek learning sought an asylum on the
banks of the Arno and the Tiber. Among the first of Greek scholars to
find a congenial home in the land of Dante and Petrarch were Janon
Lascaris and Manuel Chrysoloras. They were received with open arms in
the universities of the Peninsula and lectured with signal success
to vast numbers of eager and enthusiastic students of every age and
condition. But nowhere were they and others of their countrymen of a
later date[62] accorded a more cordial welcome than in the palaces
of the Medici and at the courts of Leo X and Nicholas V. Under such
illustrious patrons, Greek letters flourished amazingly and quickly
prepared the way for the great humanistic movement that culminated in
the literary triumphs of Politian, Reuchlin, and Erasmus.
But the fall of Constantinople was epoch-making not only in its
relation to the Humanistic Renaissance but also in its effect on
the economic and commercial development of Europe. Before the
Ottomans achieved the conquest of the Græco-Roman Empire of the East,
this region constituted what has happily been designated as “the
nerve-center of the world’s commerce.” But no sooner had it passed
into the hands of the Ottomans than the great trade routes between
the Orient and Europe were completely blocked “by a power inimical to
commerce and still more inimical to those Christian nations for whose
benefit intercourse between the East and West was mainly carried on.”
It was then imperative for Europe, unless it was prepared to forego its
trade with the East, to discover a new route to the Orient, which would
be beyond the interference of Ottoman power. This much desired result
was accomplished by two of the most decisive events in the world’s
history--“the rounding by Vasco da Gama of the Cape of Good Hope and
the discovery of the New World.” By these far-reaching achievements
“the center of gravity, commercial, political and intellectual, rapidly
shifted from the south-east of Europe to the northwest; from the cities
of the Mediterranean littoral to those of the Atlantic. Constantinople,
Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, Marseilles were deprived at one fell swoop
of the economic and political preëminence which had for centuries
belonged to them” ... and the Mediterranean, which for ages had “been
the greatest of commercial highways, was reduced almost to the position
of a backwater.”[63]
Among the many names given to the Ottoman capital by the peoples of the
East is that bestowed upon it by the Arabs, namely, El Farruch--the
Earth-Divider. In view of what has been said in the preceding pages no
epithet could be more expressive of the truth. For, since the fall of
the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, together with its two appanages,
the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, has constituted the chief line of
demarcation between the East and the West, between the Cross and the
Crescent.
One of the most difficult and delicate problems which diplomacy has
yet to solve--war has been impotent to bring about a solution--is the
future status of the historic city of the Bosphorus and the relations
between the powers of Islam and the Christian nations of Europe.
As the solution of the problem cannot, apparently, be effected by
conquest or by a sordid exploitation of the lands of the East, it seems
that the time has now arrived when more unselfish and more Christian
methods should be applied than those based on force and international
rivalries.
We owe much, very much, to the East. From her, through Greece and Rome,
have come our civilization and culture, our art and literature. From
her has come the religion that molds the mind and purifies the heart of
Christendom. To her, therefore, we owe an immense debt of gratitude,
a debt that can be paid only by helping her in her present lethargic
state and by aiding her to return to her former condition of vigor and
progress. We should, consequently, endeavor to understand the needs of
the East in order that we may the more intelligently contribute towards
her resuscitation--moral and intellectual, as well as material--and
that we may more rationally coöperate with her in regaining, at least
in a measure, that position of preëminence which she occupied when she
was acclaimed the cradle of civilization and the mother of culture;
when Bagdad and Damascus were famed centers of learning; when Saracen
scholars made known to the nations of the West the treasures of Greek
science and philosophy; when it was said, “In all other parts of the
world light descends upon earth, from Holy Bokhara it ascends.”
Is this an impossible task? It is certainly not unworthy of being
essayed by the lovers of humanity, who are beholden to the East for
the greatest blessings they now enjoy. The welfare of our race and
the peace of the world demand the removal of the impassable barriers
which have so long separated the Orient from the Occident. Of all the
plans now engaging the minds of men for securing permanent peace in the
Near East and achieving, at the same time, its spiritual and social
regeneration, this seems to be the only one that is likely to have
a successful issue--the only one which has a real basis in genuine
altruism and Christian righteousness.