Istanbul: A City on Two Continents - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 205

component, Constantinople ( polis , from the Greek, city-state) at the ancient site of Byzas's
city, a place where Europe and Asia meet. The line of a divided empire ran through today's
former Yugoslavia. East of the line, Christianity evolved toward the Orthodox Communion;
the West shifted toward Vatican dominion. (Part of the bitterness today between Serbs and
Croatians owes to that long-ago division of empire.)
In the centuries after 334, Constantine's city carried two titles: Capital of New Rome
(Rum) and Capital of the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium), whose imperial banner displayed
a two-headed eagle: one head facing west (Europe), the other facing east (Asia). The Byz-
antine Empire lasted more than 1,000 years until 1453, when the city of Constantinople
was overrun by the armies of the Turkish-Ottoman Sultan Memmet II. With the pride of the
victor, Memmet renamed his city Istanbul.
WHY BYZANTIUM INSTEAD OF NEW ROME?
Long after Constantine, the city continued to be called New Rome, but its culture laced it
to classical Greece. Its language was Greek, and its scholars and libraries preserved Greek
learning—learning that would someday lay the intellectual foundations of the Renaissance.
In the centuries following Constantine's division of empire, the western half came under
the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Rome (the Pope), while the eastern division came un-
der the jurisdiction of other Patriarchs: Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. The rela-
tionship between Patriarchs was often contentious, especially over politics linked to theo-
logy. The Patriarch of Constantinople took offense at the Pope's crowning and consecrating
Charlemagne in 800, an anger that was turned against the Patriarch when in 1204 an army
of Crusaders, led by Venice and blessed by the Pope, attacked Constantinople and looted
the city. (The great bronze horses that stand in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice were
part of that loot. The originals are now in a museum; copies take their place.)
It was in the resolution of debates about dogma and liturgy that the Orthodox Commu-
nion evolved. And it was in the Orthodox Communion that throne and church reinforced
each other. The emperor ruled by divine right and appointed the Patriarch to his sacerdotal
seat.
Like Rome, Constantinople was built on seven hills. At its most expansive, Con-
stantinople's empire stretched along the Adriatic, Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. It em-
braced present-day Greece and parts of the former Yugoslavia, the northern shores of North
Africa, the Near East, and portions of the Persian Empire. It was an empire of great wealth,
sumptuous display, dazzling architecture, and murderous intrigue. The word “byzantine”
comes down to us to describe a way of life and a system of politics that is devious, cunning,
opaque, and ruthless. Of the emperors who succeeded Constantine, more than twenty-nine
were murdered. Blinding, torture, and mutilation were the fate of many Byzantine rulers.
At least one was murdered by his own mother.