CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. From The Fortnightly Review. historic fort. Hardly any of the ancient towns of Italy and southern Europe can show so authentic and ven BY FREDERIC HARRISON. doubt that Byzantium has been a historic city for some twenty-five hundred and fifty years; during the whole of that period, with no real break in her life, it has been the scene of events recorded in the annals of mankind; it has been fought for and held by men famous in world history; it has played a substantive part in the drama of civilization. So singular a sequence of historic interest can hardly be claimed for any city in Europe, except for Rome herself. MANY things combine to call re-erable a record. There is no reason to newed attention to Constantinople as an historic city, with her wonderful past and her mysterious future. The picturesque old capital of the Padishah is fast fading away from our eyes, under the influence of the Treaty of San Stefano, railways, European reforms, and the ebb of the Moslem population from Europe. Those who wish to see some remnants of Oriental life and color on this side of the Bosphorus, should hasten to visit the Moslem capital before the turban and the hadji have quite disappeared from her khans. On the other hand an unusual stimulus has been given of late by European scholars to the history and the antiquities of this legendary "mother of dead empires." I. Of all the cities of Europe the New Rome of the Bosphorus, in its power over the imagination of men, can yield the first place to none save its own mother, the Old Rome of the Tiber. And of all cities of the world she stands foremost in beauty of situation, in the marvel of her geographical position, as the eternal link between the East and the West. We may almost add that she is foremost in the vast continuity and gorgeous multiplicity of her historic interests. For if Constantinople can present us with nothing that can vie in sublimity and pathos with the memories of Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, it has for the historic mind a peculiar fascination of its own, in the enormous persistence of imperial power concentrated under varied forms in one unique spot of our earthly globe. Byzantium, to use that which has been the ordinary name with all Greek writers from Herodotus down to Paspates in our own day, is one of the oldest cities of Europe; historically speaking, if we neglect mere pre-historic legend, little younger than Athens or Rome. Like them, Byzantium appears to have been founded on a pre For nearly a thousand years before it became the capital of an empire, Byzantium was a Greek city of much importance, the prize of contending nations, and with striking prescience even then chosen out by philosophic historians for its commanding position and immense capabilities. After the lapse of nearly a thousand years, Byzantium became Constantinople, the centre of the Roman Empire. Since then it has been the capital city of an empire for exactly fifteen hundred and sixty-four years and that in a manner, and for a period such as no other imperial city has been in the annals of civilized man. There is no actual break; although, for the dynasty of the Palæologi, from the Latin Empire down to the capture by the Ottomans, the empire outside the capital has a shrunken and almost phantom dominion. But it is yet true, that for fifteen hundred and sixty-four years Constantinople has ever been, and still is, the sole regular residence of emperors and sultans, the sole and continuous centre of civil and military administration, the supreme court of law and justice, and the official centre of the imperial religion. During all this period the life of the empire has been concentrated in that most wonderful peninsula, as its heart and its head. It has been concentrated for a far longer period, and in a more definite way, than even it was in the original Seven Hills; for Rome herself was the local seat of empire for to kindle our thoughts. History, alas! scarcely four centuries, and even for is not the record of pure virtue and that in an intermittent form; and vast peaceful happiness; it is the record of as has been the continuity of the Ro- deeds big with fate to races of men, of man Church for at least thirteen cen- passions, crimes, follies, heroisms, and turies, its life, and even its official martyrdoms in the mysterious labygovernment, have had many seats and riuth of human destiny. The stage continual movements. But from the whereon, over so vast a period of days of Constantine, Constantinople man's memory, ten thousand of such has been, both in the temporal and tragedies have been enacted, holds spiritual domains, the centre, the with a spell the mind of every man home, the palladium of the empire of who is in sympathy with human nathe East. For fifteen centuries the lord ture, and who loves to meditate on the of Constantinople has never ceased to problem of human progress. be the lord of the contiguous East; and, whilst sea and rock hold in their accustomed places, the lord of Constantinople must continue to be lord of south-eastern Europe and of north'western Asia. History and European opinion have been until lately most unjust to the Byzantine empire, whether in its Roman, its Greek, or in its Ottoman form. By a singular fatality its annals and its true place have been grossly misunderstood. Foreign scholars, German, French, Russian, and Greek, have done much in recent years to repair this error; and English historians, though late in the field, are beginning to atone for neglect in the past. Finlay worthily led the way, in spite of sympathies and antipathies which almost incapacitate an historian from truly grasping Byzantine history. Professor Freeman struck the true note in some of his most weighty and pregnant pieces, perhaps the most original and brilliant of his essays; and now Professor Bury, This continuity and concentration of imperial rule in an imperial city has no parallel in the history of mankind. Rome was the local centre of empire for barely four centuries, and for sixteen centuries she has wholly lost that claim. 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 of Dublin, has undertaken the vast and Paris have been great capitals for task of casting into a scientific and at most a few centuries; and Madrid, systematic history those wonderful Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, narratives of which Gibbon gave us deare things of yesterday in the long roll tached and superb sketches, albeit with of human civilization. There is but limited resources and incomplete knowlone city of the world of which it can be edge. Edwin Pears, in a fine monosaid that, for fifteen centuries and a graph, has given us very much more half, it has been the continuous seat of than the history of the Fourth Cruempire, under all the changes of race, sade.1 And the incessant labors of institutions, customs, and religion. foreign scholars are beginning to filter And this may be ultimately traced to even into the ideas of the general its incomparable physical and geo- reader. Russian and Greek monasgraphical capabilities. Mere duration of imperial power and variety of historical interest are indeed far different from true greatness or national dignity. But as an object of the historical imagination, the richness of the record, in the local annals of some world-famous spot, cannot fail teries have preserved unknown and precious chronicles; and Armenian, 1 History of Greece, from 146 B.C. to A.D. 1864, by George Finlay, ed. by H. F. Tozer, 7 vols.; Historical Essays, by E. A. Freeman, 3rd Series, 1879; The Later Roman Empire, from 395 A.D. to 800 A.D., by T. B. Bury, Trin. Coll., Dub., 2 vols., 1889; The Fall of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, by Edwin Pears, LL.D., 1885. Saracen, and Persian manuscripts have been brought to the test of a learned lately been added to our annals. The survey on the spot. No one could well terrible corpus of Byzantine histories deal with Byzantine antiquities without becomes less heart-breaking in its dry- a thorough study of the works of the ness and its affectation, with all the light late Dr. Paspates, especially of the that modern scholarship has thrown" "Byzantine Palaces," which is now upon that record of romantic and accessible to the English reader in the tremendous events, told by official an- new translation of Mr. Metcalfe (1893). nalists with pedantic dulness and cold- We have all been unjust to this Byblooded commonplace. Krause, Hopf, zantine empire; and its restoration to Heyd, Gfrörer, in Germany; Sabatier, its true place in the story of human Rambaud, Schlumberger, Drapeyron, civilization is beyond doubt the great Bayet, in France; Byzantios, and Pas- lacuna of our current histories. What pates, in Greece, have given a new life they tell us is mainly the story of its to this vast repertory of a thousand last four hundred years when the years of varying fortune.1 Eastern Empire was dying under the At the same time, the local archæol-mortal blows inflicted on it as it stood ogy of Constantinople has received a between the fanaticism of the East and new impulse. The political and eco- the jealousy of the West. Of the seven nomic changes which resulted from the centuries from Theodosius to the Crucourse of events, from the Crimean sades we hear little save palace inWar of 1853 and the Treaty of San trigues, though these years were the Stefano in 1878, have opened Constan- true years of glory in Byzantine histinople much as Japan was opened tory. This was the period in which thirty years ago. European scholars she handed down, and handed down and resident Greeks have been enabled alone, the ancient world to the modto study the remains; the sultan has eru; when Constantinople was the formed a most interesting museum greatest and most civilized city in Euunder Hamdi Bey, a Turkish archæ- rope, the last refuge of law, arts, and ologist; and Dr. Paspates, a Greek an- learning, the precursor of the Crusades tiquarian, has been able in the cuttings in defending Christian civilization by and works of the new railway, almost four centuries. Before the Crusades wholly to reconstruct Byzantine topog- were undertaken by Europe, the Eastraphy. The vague and somewhat ern Empire was falling into corruption traditional localization repeated by and decay. But down to the middle Banduri, Ducange, Gyllius, Busbecq, of the eleventh century, more or less and the rest, has now been corrected continuously from the opening of the by scientific inspection of ruins and seventh, the history of the eastern partial excavation. The ingenious Romans may honorably compare with labors of Labarte, Salzenberg, Schlumberger, Bayet, Riant, and others,2 have 1 Sabatier, Monnaies Byzantines, 1862; Rambaud, L'Empire Grec au Xme. Siècle, 1870; Drapeyron, L'Empereur Héraclius, 1869; Schlumberger, Un Empereur Byzantin, 1890; Krause, 1869, and Heyd, 1879, on Commerce in the Levant. the history of western Europe, whilst in certain essential elements of civilization, they stood not merely the first in Europe, but practically alone. If Chosroes, or Muaviah, or Haroun, or Crumn, had succeeded in blotting out the empire of the Bosphorus, it is difficult to imagine from whence we should have been able to recover either 2 Banduri, Imperium Orientale, 1711, 2 vols. fol.; Ducange, Constantinopolis Christiana; Gyllius, De Topogr, Constantin.; Busbecq, Letters, tr. by Forster and Daniel, 2 vols., 1881; Salzenberg, Alt-Roman law, or Hellenic art, or ancient Christliche Baudenkmale, 1854, fol.; Labarte, Le Palais Impérial de Constantinople, 4to., 1861; Paspates, Βυζαντιναὶ Μελέται, 1877; Βυζαντινὰ Ανάκτορα, 1885 ; Πολιορκία καὶ ἁλῶσις, 1890; Professor van Millingen, in Murray's Handbook, new ed., 1893: Byzantios, Kwvoravтivovπоλç, 1851-9, 3 vols. poetry and learning, or the complex art of organized government, or the traditions and manufactures of cultured civilization. At any rate, the whole history of mankind would have taken a different course. Neither under Roman, Greek, or Ot- ment seat of history the lesson of the toman, has the empire been, except at past lies in the unfolding of genius in intervals, the abyss of corruption, ser- government and in war, in organizing vility, and vice that Western prejudice nations, and in moulding their deshas too long imagined. Horrors, fol- tinies; and where these great capacilies, meanness, and pedantry abound; ties exist, there is no room to indulge but there is still a record rich in hero- the prejudices of a partisan. The two ism, intellectual energy, courage, skill, centuries of Stamboul which follow the and perseverance, which are as memo- conquest of Mohammed the Second in rable as any in the world. Neither the 1453, are greatly superior in interest intellect, nor the art, nor the religion, and in teaching to the two centuries of are those of western Europe; nor have Byzantine empire which precede it, we there the story of a great people, or and the miserable tale of the Latin a purifying church, of a profound phi- usurpation. Nor has the whole Ottolosophy, or a progressive civilization. man rule of four centuries and a half Constantinople is, and always has been, been less brilliant, less rich in great as much Eastern as Western-yet intellects and great characters, than with much that is neither of the East the Byzantine empire from the time of nor of the West-but special to itself. the Crusades till its fall-perhaps not It is a type of conservatism, of per- even more oppressive to its subjects, sistency and constancy unparalleled, nor any more antagonistic to moral and amidst change, decay, and defeat. social progress. The marvellous city This miraculous longevity and recuper- that Constantine created in 330 a.d. ative power seem to go counter to all has been ever since that day the effecthe lessons of western Europe; or in tive seat of such government as the the West they are to be matched only Eastern regions around it could mainby the recuperative power of the Cath-tain, of such civilization as they could olic Church. The city and the Church, evolve, and of such religious union as which date from Constantine, have both in these fifteen centuries shown a strange power of recovery from mortal maladies and hopeless difficulties. But the recovery of temporal dominion is always more rare than the revival of spiritual ideas. And in recuperative energy and tenacity of life, the empire of the Bosphorus, from Constantine to Abdul Hamid, is one long paradox. they were able to receive. That empire, that type of society, seem preparing to-day for an ultimate withdrawal into Asia. But with such a record of persistence and revival, such tenacity of hold on a sacred and imperial centre, few can forecast the issue with contidence. And that future is assuredly amongst the most fascinating enigmas which can engage the meditations of thinking men. The continuity of empire in Constantinople suffered, it is true, a tremen- It is an acute remark of the late Prodous breach in dynasty, in race, and in fessor Freeman that the history of the religion, by the conquest of the Turks; empire is the history of the capital. and, if it were a Christian, and Roman, The imperial, religious, legal, and comor Latin, or Greek empire for eleven mercial energy of the Eastern Empire hundred and twenty-three years, it has has always centred in Constantinople, been a Moslem and Ottoman empire by whomsoever held, in a way that can for four hundred and forty-one years. hardly be paralleled in European hisTo many historians these four hundred tory. The Italian successors of Julius and forty-one years have been a period and Augustus for the most part spent of Babylonish captivity for the Chosen their lives and carried on their governPeople. But those who are not espe- ment very largely, and at last almost cially Philhellen or Philorthodox, in wholly, away from Rome. Neither had any absolute sense, will view this great the Western emperors, nor the chiefs problem without race or sectarian ani- of the Holy Roman Empire, any permamosities. Before the impartial judgment and continuous seat. The history of England and that of France are resort thither from all parts of the associated with many historic towns world." From about the eleventh cenand many royal residences far from tury the downfall of the city began. It London and from Paris. Nor do the was ruined by the political jealousy of histories of Spain, Italy, or Germany, the Western empire, by the religious offer us any constant capital or any sin- hostility of the Roman Church, and by gle centre of government, religion, law, the commercial rivalry of the Italian commerce, and art. But of the nearly republics. Placed between these irone hundred sovereigns of the Eastern reconcilable enemies on the west, the Empire, and of the twenty-eight caliphs incessant attacks of the Slavonic races who have succeeded them in Byzan- on the north, and the aspiring fanatitium, during that long epoch of fifteen cism of Musulman races from the east hundred and sixty-four years, from the and the south, the Byzantine empire day of its foundation, Constantinople slowly bled to death, and its capital has been the uniform residence of the became, for some three centuries, little sovereign, except when on actual cam- more than a besieged fortress - filled paign in time of war or on some impe- with a helpless population and vast rial progress; and in peace and in war treasures and relics it could no longer under all dynasties, races, and creeds, protect. it has never ceased to be the seat of official government, the supreme tribunal, and the metropolis of the religious system. But whether the empire was in glory or in decay, into whatever race it passed, and whatever were the official creed, Constantinople never failed to attract to itself whatever of genius and ambition the Eastern empire contained, nor did it ever cease, nor has it ceased, to be a great mart of commerce, and clearing house of all that the East and the West desired to ex From the age of Theodosius down to the opening of the Crusades a period of seven centuries whilst Rome itself and every ancient city in Europe was stormed, sacked, burnt, more or less abandoned, and almost blotted out by a succession of invaders, Constantino- change. It is still to the Greek priest, ple remained untouched, impregnable, never decayed, never abandoned - always the most populous, the most wealthy, the most cultivated, the most artistic city in Europe - always the seat of a great empire, the refuge of those who sought peace and protection for their culture or their wealth, a busy centre of a vast commerce, the one home of ancient art, the one school of ancient law and learning left undespoiled and undeserted. From the eighth century to the thirteenth a succession of travellers have described its size, wealth, and magnificence.1 In the middle of the twelfth century, the Jew Benjamin of Tudela, coming from Spain to Palestine, declares that "these riches and buildings are equalled nowhere in the world;""that merchants 1 Early Travels in Palestine, ed. T. Wright, 1868; Krause, Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters, 1869; Heyd, Levantehandel, 1879; French ed. 1885; Riant, Exuviæ sacræ Constant.. 1877; Hopf, Chroniques as it is to the Musulman imâm, what Rome is to the Catholic. And to the Greek from Alexandria to New York it is still what Rome is to the Italian, and what Paris is to the Frenchman. In a sense, it is almost still the traditional metropolis of the Orthodox Greek, of the Armenian, and almost of the Levantine Jew, as well as of the Moslem. Its history is the history of the Balkan peninsula, for its twenty famous sieges have been the turning-points in the rise and fall of the empire. The inner history of the thrones of the East has been uniformly transacted within those walls, and upon the buried stones and fragments whereon we may still stand to-day and ponder on the vicissitudes of fifteen centuries and a half. II. A LARGE part of this strange radiation of Eastern history from the new Eternal City is unquestionably due to its unique local conditions. From He |