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Constantinople

Also Known As Istanbul · Byzantium (Greek) The Greek city on the site before Constantine refounded it in 330 as Constantinople. · Constantinopolitan
Turkey

Constantinople was refounded by the Roman emperor Constantine in 330 CE on the site of the older Greek city of Byzantium, dedicated as a new, explicitly Christian capital that Constantine styled New Rome. It stood as capital of the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years and as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, first among equals of the Eastern Orthodox churches, hosting two of the seven ecumenical councils and living through the Iconoclast controversy over the veneration of religious images. Ottoman conquest in 1453 made it an Islamic imperial capital; renamed Istanbul under the modern Turkish republic, it remains home to a much reduced but continuing Orthodox Christian community alongside its Muslim majority.

Facts
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Hagia Sophia has changed religious status four times: cathedral from 537, mosque from 1453, secular museum from 1935, and mosque again since a 2020 Turkish court ruling, a change welcomed by many in Turkey and objected to by Orthodox and other Christian communities 2
Attributions
Tradition
Eastern Orthodox Christianity, then Sunni Islam after 1453 1
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Byzantine (Medieval) Greek for the Patriarchate's liturgy and imperial administration; Ottoman Turkish and Arabic after 1453 1
Origins
Founded
Refounded by the emperor Constantine in 330 CE on the site of the older Greek city of Byzantium, dedicated as New Rome 1
Learn More
New Rome and the Seat of a Patriarchate

Constantine chose the old Greek trading city of Byzantium for his new capital largely for its defensible position on a peninsula between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, and dedicated it in 330 CE with ceremonies that mixed pagan and Christian elements, a reflection of an empire only beginning its official turn to Christianity. He styled the city Nova Roma, New Rome, and it grew quickly into the wealthiest and most populous city in the Christian world, its bishop gaining a rank, confirmed at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 CE, second only to Rome itself. Over time the see became the Ecumenical Patriarchate, recognized among the Eastern Orthodox churches as first among equals, a position of honor rather than of the direct jurisdiction a pope holds over Roman Catholicism.

The city hosted two of Christianity's seven ecumenical councils under its own name and lived through the Iconoclast controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries, when a succession of emperors banned the veneration of religious images as idolatrous, provoking fierce resistance from monks and much of the wider church before icon veneration was formally restored in 843 CE. Hagia Sophia, completed under Justinian in 537 CE as the Patriarchate's cathedral, stood at the center of that struggle and of the city's ceremonial life more broadly, its own detailed history recorded separately.

A Capital Conquered Twice

Constantinople was sacked in 1204 not by an outside power but by fellow Christians: the Fourth Crusade, diverted from its original goal by Venetian financial interests and a Byzantine succession dispute, took and looted the city and installed a Latin Catholic emperor and patriarch in place of the Orthodox ones, a rupture Eastern and Western Christianity have never fully set aside. The Byzantines recovered the city in 1261, but a weakened empire finally fell in 1453 to the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, who converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque within days of the conquest and made the city his own imperial capital.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate survived Ottoman rule under a system that granted it authority over the empire's Orthodox Christian subjects, and it continues today at the Cathedral of St. George in the Fener district, though the city's Greek Orthodox population fell sharply across the twentieth century. Renamed Istanbul under the Turkish republic founded in 1923, the city has seen Hagia Sophia's status itself contested repeatedly in recent memory: secularized into a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, then reconverted to a mosque by a 2020 Turkish court ruling and presidential decree, a change that drew objection from Orthodox and other Christian communities and support from many in Turkey, a dispute this record describes rather than settles.

Connections

Associated With

This source names Constantinople directly: "Byzantine imperial Pharos Chapel in Constantinople served as a conceptual model for how the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was understood."

Source A Byzantine Jerusalem: The Imperial Pharos Chapel as the Holy SepulchreAlexei Lidov
Bogomilism, Religions

This source names Constantinople directly: "formally investigated and condemned at Constantinople in the twelfth century, and is credited by most historians, through missionary contact, as the doctrinal source behind the Cathars of western..."

Source The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism (Obolensky, Cambridge, 1948)Dimitri Obolensky

This source names Constantinople directly: "for this pass, covering the 927 Constantinople recognition of autocephaly, the Ohrid and Tarnovo patriarchate history, the 1870 Exarchate decree and 1872 schism, the 1945 reconciliation and 1953..."

Source Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Wikipedia)

Constantinople was the imperial capital from 330 and the seat of the ecumenical patriarch, and its fall in 1453 ended the empire.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron

The Byzantine Iconoclasm controversy over the veneration of religious images played out centrally in the imperial capital across the eighth and ninth centuries.

Source Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A HistoryLeslie Brubaker and John Haldon
Callixtus III, Figures

His whole pontificate was directed at recovering the city from the Ottomans after its fall in 1453; the crusade dissolved on his death.

Source Saints and Sinners: A History of the PopesEamon Duffy

This source names Constantinople directly: "Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople jointly lifted the mutual excommunications of 1054 on 7 December 1965, in the Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration, read simultaneously at a..."

Source Catholic-Eastern Orthodox Relations (Wikipedia)

This source names Constantinople directly: "Born in Tripolis around 1730, Petros arrived in Constantinople around 1764 to study under Ioannes Trapezountios, the leading cantor of the Great Church, and rose through its ranks, serving as second..."

Source Petros Peloponnesios and the Doxastarion Syntomon (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Constantinople directly: "by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1990."

Source Georgian Orthodox Church (Wikipedia)

This source names Constantinople directly: "the ascetic, preacher and bishop of Constantinople known for his eloquence."

Source Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom, Ascetic, Preacher, BishopJ. N. D. Kelly

This source names Constantinople directly: "under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, governing the investigation and resolution of sexual misconduct complaints against clergy."

Source Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct PolicyHoly Eparchial Synod, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Hagia Sophia, completed in 537 CE, was the Patriarchate's cathedral and the city's central place of worship for nearly a millennium.

Source Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian's Great ChurchRowland J. Mainstone

This source names Constantinople directly: "use of Justinian's Hagia Sophia in Constantinople."

Source Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian's Great ChurchRowland J. Mainstone
Innocent I, Figures

He refused to accept the deposition of John Chrysostom as archbishop there and broke communion with the see over it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Constantinople directly: "Luke and later transferred from Constantinople to Cyprus, one of only three icons Orthodox tradition attributes to Luke's own hand, though this attribution is devotional tradition passed down..."

Source Kykkos Monastery and Icon (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Constantinople directly: "the 1923 Orthodox Church congress in Constantinople, work that led to the Revised Julian Calendar still used liturgically by several Orthodox churches."

Source Milutin Milankovic and the Reform of the Julian Calendar in 1923 (Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage)M. S. Dimitrijevic, E. Th. Theodossiou and P. Z. Mantarakis

This source names Constantinople directly: "1863 before his banishment onward to Constantinople, and where he is held to have first openly declared his claim to those closest to him."

Source A Concise Encyclopedia of the Baha'i FaithPeter Smith

This source names Constantinople directly: "of the fifth century Patriarch of Constantinople condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 for a Christology later tradition summarized, likely somewhat unfairly, as dividing Christ into two..."

Source Nestorius (reference article)Wikipedia contributors

Constantinople fell in 1453 and became the Ottoman capital, seat of both the sultan and the ecumenical patriarch.

Source Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923Caroline Finkel

This source names Constantinople directly: "Ceremonies at the Great Palace of Constantinople, published in 2006 within Byzas 5, a monograph series of the German Archaeological Institute's Istanbul department, examines how Byzantine emperors..."

Source Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of ConstantinopleHolger A. Klein

Constantinople stands where the Bosphorus meets this sea, with its sea walls running for kilometres along the shore.

Source Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923Caroline Finkel

This source names Constantinople directly: "a civic device of Byzantium and later Constantinople."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

This source names Constantinople directly: "of Armenian community leaders in Constantinople in April 1915, forced marches into the Syrian desert with mass death from starvation, disease and massacre along the way, and organized killings in..."

Source The Armenian Genocide: A Complete HistoryRaymond Kevorkian

This source names Constantinople directly: "a further Ottoman-ordered exile toward Constantinople."

Source Baha'u'llah (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

The First Council of Constantinople, held in the city in 381 CE, confirmed its bishop's rank second only to Rome.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron

The Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, installing a Latin Catholic patriarch in place of the Orthodox one for over half a century.

Source Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of ConstantinopleHolger A. Klein

This source names Constantinople directly: "of Edessa, tracing its translation to Constantinople in 944 and its disappearance after the city's sack in 1204."

Source The Image of EdessaMark Guscin

This source names Constantinople directly: "adopted by the First Council of Constantinople in 381 as the expanded form of the Nicene Creed, and this record holds it as a custodian source for exactly that reason: it is still recited as the..."

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

The Second Council of Constantinople met in the city in 553 CE.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron

This source names Constantinople directly: "This is the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople's own Tomos, the formal document signed 5 January 2019 granting autocephaly, full administrative independence, to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine."

Source Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of UkraineEcumenical Patriarchate of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Contained In

Turkey, Countries

Constantinople, as modern Istanbul, lies within the Republic of Turkey.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron

Related To

Chalcedon, Cities

Chalcedon was founded about seventeen years before Byzantium, on the shore facing it.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)
Nicaea, Cities

Nicaea held the Byzantine court, patriarchate and imperial title in exile from 1204 until Constantinople was recovered in 1261.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)

Sacred To

Constantinople was the imperial capital of Byzantine Christianity and remains the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople holds a first-among-equals honor among Eastern Orthodox churches.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron
Islam, Religions

The city became an Ottoman Islamic capital after the 1453 conquest, and Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque.

Source Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian's Great ChurchRowland J. Mainstone
Sources
1. Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium
Gilbert Dagron, Cambridge University Press, 2003
2. Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian's Great Church
Rowland J. Mainstone, Thames and Hudson, London, 1988
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of Constantinople
Holger A. Klein, BYZAS (German Archaeological Institute) / academic, 2006
Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A History
Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Cambridge University Press, 2011
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