CONSTANTINOPLE

CONSTANTINOPLE. Literally, the city of Constantine (q.v.), it was built on the foundations of an ancient Greek city on the Bosporus, the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and, eventually, to the Mediterranean. The new capital was ideally placed to serve as a center of commerce and communication. Massively fortified by Constantine and, a century later, by Theodosius II, its walls on land and sea successfully resisted all attempts at capture until the Fourth Crusade (q.v.) in 1204. During the Byzantine era (q.v.), the city’s population numbered between a half million and a million souls-overwhelmingly the largest urban concentration in the medieval Christian world. From the 7th c. on, following the loss of Alexandria and Antioch to Islam (qq.v.), it was incontestably the city of the Byzantine Empire, the latter’s center of culture and thought as well as of administration, military force, and wealth. From 381 its bishop, the Ecumenical Patriarch (q.v.), held the first place among the local churches of the East. Constantinople’s contribution to the Orthodox Church is quite incalculable: liturgy, theology, spirituality (qq.v.) all owe most of their current shape to the generations-long influence of the imperial city.