History of Constantinople

The Roman Emperor Constantine I the Great appreciated the advantageous location of Byzantium on the seaside, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Constantine's decision was also influenced by the turbulent situation in Rome itself: the discontent of the nobility and the constant struggle for the throne. The emperor wanted to crown his reforming activities with the creation of a new administrative center of great power. The foundation of the city took place in the fall of 324, and Constantine personally decided to mark its boundaries.[Note 2] The area he demarcated was surrounded by an earthen wall, within which a large building was constructed. By Constantine's order, famous architects, painters and sculptors, the best masons, plasterers and carpenters were brought to Byzantium and exempted from other state duties. Another of his laws, designed to speed up the construction of the capital, obliged all owners of real estate in the cities of Pontus Euxine to acquire at least one house in Byzantium (only when this condition was met could the owners bequeath their property to their heirs).

In 364, Roman troops proclaimed Valentinian I as the new emperor, who made his younger brother Valent II his co-emperor in the eastern part of the empire. During his reign, a two-tier aqueduct was completed that carried water between the hills and became part of a huge system that supplied Constantinople with water from Thrace.[Note 10] In 378, in the Battle of Adrianople, the Romans suffered a terrible defeat by the Transdanian Goths; 40 thousand Roman soldiers, including Emperor Valentus, remained on the battlefield. Gratian appointed as emperor of the eastern part of the Roman Empire the experienced commander Theodosius, who had expelled the Goths from Constantinople, having concluded peace with them. Theodosius, with the help of bribes, luxurious receptions in the imperial palace, and appointments to high posts in the army, managed to win over even some Gothic leaders and commanders. It was then that military settlements of Goths, who served in the city guard, arose in Constantinople.[Note 11]

After the death of Marcian, Leo I Macella was placed on the imperial throne with the active support of the influential Gothic generals Aspar and Ardavur. The new emperor has built in a wood behind the city walls, near a healing source in area Piga church (later emperor Justinian I, cured by waters of a source, has built here more magnificent temple and male monastery of a life-bearing source, and his successors repeatedly expanded and decorated highly esteemed monastery).[Note 18] In 463, near the shores of the Sea of Marmara, a church was built by the patrician Stoudios, which became the foundation of the Studian Monastery, one of the first monasteries of the city, which laid the foundation for the numerous and influential monasticism of Constantinople. Soon the monastery was settled by the Akimite ("awake" or "alert") monks, followers of Alexander of Constantinople, whose order played a decisive role in the confrontation with Monophysitism. In 471, by order of Leo I, who wanted to get rid of foreign influence, his former patrons —Aspar and his son Ardavur— were brutally killed in the imperial palace (in retaliation, one of Aspar's commanders attacked the palace, but the attack was repulsed by troops loyal to the emperor).

In 527, Justinian I, the Macedonian-born nephew of Justinian I the Elder, ascended the imperial throne. At that time, the dimas —mass "sports" (or "circus") parties— acquired a special weight in the capital, first emerging during the competition at the Hippodrome, and then gradually transforming into political organizations of citizens, defending the interests of different classes and strata of society.[Note 25] The Hippodrome played an important role in the political life of the city and the empire; the people used it as a place of assembly where they could express their dissatisfaction with the actions of the authorities. There were four main dimas in Constantinople - Veneti ("blue"), Prasins ("green"), Levki ("white") and Rusii ("red"), named after the colors of the chariot drivers' clothing. The most influential among them were Venets and Prasins, who had elected leaders — dimarchs and dimocrats, the treasury, real estate and armed detachments of city youth who put pressure on the imperial authority. The Venetians were led by large landowners and senators from among the aristocrats (who favored strengthening slaveholding relations, had large interests in the western part of the empire, and close ties to the clergy), the Prasinovs by rich merchants, profiteers, and usurers (who had close ties to the eastern provinces of the empire and patronized the Monophysites), but ordinary members of both parties were from the middle and lower classes of Constantinople.[Note 26] The ruling upper classes of Dimos fought among themselves for power, income, and influence at the imperial court. The masses of ordinary Dimots often participated in urban riots caused by the tax burden and oppression of the authorities, but the leaders of the Dims managed to contain the discontent of the crowds until the time.

The civil war ended with the accession of Heraclius I, whose troops entered Constantinople on October 3, 610. Phocas and his cronies were executed and their bodies burned in the Bull Forum. Heraclius was a protégé of the new feudal nobility, which had reached a compromise with the old slave-owning aristocracy, but Byzantium's position in the international arena was not so rosy: from the east the empire was threatened by the Sassanians, from the west by the Avar Khaganate. In 617, Persian armies reached Chalcedon and really threatened Constantinople, after which they made several devastating raids on Byzantine lands in Asia Minor, reaching the shores of the Bosphorus. In 619, Sassanid troops conquered Egypt and cut off grain supplies to Constantinople, forcing the emperor to stop the free distribution of bread for the first time. In 620, Heraclius made peace with the Pannonian Avars, agreeing to pay a huge tribute to their formidable neighbor, and undertook a series of successful campaigns against the Persians. Seizing the moment when the emperor's troops were on another eastern campaign, the Persian army under the command of Farrukhan Shahrbaraz captured Chalcedon in the winter of 625 and devastated the surrounding areas along the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.

In the spring of 717, the throne was seized by Leo III the Isaurian, a strategos of Armenian origin who founded the Isaurian dynasty, and in August of that year Constantinople was besieged by a large Arab army under the command of Maslama ibn Abdul-Malik. The besiegers dug a trench in the walls of Theodosius, built stone walls to fortify their positions, and installed their huge siege engines against the towers of Constantinople. Meanwhile, the Arab fleet, which numbered about 1.8 thousand ships, entered the Bosphorus to block the capital from the sea, but this time the Byzantines with the help of "Greek fire" burned many enemy ships. With the onset of the harsh winter, a large-scale famine began in the besiegers' camp, and the new squadron that arrived in the spring of 718 was again defeated. In addition, the Bulgarian detachments of Khan Tervel, allied with Leo III, began attacking the Arab rear, forcing the Arabs to dig another defensive moat. Finally, on August 15, 718, the Arabs were forced to lift the siege and retreat. It was during this siege that the Byzantines first used a barrier chain (cast-iron links held afloat by wooden buoys) to block the entrance to the Golden Horn.

In the fall of 802, an influential Byzantine official, Nicephorus, deposed Empress Irene, ending the Isaurian dynasty. In October 811, the armies, gathered on a hippodrome, deposed Nikiphoros' son Staurakios and declared Michael I Rangave, married to Nikiphoros' daughter, as the new emperor. In 813, armies of the Bulgarian Khan Krum have moved to Constantinople, who have broken the Byzantine army at the fortress Versinikia near Edirne, which has forced Michael I to abdicate. The new emperor Leo V Armenian (a scion of the Armenian princely Artsruni family) tried to kill Krum during negotiations, but he managed to escape. The enraged Khan prepared a large number of siege engines, gathered a strong army of Slavs and Avars, but in the spring of 814, on the eve of the decisive campaign, died suddenly. In 820 Leo V ordered the execution of his old comrade-in-arms Michael the Amorian, accused of treason. And he ordered it done in a rather ingenious way — tied to a monkey and burned in the furnace that heated water for the palace baths. Having learned about it, indignant supporters of Michael disguised as monks and killed Leo during the Christmas service (according to one data, in a palace, according to another — in a cathedral of Hagia Sophia), and his elder son and co-emperor Constantine Symbatios with other sons of the deceased emperor were expelled from Constantinople to the Princes' Islands.

In 820, Michael II Travol ascended the throne and founded the Amorean dynasty. In 821, a great revolt broke out in Byzantium under the leadership of the military leader Thomas the Slav, who proclaimed himself "miraculously saved" from the blindness of Constantine VI. The insurgents were made up of ruined peasants, the urban poor, soldiers, monks, and runaway slaves, as well as followers of heretical movements and natives of oppressed peoples. From December 821, the army of Thomas the Slav besieged Constantinople for almost a year. Michael II was able to defeat the rebels only after bribing some of Thomas' supporters and enlisting the help of the army of the Bulgarian Khan Omurtag. Thomas was captured and executed after torture (823), but the rebellion was not finally suppressed until 825. Emperor Theophilos ordered the construction of a number of palace buildings belonging to the third phase of the imperial palace complex. Thus, by the middle of the 9th century, the Great Imperial Palace complex, whose construction took more than five centuries (it was founded by Constantine the Great and then expanded and rebuilt by his successors), occupied a vast area in the southeastern part of the Bosphorus cape, between the Sea of Marmara, Augusteon Square and the Hippodrome. The total area of the buildings of the Great Imperial Palace and the adjacent palaces of Magnaura and Boukoleon exceeded 400 thousand square meters. The area of the Great Palace included the personal residence of the emperor, living quarters for members of the imperial family and the palace garrison (including the Imperial Guard), rooms for numerous servants, halls for ceremonial receptions, extensive gardens and parks decorated with statues, fountains and pavilionsю

In 867, Basil I of Macedonia ascended the throne, after organising the murder of his co-emperor Michael III and establishing the Macedonian dynasty (although Basil was actually an Armenian from Thrace, whose family had been captured by the Bulgarians). The new emperor liquidated all the reforms of the iconoclasts and restored the legislation of Justinian, promoted the revival of monasticism and strengthened the bureaucratic apparatus of the state.[Note 44] Under him a number of temples in the capital were repaired, including those damaged by a severe earthquake in 869, and in 880 a five-domed church "Nea Ekklesia" ("New Church") was built near the imperial palace, which became a model for Eastern Christian cross-in-square religious architecture. In 869-870, in Constantinople on the initiative of Basil I and Roman Pope Adrian II the Church Council occurred, which deposed Patriarch Photios I, although these decisions were not recognized by the Orthodox Church. In 879-880, a new council was held in the Hagia Sophia Cathedral, where the Nicene Creed was defended, but its decisions were now not recognized by the papacy.

In the middle of the 11th century, Byzantines from the north began to press the Pechenegs, and from the east — Seljuks.[Note 50] In 1059, as a result of palace intrigues, Constantine X Doukas ascended the throne, founding the Doukas dynasty. In the 1060s, Byzantine emperors undertook several campaigns against the Seljuks. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines and captured Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, who paid a huge ransom for his freedom and ceded almost all Byzantine possessions in Asia Minor to the Sultan. During the reign of Emperor Michael VII, the Pammakaristos Church (or Our Lady of the All-Blessed) was built on the site of an older temple, which became the nucleus of the nunnery. In the fall of 1077 and winter 1078, approached the walls of Constantinople armies of rebel commander Nikephoros Bryennios the Elder and his brother John, but each time loyal to the emperor detachments reflected attack. In March 1078, other rebels, proclaiming the emperor an experienced commander Nikephoros Votaniata, seized the palace and forced Michael VII to abdicate, exiling him to the monastery of Studi. The entire short reign of Nikephoros III was marked by rebellions and ended with his abdication in favor of his own general, Alexios Komnenos.