The Dedication of Constantinople
May 11, 330
Arculf, a bishop from Gaul, visited Constantinople in 670, where he heard a legend about its founding. Arculf told the tale to Adomnán of Iona, who wrote it down: Constantine, wanting to found a new capital, gathered materials and “an infinite multitude of men” on the coast of Asia Minor. “One night, while the innumerable forces of workmen were sleeping in their tents over the vast length of the camp, all the different kinds of tools used by the artificers of the different works were suddenly removed, no one knew how.” Eventually the tools were found “on the European side, across the sea, gathered together in one heap in one place between the seas.” Constantine said, “Let us build a city on the spot divinely revealed to us.”
The story reflects the mystique that Constantinople/Istanbul and its magnificent church, Hagia Sophia (now a mosque), hold among many Orthodox Christians. Its patriarch was ranked second to Rome in the early Church and is considered “first among equals” among Orthodox today, although disagreement on what this means in practice is a source of divisions between Orthodox churches.
Constantine founded Constantinople on the site of Byzantium, which had been settled as early as the seventh century BC. He chose Byzantium for its proximity to the vast empire’s frontiers and for its superb defensibility. His makeover of Byzantium into the imperial capital took six years and certainly “innumerable forces of workmen,” but there is no record of sea-crossing tools.
The location proved strategic, and the city remained in Christian hands for more than 1,100 years. It suffered a fatal blow in 1204 when it was sacked by Crusaders; it sputtered off and on until its fall to Ottoman Turks in 1453. It had been the largest and wealthiest city in Europe until then.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
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