Constantine Dedicates Constantinople

Constantine besieged his rival Licinius in Byzantium, the old Greek city on the European shore of the Bosphorus, and defeated him across the strait at Chrysopolis (Origo Constantini 5.25–28). An anonymous Latin account of his reign says that he renamed Byzantium after himself in memory of that victory, adorned it as if it were his native city, wished to make it equal to Rome, brought in new citizens from every quarter and gave it a senate (Origo Constantini 6.30).

Socrates, writing in the city a century later, says that Constantine enlarged it, surrounded it with great walls and decreed by a law, inscribed on a pillar in a public square, that it should be called New Rome (Socrates, Church History 1.16). The Chronicon Paschale dates the ceremony. On 11 May 330 the emperor named the city Constantinople, held chariot races at which he wore a diadem of pearls and precious stones, and ordered the day to be kept each year as the city’s birthday. On that day a gilded statue of Constantine holding the Fortune of the city was to be drawn into the hippodrome with an escort of soldiers carrying candles, and the reigning emperor was to rise and do it reverence (Chronicon Paschale year 330 (Dindorf pp. 529–530)).

The writers describe the religion of the new city in different ways. Eusebius says that Constantine filled it with churches and shrines of the martyrs and allowed no images to be worshipped in temples, no altars and no sacrifices. He mentions fountains with figures of the Good Shepherd and of Daniel, and a jewelled cross set in the ceiling of the palace (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.48–49). Socrates names two churches the emperor built, Irene and the Apostles, and adds that he brought the statues of the gods out of their temples to decorate the streets and set up the tripods of Delphi in the hippodrome (Socrates, Church History 1.16). Jerome notes that the city was dedicated “by denuding nearly every other city” (Jerome, Chronicle year 330).

Constantine was buried in Constantinople (Origo Constantini 6.35). The city’s standing in the state became standing in the church: the council that met there in 381 ruled that its bishop should have “the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome” (Council of Constantinople (381) canon 3). See the First Council of Constantinople.