Ilislory.—In A.D. 330 the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great gave the name Con stantinople to the new capital which he had built for himself on the Bosporus round the an cient Byzantium as a nuchms. The presence of the Emperor made Constantinople from the first distinctively the capital of the Greek civiliza tion in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. as Rome remained the head of the Latin civilization in the \Vest. From the final disruption of the Roman Empire ill 395 to 1453, the city was the capital of the lfyzantine or Eastern Empire. The Patriarch of Constantinople gradually rose to the position of head of the Christian Church in the East. In the course of years, as the Im perial provinces in Asia and Africa. with the great metropolises of Antioch and Alexandria, fell into the hands of the Mohammedans, the Christian culture of the East found refuge in Constantinople, and Byzantinism—a blending of the ideas of Oriental despotism with the Roman conception of the State—found its home there. In the struggle between Latin and Eastern Chris tianity, Constantinople naturally was the great opponent of Rome, and, as the champion of in flexible orthodoxy, it welcomed the great schism of 1054, which disrupted the Catholic Church. The strategic position of the city at the meeting place of two continents exposed it to attacks from numerous nations—Avars, Arabs, Bulgars, Varangians, Venetians, and the Latin powers of Western Europe, and filially the Turks.
It was besieged more than thirty times, and its walls were repeatedly assaulted; hut it was taken thrice only—by the Venetians and Crusaders in 1203 and 1204, and by Moham med 11., after a memorable siege, on May 29, 1453. The prosperity of the city sank during the period of the Crusades, when its lucrative commerce was diverted to the Italian towns. Its capture by the Turks marks an epoch. in European history, for the scholars and rhet oricians who fled from Constantinople brought back to Western Europe the knowledge of the ancient Greek literature, and by their contribu tion to the revival of learning fostered the Renaissance and the Reformation. in more re cent times Constantinople has been important as a storm-centre in the play of international poli tics known as the 'Eastern Question.' In 1878 the Russian armies advanced to the fortifications of the city.
Consult: Grosvenor, Constantinople (Boston, 1895) ; Hutton, Constantinople (London, 1900) ; Dwight, Constantinople and Its Problems (New York, 1901) ; Barth, Konstantinopel (Leipzig, 1901) .