Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

The Nicene Creed that Constantine had overseen was more than a simple statement of faith. It became the official definition of what it meant to be a Christian, and defined what the true (orthodox) and universal (catholic) church believed. Even today, it can be heard in all Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic churches, a dim reflection of a time when Christianity was unified. In the East, where the Byzantine Empire survived, the Council of Nicaea defined the relationship between secular and religious leaders: The bishops alone could decide on church matters, and the emperor’s role was that of an enforcer. Constantine was the sword arm of the church, rooting out heresy and guarding the faith from schism. His successors would try to manipulate unity to varying degrees, but the underlying principle remained unchanged. The emperor’s duty was to listen to the voice of the whole church; what that voice said was for the bishops to decide.

Now that Constantine’s enemies—both theological and military—lay vanquished at his feet, he decided to build a suitable monument to his glory. He had already embellished Rome, adding the finishing touches to a massive basilica and seating a gigantic forty-foot-high statue of himself inside it. Now he added several churches and donated a palace on the Lateran Hill as a church for the pope. Rome, however, was filled with too many pagan ghosts to be the splendid center of his reign, and they couldn’t be overcome with a thin Christian facade. Besides, Rome wasn’t the city it had been, and the empire no longer rotated around it.

Far away from the empire’s frontiers, Rome had long since ceased to be a practical capital, and had only been sporadically visited by the short-lived emperors of the third century. In the interests of military efficiency, Diocletian had insisted that his court travel with him, declaring that the capital of the empire wasn’t in a particular city, but rather wherever the emperor happened to be. He was only saying out loud what had long been the uncomfortable truth. Unable to base themselves miles away from the troubled frontiers, emperors had gone their separate ways, and power had followed in the imperial wake. Diocletian himself, busy in his eastern court of Nicomedia, only set foot in the eternal city once, and his reforms reduced it to a symbolically important backwater.

Constantine was determined to give the drifting empire new roots and began looking for a fresh start. He would later claim (as usual) that he was led by a divine voice to the ancient city of Byzantium, but surely no prophetic voice was needed to pick the site. Nearly a thousand years old, the Greek colony was perfectly situated halfway between the eastern and western frontiers. Possessing a superb deep-water harbor, the city could control the lucrative trade routes between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean that brought amber and wood from the far north and oil, grain, and spices from the east. Surrounded on three sides by water, its natural defenses were so obvious that the founding fathers of a nearby colony were ridiculed as blind for having failed to recognize the superiority of its splendid acropolis. Most important to Constantine, however, the gentle slopes of Byzantium had witnessed his final victory over Licinius, where he had achieved his life’s dream.^* There could be no better spot to build an edifice to his greatness.

Trailed by all the courtiers who regularly cling to those in power, Constantine climbed one of Byzantium’s hills and cast his eyes over the simple Greek colony that he would transform into the capital of the world. This was to be more than just another imperial city; it was to be the center of Christ’s government here on earth, the beating heart of Christendom. He had chosen a site with seven hills to mimic the famous seven hills of Rome, and on this site, unfettered by a pagan past, he would build Nova Roma—New Rome—that would refound the empire on a Christian, eastern axis.