Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople...

Literally every time I hear the word Constantinople, I can not help to sing to myself the lyrics from the famous They Must Be Giants Song, entitled Istanbul. (It is actually a song. I suggest YouTubing it if you haven't heard it.

Continuing on though, I will actually be discussing Constantinople and its influence by leader Constantine over the Christian Religion.

To start off with, as Jamie a few other of my peers have mentioned, Rome fell in about 476. It was about this time that the Byzantine empire was on the rise. (Constantinople was its central city). Constantinople's leader, Constantine, had previously been a Roman emperor, and had also converted over to Christianity. Due to his success as an emperor, he also managed to influence not only Constantinople's ideals towards Christianity, he also brought the ideas to the places he managed to conquer during his time. This can be noted in the Strayer Text (Ways of the World: A Brief Global History, Vol 1: to 1500 by Robert W. Strayer, if you wanted to look it up)

Strayer says the emperor in Constantinople claimed to "Govern all creation as God's worldly representative" and that he was "peer of the Apostles" he also mentions how the peoples attempted to "imitate the awesome grandeur of what they thought was God's heavenly court". Because of the ornate decorations and churches Constantinople had erected, a Russian leader, Price Vladmir, sought Christianity out as a way to unify his people, while linking to other communities and people.

The Byzantine empire was a diverse culture, pulling in parts from Roman and Greek culture, and had a few different religions in it. Ultimately, Constantine and the city of Constantinople played a large role in the spread of Christianity.

Constantine Unites Romans With Religion

Constantine served as the first Christian emperor of Rome during the 300s C.E. After his predecessor, Diocletian, brought back the old Roman gods in an attempt to restore Roman traditions, Constantine ended the persecution of Christians during his reign and encouraged the spread and unification of the religion throughout the empire.

This video from the History Channel's website explains that Constantine recognized that the Roman population was divided between several religions and races. He felt that he could bring unity to the empire by bringing all of the Christian groups together to work through the disputes that separated them from one another.

It was at the Council of Nicaea that Constantine gathered all of the Christian bishops in the Roman empire to unify Christians' views on issues such as the Trinity, Jesus' divinity, and the date of the Resurrection of Jesus. After much debate, the representatives from the different Christian groups agreed upon a universal doctrine that became known as the Nicene Creed, which laid out the core beliefs of Christianity.

While I can agree that a unification of the Roman Christian population would have been beneficial to the empire at this time and although I am not Christian, I am unsettled by the fact that these religious debates and discussions were led by an emperor rather than a religious leader within the Church.