Constantinople: The New Rome
Κωνσταντινούπολις — Konstantinoupolis · kon-stan-tee-NOO-po-lis
In brief
Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Roman Empire and, for over a thousand years, the chief city of the Orthodox East. Constantine the Great founded it in 330 on the site of the old Greek town of Byzantion and called it New Rome. The Second Ecumenical Council (381) formally ranked its bishop second only to Rome, "because Constantinople is New Rome." To this day it is the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, who holds the primacy of honor among the Orthodox.
The city Constantine built
In 324 the emperor Constantine chose the small but superbly placed town of Byzantion, guarding the straits between Europe and Asia, to be his new capital. He rebuilt it on a lavish scale and dedicated it on 11 May 330. Officially it was Nova Roma, New Rome; in daily speech it took the founder's name, Constantinople — "the city of Constantine."
Its position made it almost impregnable and immensely rich, and it grew into the largest and most splendid Christian city in the world, ringed by its famous walls and crowned by Hagia Sophia. As the empire's beating heart, it was the natural stage for the Church's great councils and the center from which Orthodox worship radiated.
New Rome and second rank
Because it was the new imperial capital, Constantinople's bishop rose quickly in standing. The Second Ecumenical Council, meeting there in 381, laid this down in its third canon: "The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome." The Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon (451) reaffirmed and extended this rank in its own famous canon — a canon Rome, for its part, declined to accept.
It is important to hear what the canon says and does not say. It gives Constantinople a prerogative of honour — a place in the order of precedence — grounded not in apostolic founding but in the city's imperial dignity. It does not give it jurisdiction over the other patriarchates. Constantinople was to be named second, after Rome, among equals.
Enduring significance
After the estrangement of East and West, with Rome no longer in communion, Constantinople became the first-ranking see of the Orthodox Church — its patriarch honored as "first among equals," a primacy of honor rather than of power. Even after the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, the patriarchate continued under Muslim rule as the spiritual center of the empire's former Christian peoples.
The city is now Istanbul, and its native Orthodox community has dwindled to a remnant. Yet the Ecumenical Patriarchate remains there, still holding the first place of honor among the world's Orthodox Churches — the living inheritance of the see that the Fathers called New Rome. (The precise scope of that primacy is discussed among the Orthodox to this day, and this article describes only its ancient rank of honor.)