On 23rd December of the year 438, the Code compiled at Constantinople was presented to the Senate of Rome and recognised by that body. It was a curious reversal of the part which the elder city had acted in the world. The teacher had become the pupil Or is it truer to say, the pupil then did homage to the teacher? The Theodosian Code was superseded by the Code of Justinian the Great, but the earlier compilation retains the honour of being the first great legal instrument to confer upon New Rome the distinction of becoming the tribunal which has guided the most civilised nations of the world into the paths of righteousness and justice in the dealings between man and man. Into the religious controversies which agitated Constantinople while Theodosius II. was upon the throne, this is not the place to enter.
But Constantinople would not have been itself without a hard theological problem to discuss, if not to solve, and we do not know the soul, so to speak, of Constantinople unless we recognise what may be termed the religious temperament of the city. At a period, indeed, when a great religious revolution in the faith of men had taken place, and men were called to make clear to themselves what exactly they believed, and how their beliefs were to be harmonised with their philosophy and the general principles of reason, religious questions could not fail to be prominent everywhere.
They were as naturally prominent in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, when Christianity became the religion of the State, as they were at the time of the Reformation. But Constantinople made these questions peculiarly its own. It could not well be otherwise where the seat of the chief bishop of the Church in the East was found, and in the capital of a Government which concerned itself in these debates as matters of political importance.
Nor can it be denied that in the discussion of the subjects before the public mind we often witness great intellectual acumen, and a profound religious spirit Able and pious men anxiously sought to reconcile faith in the unity of the Divine, with faith in the intimate oneness between the Divine and the human manifested in the life of Christ. No age is dishonoured by keen interest in that theme.
On the other hand, these discussions sometimes degenerated into idle debate, and displayed some of the most odious feelings of human nature. And Constantinople laid itself open to the well- known satirical description of its theological bias by Gregory of Nyssa. " The city is full of mechanics and slaves, who are all of them profound theologians, and preach in the shops and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of money for you, he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is that the Son was made out of nothing."
Under Theodosius II., the interest taken by the citizens of Constantinople in theological controversy was all the greater, inasmuch as the points at issue were raised by religious teachers in the capital itself; one of the heretics being no less a personage than Nestorius, the patriarch of the city. He denied the propriety of the epithet, Theotokos, Mother of God, commonly bestowed upon the Mother of our Lord.
Rome and Constantinople
A great controversy followed, in which all classes of society, from the Emperor and his family to the monks and populace, took part, and displayed, as usual in such cases, a spirit unworthy of the Christian name. So great was the commotion caused by the questions in dispute, that two General Councils of the Church — that of Ephesus in 481, and that of Chalcedon in 451— were convened to affirm the orthodox faith, if not to restore peace. And thus for some twenty years people in Constantinople had all the theology they could wish to discuss. One result of these religious troubles was to evoke the latent antagonism between the different races which composed the population of the Empire mihrimah mosque. Under the guise of religious differences, national diversities asserted themselves. Rome and Constantinople, the West and the East, did not learn to love each other better in the heat of such debates.
While from the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon, the Armenian Church and the Coptic Church date, respectively, their separation from the main body of Christendom. The extent to which religious and political aspirations are associated in the minds of the populations of the modem East casts much light upon the formation of different Churches along national lines in the earlier days of the Christian world, and also enables us to understand why religious conflicts caused so much anxiety to the imperial Government of New Rome.
Another feature in the religious life of Constantinople that became very distinct in the time of Theodosius II., was the veneration cherished for relics, and the growing desire to consecrate and enrich the city by their presence. The body of Chrysostom was taken from its grave in Pityus and entombed in the Church of the Holy Apostles, as an act of reparation for the wrongs he had suffered, and as an atonement for the sins of his persecutors. The supposed relics of Joseph and of Zacharias, on their arrival in the city, were received with great pomp by the Emperor, the Senate, and great officials, as though the saints were being welcomed in person.
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