April 24, 1932
WE shall continue to-day our survey of the Empire of Rome. Early in the fourth century of the Christian era—in 326 A.C.— Constantine founded the city of Constantinople, near the site of old Byzantium, and he shifted the capital of his empire all the way from old Rome to this New Rome on the Bosphorus. Have a look at the map. You will see that this new city of Constantinople stands on the edge of Europe looking out towards mighty Asia; it is a kind of link between the two continents. Many great trade-routes passed through it, both by land and sea. It is a fine position for a city and for a capital. Constantine chose well, but he or his successors had to pay for this change of capital. Just as old Rome was a bit too far from Asia Minor and the East, so the new eastern capital was too far from the western countries, like Gaul and Britain.
To get over this difficulty for a while there were joint emperors, one sitting in Rome, the other in Constantinople. This led to a regular division of the Empire into the Western and the Eastern.
But the Western Empire, which had Rome for its capital, did not long survive the shock. It could not defend itself against those whom it called the " barbarians ". The Goths, a Germanic tribe,
came and sacked Rome, and then came the Vandals and the Huns, and the Western Empire collapsed. You must have heard the word Hun used. During the last Great War it was commonly applied by the English to the Germans in order to make out that the Germans were very cruel and barbarous. As a matter of fact in war-time everybody, or almost everybody, loses his head and forgets all that he has learnt of civilization and good manners and behaves cruelly and
barbarously. The Germans behaved in this way; so did the English and the French. There was little to choose between them in this respect.
The word Hun has become a terrible term of reproach. So also has the word Vandal. Probably these Huns and Vandals were rather coarse and cruel and did a lot of damage, but we must remember that all the accounts of them that we have got are from their enemies the Romans, and one can hardly expect them to be impartial. Anyhow, the Goths and the Vandals and the Huns knocked down the Western Roman Empire like a house of cards. One of the reasons why they succeeded so easily was probably because the
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Roman peasantry were so utterly miserable under the Empire, and were so heavily taxed and so much in debt, that they welcomed any change. Just as the poor Indian peasant to-day would welcome any change in his terrible poverty and misery.
The Western Roman Empire thus collapsed. Some centuries later it was to rise again in a different form. The Eastern Empire, however, continued, although it was hard put to it to withstand the attacks of the Huns and others. Not only did it survive these attacks, but it carried on century after century in spite of continuous fighting against the Arabs, and later, against the Turks. For the amazing period of 1100 years it survived, till at last it fell in 1453 A.C. when Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks or the Osmanlis. Ever since then, for nearly 500 years now, Constantinople, or Istanbul as they call it, has been in the possession of the Turks. From there they repeatedly marched into Europe and came right up to the walls of Vienna. They were driven back gradually in later centuries, and a dozen years ago, after their defeat in the Great War, they nearly lost Constantinople. The English were in possession of this city and the Turkish Sultan was a puppet in their hands. But a great leader, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, came to rescue his people and, after a heroic struggle, he succeeded. To-day Turkey is a republic and the Sultan has vanished for ever. Kemal Pasha1 is the President of the Republic.
Constantinople, the seat of an empire for 1500 years, first the Eastern Roman and then the
Turkish, is still part of the Turkish State, but it is not even its capital. The Turks have preferred to keep away from its imperial associations and to have their capital at Angora (or Ankara), far away in Asia Minor.
We have hurried through nearly 2000 years and followed rapidly the changes which came, one after another, the founding of Constantinople and the transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to the new city. But Constantine did another novel thing. He turned Christian and, as he was the Emperor, that meant, of course, that Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. It must have been a strange thing, this sudden change in the position of Christianity—from that of a persecuted faith to an imperial religion. The change did not do it much good for a while.
Different sects of Christians started quarrelling with each other. Ultimately there was a great
break between two sections—the Latin section and the Greek. The Latin section had its
headquarters in Rome and the Bishop of Rome was looked up to as its head—later to become the Pope of Rome; and the Greek section had its headquarters in Constantinople. The Latin Church spread all over northern and western Europe and came to be known as the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek Church was known as the Orthodox Church. After the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, Russia was the chief country where the Orthodox Church flourished. Now with Bolshevism in Russia this Church, or any other Church, has no official position there.
I refer to the Eastern Roman Empire, and yet this had little to do with Rome. Even the language they used was Greek, not Latin.
1 Komal Pasha died in 1939.
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In a sense, it might almost be considered to have been a continuation of Alexander's Greek Empire. It had little contact with western Europe, although for long it would not admit the right of western countries to be independent of it. And yet the Eastern Empire stuck to the word
Roman and the people were called Roman, as if there was some magic in the word. And, stranger still, the city of Rome, in spite of its fall from the headship of empire, did not lose its prestige, and even the barbarians who came to conquer it seemed to hesitate, and treated it with deference.
Such is the power of a great name and the power of ideas !
Having lost the empire, Rome started carving out a new empire, but of a different kind. It was said that Peter, the disciple of Jesus, had come to Rome and become the first bishop there. This gave sanctity to the place in the eyes of many Christians and added special importance to the bishopric of Rome. The Bishop of Rome was, to begin with, not unlike other bishops, but he grew in importance after the Emperor went to Constantinople. There was no one to overshadow him then, and, as the successor to the chair of Peter, he came to be regarded as the chief of the bishops. Later he came to be called the Pope, and as you know the Popes exist to this day and are the heads of the Roman Catholic Church.
It is curious to note that one of the reasons for the split between the Roman Church and the Greek Orthodox Church was the use of images. The Roman Church encouraged the worship of the images of its saints, and especially of Mary, the mother of Jesus, while the Orthodox Church objected to this strongly.
Rome was occupied and ruled for many generations by chiefs of the northern tribes. But even they often acknowledged the over-lordship of the Emperor at Constantinople. Meanwhile the power of the Bishop of Rome, as a religious head, grew, till he felt strong enough to defy
Constantinople. When trouble came over the question of image-worship, the Pope decided to cut Rome off completely from the East. Much had happened meanwhile of which we shall have to speak later—a new religion, Islam, had arisen in Arabia, and the Arabs had overrun all northern Africa and Spain, and were attacking the heart of Europe; new States were being formed in northern and western Europe; and the Eastern Roman Empire was being fiercely assailed by the Arabs.
The Pope begged for assistance from a great leader of the Franks, a Germanic tribe of the north, and later, Karl or Charles, the head of the Franks, was crowned Emperor in Rome. This was quite a new empire or State, but they called it the " Roman Empire " and later, the " Holy Roman Empire ". They could not think of an empire without its being Roman, and although
Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, as he is called, had little to do with Rome, he became Imperator and Caesar and Augustus. The new Empire was supposed to be a continuation of the old one, but there was an addition to its name. It had become " Holy ". It was holy because it was specially a Christian empire, with the Pope for its godfather.
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Again you see the strange power of ideas. A Frank or a German living in Central Europe becomes Roman Emperor! And the future history of this "Holy" Empire is stranger still. As an empire, it became a very shadowy affair. While the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople carried on as a State, this Western one changed and vanished and appeared again from time to time. It was indeed a phantom and ghostly empire, continuing to exist in theory by the prestige of the Roman name and the Christian Church. It was an empire of the imagination with little of reality. Someone —I think it was Voltaire—defined this "Holy Roman Empire" as something which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire ! Just as someone else once defined the Indian Civil Service, with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service !
Whatever it was, this phantom Holy Roman Empire carried on in name at least for 1000 years, and it was only a little over 100 years ago, in Napoleon's time, that it finally ended. The end was not very remarkable or dramatic. Indeed, few people must have noticed it, as in reality it had not existed for a long time. But the ghost was laid at last, though not finally, for it rose up again in different guises as Kaisers and Tsars and the like. Most of these were laid to rest during the Great War which ended fourteen years ago.