The Holy City - Constantinople

'' Constantinople is the noblest city in the whole Roman world.Many people claim that it contains one third of all the gold and silver in the world.I don't know which of these wiews is true,althought I have not seen so much gold and silver anywhere else between the confines of the West and Jerusalem.Here I saw innumerable marble churches decorated with gold inside and covered with lead on the outside ,palaces similarly built of marble and roofed in lead,and images of quadrupeds and every kind of bird wonderfully fashioned in brass .One may see in Constantinople thousands of people dressed in pure silk.These people are of different rites and langues.Greeks live in one place ,Armenians in another.This street is inhabited by syrians,another by lombards,another by englishmen who are called Varagians,another by Danes.Amalfitans,Franks,Jews and Turcopuli all have their own habitations in the same city ''

So wrote an anonymous visitor,perhabs a Frenchman,Towards the end of the 11th Century.

In his eyes,however,the factor that made Constantinople all the more glorious was the multitude of its churches and the possesions of the most precious bodily reamins ot the saints.It is to these relics, to icons and the miracles accomplished by them that he accordingly devotes the greater part of his account.Our visitor ,Who was quitw typical of his age,consired , therefore, the quality of sacredness as the most noteworhty attribute of Constantinople. More than its wealth in gold and silver,more than the affluence and cosmopolitan character ot its inhabitants, it was this sacredness that raised it to the status of the noblest city of what could still be consired the Roman world.

What made Constantinople sacred was the splendour of its churches and the importance of the relics and miraculous icons preserved in them .The relics ,in other words,did not merely happen to have been accumulated at Constantinople ;they had come to rest in a city which honoured them.