the seat of his Government to Byzantium, built the great and famous city that still bears his name, and carried off all the ornaments of old Rome that he could remove to decorate his new capital. Byzantium became Constantinople, New Rome, and was to be legally in every way equal to the old city. The bishop of the new capital soon began to share its dignity. In the first place, as we have seen (p. 21), there was a tendency to imitate civil divisions and civil positions in the hierarchy of the Church. If that were so, if the position of a bishop were to be measured according to the rank of the city where he sat, who would be so great as the bishop of the capital of the whole Empire?
The pastors of the little town in the Province of Heraclea had now indeed an intoxicating opportunity of advancement. Were they to remain subject to a metropolitan? Should they not be, at least, as great as their brothers of Alexandria and Antioch? Nay, since the laws of the State were apparently to be the criterion, no position would seem too high for their ambition. Might not Cæsar's own bishop—the honoured chaplain of his Court, who stood side by side with the highest ministers of the Empire before their master, the bishop of the city that was now the centre of the Roman world—might not he even hope to be counted as great as that distant Patriarch, left alone among the ruins by the Tiber? One can understand his ambition; and the Emperors encouraged it. Throughout this story we shall see that the Emperors, while they themselves dealt most masterfully with their Court bishop, still used every means to get his position raised in the hierarchy. It was part of their policy of centralization; it helped to rivet the loyalty of their subjects to their city, through their own bishop they could the more easily govern the Church. Indeed, nowhere does the tyranny of Cæsar over the things of God, which characterizes the policy of these Emperors, show so clearly as in their dealings with their bishops at Constantinople; nowhere is there a more degrading example of subjection to the civil government than the mingled contempt and furtherance that these bishops received from the Emperor. There was also convenience in this new position of the Court bishop. He had the ear of Cæsar, he was
