THE CONDITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1200. ISl salubrious, and convenient for commerce, had indeed been ad- mirably chosen by Constantino for the establishment of the Xew Home, and nearly nine centuries of })rosperity had added to the wealth with which its great founder had endowed it. The two chief sources of this wealth had been its political pre-eminence and its commerce. As the capital city of the eastern division of the Eoman Advantnges Empire and the residence of its emperor and no- its1)dnifihe ^ility, Constantinople drew together a large popu- capitui; lation. It had gradually attracted all that was most noteworthy throughout the empire in art and science. The records of the Christian Church bear witness to the acuteness of intellect with which the great theological questions of the time were, in and about Constantinople, discussed and settled for centuries. The student of law recognizes that the body of jurisprudence which was developed in the Xew Home, and which is known as Eoman law, owes to the labors of jurists in Constantinople most of its precision, its subtilty, its grasp of principles, and its wonderful generalizations. The modern world still retains the powerful impressions made upon it by Constantinople. The leading dogmas established by its fa- mous divines and its councils are recognized throughout Christendom. Roman law, wdiich never ceased to be prac- tised throughout Western Europe, has, since its reformation under Napoleon, become the law of the whole civilized world with the exception of the English-speaking peoples, and even our law has been largely added to by doctrines taken, some- times avowedly, sometimes without recognition, from the same storehouse of legal principles. All that Paris and Berlin have done towards atti-acting the ablest professors and specialists in the countries of which they are the capitals had been done by Constantinople. The sculptor, the painter, and the architect found the best market for their talents in the capital ; the poet or the divine, the wrestler or the actor, his most appre- ciative audiences. Commerce, however, had contributed still more largely to from com- ^hc wealth of the capital. The highway of the Bos- merce. phorus and the Dardanelles is one of -the most im-
