Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities

by Bettany Hughes

Near to the Church of Peace on what was the original ancient Greek acropolis an orphanage of St Paul and an associated medical centre were also soon established. Poorhouses and additional orphanages were to follow. Constantine supplied rations of bread in the city for 80,000 people every day. Nine hundred and fifty workshops were selected to help fund the free burial of the indigent poor of the city. As Constantinople grew, one of her trademarks was provision for the sick – hospitals specialising in hospice service, infectious diseases and maternal care would come to decorate the city. Steadily the number of slaves on the land that serviced the city started to decline. Instead there were more small-time farmers tied to the land; these were known as coloni, the equivalent of western Europe’s bonded serfs.6 Constantine’s reforming motivations might have been complex, and they may have benefited from the hagiographers’ gloss, but the success of his city was said to be due to ‘the piety of the builder and of the inhabitants, and their compassion and liberality towards the poor. The zeal they manifested for the Christian faith was so great that many of the Jewish inhabitants and most of the Greeks were converted.’7 Pagan commentators remarked on the apparent lunacy of redemptive forgiveness