The Secrets of Ancient Nicaea

0:00Hello and welcome back to Echoes of Empires. My name is Nick Holmes and this is episode 136 called The Secrets of Ancient Nysear. This episode is different from usual because I want to tell you about a city I've just come back from visiting, known today as Isnake in Northwestern Turkey but better known by its ancient name of Nysear. Today it's a sleepy little Turkish town but over a thousand years ago it was an important city in both the ancient and medieval worlds and one that witnessed events which changed history including of course the famous first council of Nysear in AD 325 which was foundational for the Christian church. When you arrive the first thing you notice are the walls. These are well preserved and extend for over three miles around the old city. There are four main gates and two of them still have the marble, Roman Arches built in Hadrian's day. If you go

1:02to my YouTube channel, link in the show notes you'll see what they look like. There are also two inscriptions written in Greek one dedicating the walls to Hadrian in the second century AD and another about 500 years later dedicating to the Byzantine emperor Leo III who strengthened the walls. Indeed most of what we can see today is Leo's work and he made Nysear into one of the best fortified Byzantine cities along with Constantinople and Thessalonica. But there's more to see than just the walls including a vast Roman theatre built in Hadrian's day which has recently been excavated and is staggering. There's also the church of Hagia Sophia right in the middle of the city built by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and the site of the second council of Nysear in AD 787. And on the lake side there's been another fascinating recent discovery of a huge Byzantine

2:03church lying submerged in the water dedicated to a local saint called Neophytus. It was built around the time of the Emperor Constantine's reign and may have been the site of the first council of Nysear although most historians think that was in Constantin's summer palace in Nysear of which virtually nothing unfortunately remains. There are many other smaller Roman and Byzantine ruins as well as Turkish mosques but in this podcast I want to look at the three great events in history which took place in Nysear and put it firmly on the historical map. Those being the first and second councils and also the siege of the city in 1097 which marked a pivotal moment in the first crusade. So let's start with the first council of Nysear in AD 325 and to understand this I think we need to take a step back and look at what was happening in the

3:03Roman Empire at that time. In my book The Roman Revolution I put forward the argument that the true impetus for the rapid spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire and the third century AD before Constantin became Emperor was a crisis that nearly destroyed Rome. Called by historians the crisis of the third century Rome was engulfed by foreign invasions from Persia and Germania and only just survived thanks to the Roman army appointing a succession of capable generals as empires. Starting with Claudius Gothicus and culminating in the reigns of Orilian and Diocletian. There was I believe a genuine revolution in Roman politics and society at that time when the Senate and the Petrician class were stripped of their power which was transferred to soldier emperors who set up their capital cities outside the city of Rome in places along the Roman frontiers of Milan,

4:08Nicomedia and Trière. But this revolution wasn't just political it was also religious. The crisis of the third century did permanent damage to the credibility of Rome's pagan gods who'd been shown up as incapable of defending the empire. So a window of opportunity opened for a new religion to capture the souls of men and women and that was Christianity which exploded in popularity at exactly this time. Historians have estimated that in AD 100 there were only about 10,000 Christians but by AD 250 this had grown massively to a million and by AD 300 to 3 to 4 million which was 10% of the entire population of the Roman Empire and by AD 350 this had risen yet again to over 50% of the population with 30 to 40 million Christians. So we know Christianity

5:16went viral if we can use that term at the time of the first council of Nicer but how much of that was connected to the council and the answer I suggest is that a lot of it was connected but not for the reasons usually given which are that the council of Nicer set out the foundations for Christian organization and doctrine. For example it established most famously the Nicene Creed which has become the key statement of Christian faith. It also established a date for the celebration of Easter which was the most important Christian date in the calendar for centuries until it was overtaken by Christmas Day. Yes those were significant but the point that I think was the key one and which spurred the rise of Christianity was that the council marked the moment when the Roman emperor became the head of the Christian Church. Historians now doubt that Constantine was even a Christian

6:19at the battle of the Milvian bridge in 312 when he defeated his rival Maccentius outside Rome and allegedly was inspired by a dream to convert Christianity. I think his conversion went public so to speak at the council of Nicer and the motivation was largely political because at Nicer he saw an opportunity to strengthen his own political position by bringing church and state together under his rule. Now this opportunity arose because the Christian bishops around the empire were not united. There was no pope at this time and no official leader of the Christian Church until Constantine took that role at Nicer. Constantine's decision to become head of the church happened I think almost by accident. It started when the bishop of Rome

7:26asked him to settle a dispute among the Christian bishops which historians have called the Donatist Controversy. This centered on a heated argument over Christian behavior during diocletians great persecution of the Christians. During that time many of the clergy had been martyred while others had simply renounced Christianity and agreed to worship the Roman gods. Not surprisingly when those who'd renounced Christianity wanted to rejoin the church there was considerable hostility towards them and this came to a head in AD 315 when the bishop of Carthage called Donatis refused to allow lapsed clergy to rejoin the church. His viewpoint was rejected by the bishop of Rome and the bishops were split between those who supported Donatis, hence the name the Donatis and those who

8:29didn't. When the bishop of Rome asked Constantine to decide who was right Constantine was flattered and saw an opportunity to make himself head of this rapidly growing new religion. And in AD 325 he followed up on this with the council of Nicer which was the first council of the entire Christian church and at the council of Nicer Constantine basically declared that Christianity was his favoured religion. Pagan gods were still tolerated and Romans didn't have to become Christian but government posts in the civil service and the army were increasingly given to Christians and so if you wanted to advance your career becoming a Christian was very helpful in most professions and I think that was the key reason why Christianity suddenly took off in the 4th century

9:34AD. So let's now move on to the second council of Nicer 462 years later in 787. By then of course the world was a very very different place. Islam, not Rome, was the superpower of Western Eurasia. The scattered remnants of the Roman Empire were just about holding out in Constantinople, the islands of the Eugien and some scattered territories in Anatolia and Greece. But something of great significance happened that year because at the 2nd council of Nicer the Byzantine iconoclasts were banished and Christians were allowed again to worship icons. Now you may well ask what an earth am I talking about? Well an icon means a holy image, an image of Christ or God or the Virgin Mary with which we're so familiar today when we go inside a church

10:35and you might well ask why do people care about this when the Christian world was falling apart? Well the answer is that they cared a lot and I think this was because the controversy went to the heart of a crisis of Christian confidence caused by the astonishing success of the rise of Islam. By the early 8th century the Arabs had created one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen stretching from India to the Atlantic and in Islamic art images of Al-Araur Muhammad were forbidden. So not surprisingly the Christians wondered whether the Islamic victories were because God didn't want people to worship icons and so they started destroying their own. And why was that reversed in 787? Well the answer is that there was a political division within

11:37the Byzantine Empire at that time. The iconoclast movement was popular in the Byzantine army and in 787. Byzantium was ruled by a woman called the Empress Irene who they deeply disliked. They were dissatisfied with both her and her unic ministers and I suggest this division was the real reason behind her restoration of icons because Irene was looking for ways to undermine the army so in 786 she convened a council to discuss restoring icons. Officers from the army intervened and broke up the council but Irene was clever and determined. In 787 she distracted her disgruntled generals by sending them to Asia Minor under the pretext of mounting a campaign against the Arabs. When they were gone she hastily convened a second council this time at Nysia in the church that still exists

12:39today. She gathered 340 bishops and 132 monks and in a hurried procedure they voted to overthrow the ban on icons. Known as Nysia II or officially as the 7th ecumenical council this was one of Irene's boldest political moves and it worked. She tricked the army officers and after Nysia II she arrested them as heretics. Later iconophile chroniclers claimed her ardent love for icons motivated her and one chronicler invented the idea. She slept with icons under her pillow. This was I believe pure propaganda. Irene's true aim was to purge the army of its best generals who were her main rivals and of course this was catastrophic. In 788 the Arabs scored a spectacular victory over the Byzantines at Padanos in Anatolia and in the west the bulgars over ran threase. In 802 Irene

13:47was deposed and these defeats spurred an iconoclast backlash so that in 814 icons were once again banned and it wasn't until 843 when the Byzantines started winning battles again that icons were finally restored for good. And I think the best way of understanding the icon controversy which is long been an obscure and very scholarly subject is to see it actually in very simple terms. It was about superstition essentially and when the Byzantines were losing to the Arabs they feared God was in some way punishing them. So let's move on to the third and final significant event that happened in Nysia and that was the siege of the city in 1097 in the first crusade. We're moving on to a different time zone yet again we're looking three centuries after the second council of Nysia and the world is yet again a very different place. The great Arab caliphates have collapsed a

14:54long time ago and Western Europe has risen from the ashes of the Roman Empire to become the most vibrant and powerful power in Western Eurasia admittedly it's a collection of chaotic kingdoms and feudal fiefdoms but economically and militarily it is now the powerhouse of Western Eurasia. But there's a crisis in the east because Byzantium has been defeated at the Battle of Mansecut and the Turks are pounding at the gates of Constantinople in desperation the resourceful Byzantine Emperor who he heard about in the last episode Alexia's communeus appeals to Pope Urban II to save Byzantium and the response was the first crusade. This was exactly the type of force which Alexia's had been hoping for although it's sheer size far exceeded his expectations. Nevertheless

15:57he saw his opportunity and seized it, organizing excellent logistical support for the huge numbers that poured into the Western provinces of the Byzantine Empire he showered the Frankish nobility with gifts and required them to swear oaths of allegiance. Impressed by the size and splendor of Constantinople in particular the Franks and even Byzantiums former Norman Enemies who had been fighting Alexia's only ten years earlier accepted his authority. Overall by Constantinople one crusader recorded quote, oh what a noble and beautiful city is Constantinople how many monasteries and palaces it contains constructed with wonderful skill it would take too long to describe all the wealth that's there of every kind of gold, silver, all types of clothes and holy relics. And their first target was Nysia. This was the Seljuke Sultan Kilige Arsland's capital

17:03but the problem was the city walls which we can still see the remains of today because these were simply impregnable over three miles long and punctuated with a hundred towers at this time they were impossible to scale as one crusader wrote quote, skillful men had enclosed Nysia with such lofty walls that the city feared neither the attack of Enemies nor the force of any machine. So with the crusaders entrenched in front of the walls Kilige Arsland gathered an army to face the crusaders in battle and in May 1097 he attacked advancing out of the hills the south of Nysia thousands of Turkish horsemen thundered towards the crusaders based on their experience the people's crusader Turks were contemptuous of the Frankish knights and charged the first group of crusaders they met head on these were Raymond of Toulouse's knights but the Provozal knights held their ground and when Beaumont's Normans charged the Turks in the flank the Turks broke and retreated.

18:09Although it wasn't a decisive victory in Kilige Arsland retreated with the bulk of his forces intact the Turks learned the crusaders were a force to be reckoned with but the crusaders still couldn't take Nysia the siege dragged on into June the walls were just impossible to scale and although the crusaders dug tunnels underneath them to make them collapse through sapping operations these attempts failed starving the city into submission seemed to be the only solution but there was a major obstacle to this the western edge of the city bordered the great Ascanian lake today called Lake Isnake allowing the Turks to ferry supplies into the city in small boats the lake was too large to be patrolled and anyway the crusaders didn't have boats the siege looked set to last for many more months and meanwhile news reached the crusaders that Kilige Arsland was organizing a huge army recruited from across the whole of Anatolia to relieve the city some crusaders wondered

19:14whether the crusade would end at Nysia however Alexias hadn't been idle recovering Nysia was central to his aim to push the Turks back and to achieve this he came up with one of his most resourceful strategies this was a plan to haul Byzantine boats 20 miles overland from the coast to the Ascanian lake this allowed the Byzantines to attack the weaker lakeside defenses of the city before this Alexias' general manual Bhutumites had secretly sent envoys into Nysia to start negotiations with the Turks guaranteeing their safety if they surrendered and it should be remembered that most of Nysia's inhabitants were Greek-speaking Byzantines who wanted not just to return the city to the empire but to save themselves from the inevitable pillage of the city if the crusaders broke through the walls therefore they smuggled Alexias' general into the city with a crystal which is a document

20:18written in gold letters and signed by Alexias promising the Turkish garrison not only safe passage but even a reward of money if they surrendered the city the Turks agreed and Alexias sent a small fleet of Byzantine ships across the lake to the city walls the Turks surrendered to the Byzantine soldiers disembarking from their ships Alexias worried that his secret agreement with the Turks might meet with the crusaders disapproval even staged a mock attack on the walls facing the lake where his troops landed a Byzantine standard was raised on the walls and the sound of trumpets and horns the city was proclaimed captured by the emperor the capture of Nysia was a triumph for Alexias but it was also pivotal for the first crusade which would two years later capture Jerusalem and change world history

21:22and that ends this episode thanks so much for listening and i hope you enjoyed it and if you want to see what the walls of Nysia look like today take a look at a video i've made about my trip to Nysia on my youtube channel link in the show notes and in the next episode on the 26th of September we'll get back to narrative history and look at western europe on the eve of the first crusade and if you like the podcast please leave a review tell a friend or best of all sign up to my mailing list where you can get a free ebook just visit my website nickhomesawther.com link in the show notes thanks for listening and see you next time