When in 330 Constantine established his new capital on the banks of the Bosphorus and beautified it with all the artistic treasures he was able to remove from the old capital on the Tiber, the ecclesiastical head of Constantinople was but a simple bishop under the metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace. But this position was far from satisfying the vaulting ambition of one who suddenly found himself the honored chaplain of the Emperor and his court, the bishop of the magnificent metropolis that was thenceforth to be the center of the Roman world. What was now to prevent his becoming a Patriarch--the rival even of the greatest of Patriarchs--of the successor of the Galilean Fisherman who ruled the Universal Church from his palace in the old capital of the Cæsars? What indeed was to prevent him from making his dream a glorious reality? The Emperor, he felt sure, would not thwart his ambitious schemes. Nor did he. For it was in harmony with his policy of centralization to have his court bishop raised to the highest hierarchical position possible. It would add to his own prestige, it would stimulate the loyalty of his subjects, and would augment his power and influence in his dealings with the Church. Nor was he mistaken. For history does not furnish more glaring examples of the tyranny of Cæsar in the things of God nor of more ignoble subjection of bishops to civil power than were exhibited in the Emperor’s arbitrary and contemptuous treatment of those ecclesiastics--even the highest--who, in return for the encouragement he had given to their unholy ambitions, had become the willing vassals of the imperial government. In the evolution of the See of Constantinople, barely fifty years were required for achieving the joint plan of Bishop and Emperor. For as early as the year 381 it was decreed by a council summoned by the Emperor Theodosius I, which was composed of only a comparatively small number of Eastern bishops, and at which the Holy See had no representative, that thenceforth the Bishop of Constantinople should have the primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because that city--Constantinople--was New Rome. Thus, by a stroke of the pen, the Patriarch of Alexandria, who had previously held precedence after the Pope of Rome, was supplanted by the Bishop of Byzantium. The Pope and the Alexandrian Patriarch protested against this outrageous proceeding, but it was of no avail. The Emperor and his subservient bishops had achieved their ambitious purpose and had virtually divided Christendom into two dominant Patriarchates--that of the West, under Rome, and that of the East, under Constantinople.