New Rome
Encyclopedia
The term "New Rome" has been used in the following contexts:
- "Nova Roma" is traditionally reported to be the LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
name given by emperorRoman EmperorThe Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...
Constantine the GreatConstantine IConstantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
to the new imperial capital he founded in 324 at the city on the European coast of the BosporusBosporusThe Bosphorus or Bosporus , also known as the Istanbul Strait , is a strait that forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with the Dardanelles...
strait, known as ByzantiumByzantiumByzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
until then and as Kōnstantinoúpolis (ConstantinopleConstantinopleConstantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
) since then, until it was renamed IstanbulIstanbulIstanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
in modern times. The first appearance of the term 'New Rome' in connection to Constantinople in any kind of document was at the First Council of ConstantinopleFirst Council of ConstantinopleThe First Council of Constantinople is recognized as the Second Ecumenical Council by the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, the Old Catholics, and a number of other Western Christian groups. It was the first Ecumenical Council held in...
(381), in the context of deciding that the relatively youthful church of Constantinople should have precedence over Alexandria and Antioch 'because it is the New Rome'. Even after this, the name was not used in official proclamations by the civil authority, as opposed to the Christian church. - It is used to express connection with or discontinuity from the "old" RomeRomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, depending upon context, and is particularly used by the Orthodox Church to emphasize that the See of Constantinople should be considered as second only to the Roman See in prestige. The full title of the Patriarch of ConstantinoplePatriarch of ConstantinopleThe Ecumenical Patriarch is the Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome – ranking as primus inter pares in the Eastern Orthodox communion, which is seen by followers as the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church....
is "Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Œcumenical Patriarch". - It has been a cultural, historical, and theological concept within much of European culture (as far east as Russia) for centuries if not millennia.
- The idea of MoscowMoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
being the "Third RomeThird RomeThe term Third Rome describes the idea that some European city, state, or country is the successor to the legacy of the Roman Empire and its successor state, the Byzantine Empire ....
", became popular since the time of the early Russian TsarTsarTsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
s. Within decades after the Fall of ConstantinopleFall of ConstantinopleThe Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI...
to Mehmed IIMehmed IIMehmed II , was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire for a short time from 1444 to September 1446, and later from...
of the Ottoman EmpireOttoman EmpireThe Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
on May 29, 1453, some were nominating Moscow as the "Third Rome", or new "New Rome". Stirrings of this sentiment began during the reign of Ivan III, Grand Duke of MoscowIvan III of RussiaIvan III Vasilyevich , also known as Ivan the Great, was a Grand Prince of Moscow and "Grand Prince of all Rus"...
who had married Sophia PaleologueSophia PaleologueZoe Palaiologina , later changed her name to Sophia Palaiologina , Grand Duchess of Moscow, was a niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI and second wife of Ivan III of Russia. She was also the grandmother of Ivan the Terrible.- Biography :...
. Sophia was a niece of Constantine XIConstantine XIConstantine XI Palaiologos, latinized as Palaeologus , Kōnstantinos XI Dragasēs Palaiologos; February 8, 1404 – May 29, 1453) was the last reigning Byzantine Emperor from 1449 to his death as member of the Palaiologos dynasty...
, the last Eastern Roman Emperor and Ivan could claim to be the heir of the fallen Eastern Roman Empire. The idea crystallized with a panegyricPanegyricA panegyric is a formal public speech, or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical. It is derived from the Greek πανηγυρικός meaning "a speech fit for a general assembly"...
letter composed by the RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n monk Philoteus (Filofey)Philotheus of PskovPhilotheus was a hegumen of the Yelizarov Monastery in Pskov in the 16th century. He is credited with authorship of the Legend of the White Cowl and the Third Rome prophecy....
in 1510 to their son Grand Duke Vasili IIIVasili III of RussiaVasili III Ivanovich was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1505 to 1533. He was the son of Ivan III Vasiliyevich and Sophia Paleologue and was christened with the name Gavriil...
, which proclaimed, "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will not be a fourth. No one will replace your Christian TsarTsarTsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
dom!" - Earlier, in the 14th century, as the Byzantine EmpireByzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
weakened, the capital of BulgariaBulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
Tarnovo (Tarnovgrad) had also claimed to be the Third RomeThird RomeThe term Third Rome describes the idea that some European city, state, or country is the successor to the legacy of the Roman Empire and its successor state, the Byzantine Empire ....
based on its pre-eminent cultural influence in the BalkansBalkansThe Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and the SlavicSlavic peoplesThe Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
OrthodoxEastern Orthodox ChurchThe Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
world. - ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
has at various stages of its history been designated "nouvelle Rome" or New Rome, as early as the reign of Philip IVPhilip IV of FrancePhilip the Fair was, as Philip IV, King of France from 1285 until his death. He was the husband of Joan I of Navarre, by virtue of which he was, as Philip I, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne from 1284 to 1305.-Youth:A member of the House of Capet, Philip was born at the Palace of...
(1268–1314) but from a tradition starting most significantly under the rule of Louis XIV who dominated most of Western Europe, and whose capital experienced massive increases in population, wealth, lavish royal building projects (there were 500,000 people in Paris by the mid-17th century, compared to 350,000 in London). However it was Napoleon III's appointment of Baron HaussmannBaron HaussmannGeorges-Eugène Haussmann, commonly known as Baron Haussmann , was a French civic planner whose name is associated with the rebuilding of Paris...
as city planner of Paris in the mid-19th century, that is the cause of the appellation in modern times. - Within the context of Protestant ReformationProtestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, it became a pejorative description, applied to nations or cities that earned a reputation for rapacity, immorality, or other social or political faults. This may have its roots in virulently anti-Roman (anti-Catholic) propagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
against "papistPapistPapist is a term or an anti-Catholic slur, referring to the Roman Catholic Church, its teachings, practices, or adherents. The term was coined during the English Reformation to denote a person whose loyalties were to the Pope, rather than to the Church of England...
s" and the city of RomeRomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, home of the PopePopeThe Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
and heart of the Roman Catholic ChurchCatholicismCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
, which drew the ire of many a Reformation author. In the present day, "New Rome" is used in this form mostly to refer to "political immorality", casting any large and powerful country into the role of an oppressive and expansionary empireEmpireThe term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
(for example, by Osama bin Laden, as a description of the United States of America). "BabylonBabylon (New Testament)Babylon occurs in the Christian New Testament both with a literal and a figurative meaning. The famous ancient city, located near Baghdad, was a complete unpopulated ruin by 275 BC, well before the time of the New Testament...
" is often used in a similar sense. - Terza Roma (Third Rome, after the first Rome of the Caesars and the second Rome of the Popes) is also a name for the Benito MussoliniBenito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
plan to expand Rome towards Ostia and the sea. The Esposizione Universale RomaEsposizione Universale RomaEUR is a residential and business district in Rome, Italy, located south of the city center. The area was originally chosen in 1930s as the site for the 1942 world's fair which Benito Mussolini planned to open to celebrate twenty years of Fascism. EUR was also designed to direct the expansion of...
neighbourhood was the first step in that direction. - In the post-apocalyptic science fictionScience fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel A Canticle for LeibowitzA Canticle for LeibowitzA Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Roman Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as...
by Walter Michael Miller, Jr., first published in 1959, the residence of the post-nuclear holocaust Pope is called New Rome. In the sequel Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse WomanSaint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse WomanSaint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is a science fiction novel written by Walter M. Miller, Jr.. It is a follow-up to Miller's 1959 book A Canticle for Leibowitz...
, New Rome was revealed to have been founded on the site of St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
. - New Rome is the capital of the fictional planet Secundus, the second to be settled by the Howard familiesHoward FamiliesThe Howard Families are a fictional group created by the author Robert A. Heinlein.According to Heinlein, the Howard Foundation was started in the 19th century by Ira Howard, a millionaire dying of old age in his forties, for the purpose of extending human lifespans...
in the 19731973 in literatureThe year 1973 in literature involved several significant events and the writing of many notable books.-Events:*September 25 - The funeral of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda becomes a focus for protests against the new government of Augusto Pinochet...
science fictionScience fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novelNovelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
Time Enough for LoveTime Enough for LoveTime Enough for Love is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1973. The work was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973 and both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1974.-Plot:...
by Robert A. HeinleinRobert A. HeinleinRobert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
and subsequent books featuring Lazarus LongLazarus LongLazarus Long is a fictional character featured in a number of science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlein. Born in 1912 in the third generation of a selective breeding experiment run by the Ira Howard Foundation, Lazarus becomes unusually long-lived, living well over two thousand years with the...
. - Satirists have called Washington DC the New Rome.
- The planet New Rome is the political and legal centre of the human-inhabited worlds of Brian StablefordBrian StablefordBrian Michael Stableford is a British science fiction writer who has published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published as by Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford...
's six Hooded Swan science fiction novels. Its exact status is never clearly defined.
See also
- Nova Roma (disambiguation)Nova Roma (disambiguation)Nova Roma could refer to:* the concept of New Rome in Western Civilization* Constantinople, which was often considered a second Rome* the town of Nova Roma, Goiás, Brazil...
- Nova RomaNova RomaNova Roma is an international Roman revivalist and reconstructionist organization created in 1998 by Joseph Bloch and William Bradford, later incorporated in Maine as a non-profit organization with an educational and religious mission...
- ByzantismByzantismByzantinism or Byzantism is a term used in political science and philosophy to denote the political system and culture of the Byzantine Empire, and its spiritual successors, in particular, the Balkan states, the Ottoman Empire and Russia. The term byzantinism itself was coined in the 19th century...
- New JerusalemNew JerusalemIn the book of Ezekiel, the Prophecy of New Jerusalem is Ezekiel's prophetic vision of a city to be established to the south of the Temple Mount that will be inhabited by the twelve tribes of Israel in the...
- Translatio imperiiTranslatio imperiiTranslatio imperii, Latin for "transfer of rule", is a concept invented in the Middle Ages for describing history as a linear succession of transfers of imperium, that is of supreme power concentrated with a series of single rulers .-Origin:...