ope
are only divided by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek city of
Byzantium already stood. From hence he hoped to be able to rule the East
and the West. He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made a
palace there for himself, and called it after his own name--Constantinople,
or New Rome, neither of which names has it ever lost. He carried many of
the ornaments of Old Rome thither, but consecrated them as far as
possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother
Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our
blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The
churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity
at Bethlehem have been kept up even to this day.

[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE.]

There was now no danger in being a Christian, and thus worldly and even
wicked men and women owned themselves as belonging to the Church. So
much evil prevailed that many good men fled from the sight of it,
thinking to do more good by praying in lonely places free from
temptation than by living in the midst of it. These were called hermits,
and the first and most noted of them was St. Anthony. The Thebaid, or
hilly country above Thebes in Egypt, was full of these hermits. When
they banded together in brotherhoods they were called monks, and the
women who did the like were called nuns.

At this time there arose in Egypt a priest named Arius, who fell away
from the true faith respecting our blessed Lord, and taught that he was
not from the beginning, and was not equal with God the Father. The
Patriarch of Alexandria tried to silence him, but he led away an immense
number of followers, who did not like to stretch their souls to confess
that Jesus Christ is God. At last Constantine resolved to call together
a council of the Bishops and the wisest priests of the whole Church, to
declare what was the truth that had been always held from the beginning.
The place he appointed for the meeting was Nicea, in Asia Minor, and he
paid for the journeys of all the Bishops, three hundred and eighteen in
number, who came from all parts of the empire, east and west, so as to
form the first Oecumenical or General Council of the Church. Many of
them still bore the marks of the persecutions they had borne in
Diocletian's time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off;
some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard labor
in the min