New Rome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"New Rome" has been used for:
- It was a common name applied to Constantinople, the city founded by emperor Constantine I the Great in 324 (known as Byzantium before that date; renamed Istanbul in modern times). Although there is no evidence that such a title was actually used for official purposes in Constantine's own time, it was used at the First Council of Constantinople (381).
- It is used to express connection with or discontinuity from the "old" Rome, depending upon context, and is particularly used by the Greek Orthodox Church to emphasise that the see of Constantinople should be considered as second only to Rome in prestige.
- It has been a cultural, historical, and theological concept within much of Western culture (as far east as Russia) for centuries if not millennia.
- It was used to refer the idea of Moscow being the "Third Rome", which was popular since the early Russian Tsars. Within decades after the Fall of Constantinople to Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire 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 Moscow who had married Sophia Paleologue. Sophia was a niece of Constantine XI, the last Eastern Roman Emperor and Ivan could claim to be the heir of the fallen Eastern Roman Empire. The idea crystallized with a panegyric letter composed by the Russian monk Philoteus (Filofey) in 1510 to their son Grand Duke Vasili III, which proclaimed, "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will not be a fourth. No one will replace your Christian Tsardom!"
- Within the context of Protestant Reformation, 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(Catholic) propaganda against "papists" and the city of Rome, home of the Pope and heart of the Roman Catholic Church, 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 expansionistic empire. "Babylon" is often used in a similar sense.
- The dissolved village in Ohio, New Rome, Ohio.
- Terza Roma (Third Rome) is also a name for the Benito Mussolini plan to expand Rome towards Ostia and the sea. The Eur neighbourhood was the first step in that direction.
- Roma Tre is also the name of the Third University of Rome.
- In the 1959 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz 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 Woman, New Rome was revealed to have been founded on the site of St. Louis, Missouri.
- Nova Roma is the name of a fictional country of the Marvel Universe, first appearing in New Mutants #8 (October, 1983). The comic book was written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Bob McLeod. This colony of the Roman Republic was reportedly founded shortly after the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The colony is hidden in modern Brazil. The psychic vampire Selene was the de facto ruler of the city for centuries. Her alleged descendant Magma would leave the city to join the New Mutants, (briefly) the X-Men and the New Hellions.
[edit] References
- Dmytryshyn, Basil (transl). 1991. Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850-1700. 259-261. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Fort Worth, Texas.
- ↑ Discorso pronunciato in Campidoglio per l'insediamento del primo Governatore di Roma il 31 dicembre 1925, Internet Archive copy of a page with a Mussolini speech.
