Nicaea
Nicaea, also known as Nikaia or Nice, was an ancient Greek city in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia.
It was the site of the First and Second Councils of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed, which was composed at the First Council, takes its name from the city. It was also the capital city of the Empire of Nicaea following the Fourth Crusade in 1204, until the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines in 1261. Nicaea was also the capital of the Ottomans from 1331 to 1335.
The ancient city is located within the modern Turkish city of İznik, and is situated in a fertile basin at the eastern end of Lake Ascanius, bounded by ranges of hills to the north and south. It is situated with its west wall rising from the lake itself, providing both protection from siege from that direction, as well as a source of supplies which would be difficult to cut off. The lake is large enough that it could not be blockaded from the land easily, and the city was large enough to make any attempt to reach the harbour from shore-based siege weapons very difficult.
The ancient city is surrounded on all sides by of walls about high. These are in turn surrounded by a double ditch on the land portions, and also included over 100 towers in various locations. Large gates on the three landbound sides of the walls provided the only entrance to the city. Today, the walls have been pierced in many places for roads, but much of the early work survives; as a result, it is a tourist destination.
History
Early history
The place is said to have been colonized by Bottiaeans, and to have originally borne the name of Ancore or Helicore, or by soldiers of Alexander the Great's army who hailed from Nicaea in Locris, near Thermopylae. The later version, however, was not widespread, even in Antiquity. Whatever the truth, the first Greek colony on the site was probably destroyed by the Mysians, and it fell to Antigonus I Monophthalmus, one of Alexander's successors to refound the city as Antigoneia after himself. Antigonus is also known to have established Bottiaean soldiers in the vicinity, lending credence to the tradition about the city's founding by Bottiaeans. Following Antigonus' defeat and death at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, the city was captured by Lysimachus, who renamed it Nicaea, in tribute to his wife Nicaea, who had recently died.Sometime before 280 BC, the city came under the control of the local dynasty of the kings of Bithynia. This marks the beginning of its rise to prominence as a seat of the royal court, as well as of its rivalry with Nicomedia. The two cities' dispute over which one was the pre-eminent city of Bithynia continued for centuries, and the 38th oration of Dio Chrysostom was expressly composed to settle the dispute.
Plutarch mentioned that Menecrates wrote about the history of the city. In Greek mythology, Nicaea supposedly took its name from Nicaea, a nymph whom the god Dionysus got drunk and raped; he later named the city after her.
Roman period
Along with the rest of Bithynia, Nicaea came under the rule of the Roman Republic in 72 BC. The city remained one of the most important urban centres of Asia Minor throughout the Roman period, and continued its old competition with Nicomedia over pre-eminence and the location of the seat of the Roman governor of Bithynia et Pontus. The geographer Strabo described the city as built in the typical Hellenistic fashion with great regularity, in the form of a square, measuring 16 stadia in circumference, i.e. approx. or covering an area of some or ; it had four gates, and all its streets intersected one another at right angles in accordance with the Hippodamian plan, so that from a monument in the centre all the four gates could be seen. This monument stood in the gymnasium, which was destroyed by fire but was restored with increased magnificence by Pliny the Younger, when he was governor there in the early 2nd century AD. In his writings Pliny makes frequent mention of Nicaea and its public buildings.Emperor Hadrian visited the city in 123 AD after it had been severely damaged by an earthquake and began to rebuild it. The new city was enclosed by a polygonal wall of some 5 kilometres in length. Reconstruction was not completed until the 3rd century, and the new set of walls failed to save Nicaea from being sacked by the Goths in 258 AD. The numerous coins of Nicaea which still exist attest the interest taken in the city by the Roman emperors, as well as its attachment to the rulers; many of them commemorate great festivals celebrated there in honor of gods and emperors, as Olympia, Isthmia, Dionysia, Pythia, Commodia, Severia, Philadelphia, etc.
Christian Councils
became a legal religion of the Roman Empire in the reign of Constantine I by the Edict of Milan in 313. Constantine patronized Christianity and supported it by granting privileges, and became the first Roman emperor to adopt Christianity, but he did not get baptised until just before he died in Nicomedia. Constantine laid the groundwork for the majority of the population to become Christians, predominantly, the empire's formal religion in 380.The Nicene Creed, which declared Jesus to be of the same essence as God the Father, and became the foundation of church doctrine, was adopted at the first Roman Ecumenical Christian council in this city in 325.
After shifting the council for four centuries, the Ecumenical Council was held in Nicaea again in 787. This council was called by the emperor of the Eastern Empire, Constantine VI, Empress Irene, who later became the first female emperor, and attended by Pope Hadrian I. It addressed the iconoclastic controversy and recognized the veneration of Christian images of Jesus and the saints as legitimate. The council also forbade the secular appointment of bishops, thus solidifying the independent authority of the church against that of the state.
Byzantine period
By the 4th century, Nicaea was a large and prosperous city, and a major military and administrative centre. Emperor Constantine the Great convened the First Ecumenical Council there, and the city gave its name to the Nicene Creed. The city remained important in the 4th century, seeing the proclamation of Emperor Valens and the failed rebellion of Procopius. During the same period, the See of Nicaea became independent of Nicomedia and was raised to the status of a metropolitan bishopric. However, the city was hit by two major earthquakes in 363 and 368, and coupled with competition from the newly established capital of the Eastern Empire, Constantinople, it began to decline thereafter. Many of its grand civic buildings began to fall into ruin, and had to be restored in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian I, among them the aqueduct built by Hadrian.The city disappears from sources thereafter and is mentioned again in the early 8th century: in 715, the deposed emperor Anastasios II fled there, and the city successfully resisted attacks by the Umayyad Caliphate in 716 and 727. The city was again damaged by the 740 Constantinople earthquake, served as the base of the rebellion of Artabasdos in 741/2, and served as the meeting-place of the Second Ecumenical Council, which condemned Byzantine Iconoclasm, in 787.
Nicaea became the capital of the Opsician Theme in the 8th century and remained a center of administration and trade. A Jewish community is attested in the city in the 10th century. Due to its proximity to Constantinople, the city was contested in the rebellions of the 10th and 11th centuries as a base from which to threaten the capital. It was in the wake of such a rebellion, that of Nikephoros Melissenos, that it fell into the hands of Melissenos' Turkish allies in 1081. The Seljuk Turks made Nicaea the capital of their possessions in Asia Minor until 1097, when it returned to Byzantine control with the aid of the First Crusade after a one month siege.
The 12th century saw a period of relative stability and prosperity at Nicaea. The Komnenian emperors Alexios, John and Manuel campaigned extensively to strengthen the Byzantine presence in Asia Minor. Alexios seems to have repaired the aqueduct after the reconquest and major fortifications were constructed across the region, especially by John and Manuel, which helped to protect the city and its fertile hinterland. There were also several military bases and colonies in the area, for example the one at Rhyndakos in Bithynia, where the emperor John spent a year training his troops in preparation for campaigns in southern Asia Minor.
After the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the establishment of the Latin Empire, Nicaea escaped Latin occupation and maintained an autonomous stance. From 1206 on, it became the base of Theodore Laskaris, who in 1208 was crowned emperor there and founded the Empire of Nicaea. The Patriarchate of Constantinople, exiled from Constantinople, also took up residence in the city until the recapture of Constantinople in 1261. Although Nicaea was soon abandoned as the primary residence of the Nicene emperors, who favoured Nymphaion and Magnesia on the Maeander, the period was a lively one in the city's history, with "frequent synods, embassies, and imperial weddings and funerals", while the influx of scholars from other parts of the Eastern Roman world made it a centre of learning as well.
After the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1261, the city once again declined in importance. The neglect of the Asian frontier by Michael VIII Palaiologos provoked a major uprising in 1262, and in 1265, panic broke out when rumours circulated of an imminent Mongol attack. Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos visited the city in 1290 and took care to restore its defences, but Byzantium proved unable to halt the rise of the nascent Ottoman emirate in the region. After Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos and John Kantakouzenos were defeated at Pelekanon on 11 June 1329, the Byzantine government could no longer defend Nicaea. Nicaea finally surrendered to the Ottomans after a long siege 2 March 1331.