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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Constantinople |
 | | Constantinople occupies one of the most beautiful and advantageous sites in the world, uniting as it does Europe with Asia and putting in communication the Black Sea and all Southern Russia with the greater part of Europe and Asia, and even with distant America. |
 | | Constantinople had, therefore, to sustain numberless sieges; it was attacked in 378 by the Goths, by the Avars and Persians during the reign of Heraclius (610-41), by the Arabs during the reign of Constantine Pogonatus (668-85), and again by the Arabs under Moslemeh in 717; many times also by Bulgarians, Patzinaks, Russians, and Khazars. |
 | | The first period of the schism was coeval, especially at Constantinople, with a remarkable literary revival, inaugurated as early as the tenth century by the Macedonian dynasty and carried to its perfection under the Comneni and the Palæologi. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/04301a.htm (7407 words) |
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