Churches for the Martyrs at Constantinople

Being fully resolved to give special honor to the city that bore his name, he adorned it with many sacred buildings, both memorials of martyrs on the grandest scale and other buildings of the most splendid kind, not only within the city itself but in its surroundings. In this way he honored the memory of the martyrs and at the same time dedicated his city to the martyrs’ God. Filled too with divine wisdom, he decided to cleanse the city that was to bear his own name of idolatry of every kind, so that from then on no statues would be worshiped there in the temples of those falsely thought to be gods, and no altars would be defiled with the pollution of blood; that there would be no sacrifices burned in fire, no festivals of demons, nor any of the other ceremonies the superstitious usually keep. [a]