other things, which were said to exceed the memories of the listeners,
he spoke about this project. His eloquence was reinforced by his
literary knowledge; the richness of his speech in Latin seemed no
less than that of any lawyer nimble in his native language. Nor did
the crowd of disputants blunt the skill of the speaker. Surrounded
by praiseworthy teachers, apparently buried by clouds of cases being
pressed upon him, he was judged to have overcome, by his own literary
brilliance, the flood of oratory and to have overwhelmed the
cleverness of every speech. Therefore his meaning, and not his exact
words, follow: "If, among the churches scattered through the whole
world, some deserve more reverence than others because they are
associated with certain people and places, then, because of certain
persons, I say, greater privileges are granted to apostolic sees; in
the case of places, some privilege is granted to royal cities, as is
the case with the city of Constantinople. We are grateful for having
received from this most powerful church the grace of redemption and
the origin of all Christianity. If what was said by the Lord remains
true, namely that "salvation is from the Jews," and it remains true
that the Lord of the Sabbath has left his seed for us, lest we become
like those of Sodom and Gomorrha, and that Christ is our seed, in
whom lies salvation and blessing for all people, then the earth and
the city in which he lived and suffered is called holy by the
testimony of Scripture. If this land is the inheritance of God, and
his holy temple, even before the Lord walked and suffered there, as
the sacred and prophetic pages tell us, then what additional sanctity
and reverence did it gain then, when the God of majesty took flesh
upon Himself there, was fed, grew up, and moving in his bodily
strength walked here and there in the land? To abbreviate a matter
that could be spun out at much greater length, this is the place
where the blood of the Son of God, holier than heaven and earth, was