CONSTANTINOPLE CONSTELLATIONS. 



417 



Beschicktasch, a town containing an imperial sum- 

 mer palace, a great part of which was burnt in 1816. 

 See Dardanelles. 



CONSTANTINOPLE, GENERAL COUNCILS OF. 

 These include the second, fifth, sixth, the Trullan, and 

 the seventh. The second was convoked by Theodo- 

 sius the Great, in 381, to put down the enemies of 

 the Nicene creed, who had already been restrained 

 by his decrees. One hundred and fifty Oriental 

 bishops, assembled for that purpose, condemned the 

 Arians of all parties, together with other heretics, 

 and, in a supplement to the creed above mentioned, 

 they decided that equal honour was due to the Holy 

 Ghost as to the Father and the Sou, with a view of 

 recalling to the orthodox faith the Macedonians or 

 Pneumatomachists, who had adopted the Arian doc- 

 trine of Uie inferiority of the Holy Spirit. These, 

 however, separated from the coiuicil, and suffered 

 themselves to be declared heretics. The ordinances 

 of this council made the bishop of Constantinople 

 next in rank to the bishop of Rome, and committed 

 the disputes of their bishops to the decision of the 

 emperor. Theodosius confirmed the decrees of the 

 council, and even procured them authority in the 

 West. The Greek church took advantage of the 

 circumstance that the Holy Ghost was declared to 

 proceed only from the Father, to set up their claims 

 to orthodoxy against the Catholics. The fifth gen- 

 eral council was held, by the emperor Justinian, in 

 533, to decide the dispute of the three chapters. The 

 three chapters were three doctrines of the bishops 

 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and Ibas of 

 Edessa, who were suspected of Nestorianism, and de- 

 clared heretics by the council. The 165 bishops, 

 nearly all from the East, who were assembled at this 

 meeting, excluded from their communion the Roman 

 bishop Virgilius, who would not unconditionally con- 

 demn the three chapters, and with him many divines, 

 even some that were dead ; for example, Origen. 

 They were only the contemptible organs of the 

 senseless zeal of Justinian. The sixth council, held 

 in 680, by the order of the emperor Constantine, in 

 the Trullan palace (so called on account of its vault- 

 ed roof), by 166 bishops, of whom the legate of the 

 Roman bishop Agatho had the greatest influence, 

 condemned the doctrines of the Monothelites, and 

 declared their leaders heretics. Rejecting the Bible 

 and reason, they proved, from the fathers, that 

 Christ acted not merely with one will, which the 

 Monothelites maintained, but with both a divine and 

 a human will, in accordance with his two natures. 

 Among the condemned Monothelites was Honorius, 

 the predecessor of Agatho. As these two councils 

 made no new ecclesiastical laws, the emperor Jus- 

 tinian II., in 692, again summoned a general coun 

 cil, which, from the purpose of the meeting to sup- 

 ply the defects of the fifth and sixth, was called the 

 (/itinisexta, and, because it was held again in the 

 Trullan palace, the Trullan council; but it is not 

 numbered among the councils of Constantinople. It 

 confirmed the decrees of the previous sessions, and 

 instituted rigid laws for the clergy; among them 

 were those tixing the rank of the patriarchs and the 

 permission of marriage to priests, which were so offen- 

 sive to the Latin church, that she rejected all the 

 decrees of this council ; but in the Greek church, 

 they are still valid. The seventh ecclesiastical coun- 

 cil, which was held, in 754, in Constantinople, by 

 338 bishops, was not attended nor acknowledged by 

 the Latin clergy. This council condemned, with the 

 utmost severity, the worshippers of images, many of 

 whom were put to death in consequence. But the 

 decrees of this council lost all their validity in con- 

 sequence of the subsequent decrees of the council of 

 Nice in 787. See Iconoclasts. 



CONSTELLATIONS are the groups into which 

 astronomers have divided the fixed stars, and which 

 have received names for the convenience of descrip- 

 tion and reference. The science of the constellations 

 is called astrognosy. The division of the stars into 

 groups was begun in ancient times. It is plain that 

 the union of several stars into a constellation, to 

 which the name of some animal, person, or inanimate 

 object is given, must be entirely arbitrary, since the 

 several points (the stars) may be united in a hundred 

 different ways, just as imagination directs ; for in- 

 stance, the best known of all the constellations, the 

 Great Bear, or the Wain, might just as well be made 

 to represent a great variety of other things. It is 

 enough that astronomers know what is meant by a 

 certain constellation, so as to understand each other. 

 The division of the heavens into constellations is like 

 the division of a classic into pages and paragraphs. 

 Ijudviigldeler'sUntersuchunguber den Ur sprung und 

 die Bedeutung der Sternnamen, Berlin, 1809, (Inquiry 

 into the Origin and Meaning of the Names of the 

 Stars, by Louis Ideler), is a work of great interest. 



The ancient divisions of the constellations have 

 been retained by the modems, with the addition of 

 such as have been newly discovered. When and 

 where the first constellations were formed is not 

 known. It is very probable that some of the most 

 remarkable collections of stars, such as Charles's 

 Wain, the Pleiades, Orion, &c., were formed into 

 constellations, and had names given them, in very 

 early ages. Some of them, by their different appear- 

 ances, serve to mark out the different seasons of the 

 year, and, on that account, were not only considered 

 as a kind of directory for the commencement of 

 ploughing, sowing, and other operations of husban- 

 dry, out were also regarded as having a great influ- 

 ence on the temperature of the air, and the fertility 

 of the earth. Hence, from their being signs, point- 

 ing out the tunes of the year when heat or cold, 

 dryness or moisture, predominated, they were regard- 

 ed as the causes of these states of the atmosphere. 

 They were also imagined to have dominion over 

 minerals, vegetables, and animals ; over the complex- 

 ions, constitutions, and even the dispositions of man- 

 kind. This opinion obtained credit the more easily, 

 as the sun, moon, planets, and stars were believed to 

 be of a divine nature, insomuch that some persons 

 conceived that they were inhabited by an inferior kind 

 of deities, who governed their motions, and directed 

 their influences ; while others thought that they 

 were animals, each of which had a living soul ; and 

 others again supposed that they were animated by a 

 part of the substance of the Supreme Being. Each 

 of these notions led mankind to pay them a sort of 

 religious worship. 



The Egyptians divided the heavens into several 

 regions, which they called the stations or mansions of 

 their gods. They worshipped the heavenly bodies, 

 and more especially the sun and moon, which they 

 called their great gods, denominating the sun Osiris, 

 and the moon Isis. They also imagined that they 

 found in various animals some qualities corresponding 

 to the motions, appearances, or influences of the sun, 

 moon, and some of the stars ; hence they were induc- 

 ed not only to use those animals in their hieroglyphic 

 representations of their deities, but also to pay them 

 divine honours, and denominate the constellations 

 from them. The Greeks, who learned astronomy of 

 the Egyptians, retained several of their figures, as 

 the ram, the bull, the dog, &c., but accommodated 

 almost all of them to the fabulous history of their 

 gods and heroes, whom they placed among the stars. 

 The Romans imitated them, and the poets of both na- 

 tions have given us wild and romantic fables about 

 the origin of the constellations, probably derived 

 2 o 



