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| Fragment of Constantine's Tomb - Istanbul |
This is something that is I think is still a political hot potato after eight hundred years regarding what really happened to Constantine the Great’s final resting place.
He died in 337 C.E. in Constantinople. Was laid to rest in the only finished church in his new designer city which was the Church of the Twelve Apostles.
From what I have read here and there, the church was built with the intention of having all the bodies of the twelve apostles buried there in a circle around the central sarcophagus of Constantine, the founding force of this new Roman/Christian religion, in a standing structure, a mausoleum adjacent to the church building proper.
There are historical references to Justinian rebuilding the church. It was no doubt affected by earthquakes over time. The royals too apparently had their tombs there as well. It was kind of like an Orthodox version of Westminster Abbey.
Then the Roman catholic crusaders, the fourth crusade, got diverted on their way to Jerusalem, and under orders of the bankers in Venice, attacked and captured the city in 1204. There are reports that Justinian’s tomb got looted for its gold contents along with the pillage of the rest of the city.
I have to believe that Constantine’s tomb got looted at the same time. I also have to think that in terms of suppressed church truth, it may have some bone fragments of Constantine in some secret vault in the grottoes below the Vatican. But for diplomatic and propaganda reasons, they cannot admit to benefiting directly from the immoral seizure and rape of the Christian city of Constantinople.
The Muslims of course come along to this devastated city two centuries later in 1453 and conquered the decaying burned out city that had never fully recovered from the crusader plunder of it.
St. Mark’s Church in Venice is resplendent to this day with the gold, jewels, icons of that crusader sack of Constantinople.
The Church of the Twelve Apostles survived a decade or two more after the Turkish conquest, and was in such a state of disrepair, the Turks tore it down to make way for their own Faith Mosque.
There are fragments of empty unidentified sarcophaguses still sitting around the yard adjacent to this mosque and no doubt have been there from both the crusader sack of the city and the Turkish conquest.
All that is left of Constantine’s tomb, the founder of Christianity as it is structured today, is the above fragment of royal purple colored stone, labeled as such in the local archeological museum in Istanbul.