The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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view on the theological point and (A.D. 401) issued a Paschal letter condemning Origen and his disciples. He then convoked a synod, which anathematised Origen and condemned the Nitrian monks. He had other reasons for desiring the destruction of the Tall Brothers, and he obtained troops from the augustal Prefect of Egypt to arrest them. The habitations of the monks were sacked and pillaged, and the Tall Brothers with their followers, clad in sheepskins, made their way to Palestine, where the bishops, admonished by letters from Theophilus, refused them shelter. Unable to find rest for the soles of their feet, they took ship for Constantinople to place themselves under the protection of Chrysostom. He received them kindly, but would not communicate with them until their cause had been examined, and he lodged them in the church of St. Anastasia,111 where their wants were ministered to by his deaconesses.
The piety and virtues of the Tall Brothers were well known by repute at Constantinople, and the Empress was eager to exert herself in their behalf. Meeting one of them as she was driving through the city, she stopped her carriage, asked him to pray for her, and promised to arrange that a synod should be convoked and Theophilus summoned to attend it. The monks then drew up a petition to the Emperor, setting forth their charges against their archbishop, and an Imperial messenger was sent to Alexandria to compel Theophilus to come to Constantinople and answer for his conduct at a synod to be held there.
Theophilus had already instigated Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, who was an authority on heresies, to convene a synod of the Cypriot bishops to condemn the opinion of Origen, and to circulate its decisions to the sees of the Church. This had been done, and Theophilus, finding himself in an awkward position by the peremptory summons to appear as a defendant in the capital, urged Epiphanius to go in person to Constantinople and obtain Chrysostom’s signature to the decree of the Cypriote council. Epiphanius, persuaded by the crafty flatteries of the Alexandrian prelate that a crisis in the Church depended on his intervention, sailed for Constantinople (early in A.D. 403). But he was not a strong ally; he was out of place and bewildered amid the intrigues of the capital. Finally he became acquainted with the Tall Brothers, and when they told him that they had read his books112 with admiration, and remonstrated with him for condemning their writings, which he was obliged to confess he only knew from hearsay, he came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake and allowed himself to be used as a tool by Theophilus. Disgusted and dejected he set sail for home, but the fatigue and excitement had overtaxed his failing strength and he died on the voyage (May 12).
About a month later (in June) Theophilus arrived with a large retinue of bishops who came to support him from Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. He had been summoned to appear as an accused man before an ecclesiastical tribunal over which Chrysostom would preside, but he was determined to invert the parts, and be himself the judge, with Chrysostom at the bar. That he succeeded in his plan was due entirely to Chrysostom’s indiscretions. The Empress had interested herself in the affair of the Tall Brothers, and it was due to her influence that Theophilus had been forced to come to answer for his conduct. If Chrysostom, who in that affair had shown admirable caution, had now exercised ordinary tact and self-restraint, he could have had Eudoxia entirely on his side and might have defied all the arts and intrigues of his Alexandrian rival. Eudoxia had shown her veneration for the saintly bishop Epiphanius, by asking him to pray for her infant son who was ill, and Chrysostom, offended by her graciousness towards a bishop who had been openly hostile to himself, preached a violent sermon against women, in which the word Jezebel was pronounced. The congregation interpreted it as allusive to the Empress, and the matter was soon brought to her ears.113 She was furious at the insult, and prepared to exert all her influence to support the party which was planning the ruin of the archbishop. Theophilus, rejecting the hospitality which Chrysostom offered him, established himself in the palace of Placidia, close to the Great Palace, and his bribes, banquets, and flatteries drew thither all the ecclesiastics and fashionable ladies whom Chrysostom had offended.
Chrysostom seems hardly to have realised the danger of his position. Instead of attempting to turn away the wrath of the Empress, he adopted a weak and conciliatory attitude towards the archbishop of Alexandria. The question of the Tall Brothers, though it was now a secondary consideration, had to be disposed of before Theophilus could take any open steps against Chrysostom, and Chrysostom was invited by the Emperor to preside over an investigation into the charges they had preferred against Theophilus. But he declined on the ground that such an inquiry into things which had occurred in another diocese would be illegal. This decision at once freed Theophilus from his position as an accused person, and the board was clear for him to organise his attack on Chrysostom. A list of charges was drawn up, sufficient to move the Emperor, under his wife’s influence, to summon a council to inquire into them. Witnesses were procured to substantiate the accusations.
Popular feeling ran so high in favour of Chrysostom that the authorities were afraid to hold the synod within the precincts of the city, and it met across the water in the palace of the Oak, which had been built by the Praetorian Prefect Rufinus in the suburbs of Chalcedon. Chrysostom refused to appear before a body which was packed with his enemies. The majority of the bishops present were Egyptians, prepared to do whatever their archbishop told them. The chief accuser of Chrysostom was John, his archdeacon. Among the numerous charges that were formulated for the synod to investigate were these: that he had sold the marble which Nectarius had set aside for decorating the church of St. Anastasia; that he had reviled the clergy as corrupt; that he had called Epiphanius a fool and a demon; that he had intrigued against Severian; that he received visits from women by themselves after he had sent every one else out of the room; that a bath was heated for him alone, and that after he had bathed Serapion emptied the bath so that no one else might use it; that he ate gluttonously alone, living like a Cyclops.114 The accusations which really demanded an inquiry concerned his conduct in deposing bishops in Asia and ordaining others without due investigation of their characters.
As Chrysostom, repeatedly summoned, refused to appear and plead, he was condemned, not as guilty of the crimes which were alleged against him, but because he refused to appear, and he was formally deposed from his see. A report of the result was communicated to the Emperor, with the suggestion that it was for him and not for the Council to deal with the charge that the archbishop had spoken treasonably of the Empress.115 Arcadius confirmed the decree in a rescript which pronounced the sentence of banishment. To the archbishop’s enemies the penalty may have seemed too lenient, but it roused the indignation of the people, who would not have their idol removed by the act of a small packed assembly like the Synod of the Oak. Loud clamours were raised for the assembling of a general Council of the Church. Flocking round St. Sophia and the archiepiscopal palace, the populace made it impossible for the Imperial officers to seize Chrysostom and expel him from the city for three days. He delivered two discourses in the church, in which he referred to the Empress as a Jezebel or a Herodias. “One day she called me the thirteenth apostle, and now her name for me is Judas.”116 But he had no intention of defying the Emperor or causing a sedition. He stole out from his palace at night, surrendered himself, was taken across to the Asiatic coast, and withdrew to Praenetus near Nicomedia.
When it was discovered that he had departed, the fury of the people burst out. The city was in an uproar. The populace clamoured for the recall of their pastor, and an earthquake which at this crisis shook the city and the Great Palace was interpreted to mean that the voice of the people was the voice of God.117 The Empress herself, who was very superstitious, was panic-stricken, and she sent one of her chamberlains with a letter to Chrysostom imploring him to return. In this conciliatory letter she disclaimed all responsibility for his exile. “Let not your Holiness suppose,” she wrote, “that I was privy to what has been done. I am innocent of thy blood. Wicked and corrupt men devised this plot; God to whom I sacrifice is witness of my tears. I remember that my children were baptized by thy hands. I touched the knees of the Emperor and besought him: ‘We have lost the priest, let us bring him back. Unless we restore him there is no hope for the Empire.’ ” Chrysostom accepted her overtures and returned. When he was back in his palace, Eudoxia sent him a verbal message. “My prayer has been fulfilled. My success is a crown more precious than my Imperial diadem. I have received the priest, restored the head to the body, the pilot to the ship, the shepherd to the flock, the bridegroom to the bridal chamber.” She was generous in her amends, and the archbishop,