Archbishop of Constantinople
Thus, at fifty years of age, St. Chrysostom was placed, not only without seeking for it, but against his wishes, upon that see which, through the residence of the emperor, was already become the most conspicuous of episcopal thrones in the East. From the moment that Constantine, sixty-seven years before, had made Byzantium Nova Roma, and founded, in fact, a new empire, all the ambitious spirits among the prelates of the East sought to seat themselves on that perilous height. This new centre of temporal power was from that time forth the centre of trouble, heresy, and disaster to the Church. Eusebius left his former see, Nicomedia, to possess it, and to be the emperor’s bishop. One after another Arian heretics succeeded. In 379, when the small number of Catholics remaining in the new capital invited St. Gregory Nazienzen to come to their aid, he could only open in a private room a small church, which he called by the significant name of Anastasia, the Resurrection. In that year Theodosius was promoted by the young Gratian to share his throne, upon the destruction of his uncle Valens by the Goths. Valens had all but destroyed both empire and Church in the East. It was the great effort of Theodosius to restore both. In fifteen years of unexampled energy, terrible trials, and almost miraculous success, he did what valour, piety, and prudence could do. These years were all that the Divine Providence had allowed him for a work almost transcending human power; and when he died, not yet fifty years old, in 395, the great empire of Rome, both in East and West, may be said to have fallen into orphanage. His two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, one a youth of nineteen and the other a boy of eleven, proved to be utterly incompetent. Even Theodosius had failed to overcome the deep degeneracy and rooted party spirit to which the Arian heresy had reduced the eastern episcopate when St. Athanasius and St. Basil had been freshly laid in their tombs. The council called by Theodosius at Constantinople in 381 suffered St. Gregory to give up the see, which was surrounded by envious rivals. For when Meletius, the patriarch of Antioch, died, in presiding over that council, instead of extinguishing the Antiochene schism by the election of Paulinus, the bishop who was already in communion with Rome and Alexandria, according to an actual agreement, they suffered the schism to be prolonged by the election of Flavian. Nectarius took the place which St. Gregory had vacated, and St. Chrysostom was called after about fifteen years to succeed to his patriarchate.