Enmity of Eudoxia
But the ‘Court’s stern martyr-guest,’ who was also ‘the glorious preacher with soul of zeal and lips of flame,’ could not go on long practising the life of a saint with the power of a patriarch under such sovereigns as the weak Arcadius and the imperious Eudoxia. His virtues offended many in a city of intense worldliness. His censures, delivered with his wonted eloquence from the pulpit of the cathedral, roused great enmities. In Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, he had a watchful enemy, eager to punish, in the person of Chrysostom, the new rank which his see arrogated of being the second in the Church, as the see of Nova Roma. By that arrogation, the see of St. Mark at Alexandria was degraded from a rank which it had held since the beginning of the Christian hierarchy. Not only among the magnates of the court, but among his brother bishops, Chrysostom found much opposition: and at last the empress set herself at the head of his opponents. While he was absent in Asia Minor, restoring to order the exarchate of Ephesus, Severian, bishop of Gabala in Syria, sought, by sermons delivered in the cathedral itself, to take from him the favour of the people. But it received him with acclamation on his return, and drove Severian out of the city.