His Death
‘In that very night (that is, at Comana) the martyr of the place stood before him, Basiliscus by name, who had been bishop of Comana, and died by martyrdom in Nicomedia in the reign of Maximinus, together with Lucian of Bithynia, who had been a priest of Antioch. And he said, “Be of good heart, brother John, for to-morrow we shall be together”. It is said that the martyr had already made the same announcement to the priest of the place: “Prepare the place for brother John, for he is coming”. And John, believing the divine oracle, upon the morrow besought his guards to remain there until the fifth hour. They refused, and set forward; but, when they had proceeded about thirty stadia, he was so ill that they returned back to the martyr’s shrine whence they had started.
‘When he got there, he asked for white vestments suitable to the tenor of his past life; and taking off his clothes of travel, he clad himself in them from head to foot, being still fasting, and then gave away his old ones to them about him. Then, having communicated in the symbols of the Lord, he made the closing prayer “on present needs”. He said his customary words, “Glory be to God for all things,” and having concluded it with his last Amen, he stretched forth those feet of his which had been so beautiful in their running, whether to convey salvation to the penitent or reproof to the hardened in sin. And being gathered to his fathers, and shaking off this mortal dust, he passed to Christ, as it is written, “Thou shalt come to thy burial like full wheat that is harvested in season, but the souls of transgressors shall die prematurely”. But so great a crowd of virgins, ascetics, and those who had the witness of sanctity in their life were present from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus, and Armenia, that many thought they had come by agreement. With these solemn rites, like a victorious athlete, he was buried in the same shrine with Basiliscus.’[2]
In the meantime, the empress Eudoxia had passed away in child-bed before her victim. In the undimmed lustre of her beauty, and the undiminished power of her will over her husband, she had been called to her account. Her husband, the emperor Arcadius, died not long after. He finished an utterly inglorious reign of twelve years at the age of thirty-one. His miserable government had gone near to destroy the empire which his father saved, and had actually thrown Alaric with his Goths upon Rome and Italy. He was succeeded by Theodosius II., a boy eight years old.