Pope Innocent now boldly espoused his cause, as that of a confessor for righteousness' sake. He assembled a synod, and persuaded Honorius, Emperor of the West, who had already remonstrated with Arcadius, Emperor of the East, to write in a more peremptory tone, demanding a council at Thessalonica, and pointing out Theophilus of Alexandria as the reputed author of the present evils.
Towards the end of the year, the furious incursions of the Isaurian robbers, filling the country with rapine and bloodshed, compelled S. Chrysostom to take shelter in the castle of Arabiscus. The winter was again a time of discomfort; he could not obtain a sufficiency of medicines; and the snow-drifts prevented him from receiving his friend's letters. About this time the western delegates sent from Rome with four eastern bishops who had gone thither to plead the cause of Chrysostom, were intercepted on their way to Constantinople, and confined in a fortress, their credentials were violently wrung from them, and instead of being allowed to see Arcadius, the westerns were sent back to Italy, the easterns banished to the frontiers of the empire. On their way they were cruelly harassed, robbed of their money, wearied by prolonged days' journeys, and compelled to lodge in the lowest haunts of profligacy. One of them consoled his brethren by observing that their presence recalled the wretched women to thoughts of God, which might result in their salvation, and His glory. That the persecution was in great measure a systematic revenge on Chrysostom as the representative of clerical strictness, is evidenced by such a fact as that a venerable man named Hilary was scourged, not by a judge, but by the clergy. Chrysostom wrote to thank his western friends for their sympathy, and sent a second letter to Pope Innocent, assuring him that "in the third year of exile, amid famine, pestilence, war, sieges, indescribable solitude, and daily peril from Isaurian swords, he was greatly consoled and delighted by Innocent's genuine, stedfast, and abundant charity."
The winter of 406-7 was severe, but Chrysostom preserved his health by never stirring out of a close and well-warmed chamber. In the summer his enemies, dreading his influence on the people of Antioch, who went to visit him, procured an order for his removal to Pityus on the shores of the Black Sea, the last fortress of the empire. His guards were ordered to exhaust him by long journeys. Through scorching heat and drenching rains, he was hurried on, and never allowed the refreshment of the bath; one only of the guards being disposed to show him furtive kindnesses. For three months this painful journey lasted; at length they halted at the Church of S. Basiliscus, a short distance from Comana, in Pontus. That night, the sufferer had a foreboding that his release was at hand. The martyr Basiliscus appeared to him and said, "Courage, brother John, tomorrow we shall be together." In the morning, Sept 14, 407, he begged to be allowed to stay in the church until eleven o'clock in the forenoon. It could not be; he was forced to proceed, but after travelling about four miles, he was so evidently dying, that they returned to the church. There he asked for white garments, and exchanged for them those which he wore. He was still fasting; he received the Holy Communion, doubtless from the priest of the church, offered up his last prayer, added his usual thanksgiving, "Glory to God for all things," and sealed it with a final, Amen. "Then he stretched out his feet, which had run so beauteously for the salvation of the penitent, and the rebuke of the habitual sinners," and calmly expired, in about the sixtieth year of his age, and in the tenth of his episcopate. He was buried beside the martyr Basiliscus, the funeral being attended by a throng of virgins and monks from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus, and Armenia. No comment on his glorious life could be so expressive as the doxology with which it closed, and which, gathering into one view all its contrasts, recognised not only in success and honour, but in cruel outrage, and homeless desolation, the gracious presence of a never-changing Love.[127]
S. LUPUS, B. OF CHALONS.
(7th cent.)
[Called in France Loup, Leul, or Leu. He was canonized by Pope John VIII, in 879; he is commemorated on this day at Châlons; also there on April 30th, the day of his canonization. His life is by an anonymous writer, who says that he wrote it from the remembrance of those who had read the Acts of S. Lupus which had been destroyed by fire.]
S. Lupus, Bishop of Cabilinum, or Châlons sur Saone, flourished about the year 610. He was the son of honourable parents, and he commended himself to the people by his abundant charity, his self-denial, and his tenderness to the sick. Châlons being ill-provided with drinking water, and the soil dry and sandy, he miraculously provided it with an abundant spring which flows to the present day. The story is thus told. He stood one day with his ivory pastoral staff in hand watching the hay makers; the sun was hot, and the labourers were exhausted. Moved with compassion, and knowing that the turbid waters of the river were unfit to drink, he struck his staff into the sand, and a limpid spring bubbled up. When dying he sent for the governor of Châlons, and begged him to pardon the unfortunate wretches who languished in the prison under sentence of death. The governor roughly refused. After Lupus was dead, his funeral passed the city prison, and the bier was set down at that place. The prisoners stretched their hands through the bars of their windows crying piteously. Instantly their chains fell off, the doors flew open, and they were set at liberty.
S. THEODORIC II, B. C. OF ORLEANS.
(a.d. 1022.)