Leaves from St. John Chrysostom

by Saint John Chrysostom

In such an atmosphere the preacher and the saint was placed to struggle as he might against court intrigues, and to correct and purify a clergy whose conduct left much to be desired. He showed himself throughout an admirable bishop. Pursuing himself the most simple and ascetic life, he bestowed his whole great income as patriarch on the poor. He founded hospitals and homes. He celebrated the divine service with the utmost care and splendour. He watched over discipline among his clergy. He was unwearied in preaching. Nor did his vigilance end with the limits of his own see. He sent missionaries to Phœnicia and Palestine; to the Scythians, also, and the Goths. For the latter he established a special service of their own—he did all he could to deliver them from the fatal error which the deceit of the emperor Valens had infected them with, in presenting them with Arianism instead of the Christian faith. He exerted also the very questionable claim of his see—which the council of 381 had attempted to exalt to the utmost—by judging the case of the Exarch of Ephesus, and removing several faulty bishops from their seats in that exarchate.

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.

Synod of the Oak

But certain disturbances about the doctrine of Origen which had broken out among the monks in Egypt involved him in unfortunate difficulties. Among many monks who fled to Constantinople from the desert of Nitria in Egypt, under excommunication from Theophilus, were the ‘four tall brothers’. They came to accuse their patriarch before the emperor and Chrysostom. He took them up, showing kindness and sympathy, though he did not admit them to communion. Theophilus was summoned to Constantinople by the emperor, to answer for his conduct before a synod. To escape this humiliation he used every effort to ruin Chrysostom, whom he took to be his own opponent. He accused Chrysostom himself of Origenism. This scheme of the Egyptian patriarch brought over to his side all the opponents of Chrysostom at the court. Theophilus even ventured to appear as the accuser and judge of the patriarch in the capital itself. He was able to draw together a synod of thirty-six bishops at the Oak, a country-house near Chalcedon, and to summon the bishop of Constantinople to appear before it. Chrysostom, on the double ground of his own rank and his innocence, refused to appear. The unlawful synod ‘of the Oak’ condemned him, supported by the influence of the empress. Forty bishops around him in Constantinople attested his innocence, and objected to a proceeding utterly unlawful and, until then, unknown. Chrysostom was willing to obey a command of the emperor that he should cross the Bosphorus and attend; but the people threatened insurrection if the command were not withdrawn. Chrysostom had to return, and was reseated in his church with the joyful acclamation of his people.

Exile at Kucusus

Not long did the peace last. A statue of the empress had been inaugurated before the cathedral. The crowd indulged in most intemperate rejoicings, and paid almost idolatrous homage to the statue. This Chrysostom, in preaching, censured. The empress took the blame to herself: it kindled her wrath afresh. It was whispered to her that the great preacher had alluded to her under the name of Herodias. A new synod of the patriarch’s opponents was convoked. It issued, in the year 404, a second sentence of deposition against him. It alleged that Chrysostom, after being deposed by a synod, had, contrary to the law of the Church, resumed his see without being restored by another synod. The emperor Arcadius confirmed the decision, and subscribed a decree of banishment. This time Chrysostom waited for force to be used. Soldiers were sent into the church: they pushed aside the people who were protecting their bishop. Blood flowed, and the church was desecrated.

Chrysostom was carried away to Nicæa in Bithynia, and was ordered, in the midst of the summer heats, to go thence on foot, amid the greatest privations and hardships, to Kucusus in Armenia. The journey brought on him a grievous illness. Thus he was detained for some time at Cæsarea in Cappadocia. He was scarcely recovered when he was driven further on. In 406, he reached Kucusus. But he kept up intercourse by letter with his friends in the capital. Arsacius, in the meantime, had been intruded by the emperor’s power into his see; and a grievous persecution was instituted against those who would not recognise the intruder. Chrysostom consoled them in many letters. Banished as he was, he concerned himself for the spread of the faith among Persians and Goths. His sufferings, and the magnanimity with which he bore them, won for him sympathy far and wide. But his enemies remained unmoved. He besought the intercession of Pope Innocent I., describing to him, in a letter which is translated in this volume, the utter illegality of the violence which he was suffering. The Pope applied to the emperor Honorius for succour, and was supported by him in sending a solemn deputation to the emperor Arcadius; but he was under the dominion of the offended Eudoxia, and refused to listen either to his brother emperor or the Pope.

Judgment of Pope Innocent I.

The Pope withdrew his communion from the intruder Arsacius, who had been put unlawfully in the see of Chrysostom, and from his successor Atticus; and for many years this mark of reprobation was all that the Pope could do in the difficult circumstances of the times. It lasted until the name of Chrysostom was replaced in the diptychs of the Church at Constantinople.