Comana
But Arcadius went further, and condemned Chrysostom to a more distant and ruder exile at Pityus, a seaport on the most desolate eastern coast of the Euxine. In the utmost summer heat, with exhausted strength, the deposed patriarch had to undertake this journey. He never reached the end. His merciless guards pressed his weakness to the utmost. When at Comana he thought his end was near; but the guards urged him on. For an hour he could drag himself along; then his strength utterly failed. He was taken into the small church of the Martyr Basiliscus, which was near. His friend and biographer, the Bishop Palladius, thus describes the last scene:
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.
Translation of his Body
Thirty years after, a disciple and friend of Chrysostom sat in the see of Nova Roma, the orthodox Proclus, who was a theologian and a saint. He moved the emperor Theodosius II. to bring back the body of Chrysostom to its place among the bishops in the Church of the Apostles, where only the bishops and the emperors were buried—the former in the church, the latter in the vestibule. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus at the time, says: ‘A great multitude of the faithful crowded the sea in vessels, and lighted up a part of the Bosphorus near the mouth of the Propontis with torches. These sacred treasures were brought to the city by the present emperor. He laid his face upon the coffin, and entreated that his parents might be forgiven for having so unadvisedly persecuted the bishop.’
Final Burial at St. Peter’s
Those remains now rest in a fitter place. St. Chrysostom, in words quoted further on, when dilating as a fervent lover of St. Paul upon his praise, cried out: ‘Rome, for this do I love, although having reason otherwise to praise her, both for her size, and her antiquity, and her beauty, and her multitude, and her power, and her wealth, and her victories in war. But passing by all these things, for this I count her blessed: because, when alive, Paul wrote to them, and loved them so much, and went and conversed with them, and there finished his life. Wherefore the city is on that account more remarkable than for all other things together, and like a great and strong body, it has two shining eyes—the bodies of these saints. Not so bright is the heaven when the sun sends forth his beams, as is the city of the Romans sending forth everywhere over the world these two lights. Thence shall Paul, thence shall Peter, be caught up. Think, and tremble, what a sight shall Rome behold, when Paul suddenly rises from that resting-place with Peter, and is carried up to meet the Lord. What a rose doth Rome offer to Christ! with what two garlands is that city crowned! with what golden fetters is she girdled! what fountains does she possess! Therefore do I admire that city, not for the multitude of its gold, nor for its columns, nor for its other splendours, but for these, the pillars of the Church.’