Arcadius and Honorius,[[170]] the sons and successors of Theodosius, embraced the orthodox religion and party, and confirmed all the decrees of the foregoing emperors in their favour. Soon after their accession to the imperial dignity, Nectarius bishop of Constantinople died, and John, called for his eloquence Chrysostom, was ordained in his room: he was a person of a very rigid and severe temper, an enemy to heretics, and against allowing them any toleration. Gaina, one of the principal officers of Arcadius, and who was a Christian of the Arian persuasion, desired of the emperor one church for himself, and those of his opinion, within the city. Chrysostom being informed of it, immediately went to the palace, taking with him all the bishops he could find at Constantinople; and in the presence of the emperor bitterly inveighed against Gaina, who was himself at the audience, and reproached him for his former poverty, as also with insolence and ingratitude. Then he produced the law that was made by Theodosius, by which heretics were forbidden to hold assemblies within the walls of the city; and turning to the emperor, persuaded him to keep in force all the laws against heretics; adding, that it was better voluntarily to quit the empire, than to be guilty of the impiety of betraying the house of God. Chrysostom carried his point, and the consequence of it was an insurrection of the Goths, in the city of Constantinople; which had like to have ended in the burning the imperial palace, and the murder of the emperor, and did actually end in the cutting off all the Gothic soldiers, and the burning of their church, with great numbers of persons in it, who fled thither, for safety, and were locked in to prevent their escape. His violent treatment of several bishops,[[171]] and. the arbitrary manner of his deposing them, and substituting others in their room, contrary to the desires and prayers of the people, is but too full a proof of his imperious temper, and love of power. Not content with this, he turned his eloquence against the empress Eudoxia, and in a set oration inveighing against bad women, he expressed himself in such a manner, as that both his friends and enemies believed that the invective was chiefly levelled against her. This so enraged her that she soon procured his deposition and banishment. Being soon after restored, he added new provocations to the former, by rebuking the people for certain diversions they took at a place where the statue of the empress was erected. This she took for an insult on her person, and when Chrysostom knew her displeasure on this account, he used more severe expressions against her than before, saying, “Herodias is enraged again; she raises fresh disturbances, and again desires the head of John in a charger.” On this and other accounts he was deposed and banished by a synod convened for that purpose, bishops being always to be had in those days easily, to do what was desired or demanded of them by the emperors. [[V]]Chrysostom died in his banishment, according to the Christian wish of Epiphanius,[[172]] “I hope you will not die bishop of Constantinople;” which Chrysostom returned with a wish of the same good temper, “I hope you will not live to return to your own city;” so deadly was the hatred of these saints and fathers against each other. After Chrysostom’s death, his favourers and friends were treated with great severity, not indeed on the account of religion, but for other crimes of sedition they were charged with; and particularly, for burning down one of the churches in the city,[[173]] the flames of which spread themselves to the senate house, and entirely consumed it.
Under the same emperors the Donatists[[174]] gave sad specimens of their cruelty in Africa towards the orthodox, as St. Austin informs us. They seized on Maximianus, one of the African bishops, as he was standing at the altar, beat him unmercifully, and ran a sword into his body, leaving him for dead. And a little after he adds, that it would be tedious to recount the many horrible things they made the bishops and clergy suffer; some had their eyes put out; one bishop had his hands and tongue cut off, and others were cruelly destroyed. I forbear, says Austin, to mention their barbarous murders, and demolishing of houses, not private ones only, but the very churches themselves. Honorius[[175]] published very severe edicts against them, ordaining, that if they did not, both clergy and laity, return to the catholics by such a day, they should be heavily fined, their estates should be confiscated, the clergy banished, and their churches all given to the catholics. These laws Austin commends as rightly and piously ordained, maintaining the lawfulness of persecuting heretics by all manner of ways, death only excepted.
Under the reign of Theodosius, Arcadius’s son, those who were called heretics were grievously persecuted by the orthodox. Theodosius,[[176]] bishop of Synnada in Phrygia, expelled great numbers of the followers of Macedonius from the city and country round about, “not from any zeal for the true faith,” as Socrates says, “but through covetousness, and a design to extort money from them.” On this account he used all his endeavours to oppress them, and particularly Agapetus, their bishop; armed his clergy against them, and accused them before the tribunal of the judges. And because he did not think the governors of the provinces sufficient to carry on this good work of persecution, he went to Constantinople to procure fresh edicts against them; but by this means he lost his bishopric, the people refusing him admission into the church upon his return, and choosing Agapetus, whom he had persecuted, in his room.
Theophilus,[[177]] bishop of Alexandria, the great enemy of Chrysostom, being dead, Cyrill was enthroned in his room, not without great disturbance and opposition from the people, and used his power for the oppression of heretics; for immediately upon his advancement he shut up all the churches of the Novatians in that city, took away all their sacred treasures, and stripped Theopemptus their bishop of every thing that he had. Nor was this much to be wondered at, since, as Socrates observes,[[178]] from the time of Theophilus, Cyrill’s predecessor, “the bishop of Alexandria began to assume an authority and power above what belonged to the sacerdotal order.” On this account the great men hated the bishops, because they usurped to themselves a good part of that power which belonged to the imperial governors of provinces; and particularly Cyrill was hated by Orestes, prefect of Alexandria, not only for this reason, but because he was a continual spy upon his actions. At length their hatred to each other publicly appeared. Cyrill took on him, without acquainting the governor, or contrary to his leave, to deprive the Jews of all their synagogues, and banished them from the city, and encouraged the mob to plunder them of their effects. This the prefect highly resented, and refused the bishop’s offers of peace and friendship. Upon this, about fifty monks came into the city for Cyrill’s defence, and meeting the prefect in his chariot, publicly insulted him, calling him sacrificer and pagan; adding many other injurious reproaches. One of them, called Ammonius, wounded him in the head with a stone, which he flung at him with great violence, and covered him all over with blood; and being, according to the laws, put by Orestes publicly to the torture, he died through the severity of it. St. Cyrill honourably received the body into the church, gave him the new name of Thaumasius, or, the Wonderful; ordered him to be looked on as a martyr, and lavishly extolled him in the church, as a person murdered for his religion. This scandalous procedure of Cyrill’s the Christians themselves were ashamed of, because it was publicly known that the monk was punished for his insolence; and even St. Cyrill himself had the modesty at last to use his endeavours that the whole affair might be entirely forgotten. The murder also of Hypatia,[[179]] by Cyrill’s friends and clergy, merely out of envy to her superior skill in philosophy, brought him and his church of Alexandria under great infamy; for as she was returning home from a visit, one Peter, a clergyman, with some other murderers, seized on her, dragged her out of her chariot, carried her to one of the churches, stripped her naked, scraped her to death with shells, then tore her in pieces, and burnt her body to ashes.
Innocent[[180]] also, bishop of Rome, grievously persecuted the Novatians, and took from them many churches; and, as Socrates observes, was the first bishop of that see who disturbed them. Celestine also, one of his successors, imitated this injustice, and took from the Novatians the remainder of their churches, and forced them to hold their assemblies in private;[[181]] “for the bishops of Rome, as well as those of Alexandria, had usurped a tyrannical power, which, as priests, they had no right to;” and would not suffer those who agreed with them in the faith, as the Novatians did, to hold public assemblies, but drove them out of their oratories, and plundered them of all their substance.
Nestorius bishop of Constantinople, immediately upon his advancement, shewed himself a valiant persecutor; for as soon as ever he was ordained, he addressed himself to the emperor before the whole congregation,[[182]] and said, “Purge me, O emperor, the earth from heretics, and I will give thee in recompence the kingdom of heaven. Conquer with me the heretics, and I with thee will subdue the Persians.” And, agreeable to his bloody wishes, the fifth day after his consecration, he endeavoured to demolish the church of the Arians, in which they were privately assembled for prayer. The Arians, in their rage, seeing the destruction of it determined, set fire to it themselves, and occasioned the burning down the neighbouring houses; and for this reason, not only the heretics, but those of his own persuasion, distinguished him by the name of Incendiary. But he did not rest here, but tried all tricks and methods to destroy heretics; and, by these means, endangered the subversion of Constantinople itself. He persecuted the Novatians, through hatred of Paul their bishop for his eminent piety. He grievously oppressed those who were not orthodox, as to the day of keeping Easter, in Asia, Lydia, and Caria, and occasioned the murders of great numbers on this account at Miletus and Sardis.
Few indeed of the bishops were free from this wicked spirit. Socrates, however, tells us,[[183]] that Atticus, bishop of Constantinople, was a person of great piety and prudence, and that he did not offer violence to any of the heretics, but, that after he had once attempted to terrify them, he behaved more mildly and gently to them afterwards. Proclus[[184]] also, bishop of the same city, who had been brought up under Atticus, was a careful imitator of his piety and virtue, and exercised rather greater moderation than his master, being gentle towards all men, from a persuasion that this was a much more proper method than violence, to reduce heretics to the true faith, and therefore he never made use of the imperial power for this purpose. And in this he imitated Theodosius the emperor, who was not at all concerned or displeased that any should think differently of God from himself. However, the number of bishops of this temper was but small. Nothing pleased the generality of them but methods of severity, and the utter ruin and extirpation of their adversaries.
Under the reign of this emperor, the Arians also, in their turn, used the orthodox with no greater moderation than the orthodox had used them. The Vandals, who were partly pagans, and partly Arians, had seized on Spain and Africa, and exercised innumerable cruelties on those who were not of the same religion with themselves. Trasimond, their general in Spain, and Genseric, in Africa, used all possible endeavours to propagate Arianism throughout all their provinces. And, the more effectually to accomplish this design, they filled all places with slaughter and blood; by the advice of the bishops of their party, burning down churches, and putting the orthodox clergy to the most grievous and unheard of tortures, to make them discover the gold and silver of their churches, repeating these kind of tortures several times, so that many actually died under them. Genseric seized on all the sacred books he could find, that they might be deprived of the means of defending their opinions. By the counsel of his bishops, he ordered that none but Arians should be admitted to court, or employed in any offices about his children, or so much as enjoy the benefit of a toleration. Armogestes, Masculon, and Saturus, three officers of his court, were inhumanly tortured to make them embrace Arianism; and, upon their refusal, they were stripped of their honours and estates, and forced to protract a miserable life in the utmost poverty and want. These and many more instances of Genseric’s cruelty towards the orthodox, during a long reign of thirty-eight years, are related by Victor, l. 1. in fine.
