It may not be uninteresting to take a brief glance at the character of the city and its inhabitants among whom he was destined to labour for the next seventeen years of his life.
Both nature and art combined to make Antioch one of the most delectable and luxurious residences in the world. The advantages of its situation, in some most important respects, could scarcely be exceeded. The river Orontes, connecting it with the sea about three miles distant, was the throat through which the city was fed with merchandise from all parts of the world. The wooded shores of the large lake of Antioch some miles above the city, supplied the inhabitants with fuel, and its waters yielded fish in great abundance. The hills which impended over the town on the southern side sent down numerous and copious streams, whose water, unsurpassed in purity, bubbled up through the fountains which stood in the court of every house. Northwards extended a fertile plain between the Orontes and Mount Coryphæus. The northern winds were occasionally keen and searching, but the prevailing western breezes coming up from the sea were so delicately soft, yet refreshing, that the citizens delighted in summer to sleep upon the flat roofs of their dwellings. These advantages, however, were in some degree balanced by a liability to inundations and earthquakes. Those hill-streams, the blessing and delight of the inhabitants in summer, were sometimes swollen in winter by excessive rains into torrents of incontrollable fury, and caused much damage to the buildings which were situated near their course. But far more destructive were the earthquakes. More than once, indeed, especially in the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Trajan, the whole city was almost shattered to pieces; but on each occasion, through public and private exertions, it arose from its ruins in new and, if possible, increased magnificence. The peculiar glories of Antioch were its gardens, and baths, and colonnaded streets. As in its population, and religion, and customs, so also in its architecture, it presented, as time went on, a remarkable mixture of Asiatic, Greek, and Roman elements. The aim of each Greek king and Roman emperor was to leave it more beautiful than he had received it from the hands of his predecessor. Each marked his reign by the erection of a temple or basilica, or bath, or aqueduct, or theatre, or column. The church in which Chrysostom officiated, usually called “the great Church,” to distinguish it from the smaller and older church, called the Church of the Apostles, was begun by Constantine and finished by Constantius. In the main principles of structure, we may find some parallel to it in St. Vitale at Ravenna. It stood in the centre of a large court, and was octangular in shape; chambers, some of them subterranean, were clustered round it; the domed roof, of an amazing height, was gilded on the inside; the floor was paved with polished marbles; the walls and columns were adorned with images, and glistened with precious stones; every part, indeed, was richly embellished with bronze and golden ornament.[179] Among the principal wonders of Antioch was the great street constructed by Antiochus Epiphanes, nearly four miles in length, which traversed the city from east to west; the natural inequalities of the ground were filled up, so that the thoroughfare was a perfect level from end to end; the spacious colonnades on either side were paved with red granite. From the centre of this magnificent street, where stood a statue of Apollo, another street, similar in character, but much shorter, was drawn at right angles, leading northwards in the direction of the Orontes. Many of the other streets were also colonnaded, so that the inhabitants, as they pursued their errands of business or pleasure, were sheltered alike from the scorching sun of summer and the rains of winter. Innumerable lanterns at night illuminated the main thoroughfares with a brilliancy which almost rivalled the light of day, and much of the business, as well as the festivity, of the inhabitants was carried on by night.[180]
The character of the inhabitants partook of the various elements—Asiatic, Syrian, Greek, Jewish, Roman—which composed the whole population. But the impulsive oriental temperament, subject at times to fits of gloomy despondency, and to outbursts of wild ferocity, was undoubtedly the most dominant. When not driven under the pressure of excitement to either of these extremes, they abandoned themselves very freely to those voluptuous recreations for which the character of their city and climate afforded every facility and inducement. The bath, the circus, the theatre, were the daily amusements of the citizen; the Olympic games (instituted in the time of Commodus), which were celebrated in the grove of Daphne, and the festivities held at particular seasons in honour of different deities, were the greater occasions to which he looked forward with all the eagerness of a pleasure-loving nature.
These main characteristics of the people are abundantly illustrated in detail, as will be seen hereafter, in the homilies of Chrysostom. He is ever, in them, labouring with indefatigable industry and earnestness to lift the Christians above the frivolity and vices of the rest of the population. His opportunities for investigating the condition of the Christian community were great during his diaconate. He did not as yet preach; but by observations on life and manners, he laid up copious materials for preaching. And he was not idle in the use of his pen, for to this period may be assigned the treatise on Virginity; a letter addressed to a young widow; a book on the martyr Babylas; and, perhaps, though this cannot certainly be determined, the six books on the Priesthood.[181]
The letter to a young widow must have been written soon after the destruction of the Emperor Valens and his army by the Goths in A.D. 378, since it contains a reference to that event as a recent occurrence,[182] yet it must have been antecedent to the crushing defeats inflicted on them by Theodosius in A.D. 382, because the writer implies that at the time of composition the Goths were overrunning large tracts of the empire with impunity, and mocking the helplessness and timidity of the imperial troops.[183] The whole book is penetrated with that profound sense of the misery and instability of things human, which the corruption of society and recent calamities of the empire impressed with peculiar force on the minds of reflecting persons; which produced among pagans either melancholy or careless indifference, but made Christians cling with a more earnest and tenacious trust to the hopes and consolations of the Gospel.
Therasius, the husband of the young widow, had died after five years of married life. He is described by Chrysostom as having been distinguished in rank, in ability, and, above all, in virtue; as having held a high position in the army, with a reasonable expectation of soon becoming a prefect. But these very excellencies and brilliant prospects, which seemed to aggravate the sense of his loss, “ought,” Chrysostom observes, “to be regarded as sources of consolation. If death were a final and total destruction, then indeed it would have been reasonable to lament the extinction of one so benevolent, so gentle, so humble, prudent, and devout, as her late husband. But if death was only the landing of the soul in a tranquil haven, only a transition from the worse to better, from earth to heaven, from men to angels and archangels, and to Him who is the Lord of angels, then there was no place left for tears. It was better that he should depart and be with Christ, his true King, serving Whom in that other world, he would not be exposed to the dangers and animosities which attended the service of an earthly monarch. They were, indeed, separated in body, but neither length of time nor remoteness of place could sunder the friendship of the soul. Endure patiently for a little time, and you will behold again the face of your desire; perhaps even now, in visions, his form will be permitted to visit you.”[184] If it was the loss of the prefecture that she specially deplored, let her think from what dangerous ambitions her husband had been preserved; think of the fate of Theodorus, who was tempted by his high station to lay a plot against the Emperor, and suffered capital punishment for his treason.[185] The loftier a man’s ambitions in life, the more probable a disastrous fall. Look at the tragical fate of the Emperors in the course of the past fifty years. Two only, out of nine, had died natural deaths; of the other seven, one had been killed by a usurper,[186] one in battle,[187] one by a sedition of his domestic guards,[188] one by the man who had invested him with the purple.[189] Julian had fallen in battle in the Persian expedition. Valentinian I. died in a fit of rage, and Valens had been burnt, together with his retinue, in a house to which the Goths set fire. And of the widows of these Emperors, some had perished by poison, others had died of despair and broken hearts. Of those who yet survived, one was trembling for the safety of an orphan son,[190] another had with difficulty obtained permission to return from exile.[191] Of the wives of the present Emperors, one was racked by constant anxiety on account of the youth and inexperience of her husband,[192] the other was subject to no less anxiety for her husband’s safety, who ever since his elevation to the throne had been engaged in incessant warfare with the Goths.[193] Human ambition was a hard taskmistress, who employed arrogance and avarice as her agents; “do not then, mourn that your husband has been emancipated from her tyranny.” Most of the wisest and noblest characters even of the pagan world had resisted the allurements of ambition—Socrates, Epaminondas, Aristides, Diogenes, Crates. Shall the Christian then complain, if God takes one away from these temptations? He who cared least about glory, who was natural and modest, and unambitious, often acquired most glory, whereas he who was most eager and anxious to secure it, often obtained nothing but derision and reproach. She believed that her husband might have obtained the prefecture; it was a reasonable hope, but there was many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, and he who was king to-day was dead to-morrow. “Strive, then, to equal and even surpass your husband in piety and goodness, that you may be admitted into the same home, and reunited to him in a bond far more lovely and enduring than that of earthly wedlock.”
In the long treatise “De Virginitate,” Chrysostom boldly declares his preference for celibacy, but at the same time he exposes and denounces the mischievous error of Marcionites and Manichæans, who condemned marriage altogether as positive sin. “They were mistaken in supposing that abstinence from marriage would procure them a high place in heaven, because, even if it were granted that marriage was a positive sin, it must be remembered that not those who abstained from sin, but those who did positive good, would receive the highest rewards; not one who abstained from calling his brother ‘Raca,’ but he who loved his enemies. The celibacy of heretics, such as the Manichæans, was based on the false conception that all created matter was evil, and that the Creator Himself was an inferior being to the Supreme Deity. Hence their celibacy was the work of the devil; they belonged to those mentioned only to be condemned in 1 Tim. iv. 1-3 ‘as forbidding to marry.’[194] Chastity of body was worthless, if the soul within was depraved; but celibacy rightly cultivated, to preserve the purity of the soul towards God, was better than marriage, better as heaven was better than earth, and angels better than men.” He confronts the common objection: if all men embraced celibacy, how would the race be propagated? “Myriads of angels inhabit heaven, yet we believe they are not propagated by matrimony, and it was only by the special provision and will of God, that matrimony itself produced offspring. Sarah was barren till God vouchsafed her Isaac. Marriage was the inferior state to conduct us to the higher; it was to celibacy as the Law to the Gospel, it was a crutch to support those who would otherwise fall into sin, but to be dispensed with when possible. Let those, then, who reproached and derided celibacy, put a restraint upon their lips, lest like Miriam, or the children who mocked Elisha, they should be severely punished for pouring contempt on so holy a state.”[195]
We are enabled to understand from this work why the best Christianity in the East was so disparaging of the married state. The woman had not attained her proper place in society. She seems to have been ill-educated, to have been kept, especially before marriage, in a state of unnatural seclusion, which she broke when she could, and was too often treated by the husband like a slave, with severity and distrust. This degrading position was partly a remnant of a pagan state of society, partly the offspring of oriental character and habits of life. Christianity perceived the evil, but had not effected much towards a remedy. Instead of endeavouring to elevate, to soften, and refine the relation of one sex to the other, it encouraged rather a total separation. The treatise now under notice presents curious pictures of domestic life, if such it can be called, in that age. Matrimonial matches were arranged entirely by the parents, the attentions of the suitors were paid to the parents, not to the maiden herself. She suffered an agony of suspense, while the favourite of yesterday was supplanted by the superior charms of some rival of to-day, who in his turn was superseded by a third. Sometimes, on the very eve of marriage, the suitor whom she herself preferred was dismissed, and she was finally handed over to another whom she disliked. The suitors also, on their side, were racked by anxiety; for it was difficult to ascertain what the real character, personal appearance, and manners were of the maiden, who was always kept in the strictest seclusion. Then there was often great difficulty in getting the dowry paid by the father-in-law, which was an annoyance to each of the newly-married pair.[196]
He draws a highly-wrought picture, with some caustic humour, of the miseries of jealous wives and husbands. When a man constantly suspects “his dearest love,”[197] for whom he would willingly sacrifice life itself, what can console him? By day and night he has no peace, and is irritable to all. Some men have even slain their wives, without succeeding in cooling their own jealous rage. The trials of the wife were more severe; her words, her very looks and sighs, were watched by slaves, and reported to her husband, who was too jealous to distinguish false tales from the true. The poor woman was reduced to the wretched alternative of keeping her own apartment, or, if she went out, of rendering an exact account of her proceedings. Untold wealth, sumptuous fare, troops of servants, distinguished birth, amounted to nothing when placed in the balance against such miseries as these. If it was the woman who was jealous, she suffered more than the man, for she could not keep him at home, or set the servants to watch him. If she remonstrated with him, she would be told that she had better hold her tongue, and keep her suspicions to herself. If the husband instituted a suit against the wife, the laws were favourable to him, and he could procure her condemnation, and even death; but if she were the petitioner, he would escape.[198]