CHAPTER XIII.
SURVEY OF EVENTS BETWEEN A.D. 387 AND A.D. 397—AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS—REVOLT OF ARBOGASTES—DEATH OF THEODOSIUS—THE MINISTERS OF ARCADIUS—RUFINUS AND EUTROPIUS.
Some account has now been given of the most remarkable among the homilies delivered by Chrysostom during the first year of his priesthood; not only because to follow the course of the Christian seasons through the cycle of one year seemed the most convenient method of giving specimens of his ordinary style of preaching, but also because these first efforts were seldom if ever surpassed in power and beauty by his later productions. A more extensive survey of his theology, under its several heads, is reserved for the concluding chapter; and the remainder of the ten years during which he resided at Antioch being uneventful as regards his life, it will be profitable to fill up the gap by taking a glance at the world outside his present sphere. Some knowledge of contemporary events and men is indeed necessary to a just appreciation of his position and conduct, when he is summoned to occupy a more public and exalted station.
It is a melancholy scene which meets the eye. The mighty fabric of the Empire crumbles, perhaps more rapidly in this decade than in any previous period of equal length—like an old man whose constitution is thoroughly broken.
Effeminate luxury in the civilised population is matched by the rude ferocity of the barbarians who hem it in or mingle with it, and the new barbarian patch agrees ill with the old garment, which is not strong enough to bear it. The pages of historians are filled with tales of murder, massacre, treachery, venality, corruption, everywhere and of all kinds. There is no national greatness, but great men move across the stage: Theodosius himself, generous, just though passionate, vigorous when roused to a sense of emergency; the last Emperor who deserved the name of “great;” Ambrose, the intrepid advocate of religious duty to God and man, the champion of the rights of Church and hierarchy; Stilicho, the skilful commander of armies and able guardian of the Empire after the death of Theodosius; Alaric, the very type of Gothic force; Rufinus and Eutropius, the clever, scheming adventurers, destitute of all nobility, who in a degenerate court contrive to raise themselves to the pinnacle of power, and are suddenly toppled headlong from it.
The most commanding public character in the West at this time was, and for some years had been, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan. Disliked but feared by the Arian court, respected and beloved by the people, he fought in some respects a similar battle to that in which Chrysostom was afterwards engaged in the East, and amidst many differences there are also many parallels in the character and history of the two men: the same fearless courage to speak what they believed to be God’s truth, in the face of royalty itself, animated both; in both cases was it rewarded by virulent persecution; both had to contend with an imperious, passionate woman; both were protected from her fury by the populace keeping guard night and day before the walls of the church. In A.D. 384, Ambrose had been summoned before a royal council, and, in the presence of the young Emperor Valentinian II. and the Queen-mother Justina, had been commanded to surrender the Portian Basilica for the use of the Arians. But Ambrose had replied undauntedly, that not one inch of ground which had been consecrated to truth would he concede to error.[352] For more than two years Ambrose maintained his ground against all the stratagems of his adversaries. On one occasion they seized the Portian Basilica, but dared not hold it in the face of the infuriated people. Messengers from court endeavoured to maintain before the archbishop that the Emperor had a right to dispose of the churches as he pleased, but the argument was contemptuously dismissed as a base sophistry. “What!” he cried; “the Emperor has no right to violate the house of a private individual, and think you that he may do violence to the house of God? No! let him take all that is mine—my land, my money, though these belong to the poor; if he seeks my patrimony, let him seize it; if my person, I will present it to him: but the church it is not lawful for me to surrender, or for him to accept.”[353] Force was not more successful than argument. Soldiers were sent to dislodge him and his congregation from one of the basilicas, but instead of drawing their swords they fell on their knees, and declared that they came not to attack the archbishop, but to pray with him. The effect of an edict was tried in A.D. 386,[354] which permitted free worship to all who professed the creed of Rimini (an Arian creed), and rendered liable to capital punishment any who should impede the action of the edict, as offenders against the imperial majesty. Under shelter of this edict, the Portian Basilica was again demanded, but Ambrose refused to recognise such an edict, which militated against his sense of duty to a higher power. “God forbid that I should yield the heritage of Jesus Christ. Naboth would not part with the vineyard of his fathers to Ahab, and should I surrender the house of God? the heritage of Dionysius, who died in exile for the faith; of Eustorgius the confessor; of Miroclus, and all the faithful bishops which were before me?”[355] But though Ambrose disobeyed, the penalties of the edict were not enforced upon him. An order of banishment was served upon him, expressed in vague terms: “Depart from the city, and go where you please.” But Ambrose did not please to go anywhere, and remained where he was, moving up and down the city, and officiating as usual in the churches, using in his sermons the same Scripture parallels to indicate the Queen-mother, “Herodias” and “Jezebel,” which Chrysostom afterwards applied to the Empress Eudoxia. He preaches day after day, guarded by his faithful flock, who during passion-tide suffered him not to quit the cathedral for fear of violence to his person. Amongst that crowd, touched by the spell of the chants and hymns which Ambrose taught the people[356] to beguile the tediousness of their watch, and impressed by his pungent and decisive doctrine, are two remarkable persons, a mother and her son. They are Monica and Augustine. Monica is among the most faithful in watching, the most earnest in praying for the welfare of the bishop and the church. Augustine is about thirty-two years old; he has been in many places and passed through many phases of thought. He has subdued the vices and follies which stained his youth; he has shaken off the errors of Manicheism which for a time enthralled him; he has been a teacher of rhetoric at Tagaste, at Carthage, at Rome; and Symmachus has now obtained for him a professorial chair at Milan. But Pagan literature is losing its hold upon him. Plato no longer fascinates him equally with Holy Scripture. He is gravitating steadily towards Christianity, and in another year, April 387, just about the time that Chrysostom is delivering his homilies on the Statues, he will crown his mother’s hopes by making a public confession of his faith, and receiving baptism at the hands of Ambrose.[357]
One more effort was made to win the contest, this time through diplomacy. The court proposed that the question under dispute should be settled by arbitration, the judges to be selected by Ambrose and Auxentius the Arian bishop. But Ambrose would not accept the arbitrators nominated by Auxentius, four of whom were Pagans and one a catechumen. In the name of himself and the clergy of his province he denied the validity of the tribunal. In an address to the people the same lofty tone of independence was maintained. “He would pay deference to the Emperor, but never yield in things unlawful: the Emperor was ‘in the Church, not above it.’”[358] So he remained master of the field. The unfinished basilica, which had been the prize contended for, was consecrated by Ambrose with great pomp, and the joy of the people was completed by the discovery of the martyrs’ skeletons beneath the pavement, pronounced to be those of Gervasius and Protasius, who had suffered in the persecution of Diocletian. When demoniacs shuddered on being placed in proximity to these reliques, and a blind man was cured by the application to his eyes of a handkerchief which had been placed in contact with these same reliques, the crown was put on the triumph of Ambrose; the people were more firmly convinced than ever that his cause was the cause of God.[359]
He was so indisputably the ablest man of the time in the West, that, when danger impended over the state, the very court which persecuted him turned to him to rescue the country. Threatening messages came from the court of Maximus at Treves. Ambrose was the ambassador selected to go and pacify or intimidate the tyrant. Maximus was a Catholic, and a ruthless persecutor of those whom he deemed heretics, especially Priscillianists; yet Ambrose did not hesitate to denounce his cruelty to brethren who were Christians, however erring, as well as his disloyal attitude towards Valentinian. The embassy was unsuccessful, but the dignity of the ambassador and of the court which he represented was fully maintained. The artifices by which another ambassador, the Syrian Domninus, was blinded to the preparations of Maximus for the invasion of Italy; the passage of the Alps by the usurper; the flight of Justina and her son to Thessalonica; the prompt march of Theodosius to the succour of Italy, and his complete victory over Maximus, near Aquileia,—belong to the secular historian; but the connection between Theodosius and Ambrose will be related here more in detail.