Pentadia was wife of the consul Timasius; and when her husband was banished by Eutropius to the Oasis of Egypt, she had been persecuted by the merciless tyrant, and fled for refuge to the Church, where she was protected in sanctuary by the Archbishop in spite of the opposition of her persecutor.
But by far the most eminent of Chrysostom’s female friends was the deaconess Olympias. She sprang from a noble but Pagan family. Her grandfather, Ablavius, was a prætorian prefect, highly esteemed and trusted by Constantine the Great, and her father, Seleucus, had attained the rank of count. She was early left an orphan, endowed with great personal beauty, and heiress to a vast fortune. Her uncle and guardian, Procopius, was a man of probity and piety, a friend and correspondent of Gregory Nazianzenus. Her instructress also, Theodosia, sister of St. Amphilocius, was a woman of piety; one whom Gregory recommended Olympias to imitate as a very model of excellence in speech and conduct. Under this happy training, the girl grew up to emulate and surpass her preceptress in goodness. Gregory delighted to call her “his own Olympias,” and to be called “father” by her.[521] There could be no difficulty in finding a suitor for a lady possessed of every attraction. The anxiety of Procopius was to secure a worthy one. Nebridius was selected; a young man, but high in official rank; Count or Intendant of the Domain in A.D. 382, Prefect of Constantinople in A.D. 386. They were wedded in A.D. 384. Many bishops assisted at the ceremony, but Gregory was prevented from attending by the state of his health. He wrote a letter to Procopius, saying that in spirit, nevertheless, he would join their hands to one another and to God. Part of the letter is written in a vein of sprightly humour. “It would have been very unbecoming for a gouty old fellow like himself to be seen hobbling about among the dancers and merry-makers at the nuptials.”[522] He also addressed a poem to Olympias, in which he gives her advice how she ought to conduct herself as a married woman. She did not long need his counsel. Nebridius died about two years after their marriage. Olympias regarded this early dissolution of the marriage-bond as an intimation of the Divine will that she should henceforth live free from the worldly entanglements and cares incident to married life. The Emperor Theodosius desired to unite her to a Spaniard named Elpidius, a kinsman of his own, but she steadfastly refused. The Emperor acted in that despotic manner which occasionally marred his usually generous character. He ordered the property of Olympias to be confiscated till she should be thirty years of age; she was even denied freedom of intercourse with her episcopal friends, and of access to the Church. But she only thanked the Emperor for those deprivations, which were intended to make her hanker after worldly life. “You have exercised towards your humble handmaiden a virtue becoming a monarch and suitable even to a bishop; you have directed what was to me a heavy burden, and the distribution of it an anxiety, to be kept in safe custody. You could not have conferred a greater blessing upon me, unless you had ordered it to be bestowed upon the churches and the poor.” The Emperor was softened; at any rate he perceived the uselessness, if not the injustice, of his treatment. He cancelled the order for the confiscation of her property, and left her in the undisturbed enjoyment of single life and of her possessions. Henceforward her time and wealth were devoted to the interests of the Church. She was the friend, entertainer, adviser of many of the most eminent ecclesiastics of the day; the liberal patroness of their works in Greece, Asia, Syria, not only by donations of money but even of landed property. We may not admire what was regarded in those days as among the most admirable traits of saintliness, a total disregard to personal neatness and cleanliness; but we can admire her frugal living, and entire devotion of her time to ministering to the wants of the sick, the needy, and the ignorant. Her too indiscriminate liberality was restrained by Chrysostom, who represented to her that, as her wealth was a trust committed to her by God, she ought to be prudent in the distribution of it. This salutary advice procured for him the ill-will of many avaricious bishops and clergy, who had profited, or hoped to profit, by her wealth.[523] She, on her side, repaid the Archbishop for his spiritual care by many little feminine attentions to his bodily wants, especially by seeing that he was supplied with wholesome food, and did not overstrain his feeble constitution by a too rigid abstinence.[524]
The leaders of the faction hostile to Chrysostom among the clergy were the two bishops already mentioned—Severian of Gabala and Antiochus of Ptolemais. To these was added a third in the person of Acacius, Bishop of Berœa. He had, in A.D. 401 or A.D. 402, paid a visit to Constantinople, and, in a fit of rage at what he considered the mean lodging and inhospitable entertainment of the Archbishop, had coarsely exclaimed, in the hearing of some of the clergy, “I’ll season a dainty dish for him.”[525] The ladies who acquired a melancholy pre-eminence among the enemies of the Archbishop were the intimate friends of the Empress, already mentioned—Marsa, widow of Promotus, the consul whom Rufinus murdered; Castricia, wife of the consul Saturninus; and Eugraphia, a wealthy widow,—all rich women “who used for evil the wealth which their husbands had through evil obtained.” Proud, intriguing, licentious, they were all exasperated against the Archbishop for the censure which he had unsparingly pronounced upon their moral conduct, as well as their vain and extravagant display in dress. The house of Eugraphia became the rendezvous of all clergy and monks, as well as laity, who were disaffected to him. Among the clergy was Atticus, who was obtruded on the see as Archbishop after the banishment of Chrysostom. This worthy cabal collected, and disseminated with praiseworthy industry, whatever tales could damage the character and influence of the Archbishop. His real failings were exaggerated, others were invented, and his language misrepresented. He was irascible, inhospitable, uncourteous, parsimonious; he had unmercifully assailed Eutropius with harsh language when he fled for refuge to the Church; he had behaved disrespectfully to Gaïnas when he was “magister militum;” but, worse than all, he had audaciously attacked the Augusta herself, and had insulted her sacred majesty by indicating her under the name of Jezebel. This is scarcely credible in itself, and is distinctly contradicted by the most trustworthy authorities; but it is stated that he had reproved the Empress for appropriating with harshness, if not violence, a piece of land; and of course the blows which he directed against inordinate luxury, unseemly parade of dress and the like, fell heavily upon the most prominent leader in these follies. She was probably mortified also to find that her display of religious zeal, her pious attendance on the services of the Church, her pilgrimages, her really liberal donations to good works, did not protect her from censure in other things. Chrysostom was not one of those who would connive at evil for the benefit, as some might have represented it, of the Church. He would not sacrifice what he believed to be the interests of morality, for the supposed advantage either of himself or of the Church over which he ruled. Wrong was wrong and must be rebuked, though the actor was the Empress herself, though that Empress was inclined to be the benefactress and patroness of the Church, and though she might become, as she did become, his implacable foe.
The clergy only needed an equally potent leader on their side, and then the organisation of the hostile forces would be complete. Such a chief was to be found in the Patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, who had already displayed a malignant spirit at the ordination of the Archbishop, though intimidated by Eutropius into submission. He was only waiting his opportunity for revenge, which a concurrence of circumstances now put into his hands.
After making the most of such charges as gossip, aided by malice, could manufacture at Constantinople, the enemy employed one of the party, a despicable Syrian monk named Isaac, to make a scrutinising inquiry at Antioch into the previous life of Chrysostom. A youth passed in such a licentious and voluptuous city could not fail, they thought, to betray some stains if submitted to a rigorous inspection. But their malevolent expectations were disappointed, for their miserable spy could bring back nothing but unmixed praise of an immaculate youth and a pious manhood.[526]
At this juncture the intriguers applied to Theophilus, and they could not have secured a more willing and able director of their plans. The character of this prelate, and his prominent position in the final events of Chrysostom’s career, demand some notice. Of his family and early life little is known. He had a sister who sympathised with him in his ambitious schemes; and Cyril, who succeeded him in the patriarchate, and too largely inherited his spirit, was his nephew. He spent a portion of his younger manhood as a recluse in the Nitrian desert, where he became familiar with the most eminent anchorites of that period, Elurion, Ammon, Isidore, and Macarius. He was secretary to Athanasius, and a presbyter of Alexandria under Peter, his successor; and, on the death of Timothy in A.D. 385, who succeeded Peter, he was elevated to the see. All historians concur in admitting that he possessed great ability; that he was capable of conceiving great projects, and executing them with courage and address. Jerome has described him as deeply skilled in science, especially mathematics and astrology, and highly praises his eloquence.[527] He had a passion for building, and his episcopate was distinguished equally by the destruction of Pagan temples and the erection of Christian churches. The most splendid of these were the church of St. John the Baptist at Alexandria, and another at Canopus. But to gratify this expensive taste he was grasping of money, too often to the neglect of those indigent people who were dependent on the alms of the Church. He combined his efforts with Chrysostom’s, as has been already related, in healing the schism of Antioch in A.D. 399, after which little is known of his history, till he becomes Chrysostom’s implacable and too successful foe.[528]
CHAPTER XVII.
CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH LED TO THE INTERFERENCE OF THEOPHILUS WITH THE AFFAIRS OF CHRYSOSTOM—CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE WRITINGS OF ORIGEN—PERSECUTION BY THEOPHILUS OF THE MONKS CALLED “THE TALL BRETHREN”—THEIR FLIGHT TO PALESTINE—TO CONSTANTINOPLE—THEIR RECEPTION BY CHRYSOSTOM—THEOPHILUS SUMMONED TO CONSTANTINOPLE. A.D. 395-403.