When the departure of the Archbishop became generally known on the succeeding day, the indignation of the people burst into a blaze. The places of public resort were thronged with clamorous crowds denouncing the synod and demanding a General Council. They flocked into the churches to pour forth their lamentations, and to invoke the Divine intervention on behalf of their injured Patriarch. A revulsion of feeling in his favour took place among many of the clergy who had hitherto been opposed to him. The arrival of Theophilus with a large retinue was not calculated to allay the agitation. Force was employed to dislodge the people from the churches; the struggle occasioned bloodshed, and even some loss of life, chiefly among monks. The worthless clergy who had been deposed by Chrysostom, some of them for flagrant crimes, were restored by Theophilus. Severian of Gabala mounted a pulpit in one of the churches, and extolled the act of deposition. “Even were the Patriarch,” he said, “guiltless of other offences, the penalty was due to his arrogance, for ‘God resisteth the proud,’ even if He forgave other sins.” The people were furious at this barefaced attempt to justify injustice. They thronged the approaches to the Imperial palace itself, and with loud shouts demanded the restoration of the Patriarch.[578]
A natural phenomenon, not rare in Constantinople, but regarded under the circumstances as a Divine visitation, opportunely concurred with this demand. The city, the palace, but more especially the bedchamber of the Empress, were agitated by a severe shock of earthquake. The friends of Chrysostom rejoiced at this manifestation of the wrath of Heaven; his enemies were alarmed. The terrified Empress eagerly promoted the demand of the people for the restoration of the exile. Messengers were sent across the Bosporus to seek him, for the exact place of his retreat appears to have been unknown. Briso, the Empress’s chamberlain, a man of Christian piety and a personal friend of Chrysostom, discovered him at Prænetum. He was the bearer of a humble, we might say abject, letter of self-exculpation from the Empress. “Let not your holiness (ἡ ἁγιωσύνη) imagine that I was cognisant of what has been done. I am guiltless of thy blood. Wicked and corrupt men have contrived this plot. I remember the baptism of my children by thy hands. God whom I serve is witness of my tears.” She informs him how she had fallen at the feet of the Emperor, and had represented to him that there was no hope for the Empire except through the restoration of the Archbishop.[579]
Chrysostom yielded to the solicitation so far as to embark and cross the Bosporus, but he declined at first to advance nearer Constantinople than the suburb of Mariamna, two leagues from the capital by sea. He declared that he would not enter the city until he had been acquitted by a General Council. But the impetuosity of the people would brook no delay. Tidings of his approach had preceded him. The Bosporus was studded with boats crowded with his friends, bearing torches and chanting psalms of welcome. The halt at Mariamna was suspected to be a contrivance of the enemy, who wished to deprive the Patriarch of the honours awaiting him. Their denunciations of the Emperor and Empress grew loud and menacing. An Imperial secretary arrived at Mariamna, urging Chrysostom to enter the city without loss of time. The Archbishop consented, and, attended by about thirty bishops, amidst the acclamations of the populace, was conducted to the Church of the Apostles. Again he remonstrated, and expressed scruples at entering till the sentence of deposition should have been revoked by a legitimate council. But the eagerness of the people was irrepressible. He was borne into the church, and compelled to take his seat on the episcopal throne and pronounce a benediction upon the assembly. When he had complied with their request, they would not be satisfied till he had addressed them in an extempore discourse. The address exists only in a Latin translation. Its brevity, and the abrupt style of the opening sentences, indicate the extemporaneous character of it.[580]
“What shall I say, or how shall I speak? ‘Blessed be God.’ So spoke I when I departed, and I utter the same again: yea, even in my exile I did not cease to say these words. Ye remember how I quoted Job, and said, ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever.’ Such was the pledge I left with you when I set forth; such is the thanksgiving I repeat on my return. ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever.’ Our lot varies, but our manner of giving glory is one. I gave thanks when I was expelled, I give thanks when I return. The conditions of summer and winter are different, but the end is one—the prosperity of the field. Blessed be God who permitted the storm, blessed be God who has dispersed it and wrought a calm. These things I say, that I may prepare you to bless God at all times. Have good things happened to you? Bless God, and the good remains; have evil things occurred? bless God still, and the evil is removed.”... “Behold what great results have been wrought by the stratagems of my enemies. They have augmented your zeal, inflamed your affectionate longing for me, and procured me lovers in hundreds. Formerly I was beloved by my own people only; now even the Jews pay me respect. My enemies hoped to sever me from my own friends; and, instead, they have brought even aliens into our ranks.”... “To-day the Circensian games take place, but no one is present there; all have poured like a torrent into the church, and your voices are as streams which flow to Heaven and declare your affection towards your father.” He congratulates them on putting the enemy to flight. “Many are the sheep, yet nowhere is the wolf seen; the devouring beasts are overwhelmed, the wolves have fled. Who has pursued them? Not I the shepherd, but ye the sheep. O noble flock! in the absence of the shepherd ye have routed the wolves. O beauty and chastity of the wife! how hast thou repulsed the adulterer, because thou lovedst thy husband!”... “Where are our enemies? in ignominy;—where are we? in triumph.”[581]
On the following day the Archbishop delivered another address, pitched in the same strain, but amplified and more ornate. It opens with a singular comparison between the meditated seduction of Abraham’s wife by Pharaoh, and the plot of Theophilus to corrupt the chastity of the Church of Constantinople. The courage and faith of the flock in resisting the wolf during the absence of their shepherd, their enthusiastic welcome of his return, when the sea, as he expresses it, became a city (alluding to the crowds who had gone out to meet him on the Bosporus), and the market-place was converted into one vast church—these are again the topics on which he dilates with thankful joy. He applies to himself the verse: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy; he that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.” The Empress is extolled in language which to any but oriental ears must sound painfully fulsome and adulatory. She had sent a message to him on the previous evening, saying, “My prayer is fulfilled, my object accomplished. I have obtained a crown better than the diadem itself. I have received back the priest, I have restored the head to the body, the pilot to the ship, the shepherd to the flock, the husband to the home.” In return for this complimentary greeting (complimentary, it must be confessed, to herself as much as to the Archbishop) she is styled by him “most devout Queen, mother of the churches, nurse of monks, protectress of saints, staff of the poor.” The people were so much delighted with these laudations of the Empress, that the address was constantly interrupted by their acclamations.[582]
When the object of the Synod at the Oak had eventually failed through the recall of Chrysostom, many of the members lost no time in returning to their several sees. Theophilus and a few of his most resolute partisans appear to have lurked in the city, waiting a possible opportunity for resuming their intrigues. This they attempted, according to two historians,[583] by instigating accusations against Heracleides, who had been consecrated Bishop of Ephesus by Chrysostom. The friends of Heracleides and of the Archbishop protested against the illegality of such proceedings in the absence of the defendant. The question was taken up by the populace. Fierce and sanguinary frays were fought in the streets between the citizens and the Alexandrian followers of Theophilus. At length he and his followers consulted their safety by a precipitate flight. This account is not incompatible with the assertion of Chrysostom himself in his letter to Innocent, that after his recall he incessantly demanded the convocation of a General Council to absolve him from the verdict of the false synod, and to reinstate him in possession of his see; that the Emperor consented, and that, as soon as the imperial summonses were issued in all directions, Theophilus, dreading the scrutiny of his conduct, embarked in the dead of night, and sailed in haste for Alexandria.[584] The citation of the council, and the hostility of the people, may well have concurred to hasten his departure. The General Council seems never to have regularly assembled. Theophilus was cited to attend it after he had returned to Alexandria, but excused himself on the plea that the Alexandrians were so deeply attached to him, he feared a sedition would take place if he were again to absent himself. No less than sixty bishops, however, who had congregated in Constantinople, though not apparently convened in synodal form, solemnly declared their sense of the illegality and injustice of the late proceedings at the Synod of the Oak, and confirmed Chrysostom in the resumption of his see.