Saint John Chrysostom, His Life and Times / A sketch of the church and the empire in the fourth century

by W. R. W. Stephens

One more effort was made to avert the impending calamity. The forty bishops who maintained a close friendship with Chrysostom accosted the Emperor and Empress as they were visiting, according to their custom at this season, some of the martyr chapels outside the city. They entreated their majesties with tears to spare the Church her chief pastor, especially on account of the season, and for the sake of those who were about to be baptized. But Arcadius and Eudoxia turned a deaf ear to their piteous appeal. The bishops retired, grief-stricken, to mourn over the wrongs of their Church and Patriarch; but not before one of them, Paul, bishop of Crateia, had lifted up his voice in bold and solemn warning:—“Take heed, Eudoxia; fear God; have pity on your children. Do not outrage by bloodshed the sacred and solemn festival of Jesus Christ.”[592]

The church of St. Sophia became the scene, on the night of that Easter Eve, of shocking tumult. A vast congregation from the city and surrounding towns, including many of the catechumens, was keeping vigil to greet the dawn of the Resurrection morning. Suddenly a body of soldiers burst in with noise and violence, and took possession of the choir. The confusion may be imagined. Women and children fled shrieking in wild disorder. Many of the female catechumens, only half-dressed, in preparation for the reception of baptism, were hurriedly driven out of the baptistry with the deaconesses who attended them. Some were even wounded, and the sacred fonts stained with blood. Some of the soldiers, unbaptized men, penetrated even to the chamber where the Eucharistic elements were kept, and profaned them with their gaze and touch. The clergy were forcibly ejected in their vestments, and several were wounded. The pitiable spectacle of the mingled troop of men, women, children, and clergy, violently chased along the streets by the brutal soldiery, moved even Jews and Gentiles to compassion. The clergy, however, rallied the scattered flock in the Baths of Constantine, the largest public baths in the city. Here they proceeded with the Easter services in due order; some reading the Scriptures, others baptizing. The churches of Constantinople were deserted, which the adversary wished to force the people to attend in the absence of the Archbishop, in the hope that the Court might thus suppose him to be unpopular.

Such is the description of these violent scenes as drawn by the pen of Chrysostom himself, in a letter[593] written soon after the occurrences, and addressed to Innocent I., bishop of Rome, Venerius, bishop of Milan, and Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia. “You may imagine the rest,” he concludes; “great as these calamities are, there is no prospect of their immediate termination; on the contrary, the evil extends every day. The spirit of insubordination is rapidly spreading from the capital to the provinces, from the head to the members. Clergy rebel against their bishop, and one bishop assails another. People are, or soon will be, split into factions. All places are racked by the throes of coming trouble, and the confusion is universal. Having been informed of all these things, then, my most reverend and prudent lords, display, I pray you, the courage and zeal which becomes you in restraining this lawlessness which has crept into the churches. For if it were to become a prevailing and allowable custom, for any at their pleasure to pass into foreign and distant dioceses, and to expel whomsoever any one may choose, and act as they like on their own private authority, be sure that all discipline will go to pieces, and a kind of implacable warfare will pervade the world, all expelling or being themselves expelled. Wherefore, to prevent the subjection of the world to such confusion, I beseech you to enjoin that these acts so illegally performed in my absence, when I had not declined fair judgment, may be reckoned invalid, as indeed in the nature of things they are, and that those who have been detected taking part in these iniquitous proceedings may be subjected to the penalty of ecclesiastical law; while we who have not been proved guilty may continue to enjoy your correspondence and friendship as aforetime.” He closes his letter by affirming that he was still prepared to prove his innocence and the guilt of his accusers before a legally constituted council.

This letter is interesting not only in itself, but because it illustrates remarkably the growing tendency of Christendom to appeal to the arbitration of the Western Church, and especially of the Bishop of Rome, in matters of ecclesiastical discipline. The law-making, law-protecting spirit of the West is invoked to restrain the turbulence and licentiousness of the East. The Patriarch of the Eastern Rome appeals to the great bishops of the West, as the champions of an ecclesiastical discipline which he confesses himself unable to enforce, or to see any prospect of establishing. No jealousy is entertained of the Patriarch of the old Rome by the Patriarch of the new. The interference of Innocent is courted, a certain primacy is accorded him, but at the same time he is not addressed as a supreme arbitrator; assistance and sympathy are solicited from him as from an elder brother, and two other prelates of Italy are joint recipients with him of the appeal. The effect of this letter will shortly be related; for the present, the course of events at Constantinople must be followed.

It did not suit the purpose of Acacius and his party to allow the congregation which had been hunted out of St. Sophia to proceed with their service in the baths unmolested. If the Emperor entered the church in the morning and found it deserted, the vacancy on so great a day would reveal too plainly the intense devotion of the people to their bishop. The aim of the conspirators was to force the people to attend the services, which were to be marked by the absence of Chrysostom alone. They accordingly applied to Anthemius, Master of the Offices, to disperse the congregation, if necessary by force. Anthemius, however, was a moderate, prudent man, and kindly disposed towards the Patriarch. He refused to interfere, pleading the advanced hour of the night, the vastness of the assembly, and the risk of serious tumult. He yielded, however, to their persevering and urgent demands so far as to direct Lucius, a subordinate officer, commander of a Thracian corps called the Scutarii, to present himself with his troops at the entrance of the baths, and exhort the people to return to the church, as the more proper place for conducting the services. He was strictly charged to abstain from violence. He acted on his instructions, and harangued the congregation, but without effect. The chanting of the Psalms and the administration of baptism to crowds of catechumens were proceeded with. Lucius returned and reported his errand ineffectual. Acacius and his colleagues urged him with all their eloquence, and with promises of rich reward, probably more effective than their golden words, to make another effort, and to use force if persuasion were not regarded. They gave him some ecclesiastics to accompany him and, as it were, sanction their proceedings. Whether they began by exhortation is not recorded; at any rate, if it was given, no attention was paid to it, and it was quickly seconded by barbarian violence. Lucius himself pushed his way to the place of baptism, and laid about him with a truncheon upon candidates, deacons, and priests, some of them aged men, and dispersed them in all directions. The soldiers seized and plundered the women of their ornaments, the clergy of their vestments, and the sacred vessels belonging to the Church; they beat the fugitives and dragged them off to the prisons. The natural solitude and silence of the streets, in the hour immediately preceding dawn, were disturbed by the cries of the captives and the shouts of their brutal captors.

In the morning the street walls were covered with proclamations, menacing with severe punishment any who persisted in maintaining intercourse with the Patriarch.[594]

The baths were effectually emptied of the congregation; but to fill the churches could not so easily be accomplished; in fact, they were entirely deserted. Large numbers of the dispersed congregation who had escaped the hands of the soldiers fled outside the walls of Constantinople, and, with indefatigable zeal, sought to complete the celebration of the Paschal rites as best they could in the secure recesses of woods or valleys. A large number assembled in a field called Pempton, because five miles from the Forum of Constantine, an open space surrounded by wood and intended to be used as a Hippodrome. In the course of the day—Easter Day—the Emperor and his retinue happened to ride, or perhaps were maliciously conducted, near the spot. The eye of Arcadius was attracted by the sight of a large body of people, many of them clothed in white, crowded together outside the Hippodrome. Unhappily, the Emperor was attended by courtiers inimical to the Archbishop. They replied to his inquiries respecting the nature of the concourse, that it was a body of heretics who had met to worship there in order to escape interference. Arcadius was weak enough to allow, without further inquiry, a number of soldiers who formed part of his escort to ride in upon the assembly and seize the most conspicuous leaders. A number of priests were captured, and several rich and noble ladies, whom the soldiers despoiled of their head-dresses and earrings with great barbarity, in one instance even tearing away with the appendage a portion of the ear itself.

One more attempt was made to assemble in a wooden hippodrome, built by Constantine, called the Xulodrome; but once more they were driven out, and hunted from place to place with relentless diligence. These repeated assaults broke up the flock of Chrysostom; the prisons were filled with the Johnites, as they were called after the name of their bishop, and the churches were empty. The prison walls echoed to the sound of the chants and hymns of the martyrs, but the churches to the noise of scourge and fierce threats administered to those who ventured to enter. This was done in the hope that they might be coerced by torture to anathematise the Archbishop.[595]

He himself, however, meanwhile continued to reside two months in his palace, though not without risk. Twice, as it was believed, attempts were made to assassinate him, but frustrated. Suspicion fell first on a man who affected demoniacal possession, and hovered much about the precincts of the palace. A dagger was found upon his person; the people seized him and dragged him before the prefect; but Chrysostom procured his release through the intercession of some bishops, just as he was about to be examined by torture. A second attempt was supposed to be intended by a slave, who ran at full speed towards the entrance of the palace, and plunged a dagger, in some instances with fatal effect, into several passers-by who endeavoured to stop him. He was at last surrounded and captured by the people, when he confessed that he had been bribed by his master, a priest named Elpidius, to try and assassinate the Archbishop. The fury of the people was appeased by the imprisonment of the man; but they now resolved to take the protection of their Archbishop into their own hands. They divided themselves into companies, which kept watch by turns, night and day, over the episcopal palace. The hostile party, dreading any further impediments to the execution of their iniquitous sentence, now hurried matters to their conclusion. Five days after Pentecost, four bishops—Acacius, Antiochus, Severian, and Cyrinus—obtained an interview with the Emperor. They represented that the city never would be tranquil till the removal of the Archbishop had been effected, and that his remaining in the palace after his condemnation was a gross violation of ecclesiastical law. They avowed themselves willing to take the responsibility of his deposition on their own heads, and besought the Emperor not to be more lenient and concessive than were bishops and priests.[596]