The party now in power could not convert the hearts of clergy or people to their side, but they could, and did, change the outward aspect of the Church. The men of probity and piety with whom Chrysostom had replaced the six simoniacal bishops deposed in Asia were expelled, and the delinquents restored. The Church in that region was reduced to a disgraceful state. Ordinations were conducted, not amidst prayer and fasting, but feasting, drunkenness, and gross bribery. The see of Heracleides, the good bishop of Ephesus, appointed by Chrysostom, was occupied by a eunuch, a monster of iniquity. The people in disgust deserted the churches.
The death of Flavian, bishop of Antioch, nearly coincided with the banishment of Chrysostom. The people of Antioch were much attached to a priest named Constantius, a man described by Palladius as a faithful and incorruptible servant of the Church from his earliest youth, first as a messenger who carried ecclesiastical despatches, then as reader, deacon, priest. He had won the love and admiration of the people by his gentle, amiable disposition, his intelligence, strict integrity, and exemplary piety. There was a general desire to make him bishop, but an ambitious priest named Porphyry frustrated the design. By bribery, and calumnious stories conveyed to the Court at Constantinople, he procured an Imperial rescript condemning Constantius to be banished to one of the oases as a disturber of the people. With the assistance of his friends Constantius escaped to Cyprus. Porphyry meanwhile imprisoned several of the clergy of Antioch, and seized the opportunity of the Olympian festival (when most of the inhabitants had poured out to the celebrated suburb of Daphne) to enter the church with a few bishops and clergy; and then, with doors fast closed, he was hurriedly ordained, so hurriedly that some portions of the service were omitted. Acacius, Severian, and Antiochus, who had officiated, immediately fled. The people were enraged when they discovered the trick, surrounded Porphyry’s house, and threatened to burn it to the ground. He applied for protection to the prefect, who lent him a body of troops, with which he forcibly took possession of the church. He contrived to get an unscrupulous and cruel man sent from Constantinople to be captain of the city guards, terror of whom drove the people to attend the churches, though they did so with disgust, and earnestly prayed for retribution from Heaven on the authors of this wickedness.[618]
Innocent remained inflexibly attached to the cause of Chrysostom. The Church of Rome and the Italian bishops broke off all communion with Theophilus and Atticus, and ceased not to demand the convocation of a General Council, as the only tribunal by which the Patriarch could be lawfully acquitted or condemned.[619] But the Court of Ravenna was not in a position to support these demands by intimidation or actual force. All the skill of Stilicho and all the resources at his command were barely sufficient to repel the persevering efforts of Alaric and Rhadagaisus to take the great prize which they so eagerly coveted, the capital of the Roman Empire. The inevitable fall of Rome was averted only for a little while.
Thus the spirit of lawlessness and selfishness took advantage of the impotence of the secular power both in Rome and Constantinople to work its will upon the Church. It dealt a blow to Christian morality and ecclesiastical discipline from which the Church at Constantinople never recovered, and which caused a throb of pain from one end of Christendom to the other; for, in spite of all differences and divisions, Christendom was one then, so that, if one member suffered, all the members suffered with it; and what was done and said, and thought and felt, in the Church of Alexandria, or Antioch, or Constantinople, was not unknown or unregarded by the Churches of Rome or Milan, and through them made its impress on the Churches even of Gaul and Spain.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHRYSOSTOM ORDERED TO BE REMOVED TO CUCUSUS—PERILS ENCOUNTERED AT CÆSAREA—HARDSHIPS OF THE JOURNEY—REACHES CUCUSUS—LETTERS WRITTEN THERE TO OLYMPIAS AND OTHER FRIENDS. A.D. 404.
It now only remains to follow the illustrious exile along his painful journey to its melancholy or, if we regard him as the Christian martyr, its glorious termination.
He was removed, as has been already seen, from Constantinople on June 20, and conveyed, in the course of a few days, to Nicæa. Here he remained till July 4, and several of his letters to Olympias were written from this place. The soft yet fresh sea air revived his health, which had suffered from the feverish and harassing scenes that he had gone through at Constantinople, and from the journey begun in the very middle of the summer heat. Nothing could exceed the kindness of the soldiers under whose custody he travelled, who discharged towards him all the duties of servants as well as of guards.[620] His ultimate destination was not known for some time by himself or his friends. Common report sent him to Scythia,[621] but the intention of his enemies appears to have changed from time to time. Sebaste in Armenia had been first proposed, but finally Cucusus, a village in the Tauric range on the edge of Cilicia and the Lesser Armenia, was fixed upon. It was a remote and desolate spot, subject to frequent attacks from the marauding Isaurians; and at first Chrysostom earnestly entreated his friends in Constantinople to try and procure a more agreeable place of exile, a favour frequently granted to criminals. Olympias, Bishop Cyriacus, Briso the chamberlain, and a lady named Theodora, repeatedly interceded on his behalf; but their efforts were ineffectual.[622] The Empress herself, it would appear, selected Cucusus, and was inexorable in her decision.[623]