FURY OF THE PEOPLE AT THE REMOVAL OF CHRYSOSTOM—DESTRUCTION OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH AND SENATE-HOUSE BY FIRE—PERSECUTION OF CHRYSOSTOM’S FOLLOWERS—FUGITIVES TO ROME—LETTERS OF INNOCENT TO THEOPHILUS—TO THE CLERGY OF CONSTANTINOPLE—TO CHRYSOSTOM—DEPUTATION OF WESTERN BISHOPS TO CONSTANTINOPLE REPULSED—SUFFERINGS OF THE EASTERN CHURCH—TRIUMPH OF THE CABAL. A.D. 404, 405.

The people, meanwhile, both within the church and outside, were not long in discovering that the Archbishop had disappeared from the building and its precincts. They became furiously agitated: some rushed to the harbour, but too late to obstruct the embarkation. The doors of the cathedral, which had been locked by some of the cabal, who anticipated a rush of the people as soon as the departure of Chrysostom should have been discovered, were fiercely battered by the crowd on both sides. Jews and Pagans looked on, and jeered derisively at the tumult. The horror of this scene of wild confusion was suddenly increased by the apparition of fire bursting forth from the building. How kindled, by accident or design, it is impossible to determine. Each party fiercely charged the other with the guilt of the catastrophe, and some attributed it to miraculous interference of heavenly powers. The conflagration broke out in or near the throne of the Archbishop, which it consumed, and then spread to the roof. In three hours the edifice, whose erection and embellishment had been the work of many years, was reduced to a heap of cinders. The only portion not destroyed was the treasury which contained the sacred vessels of silver and gold, as if expressly to confute one of the charges made against the Archbishop, that he had sold all the most valuable ornaments belonging to the church. Germanus and Cassian, the custodians of the treasury, when they fled to Rome, carried with them a copy of the inventory of all these articles, which, when they surrendered their office, had been handed over to the prefect and some of the other chief functionaries of the city.

The conflagration, however, did not confine itself to the cathedral. A violent north wind carried the flames across the Forum, and ignited the great curia or senate-house; not, however, that side of it which faced the cathedral, but the further side, which looked into the little forum where the royal palace was situated. The whole senate-house was destroyed. The statues of the Muses which Constantine had brought from Helicon were consumed, and all the other principal adornments. The images of Zeus and Athene alone were found intact, beneath a heap of ruins and of masses of molten lead which had dropped upon them from the burning roof.598

The real or affected suspicion that the Archbishop and his flock were the incendiaries was quite a sufficient pretext for treating them with rigour. He himself, with Cyriacus and Eulysius, was detained in chains under a strict guard in Bithynia. These two companions were taken from him and conveyed bound to Chalcedon, but after examination were dismissed as innocent. But at Constantinople the persecution was enforced with merciless severity under the auspices of Optatus, a Pagan, now prefect in the place of Studius. All the followers of the Archbishop, clerical and lay, high and low, were subjected, if caught, to rigorous inquisition, and most of them to severe punishment. Chrysostom wrote a letter from Bithynia to the Emperor, imploring that he might at least be allowed to appear and defend himself and his clergy from the atrocious charge of incendiarism, but the letter received no attention; and as the poor exile continued his journey to Nice, his sufferings were enhanced by pitiable intelligence of the persecution inflicted on bishops, priests, and deacons who refused to anathematise him or recognise the validity of his deposition. But the spirit of the exile was not only brave to support his own troubles, but could spare some of its energy to encourage those, who were suffering in his cause, to patience, fortitude, resignation, and even joy.599

In times of religious persecution, the language of the New Testament, about the blessedness of tribulation as a pledge of future happiness and a means of preparation for it, comes home to men’s hearts with a reality and force which seem to exceed our present application of it to the troubles and sorrows of ordinary life. Those who were firmly persuaded that their cause was the cause of truth and of Jesus Christ read the words, “Blessed are ye when ye are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” or, “Happy are ye when men revile you and persecute you,” as if spoken directly to themselves; and they really did “rejoice in that day, and leap for joy.” Such are the texts which Chrysostom cites for the consolation of his suffering friends. He speaks of their exposure to intimidation by threats, imprisonment, frequent appearance in judges’ courts, torture at the hands of the executioner, shameless false evidence, coarse ribaldry, and scurrilous jests; but “blessed were they, yea, thrice blessed, and more than that, to endure imprisonment and chains, for not only was their fortitude the subject of admiration everywhere, but their present sufferings were the measure of their future happiness, and their names had been inscribed in the Book of Life.”600

The destruction of the church and senate-house was the first pretext for instituting persecution against the adherents of Chrysostom; the second was, their refusal to recognise his successor. One week after his deposition, Arsacius, brother of Nectarius the predecessor of Chrysostom, was, apparently by the simple exercise of Imperial authority, elevated to the see. He was eighty years old, and is quaintly described by Palladius as “muter than a fish, and more incapable than a frog.”601 The probable aim of the Empress was to secure a man whose servility might be depended on. His brother, Nectarius, had once desired to make him Bishop of Tarsus; and, on his declining to accept the promotion, had taunted him with ambitiously reserving himself for the see of Constantinople; whereupon Arsacius had taken an oath that he never would accept any bishopric. But ambition and Imperial authority overcame his scruples. He is described by the historians as a man of pious disposition and mild conduct; with one exception: that he persecuted with relentless vigour the contumacious adherents of his predecessor. By Chrysostom he is denounced as a wolf, and in a figurative sense as an adulterer, on account of his usurpation of the see during the lifetime of its legitimate occupant.602 Arsacius applied to the civil powers for assistance to compel the Johnites to attend the churches where he and his clergy officiated. A tribune was directed to attack a body of them who had assembled for worship in some remote part of the city. The soldiers dispersed the assembly, took several of the most eminent persons prisoners, and, as usual, stripped the women of their golden girdles, jewels, and earrings. The only consequence of this was, that the Johnites became more attached to the cause and memory of their late Archbishop. Some of them fled the city, and many more refrained as much as possible from appearing in public places, such as the Forum and the baths. Meetings of some kind for worship were not discontinued, or were soon resumed, for we find Chrysostom, in one of his letters written during his exile, reproving two priests, Theophilus and Salustius, for slackness in attending such assemblies.603 But worshippers ran great risks. The prefect Optatus, who succeeded Studius, probably because the latter was considered too lenient, appears to have entertained all the animosity of a thorough Pagan against Christians, and to have rejoiced in the present opportunity of inflicting sufferings upon them. He combined the two charges of incendiarism and contumacy in his prosecution of the Johnites, and endeavoured to extort confessions of guilt from his victims with merciless barbarity.

A few instances are recorded, and they are quite enough to sicken us of the tale of such horrors. Eutropius, a reader, was commanded to name the persons who had set fire to the church. He refused. He was young and delicate, and it was thought a confession might be wrung from him under the agony of torture. He was lashed with a scourge, his cheeks were scraped, and his sides lacerated with iron teeth, after which lighted torches were applied to the wounded parts. No information could be extorted from him: he was therefore conveyed to prison, and thrown into a dungeon, where he expired. Some priests, adherents of Arsacius, buried him by night, that his mangled body might not be seen by any eyes but those of his enemies. Celestial music was said to have been heard at the time of his interment.

Tigrius, the priest, whose presence with Serapion had been demanded at the Synod of the Oak, was another victim. He was stripped, scourged on his back, and then stretched on the rack till his bones were dislocated. He survived the torture, and was banished to Mesopotamia. Serapion himself, now bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, was seized, tried on several calumnious charges, barbarously scourged, and sent into exile.

Those ladies also who were most distinguished for their friendship with the deposed Archbishop, and for the dedication of their time and money to the Church, were marked objects of persecution. They were brought before the prefect, and admonished by him to acknowledge Arsacius, and so save themselves from future annoyance. A few from timidity complied; but Olympias, who was subjected to a severer examination, confronted it with a dauntless spirit. She was bluntly asked why she had set fire to the “Great Church.” “My manner of life,” replied the accused, “is a sufficient refutation of such a charge; a person who has expended large sums of money to restore and embellish the churches of God is not likely to burn and demolish them.” “I know your past course of life well,” cried the prefect. “If you know aught against it, then descend from your place there as judge, and come forward as my accuser,” replied the undaunted Olympias. Perceiving that she was not to be browbeaten, Optatus proposed the same course to her which had been adopted by some other women as a means of exemption from further persecution, namely, communion with Arsacius; but she scornfully rejected the base compromise. “I have been publicly calumniated by a charge which cannot be proven, and I will not accede to any terms till I have been cleared from this accusation. Even if you resort to force, I will not hold communion with those from whom I ought to secede, nor do anything contrary to the principles of my holy religion.” She made a request, which was granted, that she might be allowed a few days to consult with lawyers on the proper means of legally refuting the libellous accusation. The prefect, however (on what pretence is not stated), sent for her again, and exacted a heavy fine, in the hope that she would be induced to yield. The fine was paid without any reluctance, but her refusal to acknowledge the usurper was inflexible; and to avoid, if possible, further pressure and persecution, she retired to Cyzicus, on the other side of the straits.604

The tidings of her fortitude and loyalty were conveyed to the exiled Chrysostom, and so cheered his spirit in the midst of depression and sickness that his sufferings seemed to him as nothing. “When many men and women, old and young, highly reputed for their virtue, had turned their backs on the enemy almost before the conflict had begun, she, on the other hand, after many encounters, so far from being enervated, was even invigorated; she spread forth the sails of patience, and floated securely as on a calm sea; so far from being overwhelmed by the storm, she was scarcely sprinkled by the spray. In the seclusion of her little house she was able to inspire courage into the hearts of others, and had been to them a haven of comfort and a tower of strength.”605

The deaconess Pentadia, widow of the consul Timasius, was another victim. She led the life of a recluse, never going beyond the walls of her house except to church. She was now dragged from her retreat through the Forum to the prefect’s tribunal, and thence to prison, charged with being an accomplice in the late fire. Several persons were put to the torture before her eyes, in order to intimidate her into a confession; but in vain. Her firm demeanour, courageous answers, and powerful demonstrations of her innocence, confounded and silenced her adversaries, and elicited the admiration of the public. Beyond imprisonment, no indignities seem to have been inflicted on her; and when desirous to quit the capital, she was persuaded by Chrysostom to remain, who represented the great value of her presence and example in animating others to undergo their present afflictions. She had apparently intended to try and join him in his place of exile, when he had been removed to Cucusus, on the confines of Lesser Armenia, for he dwells on the great risk to her delicate health from a journey in winter, and the danger of being plundered by the Isaurian robbers, who were just then, he says, in a powerful condition. He, therefore, on all grounds, begs her to remain where she is, but to relieve his mind from anxiety about her affairs and health by constantly writing to him.606

Meanwhile, the injured Church of Constantinople did not cease through letters and emissaries to solicit the interference of the Western Church. The first intimation of the calamities we have been describing which reached the ears of Rome was through a messenger despatched by Theophilus. The letter which he brought was inscribed “From Pope Theophilus to Pope Innocent,” and stated in the barest manner, without assigning his reasons or mentioning any assessors in his judgment, that he had deposed Chrysostom, and that it behoved Innocent to break off communion with him. The Pope was displeased by the cool and curt character of the letter, and somewhat perplexed how to notice or reply to so inexplicit a despatch. Eusebius, a deacon from Constantinople, who was in Rome at the time on some ecclesiastical business, obtained an interview with Innocent, and entreated him not to act till information should be received from Constantinople, which, he added (on what grounds does not appear), he had good reason to expect would arrive in a short time. Three days afterwards four bishops did arrive, bearing the letter from Chrysostom to Innocent which contained that pathetic and perspicuous narrative of the recent occurrences, from which extracts have been made in the preceding chapter. They brought two other letters, one from the forty friendly bishops, another from the clergy of Constantinople.

Innocent no longer hesitated to pronounce an opinion. His letter to Theophilus is brief, decisive, almost peremptory in tone. “The See of Rome,” he said, “would maintain communion with Alexandria and Constantinople to avoid rending the unity of the Church; but he annulled (???t?sa?) the deposition of John apparently made by Theophilus. It was impossible to recognise the validity of a sentence pronounced by such an irregular synod as that lately convened at Chalcedon. If Theophilus had confidence in the justice of that sentence, he must appear in person to prove it before a General Council called together and regulated according to the Canons of Nice.” A few days after the despatch of this letter, Peter, an Alexandrian priest, arrived with a deacon from Constantinople, bearing another letter from Theophilus, and certain minutes, so called, of the acts of the Synod of the Oak. Innocent, having perused the minutes, was indignant at the mingled monstrosity and levity of the charges brought against Chrysostom, and at the condemnation having been pronounced in the absence of the defendant. He ordered special prayers and fasts to be observed by the Church for the restoration of concord, and addressed to Theophilus a sharp letter of reproof.607

It is not easy to make out precisely how many communications passed each way between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople, or the exact date of each; but several letters are distinctly mentioned. Theotecnus, a priest from Constantinople, brought a letter from twenty-five of the forty bishops who had constantly adhered to Chrysostom, in which they described the expulsion of the Patriarch and the conflagration of the church. Innocent replied by a letter of condolence, and exhortation to bear their trial with Christian fortitude and patience, for at present he confessed, with deep regret, that he saw small prospect of rendering much effectual aid, “owing to the opposition of certain persons powerful for evil,” alluding probably to the jealousies between the Courts of the two brothers, Honorius and Arcadius. The cabal also sent a letter to Innocent, containing their version of the late transactions. Their emissary was Paternus, who called himself a priest of Constantinople; “an ugly little fellow,” says Palladius, “and very unintelligible.” The letter was written in the names of Arsacius, Paulus, Antiochus, Cyrinus, Severian, and some others; and, among other opprobrious charges, distinctly accused Chrysostom of setting fire to the church. Innocent treated the letter with much disdain, and would not condescend to answer it. Some days afterwards, Cyriacus, bishop of Synnada, arrived in Rome as a fugitive, in consequence of an Imperial edict, which directed the deposition of any bishop who refused to communicate with Arsacius and Theophilus, and the confiscation of his property, if he had any. After Cyriacus arrived Eulysius, bishop of Apamea in Bithynia, bringing a letter from fifteen of the forty friendly bishops, which described all the past and present distress of the Church caused by Chrysostom’s enemies, and in all respects confirmed the oral account of Cyriacus. In the course of another month, Palladius, bishop of Hellenopolis, fled to Rome from the intolerable harshness of magisterial decrees, which now subjected to confiscation the house of any one who should be found to have harboured bishop, priest, or even layman, who communicated with Chrysostom. From a letter of Chrysostom608 it appears that Palladius and many others lived for some time in concealment at Constantinople, in the hope of escaping persecution. They were courteously lodged in Rome by one Pinianus and his wife, by Juliana, Proba, and other Roman ladies, whom Chrysostom warmly thanks for their kindness in letters written by him from Cucusus.609 Germanus the priest, and Cassian the deacon, custodians of the Church treasury at Constantinople, also came to Rome, bringing a letter from the whole body of the clergy who adhered to Chrysostom, describing the violent deposition and expulsion of the Archbishop, and the tyranny of their adversaries under which they were now suffering.610

The reply of Innocent to this letter from the clergy of Constantinople is dignified as well as sympathetic. He exhorts, as usual, to patience, and to the derivation of comfort from the remembrance of the sufferings of all God’s saints in past times. But he deeply deplores their wrongs, and again expresses his reprobation in the strongest terms of the illegality of the late proceedings. “The canon which prohibited the ordination of a successor during the lifetime of the reigning bishop had been grossly violated. The Canons of Antioch, on which the synod had relied, were invalid, having been composed by heretics, and they had been rejected by the Council of Sardica. The Canons of Nice alone were entitled to the obedience of the Church; but adversaries and heretics were always attempting to subvert them.”... “What steps, then, should be taken in the existing crisis? Plainly a General Council must be convoked: that was the only means of appeasing the fury of the tempest. He was watching an opportunity to accomplish this: meanwhile, they must wait in patience, and trust the goodness of God for the restoration of tranquillity and good order.”

To Chrysostom Innocent wrote, as friend to friend, as a bishop to a brother bishop, a letter of Christian consolation and encouragement, not entering into the legal questions of the case, and not pledging himself to decisive action of any kind. It was not necessary to remind one, who was himself the teacher and pastor of a great people, that God often tried the best of men, and put their patience to the severest tests, and that they are firmly supported under the greatest calamities by the approving voice of conscience.... A good man may be severely tried, but cannot be overcome, since he is preserved and guarded by the truth of Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture supplied abundant examples of suffering saints who did not receive their crowns until they had undergone the heaviest trials with patience. “Take courage, then, honoured brother, from the testimony of conscience. When you have been purified by affliction, you will enter into the haven of peace in the presence of Christ our Lord.”611

Innocent, however, not only wrote commonplace letters of condolence, but exerted himself to obtain the council which he had recommended to the Church of Constantinople as the only means of redressing her wrongs. He wrote a letter to Honorius, then at Ravenna, representing the lamentable condition of the Church of Constantinople, which elicited from the Emperor an order for the convention of an Italian synod. This synod, after a due consideration of all the circumstances, was to submit its decision and suggestions to himself. The result of the deliberations of the Italian bishops, swayed no doubt by Innocent, was to request the Emperor to write to his brother Arcadius, urging the convocation of a General Council to be held in Thessalonica, which would be a convenient meeting-point for the prelates of East and West. Honorius complied, and the letter was despatched under the care of a deputation from the Italian Church, consisting of five bishops, two priests, and a deacon. The Emperor calls it the third letter612 which he had written relative to the affairs of Constantinople. He professes great solicitude for the peace of the Church, “on which,” he observes, “the peace of our Empire depends;” and with a view to this object, he urges the convocation of a council at Thessalonica, and specially entreats that the attendance of Theophilus, who was, he is informed, author of all these disturbances, should be insisted upon. He commends the deputation to the honourable care of Arcadius; and that he may know the sentiments of the Italian Church on the present state of affairs, he sends him two letters as samples of many, one from the Bishop of Rome, the other from the Bishop of Aquileia.

The only bishop on the deputation whose see is mentioned was Æmilius, bishop of Beneventum. The Oriental refugees, Cyriacus, Demetrius, Palladius, and Eulysius, accompanied the Italians. They were the bearers not only of letters from Honorius, Innocent, and the bishops Chromatius of Aquileia and Venerius of Milan, but also of a memorial from the Italian synod, which recommended that Chrysostom should be reinstated in his see before he was required to take his trial before a council. He would then, it was observed, have no reasonable excuse for declining to attend it. The deputation was absent four months. On their return the members had a pitiful tale to tell of failure in their errand, and of personal suffering from maltreatment. They touched at Athens on their voyage out, whence they had intended to proceed to Thessalonica, and lay the letters first of all before Anysius, bishop of that place; but at Athens they were arrested by a military officer, who placed them on board two vessels under charge of a centurion, to be conveyed to Constantinople. A furious southerly gale sprang up soon after their departure, and, after a voyage of some danger, they arrived, late on the third day, at the suburb of Constantinople called Victor. But, instead of being allowed to proceed to the city, they were shut up in a fortress named Athyra, on the coast—the Romans in a single chamber, the Orientals in separate apartments. No servant even was permitted to attend them. They were commanded to deliver up the letters which they had brought, but refused, as being ambassadors, to surrender them to any but to the Emperor himself. Secretaries and messengers were sent in succession, but the ambassadors steadfastly adhered to their refusal. The letters were at length wrested from their possession by sheer violence: one bishop’s thumb was broken in the struggle. On the following day a large bribe was offered them if they would recognise Atticus (the aged Arsacius was now dead) as Patriarch, and say no more about the trial of Chrysostom. This base proposal was firmly resisted; and, seeing the utter hopelessness of their mission, they requested to be released as soon as possible, and suffered to return to their dioceses in safety. The Italians saw no more of their companions from the East. They themselves were thrust into a miserable vessel, with twenty soldiers of various grades, and conveyed to Lampsacus, on the Asiatic coast, where they embarked in another vessel, and, after a tedious voyage of twenty days, arrived at Hydruntum, in Calabria.613

Neither the Papacy nor the Empire of the West was sufficiently powerful at this time to insist further upon justice being done to the Patriarch, in the face of the determined animosity of the ruling powers at Constantinople; but the friends of the martyr deemed that they read unequivocal signs of the Divine displeasure in the misfortunes which befell some of Chrysostom’s greatest personal enemies. Thrace and Illyria were ravaged by an incursion of Huns, and the Isaurians, a predatory barbarian race, which inhabited the fastnesses of Mount Taurus, committed fearful havoc in Syria and Asia Minor. Cyrinus, bishop of Chalcedon, one of the four who had taken on them the responsibility of Chrysostom’s condemnation, died in great agony from the wound in his foot, originally caused when his foot had been trodden upon by Bishop Maruthas, more than a year ago, just before the Synod of the Oak. At the end of September, Constantinople was visited by a destructive fall of hailstones of extraordinary size; and on October 6, A.D. 404, died the Empress Eudoxia. Nilus, one of the most eminent anchorites of the day, once prefect of Constantinople, who had abandoned wealth, family, and position for the solitudes of Mount Sinai, addressed two letters of reproof and warning to Arcadius on the iniquitous banishment of Chrysostom and inhuman persecution of his followers. “How can you expect to see Constantinople delivered from visitations of earthquake and fire from Heaven, after the enormities which have there been perpetrated; after crime has been established there by the authority of laws; after the thrice-blessed John, the pillar of the Church, the lamp of truth, the trumpet of Jesus Christ, has been driven from the city? How can I grant my prayers (Arcadius had apparently begged the intercession of the saint to remove the national troubles) to a city stricken by the wrath of God, whose thunder is every moment ready to fall upon her?”614

But human and divine warnings were alike wasted; the enemies of the Patriarch had complete sway over the Court, and suffered it not to swerve from the path of persecution. The Western bishops and presbyters, after the disastrous termination of their embassy to Constantinople, returned home, without honour indeed, but unmolested. Their Eastern colleagues did not escape so easily. They were conveyed to places of exile in the most distant and opposite quarters of the Empire. Cyriacus was confined in a Persian fortress beyond Emessa; Eulysius in Arabia; Palladius on the confines of Ethiopia; Demetrius was to have been confined in one of the Egyptian oases, but died of the harsh treatment to which he was subjected on the journey. The exiles suffered such brutal insults and indignities from the soldiers who conducted them to these places, that the desire of life was extinguished. The little money which they had collected for the expenses of their journey was taken from them by their guards, who divided it among themselves. They were forced to perform in one day the distance of two days’ journey. They were not permitted to enter any churches on their route, but forced into Jewish or Samaritan synagogues, and lodged at night in low inns, where their ears were shocked by the filthy conversation of abandoned characters of both sexes. Yet even some of these degraded people were won to a more respectful behaviour, if not actually converted, by the Christian exhortations and instruction of the captives. The “Word of God was not bound.” Some of the bishops friendly to Theophilus bribed the soldiers to hurry the exiles out of their dioceses as quickly as possible. Distinguished among these malignants were the bishops of Tarsus, Antioch, Ancyra, and of CÆsarea in Palestine. Most of the bishops of Cappadocia, on the other hand, especially Theodorus of Tyana, and Bosporius of Colonia, accorded them a compassionate and courteous reception.615

Arsacius died in November A.D. 404. Out of many ambitious candidates for the vacant throne, Atticus, a presbyter, who had taken an active part in the persecution of Chrysostom, a native of Sebaste in Armenia, was appointed. He was a man of moderate abilities and generally mild disposition, but relentless in his determination to crush out the party of the exiled Patriarch. By his influence an Imperial rescript was obtained, which decreed that “any bishop who did not communicate with Theophilus, Porphyry of Antioch, and Atticus, should be ejected from the Church, and his property confiscated.” The wealthy, for the most part, bowed to the storm; the poor sought peace of body and of conscience in flight either to Rome or monasteries. This rescript, aimed at the bishops, was followed up by another directed against the laity. Any layman who refused to recognise the above-mentioned prelates was, if a civilian, to be deprived of any office which he might hold; if a soldier, of his military girdle; if an artisan, to be heavily fined or banished. Bishops and presbyters were dispersed as fugitives into all parts of the Empire. Some sought retirement in some secluded little country property of their own, and obtained a precarious livelihood by manual labour, farming, or fishing.616

But, in spite of all the various means of coercion at Constantinople, in spite of trials, torture, imprisonment, banishment, the bulk of the people could not be brought to attend the ministration of Atticus and his clergy. Their churches were comparatively empty, while the persecuted adherents of the exile persistently held their services in some sequestered valley, or on some lonely hillside. In fact, persecution, as has always been the case, only intensified the attachment of many to the person and the cause which it was intended to crush, and so far defeated its own object. Chrysostom himself observes,617 that many of those who had enjoyed a high reputation for piety were the first to fall away when brought to the test of persecution; whereas others, who had formerly been abandoned to frivolity and vice, now renounced the theatre and circus, hastened into the desert to attend the assembly of the Catholics at worship, and displayed the greatest fortitude before the judge when brought to trial, in the face of torture, and with the prospect of imprisonment or exile.

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.