amid exhausting studies on root dinners and ascetic severities? He was
obliged to leave his cave, where he had dwelt six blessed years; and the
bishop of Antioch, who knew his merits, pressed him into the active
service of the Church, and ordained him deacon,--for the hierarchy of
the Church was then established, whatever may have been the original
distinctions of the clergy. With these we have nothing to do. But it
does not appear that he preached as yet to the people, but performed
like other deacons the humble office of reader, leaving to priests and
bishops the higher duties of a public teacher. It was impossible,
however, for a man of his piety and his gifts, his melodious voice, his
extensive learning, and his impressive manners long to remain in a
subordinate post. He was accordingly ordained a presbyter, A.D. 381, by
Bishop Flavian, in the spacious basilica of Antioch, and the active
labors of his life began at the age of thirty-four.
Many were the priests associated with him in that great central
metropolitan church; "but upon him was laid the duty of especially
preaching to the people,--the most important function recognized by the
early Church. He generally preached twice in the week, on Saturday and
Sunday mornings, often at break of day, in consequence of the heat of
the sun. And such was his popularity and unrivalled power, that the
bishop, it is said, often allowed him to finish what he had himself
begun. His listeners would crowd around his pulpit, and even interrupt
his teachings by their applause. They were unwearied, though they stood
generally beyond an hour. His elocution, his gestures, and his matter
were alike enchanting." Like Bernard, his very voice would melt to
tears. It was music singing divine philosophy; it was harmony clothing
the richest moral wisdom with the most glowing style. Never, since the
palmy days of Greece, had her astonishing language been wielded by such
a master. He was an artist, if sacred eloquence does not disdain that
word. The people were electrified by the invectives of an Athenian
orator, and moved by the exhortations of a Christian apostle. In majesty
and solemnity the ascetic preacher was a Jewish prophet delivering to
kings the unwelcome messages of divine Omnipotence. In grace of manner
and elegance of language he was the persuasive advocate of the ancient
Forum; in earnestness and unction he has been rivalled only by
Savonarola; in dignity and learning he may remind us of Bossuet; in his
simplicity and orthodoxy he was the worthy successor of him who preached
at the day of Pentecost. He realized the perfection which sacred
eloquence attained, but to which Pagan art has vainly aspired,--a charm
and a wonder to both learned and unlearned,--the precursor of the
Bourdaloues and Lacordaires of the Roman Catholic Church, but especially
the model for "all preachers who set above all worldly wisdom those
divine revelations which alone can save the world."
Everything combined to make Chrysostom the pride and the glory of the
ancient Church,--the doctrines which he did not hesitate to proclaim to
unwilling ears, and the matchless manner in which he enforced
them,--perhaps the most remarkable preacher, on the whole, that ever
swayed an audience; uniting all things,--voice, language, figure,
passion, learning, taste, art, piety, occasion, motive, prestige, and
material to work upon. He left to posterity more than a thousand
sermons, and the printed edition of all his works numbers twelve folio
volumes. Much as we are inclined to underrate the genius and learning of
other days in this our age of more advanced utilities, of progressive
and ever-developing civilization,--when Sabbath-school children know
more than sages knew two thousand years ago, and socialistic
philanthropists and scientific _savans_ could put to blush Moses and
Solomon and David, to say nothing of Paul and Peter, and other reputed
oracles of the ancient world, inasmuch as they were so weak and
credulous as to believe in miracles, and a special Providence, and a
personal God,--yet we find in the sermons of Chrysostom, preached even
to voluptuous Syrians, no commonplace exhortations, such as we sometimes
hear addressed to the thinkers of this generation, when poverty of
thought is hidden in pretty expressions, and the waters of life are
measured out in tiny gill cups, and even then diluted by weak platitudes
to suit the taste of the languid and bedizened and frivolous slaves of
society, whose only intellectual struggle is to reconcile the pleasures
of material and sensual life with the joys and glories of the world to
come. He dwelt, boldly and earnestly, and with masculine power, on the
majesty of God and the comparative littleness of man, on moral
accountability to Him, on human degeneracy, on the mysterious power of
evil, by force of which good people in this dispensation are in a small
minority, on the certainty of future retribution; yet also on the
never-fading glories of immortality which Christ has brought to light by
his sufferings and death, his glorious resurrection and ascension, and
the promised influences of the Holy Spirit. These truths, so solemn and
so grand, he preached, not with tricks of rhetoric, but simply and
urgently, as an ambassador of Heaven to lost and guilty man. And can you
wonder at the effect? When preachers throw themselves on the cardinal
truths of Christianity, and preach with earnestness as if they believed
them, they carry the people with them, producing a lasting impression,
and growing broader and more dignified every day. When they seek
novelties, and appeal purely to the intellect, or attempt to be
philosophical or learned, they fail, whatever their talents. It is the
divine truth which saves, not genius and learning,--especially the
masses, and even the learned and rich, when their eyes are opened to the
delusions of life.
For twelve years Chrysostom preached at Antioch, the oracle and the
friend of all classes whether high or low, rich or poor, so that he
became a great moral force, and his fame extended to all parts of the
Empire. Senators and generals and governors came to hear his eloquence.
And when, to his vast gifts, he added the graces and virtues of the
humblest of his flock,--parting with a splendid patrimony to feed the
hungry and clothe the naked, utterly despising riches except as a means
of usefulness, living most abstemiously, shunning the society of
idolaters, indefatigable in labor, accessible to those who needed
spiritual consolation, healing dissensions, calming mobs, befriending
the persecuted, rebuking sin in high places; a man acquainted with grief
in the midst of intoxicating intellectual triumphs,--reverence and love
were added to admiration, and no limits could be fixed to the moral
influence he exerted.
There are few incidents in his troubled age more impressive than when
this great preacher sheltered Antioch from the vengeance of Theodosius.
That thoughtless and turbulent city had been disgraced by an outrageous
insult to the emperor. A mob, a very common thing in that age, had
rebelled against the majesty of the law, and murdered the officers of
the Government. The anger of Theodosius knew no bounds, but was
fortunately averted by the entreaties of the bishop, and the emperor
abstained from inflicting on the guilty city the punishment he
afterwards sent upon Thessalonica for a less crime. Moreover the
repentance of the people was open and profound. Chrysostom had moved and
melted them. It was the season of Lent. Every day the vast church was
crowded. The shops were closed; the Forum was deserted; the theatre was
shut; the entire day was consumed with public prayers; all pleasures
were forsaken; fear and anguish sat on every countenance, as in a
Mediaeval city after an excommunication. Chrysostom improved the
occasion; and perhaps the most remarkable Lenten sermons ever preached,
subdued the fierce spirits of the city, and Antioch was saved. It was
certainly a sublime spectacle to see a simple priest, unclothed even
with episcopal functions, surrounded for weeks by the entire population
of a great city, ready to obey his word, and looking to him alone as
their deliverer from temporal calamities, as well as their guide in
fleeing from the wrath to come.
And here we have a noted example of the power as well as the dignity of
the pulpit,--a power which never passed away even in ages of
superstition, never disdained by abbots or prelates or popes in the
plenitude of their secular magnificence (as we know from the sermons of
Gregory and Bernard); a sacred force even in the hands of monks, as when
Savonarola ruled the city of Florence, and Bourdaloue awed the court of
France; but a still greater force among the Reformers, like Luther and
Knox and Latimer, yea in all the crises and changes of both the Catholic
and Protestant churches; and not to be disdained even in our utilitarian
times, when from more than two hundred thousand pulpits in various
countries of Christendom, every Sunday, there go forth voices, weak or
strong, from gifted or from shallow men, urging upon the people their
duties, and presenting to them the hopes of the life to come. Oh, what a
power is this! How few realize its greatness, as a whole! What a power
it is, even in its weaker forms, when the clergy abdicate their
prerogatives and turn themselves into lecturers, or bury themselves in
liturgies! But when they preach without egotism or vanity, scorning
sensationalism and vulgarity and cant, and falling back on the great
truths which save the world, then sacredness is added to dignity. And
especially when the preacher is fearless and earnest, declaring most
momentous truths, and to people who respond in their hearts to those
truths, who are filled with the same enthusiasm as he is himself, and
who catch eagerly his words of life, and follow his directions as if he
were indeed a messenger of Jehovah,--then I know of no moral power which
can be compared with the pulpit. Worldly men talk of the power of the
press, and it is indeed an influence not to be disdained,--it is a great
leaven; but the teachings of its writers, when not superficial, are
contradictory, and are often mere echoes of public sentiment in
reference to mere passing movements and fashions and politics and
spoils. But the declarations of the clergy, for the most part, are all
in unison, in all the various churches--Catholic and Protestant,
Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist--which accept God
Almighty as the moral governor of the universe, the great master of our
destinies, whose eternal voice speaketh to the conscience of mankind.
And hence their teachings, if they are true to their calling, have
reference to interests and duties and aspirations and hopes as far
removed in importance from mere temporal matters as the heaven is
higher than the earth. Oh, what high treason to the deity whom the
preacher invokes, what stupidity, what frivolity, what insincerity, what
incapacity of realizing what is truly great, when he descends from the
lofty themes of salvation and moral accountability, to dwell on the
platitudes of aesthetic culture, the beauties and glories of Nature, or
the wonders of a material civilization, and then with not half the force
of those books and periodicals which are scattered in every hamlet of
civilized Europe and America!
Now it was to the glory of Chrysostom that he felt the dignity of his
calling and aspired to nothing higher, satisfied with his great
vocation,--a vocation which can never be measured by the lustre of a
church or the wealth of a congregation. Gregory Nazianzen, whether
preaching in his paternal village or in the cathedral of Constantinople,
was equally the creator of those opinion-makers who settle the verdicts
of men. Augustine, in a little African town, wielded ten times the
influence of a bishop of Rome, and his sermons to the people of the town
of Hippo furnished a thesaurus of divinity to the clergy for a
thousand years.
Nevertheless, Antioch was not great enough to hold such a preacher as
Chrysostom. He was summoned by imperial authority to the capital of the
Eastern Empire. One of the ministers of Arcadius, the son of the great
Theodosius, had heard him preach, and greatly admired his eloquence, and
perhaps craved the excitement of his discourses,--as the people of Rome
hankered after the eloquence of Cicero when he was sent into exile.
Chrysostom reluctantly resigned his post in a provincial city to become
the Patriarch of Constantinople. It was a great change in his outward
dignity. His situation as the highest prelate of the East was rarely
conferred except on the favorites of emperors, as the episcopal sees of
Mediaeval Europe were rarely given to men but of noble birth. Yet being
forced, as it were, to accept what he did not seek or perhaps desire, he
resolved to be true to himself and his master. Scarcely was he
consecrated by Theophilus of Alexandria before he launched out his
indignant invectives against the patron who had elevated him, the court
which admired him, and the imperial family which sustained him. Still
the preacher, when raised to the government of the Eastern church,
regarding his sphere in the pulpit as the loftiest which mortal genius
could fill. He feared no one, and he spared no one. None could rob a man
who had parted with a princely fortune for the sake of Christ; none
could bribe a man who had no favors to ask, and who could live on a
crust of bread; none could silence a man who felt himself to be the
minister of divine Omnipotence, and who scattered before his altar the
dust of worldly grandeur.
It seems that Chrysostom regarded his first duty, even as the
Metropolitan of the East, to preach the gospel. He subordinated the
bishop to the preacher. True, he was the almoner of his church and the
director of its revenues; but he felt that the church of Christ had a
higher vocation for a bishop to fill than to be a good business man.
Amid all the distractions of his great office he preached as often and
as fervently as he did at Antioch. Though possessed of enormous
revenues, he curtailed the expenses of his household, and surrounded
himself with the pious and the learned. He lived retired within his
palace; he dined alone on simple food, and always at home. The great
were displeased that he would not honor with his presence their
sumptuous banquets; but rich dinners did not agree with his weak
digestion, and perhaps he valued too highly his precious time to waste
himself, body and soul, for the enjoyment of even admiring courtiers.
His power was not at the dinner-table but in the pulpit, and he feared
to weaken the effects of his discourses by the exhibition of weaknesses
which nearly every man displays amid the excitements of social
intercourse.
Perhaps, however, Chrysostom was too ascetic. Christ dined with
publicans and sinners; and a man must unbend somewhere, or he loses the
elasticity of his mind, and becomes a formula or a mechanism. The
convivial enjoyments of Luther enabled him to bear his burden. Had
Thomas à Becket shown the same humanity as archbishop that he did as
chancellor, he might not have quarrelled with his royal master. So
Chrysostom might have retained his favor with the court and his see
until he died, had he been less austere and censorious. Yet we should
remember that the asceticism which is so repulsive to us, and with
reason, and which marked the illustrious saints of the fourth century,
was simply the protest against the almost universal materialism of the
day,--that dreadful moral blight which was undermining society. As
luxury and extravagance and material pleasures were the prominent evils
of the old Roman world in its decline, it was natural that the protest
against these evils should assume the greatest outward antagonism.
Luxury and a worldly life were deemed utterly inconsistent with a
preacher of righteousness, and were disdained with haughty scorn by the
prophets of the Lord, as they were by Elijah and Elisha in the days of
Ahab. "What went ye out in the wilderness to see?" said our Lord, with
disdainful irony,--"a man clothed in soft raiment? They that wear soft
clothing are in king's houses,"--as much as to say, My prophets, my
ministers, rejoice not in such things.
So Chrysostom could never forget that he was a minister of Christ, and
was willing to forego the trappings and pleasures of material life
sooner than abdicate his position as a spiritual dictator. The secular
historians of our day would call him arrogant, like the courtiers of
Arcadius, who detested his plain speaking and his austere piety; but the
poor and unimportant thought him as humble as the rich and great thought
him proud. Moreover, he was a foe to idleness, and sent away from court
to their distant sees a host of bishops who wished to bask in the
sunshine of court favor, or revel in the excitements of a great city;
and they became his enemies. He deposed others for simony, and they
became still more hostile. Others again complained that he was
inhospitable, since he would not give up his time to everybody, even
while he scattered his revenues to the poor. And still others
entertained towards him the passion of envy,--that which gives rancor to
the _odium theologicum_, that fatal passion which caused Daniel to be
cast into the lions' den, and Haman to plot the ruin of Mordecai; a
passion which turns beautiful women into serpents, and learned
theologians into fiends. So that even Chrysostom was assailed with
danger. Even he was not too high to fall.
The first to turn against the archbishop was the Lord High
Chamberlain,--Eutropius,--the minister who had brought him to
Constantinople. This vulgar-minded man expected to find in the preacher
he had elevated a flatterer and a tool. He was as much deceived as was
Henry II. when he made Thomas à Becket archbishop of Canterbury. The
rigid and fearless metropolitan, instead of telling stories at his
table and winking at his infamies, openly rebuked his extortions and
exposed his robberies. The disappointed minister of Arcadius then bent
his energies to compass the ruin of the prelate; but, before he could
effect his purpose, he was himself disgraced at court. The army in
revolt had demanded his head, and Eutropius fled to the metropolitan
church of Saint Sophia. Chrysostom seized the occasion to impress his
hearers with the instability of human greatness, and preached a sort of
funeral oration for the man before he was dead. As the fallen and
wretched minister of the emperor lay crouching in an agony of shame and
fear beneath the table of the altar, the preacher burst out: "Oh, vanity
of vanities, where is now the glory of this man? Where the splendor of
the light which surrounded him; where the jubilee of the multitude which
applauded him; where the friends who worshipped his power; where the
incense offered to his image? All gone! It was a dream: it has fled like
a shadow; it has burst like a bubble! Oh, vanity of vanity of vanities!
Write it on all walls and garments and streets and houses: write it on
your consciences. Let every one cry aloud to his neighbor, Behold, all
is vanity! And thou, O wretched man," turning to the fallen chamberlain,
"did I not say unto thee that money is a thankless servant? Said I not
that wealth is a most treacherous friend? The theatre, on which thou
hast bestowed honor, has betrayed thee; the race-course, after
devouring thy gains, has sharpened the sword of those whom thou hast
labored to amuse. But our sanctuary, which thou hast so often assailed,
now opens her bosom to receive thee, and covers thee with her wings."
But even the sacred cathedral did not protect him. He was dragged out
and slain.
A more relentless foe now appeared against the prelate,--no less a
personage than Theophilus, the very bishop who had consecrated him.
Jealousy was the cause, and heresy the pretext,--that most convenient
cry of theologians, often indeed just, as when Bernard accused Abélard,
and Calvin complained of Servetus; but oftener, the most effectual way
of bringing ruin on a hated man, as when the partisans of Alexander VI.
brought Savonarola to the tribunal of the Inquisition. It seems that
Theophilus had driven out of Egypt a body of monks because they would
not assent to the condemnation of Origen's writings; and the poor men,
not knowing where to go, fled to Constantinople and implored the
protection of the Patriarch. He compassionately gave them shelter, and
permission to say their prayers in one of his churches. Therefore he was
a heretic, like them,--a follower of Origen.
Under common circumstances such an accusation would have been treated
with contempt. But, unfortunately, Chrysostom had alienated other
bishops also. Yet their hostility would not have been heeded had not
the empress herself, the beautiful and the artful Eudoxia, sided against
him. This proud, ambitious, pleasure-seeking, malignant princess--in
passion a Jezebel, in policy a Catherine de Medici, in personal
fascination a Mary Queen of Scots--hated the archbishop, as Mary hated
John Knox, because he had ventured to reprove her levities and follies;
and through her influence (and how great is the influence of a beautiful
woman on an irresponsible monarch!) the emperor, a weak man, allowed
Theophilus to summon and preside over a council for the trial of
Chrysostom. It assembled at a place called the Oaks, in the suburbs of
Chalcedon, and was composed entirely of the enemies of the Patriarch.
Nothing, however, was said about his heresy: that charge was ridiculous.
But he was accused of slandering the clergy--he had called them corrupt;
of having neglected the duties of hospitality, for he dined generally
alone; of having used expressions unbecoming of the house of God, for he
was severe and sarcastic; of having encroached on the jurisdiction of
foreign bishops in having shielded a few excommunicated monks; and of
being guilty of high treason, since he had preached against the sins of
the empress. On these charges, which he disdained to answer, and before
a council which he deemed illegal, he was condemned; and the emperor
accepted the sentence, and sent him into exile.
But the people of Constantinople would not let him go. They drove away
his enemies from the city; they raised a sedition and a seasonable
earthquake, as Gibbon might call it, and having excited superstitious
fears, the empress caused him to be recalled. His return, of course, was
a triumph. The people spread their garments in his way, and conducted
him in pomp to his archiepiscopal throne. Sixty bishops assembled and
annulled the sentence of the Council of the Oaks. He was now more
popular and powerful than before. But not more prudent. For a silver
statue of the empress having been erected so near to the cathedral that
the games instituted to its honor disturbed the services of the church,
the bishop in great indignation ascended the pulpit, and declaimed
against female vices. The empress at this was furious, and threatened
another council. Chrysostom, still undaunted, then delivered that
celebrated sermon, commencing thus: "Again Herodias raves; again she
dances; again she demands the head of John in a basin." This defiance,
which was regarded as an insult, closed the career of Chrysostom in the
capital of the Empire. Both the emperor and empress determined to
silence him. A new council was convened, and the Patriarch was accused
of violating the canons of the Church. It seems he ventured to preach
before he was formally restored, and for this technical offence he was
again deposed. No second earthquake or popular sedition saved him. He
had sailed too long against the stream. What genius and what fame can
protect a man who mocks or defies the powers that be, whether kings or
people? If Socrates could not be endured at Athens, if Cicero was
banished from Rome, how could this unarmed priest expect immunity from
the possessors of absolute power whom he had offended? It is the fate of
prophets to be stoned. The bold expounders of unpalatable truth ever
have been martyrs, in some form or other.
But Chrysostom met his fate with fortitude, and the only favor which he
asked was to reside in Cyzicus, near Nicomedia. This was refused, and
the place of his exile was fixed at Cucusus,--a remote and desolate city
amid the ridges of Mount Taurus; a distance of seventy days' journey,
which he was compelled to make in the heat of summer.