(A.D. 407.)
[Authorities: Socrates, Sozomen, life by Palladius, and his own
writings, &c.]
John Chrysostom was the son of Secundus, a military officer, born about
347, at Antioch, and on his father's death, soon afterwards, he became
indebted for a careful and Christian training to his pious mother,
Anthusa. He studied rhetoric under the accomplished pagan teacher
Libanius, who afterwards, on being asked to name his own successor,
replied, "John would be the fittest, if the Christians had not stolen
him."
He was baptized by Meletius, patriarch of Antioch; his chief friend was
S. Basil, and Anthusa's earnest pleadings were required to counteract
Basil's proposal that they should both retire into monastic life.
Chrysostom, as we may most conveniently call him, could not resist his
mother's appeal; he continued to live at home, but in the practice of
monastic asceticism and the diligent reading of Scripture. He studied
theology under Diodore, the companion of Flavian, who had been the
champions of orthodoxy against Arianism, first as laymen, and afterwards
as priests, in Antioch. Meletius, who had baptized John Chrysostom, was
himself a confessor. It was probably about 372-374 that Chrysostom and
Basil were spoken of as likely to be made bishops; and Chrysostom, by a
singular artifice--the justification of which forms the least pleasing
portion of his treatise "On the Priesthood,"--procured Basil's
consecration while evading the burden himself.
For several years he carried out the plan which, during his mother's
lifetime he had abandoned, living first in cenobitic "tabernacles," and
afterwards as a hermit in a cave, until his health, never robust, gave
way, and he was obliged to return to Antioch, where he entered the
ministry.
Early in 387, an increase of taxes provoked the people of Antioch to
sedition. They threw down the brazen statues of the Emperor Theodosius,
and his deceased wife, the pious and charitable Flacilla. Flavian, who
had been elected and consecrated patriarch, on the death of Meletius,
set forth a little before Lent, to appease the emperor, and met the
officers of the empire, sent from court to avenge the insult. His
absence was well supplied by Chrysostom, who had recently received
priest's orders, and who began to turn this trouble to account by a
course of "Sermons on the Statues," as they are called. In these he
endeavoured to allay the people's terror, and to convince them of their
besetting sins--of which swearing was the chief--and so far succeeded,
that the churches were thronged all day. The people of Antioch were
pardoned by the emperor at the intercession of the patriarch.
S. Chrysostom had been five years deacon, and twelve years priest, when
Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople died, in 397, after an episcopate
which had relaxed the general tone of the clergy. "Then," says the
biographer of S. Chrysostom, "there came together some who were not
wanted, priests unworthy of the priesthood, besetting the palace gates,
resorting to bribery, falling on their knees even, before the people."
Disgusted by this scandalous eagerness for an office which saints were
wont to dread, the faithful entreated Arcadius, the Emperor, to look out
for one who could administer it worthily. Eutropius, the emperor's
chamberlain, had learned by visiting Antioch to admire the character of
Chrysostom. He made Arcadius write to the military commander at Antioch,
desiring him to send the priest John to Constantinople, without causing
any public excitement. The commander sent a message to Chrysostom,
asking him to meet him "at the Church of the Martyrs, near the Roman
Gate." Chrysostom complied; was placed in a public conveyance, and
hurried away from the scene of his early life and priestly labours.
Several bishops were summoned for the consecration. Theophilus of
Alexandria had come to Constantinople to solicit the appointment for his
priest Isidore. He was required to consecrate Chrysostom, but
endeavoured to withdraw, reading the decision and earnestness of
Chrysostom in his face, and disliking him, for he was a thoroughly
worldly, self-seeking prelate. Eutropius showed him some papers,
however, saying, "Choose between consecrating John, and undergoing a
trial on the charges made against you in these documents." Theophilus
could make no reply. He consecrated Chrysostom on Feb. 26th, A.D. 398;
but he never forgave him for having been the cause of this severe
mortification.
Over a city in which intrigue and adulation were practised as the royal
road to honour, John Chrysostom, straight forward and outspoken, was set
as patriarch. He came to be chief shepherd over a clergy given up to
ease and sycophancy, flattering the rich and powerful, fawning on the
emperor for place, and betraying their charge, the poor.
Chrysostom set to work at once as a reformer of abuses. He forbad the
clergy frequenting the banquets of great men; he struggled against the
practice of entertaining "spiritual sisters." Several clergy were
deprived; Chrysostom drew upon himself the bitter dislike of many
members of their body. He examined the accounts of the church-stewards,
cut off superfluous expenses, and ordered the sum thus saved to be
applied to the maintenance of hospitals. He scrutinized the lives of the
widows receiving pension from the Church; he earnestly besought
contributions to a fund for the poor; he exhorted the faithful to attend
the nocturnal services, but to leave their wives at home with the
children. He rebuked the rich for their pride and selfishness. So great
was the charm of his "golden tongued" eloquence, and of the
unmistakeable nobleness and sincerity of his character, that "the city
put on a new aspect of piety;" and the worship of the Catholics became
more real, and their lives more earnest and pure.
Among those of the higher classes in Constantinople who were offended by
the uncompromising character of their new archbishop, was Eutropius, the
chamberlain, who had raised him to the see. He desired to see the Church
respectable and subservient, the patriarch pious and obedient, to the
state. The Church, in his view, was a portion of the state organization,
the clergy the moral police, always to be under the direction of the
crown. But under Chrysostom's government it was becoming unmanageable
and independent. To curtail its liberties, he procured a law to annul
the right of asylum in the churches, which had been growing up during
the century. But he was soon driven himself, by a revolution in the
emperor's counsels, to clasp the altar as the safeguard of his life.
Chrysostom violated the new law in defence of its author; and while
Eutropius lay cowering in the sanctuary, bade the people take home this
new lesson on the vanity of vanities. "The altar," said he, "is more
awful than ever, now that it holds the lion chained." He called on his
hearers to beg the emperor's clemency, or rather, to ask the God of
mercy to save Eutropius from threatened death, and enable him to put
away his many crimes. He bravely withstood the court in the cause of
Christian humanity; but Eutropius himself quitted the church, and was
condemned to exile.
At this time the Origenist controversy was raging with great acrimony.
It is difficult to pronounce an opinion upon it. Origen had
unquestionably published some heretical opinions, but some were also
attributed to him which he did not hold. Theophilus of Alexandria had
leaned strongly towards the Origenists, but he was not a man of
principle, and he adopted that view which suited his purposes at the
time. Finding it would answer his ends better to oppose Origenism, he
denounced it in his Paschal letters, in 401. The monks and hermits of
Egypt had been regarded with an evil eye by heathens, Arians, and
insincere Christians. All the learned, the philosophers, and men of
letters, among the pagans, were emulous in their protest. The
impassioned activity of the monks against idolatry, their efforts, more
and more successful, to extirpate it from the heart of the rural
population, naturally exasperated the last defenders of the idols. The
Arians were still more implacable than the Pagans. The tendency of these
enemies of the Divinity of Christ was in everything to abuse, degrade,
and restrain the spirit of Christianity. How should the monastic life,
which was its most magnificent development escape their fury? The war
between them and the monks was therefore long and cruel. The persecution
which Paganism had scarcely time to light up to its own advantage under
Julian, was pitiless under the Arian Constantius, and more skilful,
without being more successful, under the Arian Valens. In the time of
Constantius, entire monasteries, with the monks they contained, were
burnt in Egypt, and in the frightful persecution under the Arian
patriarch Lucius, raised in Alexandria, a troop of imperial soldiers
ravaged the solitude of Nitria, and massacred its inhabitants. And now
Lucius was succeeded by the worldly, ambitious, and utterly unspiritual
Theophilus, who hated the poor monks of the desert as a living reproach
upon his own self-seeking, and his aim to accommodate Christianity to
worldliness. He soon quarrelled with S. Isidore the hospitaller, who had
suffered under the Arian Lucius, and whom he now drove from Alexandria,
hating him, as those holding to mammon always will hate those who hold
to Christ. Isidore fled to Nitria. Theophilus brought the charge of
Origenism against the monks there. The chief Nitrian monks were
Dioscorus, Bishop of Nitria, Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius; they
were known as the "Tall Brothers." Theophilus ordered them to be
expelled; when they came to remonstrate, his eyes flashed, his face
became livid, he threw his episcopal pall round the neck of Ammonius,
struck him on the face with open palm and clenched fist, and cried,
"Heretic, anathematize Origen!" They returned to Nitria; the patriarch,
in a synod, condemned them unheard, and proceeded by night to attack
their monasteries, at the head of a drunken band. Dioscorus was dragged
from his throne; the cells of the other three were burned, together with
copies of both Testaments, and even the reserved portions of the Holy
Eucharist. It was said that a boy perished in the flames. The brothers,
with many of their companions, fled to Scythopolis in Palestine, hoping
to support themselves in a place famous for palms, by their occupation
of weaving palm-baskets. The enmity of Theophilus hunted them out of
this refuge; they reached Constantinople, and fell at Chrysostom's feet,
"Who is it," asked he with tears, "that has injured you?" They answered,
"Pope Theophilus; prevail upon him, father, to let us live in Egypt, for
we have never done aught against him or against our Saviour's law."
He lodged them in the church called Anastasia; allowed them to attend
the service, but prudently, to avoid, if possible, a breach with their
persecutor, debarred them from the communion. They had been condemned by
their own patriarch, and it was not for him to admit them to communion
without a fair investigation and authoritative exculpation. He wrote to
Theophilus, in the tone of a "son and brother," praying him to be
reconciled to the fugitives; but Theophilus, who disclaimed his right to
interfere, defamed them as sorcerers and heretics. The Tall Brothers now
appealed to the emperor and empress, who ordered Theophilus to be
summoned, and the accusations against the brothers made by him to be
examined. The accusations were soon proved to be groundless. Theophilus,
who openly said he was "going to court in order to depose John," arrived
in Constantinople in June, 402, with a load of gifts for the emperor,
the empress, and the court, from Egypt and India. He at once assumed a
tone of contumelious hostility towards S. Chrysostom. He would not visit
or speak to him; he even abstained from entering the church.
While Chrysostom declined to hear judicially the complaints of the Tall
Brothers, Theophilus was concocting a scheme for his deposition. All the
courtiers among the bishops, and the worldly among the clergy desired
it, for their tempers rebelled against godly discipline, and the example
of his own self-denial was a standing protest against their
self-indulgence. Acacius, Bishop of Berrhoea, had been provided with so
homely a lodging by Chrysostom that he joined the malcontents, venting
his spleen in the curious menace, "I will cook a dish for him!" Eudoxia,
the empress, who had heard of a sermon in which Chrysostom had lashed
the pride of women, took the side of his enemies, who determined to hold
a council at a suburb of Chalcedon, called "The Oak." The bishops who
attended were thirty-six. Twenty-nine charges were advanced against the
patriarch. Some were of open violence; that he had beaten and chained a
monk, had struck a man in church so as to draw blood, and then had
offered the sacrifice. Others were of evil speaking; he had said his
clergy "were not worth three-pence;" he had accused three deacons of
having stolen his pall. He was also charged with misconduct in his
office; he sold church furniture, had been careless in conferring
orders; he was unsociable, gave women private interviews, was irreverent
in church, and ate wafers while sitting on his throne. Some of these
charges were gross exaggerations of that plain-spoken severity which
knew no respect of persons. Others were inventions more or less
malignant. One of the basest was the charge about disposing of church
ornaments. Like other saints, he had done so for the sake of the
suffering poor.
While these charges were being read at the Oak, he sat in his palace
with forty bishops, and consoled them by quoting texts of Scripture. "I
am now ready to be offered. Do not weep and break my heart! To me to
live is Christ, and to die is gain."
Now entered two young bishops from the council at the Oak citing "John"
to appear, with other clergy. The forty bishops sent a deputation to
remonstrate with Theophilus. Chrysostom, for himself, sent word that he
objected to Theophilus and three others as disqualified, by avowed
hostility, to be his judges. A bishop, named Isaac, produced a new list
of charges, three of which were remarkable. He had used strong language
about fervour of rapturous devotion. He had been emphatic in his
assurances of Divine long-suffering. This was denounced as an
encouragement of sinners in their sins; but it was forgotten that he had
warned men against presuming thereon. "He had eaten before administering
baptism," that is the Paschal baptism which was followed immediately by
a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and which therefore implied
non-fasting performance of the sacrifice; and "he had given the
Eucharist to persons who were not fasting;" two charges which he
vehemently denied. "If I have done this, may my name be effaced from the
roll of bishops," he said. The council pronounced him contumacious, and
deposed him, requesting the emperor, Arcadius, also to punish him for
insolence towards Eudoxia. This was in 403.
Appealing in vain to a more just tribunal, Chrysostom was dragged from
his church, and hurried by night into Bithynia. That night an earthquake
shook the palace; Eudoxia, frightened at the omen, wrote to the exile,
entreating him to return. He was escorted to the city by a joyous
multitude, bearing tapers and chanting psalms, who forced him, in spite
of the irregularity of such a proceeding, to ascend his throne, before
the sentence of the council of the Oak could be annulled. This was,
however, speedily done by a synod of sixty bishops; the hostile assembly
could not stand its ground, and Theophilus, after meanly forcing the two
surviving brothers, on the ground of their monastic obedience, to ask
his pardon, consulted his safety by flight to Alexandria.
New troubles soon began. In September of the same year 403, a silver
statue of the Empress Eudoxia was erected near the cathedral, and the
Manichean governor of the city encouraged wild and heathenish dancing in
its honour, which interrupted the church service. Chrysostom spoke
strongly on the subject, and was said to have begun a sermon with the
words, "Again Herodias rages, again she demands the head of John." The
foes of the archbishop seized the opportunity. His old enemy Theophilus
sent three bishops to Constantinople. The feeble Emperor Arcadius was
persuaded to order that Chrysostom should be refused the use of the
churches. Easter-eve came, April 16. Arcadius said to the chief
adversaries of Chrysostom, "See to it, that you are not giving me wrong
counsel." "On our heads," they answered, "be the deposition of John!"
One of the forty faithful bishops bade the haughty empress fear God, and
have pity on her own children. As the churches were closed to S. John
Chrysostom, he held the solemn services of the day in the Baths of
Constantine. Thither the people thronged, abandoning the churches. The
courtier bishops complained, and it was resolved to break up this
assembly. A band of soldiers was sent together with four hundred
barbarian recruits to clear the bath, about 9 p.m. They pressed onwards
to the font, dispersed the catechumens, for on that day it was customary
to baptize great numbers, struck the priests on the head until their
blood was mingled with the baptismal water, rushed up to the altar where
the sacred Body and Blood were reserved for communicating the newly
baptized, and overthrew them, so that as S. Chrysostom says in his
letter to Pope Innocent of Rome, "the most holy Blood of Christ, as
might be expected in so great a tumult, was spilled on the clothes of
the soldiers." Thus were the Arian horrors renewed. On Easter-day,
Arcadius, riding out of the city, saw some three thousand newly baptized
in their white robes. "Who are those persons?" he asked. "They are
heretics," was the answer; and a new onslaught was made upon them.
During the paschal season, those who would not disown S. Chrysostom were
cast into prison. Within the churches, instead of the joyful worship of
the season, were heard the sounds of torture, and the terrible oaths by
which men were commanded to anathematize the archbishop. His life was
twice attempted; his people guarded his house; he wrote an account of
what had happened to the Bishops of Rome, Milan and Aquileia. Pope
Innocent, who had already heard Theophilus' version of the story,
continued his communion for the present to both parties, but summoned
Theophilus to attend a council.
Towards the end of Whitsun-week, Arcadius was prevailed upon to send
another mandate to Chrysostom--"Commend your affairs to God, and
depart." Chrysostom was persuaded to depart secretly; he called his
friends to prayer; kissed them, bade farewell in the baptistry to the
deaconesses, and desired them to submit to a new bishop, if he were
ordained without having solicited the see. "The Church cannot be without
a bishop." Whilst the people waited for him to mount his horse at the
great western door, he went out at the eastern; repeating to himself the
words of Job, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked I return
thither!"
This was his final expulsion, June 20th, 404; he crossed over to
Bithynia, while a fire broke out which consumed the cathedral and the
palace of the senate. Some ascribed it to incendiaries; others called it
a sign of divine wrath. Several of Chrysostom's friends, the
"Joannites," as they were called, were cruelly treated, as if guilty of
the fire.[126]
The place of his exile was Cucusus, in Armenia; and there, after a
journey, the pain of which was only alleviated by marks of sympathy and
reverence, he arrived in the middle of September. The bishop of Cucusus
offered to resign his see in his favour; and Dioscorus, a man of rank,
entreated him as a favour to occupy his own house, which he fitted up
for the exile's convenience, with a liberality against which Chrysostom
writes, "I am continually exclaiming." Very soon after he reached
Cucusus, the Empress Eudoxia bore a dead child and expired.
Pope Innocent wrote to the exile, exhorting him to patience by
Scriptural examples. "A good man can be exercised, but he cannot be
overcome, while the Divine Scriptures fortify his mind. Venerable
brother, let your conscience comfort you." He also wrote to the clergy
and laity of Constantinople, declaring his intention of holding a
General Council for the composing of these miserable quarrels.
The saintly exile in Cucusus, while suffering from illness and intense
cold, and in constant peril from freebooters, continued to discharge the
office of a good shepherd. He wrote letter after letter to the faithful
lady Olympias in Constantinople, exhorting her to remember that the only
trial really terrible was sin. He lamented that faithful bishops were
suffering for adherence to his communion; he exhorted them and their
clergy to be of good courage. His pastoral thoughtfulness extended far
beyond a merely general care for his brethren's welfare. We find him
rebuking two priests of Constantinople, one of whom had only preached
five times between his expulsion and October, while the other had not
preached once; setting on foot a mission to the pagans of Phoenicia;
anxious to have a good bishop consecrated for the Goths; drawing tighter
the old ties which bound him to the clergy of Antioch, and employing
part of his friend's contributions in the redemption of captives, and
the relief of the poor.
Pope Innocent now boldly espoused his cause, as that of a confessor for
righteousness' sake. He assembled a synod, and persuaded Honorius,
Emperor of the West, who had already remonstrated with Arcadius, Emperor
of the East, to write in a more peremptory tone, demanding a council at
Thessalonica, and pointing out Theophilus of Alexandria as the reputed
author of the present evils.
Towards the end of the year, the furious incursions of the Isaurian
robbers, filling the country with rapine and bloodshed, compelled S.
Chrysostom to take shelter in the castle of Arabiscus. The winter was
again a time of discomfort; he could not obtain a sufficiency of
medicines; and the snow-drifts prevented him from receiving his friend's
letters. About this time the western delegates sent from Rome with four
eastern bishops who had gone thither to plead the cause of Chrysostom,
were intercepted on their way to Constantinople, and confined in a
fortress, their credentials were violently wrung from them, and instead
of being allowed to see Arcadius, the westerns were sent back to Italy,
the easterns banished to the frontiers of the empire. On their way they
were cruelly harassed, robbed of their money, wearied by prolonged days'
journeys, and compelled to lodge in the lowest haunts of profligacy. One
of them consoled his brethren by observing that their presence recalled
the wretched women to thoughts of God, which might result in their
salvation, and His glory. That the persecution was in great measure a
systematic revenge on Chrysostom as the representative of clerical
strictness, is evidenced by such a fact as that a venerable man named
Hilary was scourged, not by a judge, but by the clergy. Chrysostom wrote
to thank his western friends for their sympathy, and sent a second
letter to Pope Innocent, assuring him that "in the third year of exile,
amid famine, pestilence, war, sieges, indescribable solitude, and daily
peril from Isaurian swords, he was greatly consoled and delighted by
Innocent's genuine, stedfast, and abundant charity."
The winter of 406-7 was severe, but Chrysostom preserved his health by
never stirring out of a close and well-warmed chamber. In the summer his
enemies, dreading his influence on the people of Antioch, who went to
visit him, procured an order for his removal to Pityus on the shores of
the Black Sea, the last fortress of the empire. His guards were ordered
to exhaust him by long journeys. Through scorching heat and drenching
rains, he was hurried on, and never allowed the refreshment of the bath;
one only of the guards being disposed to show him furtive kindnesses.
For three months this painful journey lasted; at length they halted at
the Church of S. Basiliscus, a short distance from Comana, in Pontus.
That night, the sufferer had a foreboding that his release was at hand.
The martyr Basiliscus appeared to him and said, "Courage, brother John,
tomorrow we shall be together." In the morning, Sept 14, 407, he begged
to be allowed to stay in the church until eleven o'clock in the
forenoon. It could not be; he was forced to proceed, but after
travelling about four miles, he was so evidently dying, that they
returned to the church. There he asked for white garments, and exchanged
for them those which he wore. He was still fasting; he received the Holy
Communion, doubtless from the priest of the church, offered up his last
prayer, added his usual thanksgiving, "Glory to God for all things," and
sealed it with a final, Amen. "Then he stretched out his feet, which had
run so beauteously for the salvation of the penitent, and the rebuke of
the habitual sinners," and calmly expired, in about the sixtieth year of
his age, and in the tenth of his episcopate. He was buried beside the
martyr Basiliscus, the funeral being attended by a throng of virgins and
monks from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus, and Armenia. No comment on his
glorious life could be so expressive as the doxology with which it
closed, and which, gathering into one view all its contrasts, recognised
not only in success and honour, but in cruel outrage, and homeless
desolation, the gracious presence of a never-changing Love.[127]