ILLNESS OF CHRYSOSTOM—HOMILIES ON FESTIVALS
OF SAINTS AND MARTYRS—CHARACTER OF THESE
FESTIVALS—PILGRIMAGES—RELIQUES—CHARACTER OF PEASANT
CLERGY IN NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ANTIOCH. A.D. 387.
Very probably the physical labour and mental strain which Chrysostom
had undergone during the events recorded in the previous chapter may
have brought on the illness to which he alludes in the homily preached
on the Sunday before Ascension Day.[328] He was prevented by this
attack from taking part in the services which were held some time after
Easter under the conduct of Bishop Flavian at the chapels built over
the remains of martyrs and saints.[329] A variety of homilies delivered
by Chrysostom at such “martyries” on other occasions are extant, and it
may be as well to introduce here such indications as can be collected
from them of the general feeling of the Church, as well as of himself,
with regard to saints, and such kindred subjects as pilgrimages and
reliques.
Churches had in most instances been erected to commemorate the death of
a martyr, or to mark the spot where he died. Tertullian’s saying that
“the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church” thus became verified
in a literal, material sense. Socrates (iv. 23) even speaks of the
churches of St. Paul and St. Peter at Rome as their “martyries,” as
Eusebius[330] also calls the church which Constantine built on Golgotha
the “martyry” of our Saviour. By the age of Chrysostom the festivals
of martyrs and saints had grown so numerous that frequently more than
one occurred in the same week.[331] Good Friday and Ascension Day, and
the Sunday after Whitsun Day (not observed as Trinity Sunday till much
later), were especially dedicated to the commemoration of saints.[332]
The congregation kept a vigil the night before, or very early before
dawn on the Saints’ day itself. The vigil consisted of psalms, hymns,
and prayers, and was followed early in the day by a full service, when,
in addition to the ordinary lessons of the day, the acts or passions
of the saint or martyr were read. St. Augustine permitted his people
to sit during the reading of them because they were often of great
length. Pope Gelasius forbade them to be read because they were so
seldom authentic.[333] The martyries were generally outside the city
walls, not always built over the grave of the saint, but close to it;
in which case the congregation assembled at the grave first, and walked
in procession from it to the church, singing hymns as they went. There
can be no doubt that Chrysostom believed in the intercessory power of
departed saints, and encouraged the invocation of their intercession.
They were nearer to the Divine ear, and by virtue of their glorious
deaths had justly obtained more confidence in making their requests to
God than had the inhabitants of earth. He implores Christians not to
resort for medical assistance to Jews, who were the enemies of Christ,
but to seek aid from His friends the saints and martyrs, who had much
confidence in addressing God.[334] At the close of his homily on the
festival of two soldiers who had been beheaded by Julian for obstinate
adherence to Christianity, he says: “Let us constantly visit them,
touch their shrine, and with faith embrace their reliques, that we may
derive some blessing therefrom; for like soldiers who converse freely
with their sovereign when they display their wounds, so these, bearing
their heads in their hands, are easily able to effect what they desire
at the court of the King of Heaven.”[335] So, again, in the homily on
Bernice and Prosdoke: “Let us fall down before their reliques ... let
us embrace their shrines: not only on their festival, but at other
times, let us resort to them and invoke them to become our protectors;
for they can use much boldness of speech when dead, more, indeed, than
when they were alive, for now they bear in their bodies the marks of
Jesus Christ ... let us therefore procure for ourselves, through them,
favour from God.”[336] Thus the saint is to be appealed to as a kind
of friend at court, who will present petitions, and use his influence
to obtain a favourable answer from the Monarch; but the further step
of invoking saints as the _direct_ dispensers of spiritual and other
benefits had not yet been taken. The feeling of the Church of Smyrna
towards their beloved martyr and bishop Polycarp, as expressed in
A.D. 160 to the Church of Philomelium, still represented the general
state of feeling in the Church.[337] The Jews and other malignants had
suggested, when the remains of Polycarp had been earnestly asked for,
that the Christians intended to worship him; and “this they said, being
ignorant that we should never be able to desert Christ, or worship any
other Being. For Him, being the Son of God, we adore, but the martyrs,
as the disciples and imitators of the Lord, we love with a deserved
affection; desiring to become partners and fellow-disciples with them.”
The language of St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom thoroughly corresponds
to that in the passage just cited. “Our religion,” says Augustine,
“consists not in the worship of dead men; because if they lived piously
they are not considered likely to desire that kind of honour; but would
wish Him to be worshipped by us through whose illumination they rejoice
to have us partners with them in their merit. They are therefore to be
honoured for the sake of imitation, not to be worshipped as a religious
act.”[338] And in another place: “Christian people celebrate the
memory of martyrs with religious solemnity, to stimulate imitation, to
become partners in their merits, and to be assisted by their prayers;
but in doing this we never offer sacrifice to a martyr, but only to
Him who is the God of martyrs.”[339] A multitude of passages might be
cited from Chrysostom’s homilies on Saints’ Festivals, in which he
passionately exhorts to the imitation and emulation of their noble
lives and glorious deaths, and dwells on the great advantages to the
Church arising from these solemn commemorations. The very memory of
the martyrs wrought upon the minds of men in confirming them against
the assaults of wicked spirits, and delivering them from impure and
unseemly thoughts; ... the death of the martyrs was the exhortation
of the faithful, the confidence of Churches, the confirmation of
Christianity, ... the reproach of devils, the condemnation of Satan,
a consolation in affliction, a motive to patience, encouragement to
fortitude, the root, fountain, mother of all which is good.[340]
But if no inculcations to direct worship of saints are to be found in
Chrysostom, it is evident that no small virtue was ascribed by popular
faith (and, in his opinion, justly) to their remains.[341] Miracles
of healing were wrought, or supposed to be wrought, at their tombs;
demons were expelled by the application of their ashes to the persons
possessed. It is obvious that, where such a belief has taken possession
of the popular mind, prayer will very soon be addressed to the saint
for the direct bestowal of those advantages which are supposed to be
derivable from his reliques. Pilgrimages were fashionable in all parts
of Christendom. Prefects and generals, when they visited Rome, hastened
to pay their devotion at the tombs of the tentmaker and fisherman;
journeys were made into Arabia to visit the supposed site of Job’s
dunghill.[342]
Two different causes seem to have led on the mind of the Church to an
increasing veneration of martyrs. First, the Church owed to them a real
debt; the heroic steadfastness of their deaths contributed much to
promote and establish Christianity. Chrysostom observes how the sight
of the aged Ignatius going to die at Rome for his faith—going not only
with calmness, but even with alacrity—mightily confirmed the souls of
the disciples in the several cities through which he passed.[343] “As
irrigation made gardens fruitful, so the blood of martyrs gave drink
to the Churches.”[344] Honour, affection, veneration, easily pass into
actual adoration.
Secondly, there is a natural desire to bridge over the chasm which
divides the human nature from the Divine, and earth from heaven, by
enlisting the agency of some intermediate being. In its earliest
conflicts with heresy, theology was chiefly engaged in zealously
defending the pure divinity of Christ—his co-equal, co-eternal
power and majesty with the Father. The more He was withdrawn into a
less accessible region of exalted deity, the more this need of the
half-deified human interpositor was felt, and worked itself out at last
into a distinct article of faith.
Some of those abuses of saints’ days, which we are apt to associate
more especially with medieval times, were far from uncommon in the days
of Chrysostom. The day which had begun in fasting, and was preceded
by a vigil, too often terminated in a very carnal kind of revelry.
“Ye have turned night into day by your holy vigils: do not turn day
into night by drunkenness, surfeiting, and lascivious songs; let not
any one see you misbehaving in an inn on your return home.”[345] A
custom prevailed of holding a “love-feast,” at or near the tomb of
the saint, which was furnished by the oblations of the wealthier
devotees. Chrysostom on one occasion urges his congregation to attend
such a sacred banquet when they dispersed after service, instead of
hurrying off to the diabolical entertainments at Daphne. The sight
of the martyrs, standing as it were near their table, would prevent
their pleasure from running to excess.[346] But there is abundant
evidence in other contemporary writers that these meetings too often
did degenerate into scenes of mere conviviality and intemperance.
St. Augustine speaks of those who “made themselves drunk at the
commemoration of martyrs.”[347] St. Ambrose prohibited all such feasts
in the churches of Milan; and St. Augustine cited his example to obtain
a similar prohibition from Aurelius, the Primate of Carthage.[348]
St. Basil reprobates a growing custom of trading near the martyries
on festival days, under pretence of making a better provision for the
feasts, to which we may fairly, perhaps, attribute the universal
custom in Christendom of holding fairs on saints’ days.[349] As they
were in medieval times, so in Roman Catholic countries at the present
day, the booths of the fair are in close contiguity with the walls of
the church, and they who attend mass in the morning, as well as those
who do not attend it at all, may disgrace themselves by drunkenness
and all kinds of folly in the evening. Such abuses are an inevitable
consequence of keeping up the observance of days after the real
enthusiasm for the person or cause which they commemorate has begun to
grow, or has altogether grown, cold. Little may ever have been really
known about the saint whose memory is celebrated, and that little
ceases to speak with any meaning to the minds of later generations.
The service, which was once a living reality, becomes a cold and empty
form, or the place of religious enthusiasm is supplied by some form of
sensual excitement. Crowds of peasants will not fail to be attracted to
a church which blazes with thousands of candles arranged in fantastic
patterns, and which rings with noisy sensational music: they probably
place a superstitious faith in the tutelary power of their patron: but
how different is all this from the hearty, genuine, reasonable devotion
of more enlightened worshippers to the Lord Himself, and the less
strong but more real respect and honour paid by such to His day! It is
surely one among many proofs of the deep and lasting hold of Christ’s
character upon the mind of men, of the applicability of its influence
to all times and places, and of its Divine superiority to that of all
His followers, however exalted, that abuses which have accompanied the
commemorations of saints have never extended in the same degree to His
day.[350]
As already remarked, Chrysostom was prevented this year by illness
from attending the festivals of saints and martyrs, which fell very
thickly between Easter and Whitsun Day. He commences his homily
preached on the Sunday before Ascension Day with an allusion to his
recent sickness, and tells his congregation that, though absent in body
from their sacred festivities, he had been present and rejoiced with
them in spirit; and now, though he had not fully recovered his health,
he could not refrain from meeting his beloved and much-longed-for
flock again. He was the more anxious also to occupy his accustomed
place on that day, because large numbers of the rustic population
from the neighbouring country had flocked into the city and attended
the services of the church. They spoke a different dialect, but they
were one with the Christian inhabitants of the town in the soundness
of their faith; and their habits of simple piety, pure morality, and
honourable industry, put to shame the dissolute manners and indolence
which prevailed in the city. Their peasant clergy were a noble race of
men; they might be seen, one while yoking their oxen to the plough,
and marking out furrows in the soil, another while mounting the pulpit
and ploughing the hearts of their flock; now cutting away thorns from
the ground with a sickle, now cleansing men’s minds from sin by their
discourse: for they were not ashamed of hard work, like the people of
the city, but of idleness, knowing that it was idleness which taught
men vice, and had been from the beginning to those who loved it the
schoolmaster of all iniquity. Though little skilled, by training,
in reasoning or rhetoric, they proved more than a match for those
counterfeit philosophers who paraded themselves about the streets with
their professional cloak, staff, and beard, but who could not give
any satisfactory information on the subjects upon which they expended
such a heap of words,—as the immortality of the soul, the creation of
the world, Divine Providence, a future world and judgment. The rustic
pastor, being simply and firmly persuaded of the truth of these things,
could instruct men with clearness and decision about them; he could
give solid matter, the others only polished language, like a man who
should have a sword with a silver ornamented hilt, but a weak blade.
Their wives were not luxurious creatures, covering themselves with
unguents, paints, and dyes, but simple, sober, quiet matrons; which
increased the influence of the pastor over the people committed to his
charge, and caused the precept of St. Paul, “having food and raiment,
let us be therewith content,” to be strictly observed[351] among them.