CHAP. and merit of A. 398, 26. After the death of the indolent Nectarius, the successor of Gregory Nazianzen, the church of ConElection stantinople was distracted by the ambition of rival Chrysostom, candidates, who were not ashamed to solicit, with Feb. 23, gold or flattery, the suffrage of the people, or of the favourite. On this occasion, Eutropius seems to have deviated from his ordinary maxims; and his uncorrupted judgment was determined only by the superior merit of a stranger. In a late journey into the East, he had admired the sermons of John, a native and presbyter of Antioch, whose name has been distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth. A private order was despatched to the governor of Syria; and as the people might be unwilling to resign their favourite preacher, he was transported with speed and secrecy in a postchariot, from Antioch to Constantinople. The unanimous and unsolicited consent of the court, the clergy, and the people, ratified the choice of the minister; and, both as a saint and an orator, the new archbishop surpassed the sanguine expectations of the public. Born of a noble and opulent family, in the capital of Syria, Chrysostom had been educated by the care of a tender mother, under the tuition of the most skilful masters. He studied the art of rhetoric in the school of Libanius; and that celebrated sophist, who soon discovered the talents of his disciple, ingenuously confessed, that John would have deserved to succeed him, had he not been stolen away by the Christians. His piety soon disposed him to receive the sacrament of baptism; to renounce the lucrative and honourable profession of the law, and to bury himself in the adjacent desert. The authority of Maletius devoted his talents to the service of the church: but in the midst of his family, and afterwards on the archiepiscopal throne, Chrysostom still XXVI. persevered in the practice of the monastic virtues. CHAP. The ample revenues, which his predecessors had consumed in pomp and luxury, he diligently applied to the establishment of hospitals; and the multitudes, who were supported by his charity, preferred the eloquent and edifying discourses of their archbishop, to the amusements of the theatre or the circus. The monuments of that eloquence, which was admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constantinople, have been carefully preserved; and the possession of near one thousand sermons, or homilies, has authorised the critics of succeeding times to appreciate the genuine merit of Chrysostom. They unanimously attribute to the Christian orator the free command of an elegant and copious language; the judgment to conceal the advantages which he derived from the knowledge of rhetoric and philosophy; an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, of ideas and images, to vary and illustrate the most familiar topics; the happy art of engaging the passions in the service of virtue; and of exposing the folly, as well as the turpitude, of vice, almost with the truth and spirit of a dramatic representation. nistration -403. The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Con- His admistantinople provoked, and gradually united against and defects, him, two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who A. D. 398 envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered, from the pulpit of St. Sophia, against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding, or even marking, the character of any individual. When he declaimed against the peculiar vices of the rich, poverty might obtain a transient consolation from his invectives: but the guilty were still sheltered by their numbers; and the reproach itself was dignified by some ideas of superiority, and enjoyment. But as the pyramid rose towards the summit, it insensibly XXVI. diminished to a point; and the magistrates, the ministers, the favourite eunuchs, the ladies of the court, the empress Eudoxia herself, had a much larger share of guilt, to divide among a smaller proportion of criminals. The personal applications of the audience were anticipated, or confirmed, by the testimony of their own conscience; and the intrepid preacher assumed the dangerous right of exposing both the offence, and the offender, to the public abhorrence. The secret resentment of the court encouraged the discontent of the clergy and monks of Constantinople, who were too hastily reformed by the fervent zeal of their archbishop. He had condemned, from the pulpit, the domestic females of the clergy of Constantinople, who, under the names of servants, or sisters, afforded a perpetual occasion either of sin, or of scandal. The silent and solitary ascetics, who had secluded themselves from the world, were intitled to the warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatised, as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd of degenerate monks, who, from some unworthy motives of pleasure or profit, so frequently infested the streets of the capital. To the voice of persuasion, the archbishop was obliged to add the terrors of authority; and his ardour, in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was not always exempt from passion; nor was it always guided by prudence. Chrysostom was naturally of a choleric disposition; and his sentiments were sometimes delivered with too much energy of countenance and expression. He still maintained, from some considerations of health, or abstinence, his former habits of taking his repasts alone; and this inhospitable custom, which his enemies imputed to pride, contributed, at least, to nourish the infirmity of a morose and unsocial humour. Separated from that XXVI. familiar intercourse, which facilitates the knowledge CHAP. and the despatch of business, he reposed an unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion; and seldom applied his speculative knowledge of human nature to the particular characters, either of his dependents, or of his equals. Conscious of the purity of his intentions, and perhaps of the superiority of his genius, the archbishop of Constantinople extended the jurisdiction of the Imperial city, that he might enlarge the sphere of his pastoral labours; and the conduct which the profane imputed to an ambitious motive, appeared to Chrysostom himself in the light of a sacred and indispensable duty. In his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia; and indiscreetly declared, that a deep corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected the whole episcopal order. If those bishops were innocent, such a rash and unjust condemnation must excite a well-grounded disconIf they were guilty, the numerous associates of their guilt would soon discover, that their own safety depended on the ruin of the archbishop; whom they studied to represent as the tyrant of the Eastern church. tent. cuted by Eudoxia, This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by Chrysostom Theophilus, archbishop of Alexandria, an active and is perseambitious prelate, who displayed the fruits of rapine the empress in monuments of ostentation. His national dislike A. D. 403. to the rising greatness of a city, which degraded him from the second to the third rank in the Christian world, was exasperated by some personal disputes with Chrysostom himself. By the private invitation of the empress, Theophilus landed at Constantinople, with a stout body of Egyptian mariners, to encounter the populace; and a train of dependent bishops, to secure, by their voices, the majority of a synod. The synod was convened in the suburb of Chalcedon, XXVI. CHAP. surnamed the Oak, where Rufinus had erected at stately church and monastery; and their proceedings were continued during fourteen days, or sessions. A bishop and a deacon accused the archbishop of Constantinople; but the frivolous or improbable nature. of the forty-seven articles which they presented against him, may justly be considered as a fair and unexceptionable panegyric. Four successive summons were signified to Chrysostom; but he still refused to trust either his person, or his reputation, in the hands of his implacable enemies, who, prudently declining the examination of any particular charges, condemned his contumacious disobedience, and hastily pronounced a sentence of deposition. The synod of the Oak immediately addressed the emperor to ratify and execute their judgment, and charitably insinuated, that the penalties of treason might be inflicted on the audacious preacher, who had reviled, under the name of Jezebel, the empress Eudoxia herself. The archbishop was rudely arrested, and conducted through the city, by one of the Imperial messengers, who landed him, after a short navigation, near the entrance of the Euxine; from whence, before the expiration of two days, he was gloriously recalled. Popular tumults at nople. The first astonishment of his faithful people had Constanti- been mute and passive: they suddenly rose with unanimous and irresistible fury. Theophilus escaped; but the promiscuous crowd of monks and Egyptian mariners were slaughtered without pity in the streets of Constantinople. A seasonable earthquake justified the interposition of heaven; the torrent of sedition rolled forwards to the gates of the palace; and the empress, agitated by fear or remorse, threw herself at the feet of Arcadius, and confessed, that the public safety could be purchased only by the restoration of Chrysostom. The Bosphorus was covered with |