preserved the peace of the republic; but the submission of Chrysostom was the indispensable duty of a Christian and a subject. Instead of listening to his humble prayer that he might be permitted to reside at Cyzicus or Nicomedia, the inflexible empress assigned for his exile the remote and desolate town of Cucusus, among the ridges of Mount Taurus, in the Lesser Armenia. A secret hope was entertained that the archbishop might perish in a difficult and dangerous march of seventy days in the heat of summer through the provinces of Asia Minor, where he was continually threatened by the hostile attacks of the Isaurians and the more implacable fury of the monks. Yet Chrysostom arrived in safety at the place of his confinement; and the three years which he spent at Cucusus and the neighbouring town of Arabissus were the last and most glorious of his life. His character was consecrated by absence and persecution; the faults of his administration were no longer remembered; but every tongue repeated the praises of his genius and virtue, and the respectful attention of the Christian world was fixed on a desert spot among the mountains of Taurus. From that solitude the archbishop, whose active mind was invigorated by misfortunes, maintained a strict and frequent correspondence with the most distant provinces; exhorted the separate congregation of his faithful adherents to persevere in their allegiance; urged the destruction of the temples of Phoenicia, and the extirpation of heresy in the isle of Cyprus ; extended his pastoral care to the missions of Persia and Scythia; negotiated, by his ambassadors, with the Roman pontiff and the emperor Honorius; and boldly appealed, from a partial synod, to the supreme tribunal of a free and general council. The mind of the illustrious exile was still independent; but his captive body was exposed to the revenge of the oppressors, who continued to abuse the name and authority of Arcadius.55 An He displays those specious motives (Post Reditum, c. 13, 14) in the language of an orator and a politician. Two hundred and forty-two of the epistles of Chrysostom are still extant (Opera, tom. iii. p. 528-736). They are addressed to a great variety of persons, and show a firmness of mind much superior to that of Cicero in his exile. The fourteenth epistle contains a curious narrative of the dangers of his journey. After the exile of Chrysostom, Theophilus published an enormous and horrible volume against him, in which he perpetually repeats the polite expressions of hostem, humanitatis, sacrilegorum principem, immundum dæmonem; he affirms that John Chrysostom had delivered his soul to be adulterated by the devil; and wishes that some farther punishment, adequate (if possible) to the magnitude of VOL. III.-26 order was dispatched for the instant removal of Chrysostom to the extreme desert of Pityus; and his guards so faithfully obeyed their cruel instructions that, before he reached the seaHis death. coast of the Euxine, he expired at Comana, in Pontus, in the September sixtieth year of his age. The succeeding generation acknow A.D. 407, 14 ledged his innocence and merit. The archbishops of the East, who might blush that their predecessors had been the enemies of Chrysostom, were gradually disposed, by the firmness of the Roman pontiff, to restore the honours of that venerable name." At the pious solicitation of the clergy and people of ConstantiHis relics nople, his relics, thirty years after his death, were transported ported to from their obscure sepulchre to the royal city.57 The emperor nople. Theodosius advanced to receive them as far as Chalcedon; and, January 27 falling prostrate on the coffin, implored, in the name of his guilty parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia, the forgiveness of the injured saint.58 trans Constanti A.D. 438, The death of Ar- A.D. 408, successor. Yet a reasonable doubt may be entertained, whether any stain of hereditary guilt could be derived from Arcadius to his Eudoxia was a young and beautiful woman, who indulged her passions and despised her husband; count John enjoyed, at least, the familiar confidence of the empress; and the public named him as the real father of Theodosius the younger." The birth of a son was accepted, however, by the pious husband, as an event the most fortunate and honourable to himself, to his crimes, may be inflicted on him. St. Jerom, at the request of his friend 56 His name was inserted by his successor Atticus in the Diptychs of the church of Constantinople, A.D. 418. Ten years afterwards he was revered as a saint. Cyril, who inherited the place, and the passions, of his uncle, Theophilus, yielded with much reluctance. See Facund. Hermian. 1. iv. c. I. Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. xiv. p. 277-283. 57 Socrates, 1. vii. c. 45. Theodoret, 1. v. c. 36. This event reconciled the Joannites, who had hitherto refused to acknowledge his successors. During his lifetime the Joannites were respected by the catholics as the true and orthodox communion of Constantinople. Their obstinacy gradually drove them to the brink of schism. 58 According to some accounts (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 438, No. 9, 10) the emperor was forced to send a letter of invitation and excuses before the body of the ceremonious saint could be moved from Comana. 59 Zosimus, 1. v. p. 315 [18]. The chastity of an empress should not be impeached without producing a witness; but it is astonishing that the witness should write and live under a prince whose legitimacy he dared to attack. We must suppose that his history was a party libel, privately read and circulated by the Pagans. [For date of Zosimus, see above, vol. ii. p. 565.] Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 782) is not averse to brand the reputation of Eudoxis. 60 his family, and to the eastern world; and the royal infant, by an unprecedented favour, was invested with the titles of Cæsar and Augustus. In less than four years afterwards, Eudoxia, in the bloom of youth, was destroyed by the consequences of a miscarriage; and this untimely death confounded the prophecy of a holy bishop, who, amidst the universal joy, had ventured to foretell that she should behold the long and auspicious reign of her glorious son. The catholics applauded the justice of heaven, which avenged the persecution of St. Chrysostom; and perhaps the emperor was the only person who sincerely bewailed the loss of the haughty and rapacious Eudoxia. Such a domestic misfortune afflicted him more deeply than the public calamities of the East: 61 the licentious excursions, from Pontus to Palestine, of the Isaurian robbers, whose impunity accused the weakness of the government; and the earthquakes, the conflagrations, the famine, and the flights of locusts,62 which the popular discontent was equally disposed to attribute to the incapacity of the monarch. At length, in the thirty-first year of his age, after a reign (if we may abuse that word) of thirteen years, three months, and fifteen days, Arcadius expired in the palace of Constantinople. It is impossible to delineate his character; since, in a period very copiously furnished with historical materials, it His suphas not been possible to remark one action that properly belongs testament to the son of the great Theodosius. The historian Procopius 63 has indeed illuminated the mind of the dying emperor with a ray of human prudence or celestial wisdom. Arcadius considered, with anxious foresight, the helpless condition of his son Theodosius, who was no more than seven years of age, the dangerous factions of a minority, and the aspiring spirit of Jezdegerd, the Persian monarch. Instead 60 Porphyry of Gaza. His zeal was transported by the order which he had obtained for the destruction of eight Pagan temples of that city. See the curious details of his life (Baronius, A.D. 401, No. 17-51), originally written in Greek, or perhaps in Syriac, by a monk, one of his favourite deacons. [The Greek text of the Life of Porphyry by Marcus was first published by Haupt in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, 1874; and it has been re-edited by the Soc. Philol. Bonnensis Sodales, 1895. For an account of the visit of Porphyry to Constantinople, see Bury, Later Roman Empire, i. p. 200 sqq.] Philostorg. l. xi. c. 8, and Godefroy, Dissertat. p. 457. Jerom (tom. vi. p. 73, 76) describes, in lively colours, the regular and destructive march of the locusts, which spread a dark cloud, between heaven and earth, over the land of Palestine. Seasonable winds scattered them, partly into the Dead Sea, and partly into the Mediterranean. 63 Procopius, de Bell. Persic. 1. i. c. 2, p. 8, edit. Louvre. posed |