The Lives of the Saints, Volume 1 (of 16)

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 Berrhœa, 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 Phœnicia; 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

S. LUPUS, B. OF CHALONS(7th cent.)

[Called in France Loup, Leul, or Leu. He was canonized by Pope John VIII, in 879; he is commemorated on this day at Châlons; also there on April 30th, the day of his canonization. His life is by an anonymous writer, who says that he wrote it from the remembrance of those who had read the Acts of S. Lupus which had been destroyed by fire.]

S. Lupus, Bishop of Cabilinum, or Châlons sur Saone, flourished about the year 610. He was the son of honourable parents, and he commended himself to the people by his abundant charity, his self-denial, and his tenderness to the sick. Châlons being ill-provided with drinking water, and the soil dry and sandy, he miraculously provided it with an abundant spring which flows to the present day. The story is thus told. He stood one day with his ivory pastoral staff in hand watching the hay makers; the sun was hot, and the labourers were exhausted. Moved with compassion, and knowing that the turbid waters of the river were unfit to drink, he struck his staff into the sand, and a limpid spring bubbled up. When dying he sent for the governor of Châlons, and begged him to pardon the unfortunate wretches who languished in the prison under sentence of death. The governor roughly refused. After Lupus was dead, his funeral passed the city prison, and the bier was set down at that place. The prisoners stretched their hands through the bars of their windows crying piteously. Instantly their chains fell off, the doors flew open, and they were set at liberty.

S. THEODORIC II, B. C. OF ORLEANS(a. d. 1022.)

[Called in France Thierry. Authority: an ancient life in Bollandus.]

S. Thierry was born at Château Thierry, so called from an ancestor of the saint, whose family was noble and wealthy. He was taken to court and gained the confidence of King Robert the Good. On the death of Bishop Arnulf of Orleans, Thierry was elected, with the consent of the king, to fill the vacant see. His appointment was opposed by a priest named Adalric who had desired the throne for himself, and who had the indecency to burst into the church with a band of armed men, and thrust up to the very altar, uttering violent menaces, when Thierry was being consecrated, in the hopes of terrifying the consecrating bishops from what they were doing. Afterwards the priest at the head of a party of ruffians waylaid the Bishop by night, in a lane, and throwing him from his horse, ran him through, as they believed, with a sword. The weapon providentially cut through his garments without wounding him; and when the would-be assassins had fled, he rose and regained the city. Adalric, fearing the consequences, threw himself on the compassion of the Bishop, and asked his pardon, which Thierry frankly accorded him. Thierry died on a journey at Tonnerre, where his kinsman Count Milo built the church of S. Michael over his body. He was succeeded on the throne of Orleans by the priest Adalric.

S. JOHN, B. OF FRENCH FLANDERS(a. d. 1130.)

This saint was forced into the episcopate by Pope Urban against his desire. He was a most meek and gentle-spirited man, full of thought for others, but severe upon himself, as was evidenced by one little fact noticed by his biographer. He was wont to rise very early to his prayers, and when he did so, he took the greatest care not to disturb others in the room and house. When he was dying, crowds of people came to see his loved face for the last time, and he gave them his benediction, and died in so doing.

January 28

SS. Thyrsus, Leucius and Others, MM., in Asia, a.d. 250. SS. Emilian, B., Hilarian, Mk., and Others, MM., at Trevi, in Umbria, a.d. 303. S. Valerius, B. of Saragossa, beginning of 4th cent. S. Palladius, H., in Syria, end of 4th cent. S. Cyril, Pat. of Alexandria, a.d. 444. S. John, Ab. of Reomay, circ. a.d. 545. S. James, H., in Palestine, 6th cent. S. Paulinus, Patr. of Aquileia, a.d. 804. B. Charlemagne, Emp., a.d. 814. S. Richard, Ab. of Valcelles, in France, 12th cent. S. Julian, B. of Cuenca, in Spain, a.d. 1207. B. Margaret, of Hungary, V.O.S.D.; a.d. 1271. B. Gentile, W., Ravenna, a.d. 1530.

SS. THYRSUS, LEUCIUS, CALLINICUS, AND OTHERS, MM(a. d. 250.)

[Roman Kalendar on Jan. 28th; Greek Menæa on Dec. 14th; Mart. attributed to S. Jerome on Jan. 20th. The martyrs not having all suffered the same day or in the same places, has led to considerable variety in the days of their commemoration. Their Acts are extant in three forms, agreeing together in most particulars, and evidently amplifications by different hands of the original Acts. They are not to be implicitly relied upon.]

In the reign of the Emperor Decius, Combritius, the governor of Bithynia, made the circuit of the province, to carry into execution the severe imperial edict against the Christians. Being a man of a naturally cruel disposition he subjected those brought before him to the most exquisite torments his ingenuity could devise. Thyrsus had his eyelids pierced, and rings put through them, and molten lead was poured down his back. His arms and legs were broken. He died in prison. Leucius was hung up, and torn with iron hooks, and then decapitated; Callinicus and several others suffered in this persecution by various deaths.

S. VALERIUS, B. OF SARAGOSSA(beginning of 4th cent.)

[Roman Martyrology, but in others on Jan. 19th, 22th, 23rd, or 29th.]

Of this saint little is known, except that he associated with him S. Vincent, to speak for him, he having an impediment in his speech. When Dacian persecuted the Church, S. Valerius was taken to Valentia and there imprisoned. When brought forth and interrogated, his nervousness prevented him from articulating a word, therefore Vincent, the deacon, spoke for him. Vincent was ordered to execution, but Valerius was banished.

S. PALLADIUS, H. IN SYRIA(end of 4th cent.)

[This Palladius is not to be confounded with the author of the Historia Lausiaca. He is mentioned by Theodoret, who relates of him all that is known.]

Palladius was a friend of Simeon the Ancient; they often met to encourage one another in the practice of self-denial and prayer. One incident in the life of this hermit has been alone transmitted to us. Not far from his cell was a frequented market. A merchant who had been at it was waylaid, robbed and murdered by a man who, after having done the deed, cast the body by the door of the hermit's cell. Next day a crowd assembled, instigated by the murderer, and with threatening looks and words, they broke open the hermit's door, and drew him forth, charging him with the murder. Then Palladius raised his hands and eyes to heaven and prayed. And when his prayer was concluded, he turned to the corpse and said, "Young man, designate the murderer!" Thereupon the dead man partly rose, raised his hand and pointed at him who had killed him; and when he was apprehended, articles belonging to the deceased were discovered upon him.

S. CYRIL, PATR. OF ALEXANDRIA(a. d. 444.)

[Roman Martyrology. The Greeks celebrate the memory of S. Cyril on June 9th, and commemorate him together with S. Athanasius on June 18th. Authorities: Socrates, Sozomen, Marius Mercator, the Acts of the council of Ephesus, and his own letters and treatises &c.]

This great champion of the faith has been attacked by modern writers as passionate and intolerant; it is true that he was guilty of several errors in administrating his patriarchate, and that his impetuosity gave the impulse which led to serious violation of justice. But we must remember that no man, not the greatest of saints, is without imperfection of character, and that the greatest of saints are they who, having serious natural defects, have mastered them by their faith and self-control. S. Cyril began his patriarchate under disadvantageous circumstances. He was the nephew of Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, Chrysostom's worst enemy, a man devoid of principle, wholly given up to pride of station; on October 15th, 412, he closed his episcopate of twenty-seven years; a melancholy instance of great powers rendered baneful to the Church by a worldly spirit and a violent temper. He was succeeded by his nephew Cyril. The evil of his uncle's example hung about him for some time, obscuring the nobleness which was to shine out afterwards. He desired above all things the ascendancy of the Church; as to the means of obtaining which, he had fewer scruples than became a minister of Him who rebuked the attack on Malchus. He closed the Novatian church, took away its sacred ornaments, and deprived its Bishop of his property. The Jews of Alexandria – a powerful body during many centuries – had procured the disgrace and punishment of Hierax, an admirer of Cyril's sermons. Cyril, naturally indignant, menaced the chief of their community; the Jews' revenge was to raise a cry at midnight, "The Church of S. Alexander is on fire!" and to massacre those Christians who rushed out to save their church. Cyril appears to have made up his mind that the Christians must right them, without expecting justice from the præfect Orestes, and he organized at daybreak a force which attacked the synagogues, expelled the Jews from Alexandria, and treated their property as rightful spoil. Orestes, exasperated at this hasty and lawless vengeance, would not listen to the explanations which Cyril offered; and the archbishop, after vainly holding out the Gospels to enforce his attempts at a reconciliation, gave up all hopes of peace. Five hundred monks of Nitria, inflamed by a furious partisanship, entered the city and reviled the præfect as a pagan. "I am a Christian," he exclaimed; "Atticus of Constantinople baptized me." A monk named Ammonius disproved his own Christianity by throwing a stone at the præfect, which inflicted a ghastly wound. He was seized, and expired under tortures; but Cyril so miserably forgot himself as to call this ruffian an "admirable" martyr, a proceeding of which he was afterwards heartily ashamed. Then followed a darker tragedy. Hypatia, a learned lady, and teacher of philosophy, and a heathen, who had great influence in the city in opposing Christianity, was supposed to have embittered Orestes against Cyril; and some fiery zealots, headed by a reader of the church, named Peter, dragged her from her house and tore her to pieces, limb from limb. Cyril was no party to this hideous deed,128 but it was the work of men whose passions he had originally called out. Had there been no onslaught on the synagogues, there would have been no murder of Hypatia. The people of Alexandria were singularly fiery and given to civil contensions. Gibbon says of them, "The most trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable."129 A ferocious civil war which lasted twelve years, and raged within the city, till a considerable portion had been reduced to ruins in the reign of Valerian, had originated in a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes.