h

church; and Eutropius was tempted to capitulate, by the milder arts of persuasion, and by an oath, that his life should be spared. Careless of the dignity of their sovereign, the new ministers of the palace immediately published an edict, to declare that his late favourite had disgraced the names of consul and patrician, to abolish his statues, to confiscate his wealth, and to inflict a perpetual exile in the island of Cyprus. A despicable and decrepit eunuch could no longer alarm the fears of his enemies; nor was he capable of enjoying what yet remained, the comforts of peace, of solitude, and of a happy climate. But their implacable revenge still envied him the last moments of a miserable life, and Eutropius had no sooner touched the shores of Cyprus, than he was hastily recalled. The vain hope of eluding, by a change of place, the obligation of an oath, engaged the empress to transfer the scene of his trial and execution from Constantinople to the adjacent suburb of Chalcedon. The consul Aurelian pronounced the sentence; and the motives of that sentence expose the jurisprudence of a despotic government. The crimes which Eutropius had committed against the people, might have justified his death; but he was found guilty of harnessing to his chariot the sacred animals, who, from their breed, or colour, were reserved for the use of the emperor alone.i

Conspiracy and fall of Gainas,

A. D. 400.

While this domestic revolution was transacted, Gainas openly revolted from his allegiance: united his forces, at Thyatira in Lydia, with those of Tribigild; and still maintained his superior ascendant over the rebellious leader of the Ostrogoths. The confederate armies advanced, without resistance, to the straits of the Hellespont, and the Bosphorus; and Arcadius was instructed to prevent the loss of his Asiatic dominions, by resigning his authority and his person to the faith of the barbarians. The church of the holy martyr Euphemia, situate on a lofty cminence near Chalcedon,' was chosen for the place of the interview. Gainas bowed, with reverence, at the feet of the emperor, whilst he required the sacrifice of Aurelian and Saturninus, two ministers of consular rank; and their naked necks were exposed, by the haughty rebel, to the edge of the sword, till he condescended to grant them a precarious and disgraceful respite. The Goths, according to the terms of the agreement, were immediately transported from Asia into Europe; and their victorious chief, who accepted the title of master-general of

g Chrysostom, in another Homily, (tom. iii. p. 386.) affects to declare, that Eutropius would not have been taken, had he not deserted the church. Zosimus (1. v. p. 313.) on the contrary pretends, that his enemies forced him (efapragaνTES AUTOV) from the sanctuary. Yet the promise is an evidence of some treaty; and the strong assurance of Claudian, (Præfat. ad. I. ii. 46.)

Sed tamen exemplo non feriere tuo,

may be considered as an evidence of some promise.

h Cod. Theod. 1. ix tit. xi. leg. 14. The date of that law (Jan. 17, A. D. 399.) is erroneous and corrupt; since the fall of Eutropius could not happen till the autumn of the same year. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 780.

i Zosimus, I. v. p. 313. Philostorgius, 1. xi. c. 6.

k Zosimus, (l. v. p. 313-323.) Socrates, (1. vi. c. 4.) Sozomen, (1. viii. c. 4.) and Theodoret, (I. v. c. 32, 33.) represent, though with some various circumstances, the conspiracy, defeat, and death of Gainas.

|

m

July 20.

the Roman armies, soon filled Constantinople with his troops, and distributed among his dependents the honours and rewards of the empire. In his early youth, Gainas had passed the Danube as a suppliant, and a fugitive: his elevation had been the work of valour and fortune; and his indiscreet or perfidious conduct, was the cause of his rapid downfall. Notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of the archbishop, he importunately claimed, for his Arian sectaries, the possession of a peculiar church; and the pride of the catholics was offended by the public toleration of heresy. Every quarter of Constantinople was filled with tumult and disorder; and the barbarians gazed with such ardour on the rich shops of the jewellers, and the tables of the bankers, which were covered with gold and silver, that it was judged prudent to remove those dangerous temptations from their sight. They resented the injurious precaution; and some alarming attempts were made, during the night, to attack and destroy with fire the imperial palace." In this state of mutual and suspicious hostility, the guards, and the people of Constantinople, shut the gates, and rose in arms to prevent, or to punish, the conspiracy of the Goths. During the absence of Gainas, his troops were surprised and oppressed; seven thousand barbarians perished in this bloody massacre. In the fury of the pursuit, the catholics uncovered the roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they overwhelmed their adversaries, who had retreated to the church or conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the design, or too confident of his success: he was astonished by the intelligence, that the flower of his army had been ingloriously destroyed; that he himself was declared a public enemy; and that his countryman, Fravitta, a brave and loyal confederate, had assumed the management of the war by sea and land. The enterprises of the rebel, against the cities of Thrace, were encountered by a firm and well-ordered defence: his hungry soldiers were soon reduced to the grass that grew on the margin of the fortifications; and Gainas, who vainly regretted the wealth and luxury of Asia, embraced a desperate resolution of forcing the passage of the Hellespont. He was destitute of vessels; but the woods of the Chersonesus afforded materials for rafts, and his intrepid barbarians did not refuse to trust themselves to the waves. But Fravitta attentively watched the progress of their undertaking. As soon as they had gained the middle of the stream,

Dec. 23.

1 Οσίας Ευφημίας μαρτύριον, is the expression of Zosimus himself, (1. v. p. 314.) who inadvertently uses the fashionable language of the christians. Evagrius describes (1. ii. c. 3.) the situation, architecture, relics, and miracles of that celebrated church, in which the general council of Chalcedon was afterwards held.

The pious remonstrances of Chrysostom, which do not appear in his own writings, are strongly urged by Theodoret; but his insinuation that they were successful, is disproved by facts. Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. 383.) has discovered, that the emperor, to satisfy the rapacious demands of Gainas, was obliged to melt the plate of the church of the apostles.

n The ecclesiastical historians, who sometimes guide and sometimes follow, the public opinion, most confidently assert, that the palace of Constantinople was guarded by legions of angels.

the Roman galleys,° impelled by the full force of oars, of the current, and of a favourable wind, rushed forwards in compact order, and with irresistible weight; and the Hellespont was covered with the fragments of the Gothic shipwreck. After the destruction of his hopes, and the loss of many thousands of his bravest soldiers, Gainas, who could no longer aspire to govern, or to subdue, the Romans, determined to resume the independence of a savage life. A light and active body of barbarian horse, disengaged from their infantry and baggage, might perform, in eight or ten days, a march of three hundred miles from the Hellespont to the Danube; the garrisons of that important frontier had been gradually annihilated; the river, in the month of December, would be deeply frozen; and the unbounded prospect of Scythia was opened to the ambition of Gainas. This design was secretly communicated to the national troops, who devoted themselves to the fortunes of their leader; and before the signal of departure was given, a great number of provincial auxiliaries, whom he suspected of an attachment to their native country, were perfidiously massacred. The Goths advanced, by rapid marches, through the plains of Thrace; and they were soon delivered from the fear of a pursuit, by the vanity of Fravitta, who, instead of extinguishing the war, hastened to enjoy the popular applause, and to assume the peaceful honours of the consulship. But a formidable ally appeared in arms to vindicate the majesty of the empire, and to guard the peace and liberty of Scythia. The superior forces of Uldin, king of the Huns, opposed the progress of Gainas; an hostile and ruined country prohibited his retreat; he disdained to capitulate; and after repeatedly attempting to cut his way through the ranks of the enemy, he was slain, with A. D. 401. his desperate followers, in the field of January 3. battle. Eleven days after the naval victory of the Hellespont, the head of Gainas, the inestimable gift of the conqueror, was received at Constantinople with the most liberal expressions of gratitude; and the public deliverance was celebrated by festivals and illuminations. The triumphs of Arcadius became the subject of epic poems; and the monarch, no longer oppressed by any hostile terrors, resigned himself to the mild and abso

o Zosimus (1. v. p. 319.) mentions these galleys by the name of Libur. nians, and observes, that they were as swift (without explaining the difference between them) as the vessels with fifty oars; but that they were far inferior in speed to the triremes, which had been long disused. Yet he reasonably concludes, from the testimony of Polybius, that galleys of a still larger size had been constructed in the Punic wars. Since the establishment of the Roman empire over the Mediterranean, the useless art of building large ships of war had probably been neglected, and at length forgotten.

p Chishull (Travels, p. 61-63. 72-76.) proceeded from Gallipoli, through Hadrianople, to the Danube, in about fifteen days. He was in the train of an English ambassador, whose baggage consisted of seventyone waggons. That learned traveller has the merit of tracing a curious and unfrequented route.

The narrative of Zosimus, who actually leads Gainas beyond the Danube, must be corrected by the testimony of Socrates, and Sozomen, that he was killed in Thrace; and by the precise and authentic dates of the Alexandrian, or Paschal, Chronicle, p. 307. The naval victory of the Hellespont is fixed to the month Apellans, the tenth of the calends of January, (December 23.) the head of Gainas was brought to Constantinople the third of the nones of January, (January 3,) in the month Au dynæus.

Eusebius Scholasticus acquired much fame by his poem on the

lute dominion of his wife, the fair and artful Eudoxia; who has sullied her fame by the persecution of St. John Chrysostom.

Election and

sostom, A. D. 398. Feb. 26.

After the death of the indolent Nectarius, the successor of Gregory Na- merit of Chry. zianzen, the church of Constantinople was distracted by the ambition of rival candidates, who were not ashamed to solicit, with 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 had been distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth.s 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 post-chariot, 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, where he subdued the lusts of the flesh by an austere penance of six years. His infirmities compelled him to return to the society of mankind; and the authority of Meletius devoted his talents to the service of the church: but in the midst of his family, and afterwards on the archiepiscopal throne, Chrysostom still persevered in the practice of the monastic virtues. The ample revenues, which his predecessors had consumed in pomp and luxury,

Gothic war, in which he had served. Near forty years afterwards, Ammonius recited another poem on the same subject, in the presence of the emperor Theodosius. See Socrates, 1. vi. c. 6.

The sixth book of Socrates, the eighth of Sozomen, and the fifth of Theodoret, afford curious and authentic materials for the life of John Chrysostom. Besides those general historians, I have taken for my guides the four principal biographers of the saint. 1. The author of a partial and passionate Vindication of the Archbishop of Constanti nople, composed, in the form of a dialogue, and under the name of his zealous partizan, Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis. (Tillemont, Mem, Eccles. tom. xi. p. 500-533.) It is inserted among the works of Chrysostom, tom. xiii. p. 1-90. edit. Montfauçon. 2. The moderate Erasmus, (tom. ii. epist. MCL. p. 1331-1347. edit. Lugd. Bat.) His vivacity and good sense were his own; his errors, in the uncultivated state of ecclesiastical antiquity, were almost inevitable. 3. The learned Tillemont, (Mem. Ecclesiastiques, tom. xi. p. 1-405, 547–626, &c. &c.) who compiles the lives of the saints with incredible patience, and religious accuracy. He has minutely searched the voluminous works of Chrysostom himself. 4. Father Montfauçon; who has perused these works with the curious diligence of an editor, discovered several new homilies, and again reviewed and composed the Life of Chrysostom. (Opera Chrysostom, tom. xiii. p. 91-177.)

His administra.

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 authorized 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. The pastoral labours of the archtion and defects, bishop of Constantinople provoked, A. D. 398, 403. and gradually united against him, two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who 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 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

t As I am almost a stranger to the voluminous sermons of Chrysostom, I have given my confidence to the two most judicious and moderate of the ecclesiastical critics, Erasmus (tom. iii. p. 1344.) and Dupin; (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. iii. p. 38.) yet the good taste of the former is sometimes vitiated by an excessive love of antiquity; and the good sense of the latter is always restrained by prudential considerations.

u The females of Constantinople distinguished themselves by their enmity or their attachment to Chrysostom. Three noble and opulent widows, Marsa, Castricia, and Eugraphia, were the leaders of the persecution. (Pallad. Dialog. tom. xiii. p. 14.) It was impossible that they should forgive a preacher, who reproached their affectation to Conceal, by the ornaments of dress, their age and ugliness, (Pallad. p. 27) Olympias, by equal zeal, displayed in a more pious cause, has obtained the title of Saint. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi.

416-440.

females of the clergy of Constantinople, who, under the name 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 entitled to the warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatized, 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. Although he struggled, according to the precepts of the gospel, to love his private enemies, he indulged himself in the privilege of hating the enemies of God and of the church; 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 familiar intercourse, which facilitates the knowledge 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 wellgrounded discontent. If 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.

x Sozomen, and more especially Socrates, have defined the real character of Chrysostom with a temperate and impartial freedom, very offensive to his blind admirers. Those historians lived in the next generation, when party violence was abated, and had conversed with many persons intimately acquainted with the virtues and imperfections

of the saint.

y Palladius (tom. xiii. p. 40, &c.) very seriously defends the archbishop. 1. He never tasted wine. 2. The weakness of his stomach required a peculiar diet. 3. Business, or study, or devotion, often kept him fasting till sun-set. 4. He detested the noise and levity of great dinners. 5. He saved the expense for the use of the poor. 6. He was apprehensive, in a capital like Constantinople, of the envy and reproach of partial invitations.

z Chrysostom declares his free opinion, (tom. ix. hom. iii. in Act. Apostol. p. 29.) that the number of bishops who might be saved, bore a very small proportion to those who would be damned.

Chrysostom is This ecclesiastical conspiracy was persecuted by the empress Eudoxia, managed by Theophilus," archbishop A. D. 403. of Alexandria, an active and ambitious prelate, who displayed the fruits of rapine in monuments of ostentation. His national dislike 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, surnamed the Oak, where Rufinus had erected a 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. The first astonishment of his faithful Popular tumults at Constantino people had 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

ple.

See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 441-500.

b I have purposely omitted the controversy which arose among the monks of Egypt, concerning Origenism and Anthropomorphism: the dissimulation and violence of Theophilus; his artful management of the simplicity of Epiphanius; the persecution and flight of the long, or tall, brothers; the ambiguous support which they received at Constantinople from Chrysostom, &c. &c.

e Photius (p. 53-60.) has preserved the original acts of the synod of the Oak, which destroy the false assertion, that Chrysostom was condemned by no more than thirty-six bishops, of whom twenty-nine were Egyptians. Forty-five bishops subscribed his sentence. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 595.

d Palladius owns, (p. 30.) that if the people of Constantinople had found Theophilus, they would certainly have thrown him into the sea. Socrates mentions (1. vi. c. 17.) a battle betwen the mob and the sailors

innumerable vessels; the shores of Europe and Asia were profusely illuminated; and the acclamations of a victorious people accompanied, from the port to the cathedral, the triumph of the archbishop; who too easily consented to resume the exercise of his functions, before his sentence had been legally reversed by the authority of an ecclesiastical synod. Ignorant, or careless, of the impending danger, Chrysostom indulged his zeal, or perhaps his resentment; declaimed with peculiar asperity against female vices; and condemned the profane honours which were addressed, almost in the precincts of St. Sophia, to the statue of the empress. His imprudence tempted his enemies to inflame the haughty spirit of Eudoxia, by reporting, or perhaps inventing, the famous exordium of a sermon, "Herodias is again furious; Herodias again dances; she once more requires the head of John:" an insolent allusion, which, as a woman and a sovereign, it was impossible for her to forgive. The short interval of a perfidious truce was employed to concert more effectual measures for the disgrace and ruin of the archbishop. A numerous council of the eastern prelates, who were guided from a distance by the advice of Theophilus, confirmed the validity, without examining the justice, of the former sentence; and a detachment of barbarian troops was introduced into the city, to suppress the emotions of the people. On the vigil of Easter, the solemn administration of baptism was rudely interrupted by the soldiers, who alarmed the modesty of the naked catechumens, and violated by their presence the awful mysteries of the christian worship. Arsacius occupied the church of St. Sophia, and the archiepiscopal throne. The catholics retreated to the baths of Constantine, and afterwards to the fields where they were still pursued and insulted by the guards, the bishops, and the magistrates. The fatal day of the second and final exile of Chrysostom was marked by the conflagration of the cathedral, of the senate-house, and of the adjacent buildings; and this calamity was imputed, without proof, but not without probability, to the despair of a persecuted faction.f

sostom, A. D. 404. June 20.

Cicero might claim some merit, if Exile of Chryhis voluntary banishment 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

of Alexandria, in which many wounds were given, and some lives were lost. The massacre of the monks is observed only by the pagan Zosimus, (1. v. p. 324.) who acknowledges that Chrysostom had a singular talent to lead the illiterate multitude, ην γαρ ό άνθρωπος αλόγον όχλον ὑπαγαγέσθαι δεινος.

e See Socrates, 1. vi. c. 18. Sozomen, 1. viii. c. 20. Zosimus (1. v. p. 324. 327.) mentions, in general terms, his invectives against Eudoxia. The homily, which begins with those famous words, is rejected as spurious. Montfaucon, tom. xiii. p. 151. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 603.

f We might naturally expect such a charge from Zosimus; (1. v. p. 327.) but it is remarkable enough, that it should be confirmed by Socrates, 1. vi. c. 18. and the Paschal Chronicle, p. 307.

g He displays those specious motives, (Post Reditum, c. 13, 14.) in the language of an orator and a politician.