CHAPTER XVIII

THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS

Lord Lytton, The Siege of Constantinople.

The great official personages rose in a body and preceded Chrysostom, by whose side walked Eutropius.

The Purple Chamber, into which they were ushered by a crowd of slaves, was so called partly from its pavement and walls inlaid with porphyry, and partly from its rich purple hangings embroidered with gold. The luxury of modern days would almost seem like childish simplicity before the lavish pomp of Byzantine splendour. The floor along the centre was sprinkled with gold dust, brought from distant lands in ships and chariots at enormous cost, that the sacred feet of the Emperor might not be desecrated by treading on anything less profoundly precious. The walls of alabaster and other lustrous marbles were inlaid with agate and cornelian, and the eastern sunlight glowed hotly on pillars of the Numidian marble, rose-coloured or golden. Chrysostom was almost blinded by the sudden blaze of splendour, to which he was wholly unaccustomed. Two lines of the palatine soldiers stood at intervals down the centre of the hall. They wore Sidonian war-cloaks so richly dight that there were pearls on their girdles and emeralds in their helmets.⁸⁸Claud., de Laud. Stil., ii. 88. Between and behind them were massed a number of courtiers in all the ranks of Byzantine officialism—perfectissimi, egregii, illustres, and spectabiles. Round the apse at the end stood a guard of tall and fully armed Gothic soldiers in their collars 127 of gold, and nearest the Emperor stood the four Prætorian Præfects, conspicuous, like him, in the purple robe, or man-dye, which they, however, wore only to the knees.

In the centre, on a throne supported by four huge golden lions, lolled Arcadius on silken cushions fringed with pearls. His robe of purple was woven in gold with dragons, which were his imperial insignia. His person was a blaze of jewels. Huge rubies and emeralds were pendent from his ears. Necklaces of large orient pearls gleamed round his neck, and over his breast hung chains of precious stones chosen for their size and lustre. The passion for gems, which Constantine had fostered, had lingered among later emperors. Round the dark hair of Arcadius was the diadem, a band of purple silk woven with pearls and the choicest rubies and emeralds.

Arcadius was but a youth of nineteen, but it seemed as if all the fire of his blood, all the manliness and fervency of youthful life, had either never existed in his ill-shaped body, or had long ago been drained out of him by the hollow and dreary magnificence in which his days were passed. His intellect was of the feeblest; his character was flabby and invertebrate. Chrysostom took him in at a glance. He was a youth of short stature, of feeble health, of thin person, and of sallow complexion. His thick eyelids drooped over his eyes, and gave him the aspect of being always half-asleep; and, except in the very rare cases in which he was for a moment aroused out of his listlessness, his speech was apt to dribble out in low, lazy, and half-finished sentences. He was steeped to the lips in indolent and sensuous luxury, and though he was too languid to be actively vicious, this lord of the world was the born slave of everyone who had sufficient astuteness and opportunity to turn him into a helpless tool.

The look of Arcadius—who had been an emperor since he was eight years old, and who had been married at seventeen—betrayed nothing but infinite boredom. He had not even his younger brother’s resource of keeping pet hens. He scarcely had as much activity as used to make Louis XV. take a courtier by the buttonhole and say, ’Ennuyons-nous ensemble!’

Chrysostom could not help wondering how it happened 128 that such a poor creature—and his equally poor brother, Honorius—could be sons of the able, stalwart, and handsome Theodosius; and why the destinies of the word should be committed to hands so unequal to the burden.

And, if there was ever a man to be pitied, it was this hapless potentate. There was no bliss in his youthfulness. He cared for no one, and believed in no one. He regarded even the Ministers who domineered over him with a dull jealousy and suspicion, and would soon have got rid of them if he could only have summoned up the energy to do without them. Eutropius only suited him because he saved all trouble, relieved him of the intolerable burdens of empire, transacted the minute details and functions of necessary business; and arranged for him the amusements which served to dissipate his deadly dulness and to

But meanwhile the wretched little human deity felt an inexorable weariness of everything:

And so he sat in his vast hall and in his ‘sacred’ chambers

The Chamberlain and officials advanced with genuflexions and prostrations, and with hands which shaded their eyes, as though they were blinded with the divine and sunlike radiance of the Emperor. Chrysostom bowed low, and then advanced in the simple dignity of his manhood. Eutropius took him by the hand and presented him to Arcadius.

‘This, sire,’ he said, ‘is John, the Presbyter of Antioch, whom your sacred Majesty has been pleased to appoint to the vacant Archbishopric.’

‘Oh!’ said Arcadius, slowly and languidly. ‘I am glad to see you.’

Chrysostom bowed again, and since Arcadius seemed to have nothing more to say, he replied:

‘I thank your Clemency, though, had I been consulted, I would gladly have remained in my former obscurity.’

‘Well,’ said the Emperor, ‘you shall be consecrated Archbishop on the twenty-seventh of this month. Meanwhile, as my Chamberlain has doubtless explained to you, the palace and the revenues of the Patriarchate are yours.’

‘May God help me to do my duty!’ said Chrysostom, and as Arcadius had now exhausted his conversational resources he bowed once more and stood aside. Eutropius gave his arm to the Emperor, who stepped down from his throne and retired. Then all the egregii, and spectabiles, and the rest, thronged round Chrysostom to load him with congratulations and fulsome compliments. From this embarrassment he was set free by a message that her Sacredness the Empress Eudoxia desired to see him; and his friend Amantius, as her almoner, conducted him into the presence of the young Nobilissima.

Eudoxia was a very different personage from Arcadius. She was a Frank, brilliant, beautiful, impetuous, full of passion and vivacity, determined, as far as possible, to brighten by every sort of excitement, mundane and religious, the dull though gilded prison of imperialism. Her reception of the Archbishop—for as such he was now regarded—was in singular contrast with that of her pale-blooded lord. One or two high officials were present in her audience-room, and among them the showy Count John, who was her favourite, and whom the scandalmongers of Constantinople declared to be her lover and the father of her children. At that time she had only one daughter, Flaccilla, who was now a year old, and whose rosy little face shone out of the glowing silk of her cradle inlaid with gold and ivory, beside the chair of the Empress.

Eudoxia rose to greet Chrysostom, and so far from allowing him to kiss her hand, she herself passionately pressed to her lips the hem of his garment. Eudoxia had, or fancied she had, deep religious feelings, and she certainly 130 had strong superstitions, which she took for religion. Her religiosity was intense, but almost exclusively external. It impelled her to give alms, to build churches, to attend services, to prostrate herself to her favourite priests, and to adore the relics of martyrs; but so long as she manifested her devotion in this way she did not think it of any importance that it should regulate the passions of her heart and the duties of her daily life. Her one object at this moment was to depose the hated Eutropius, and to put herself and her favourite, Count John, in his place. She respected and liked Amantius, who was a man of unaffected piety; but his character was too pure and his temperament too placid to give her material help in her ambitious designs. From the first she had intended to attract Chrysostom, and never doubted for a moment, that she could make him her devoted ally.

‘Most heartily do I congratulate your Sanctity,’ she said, ‘on this high promotion.’

‘I thank you, Empress,’ he replied; ‘but may I ask you to call me by some less flattering title? I am strange to the world of sounding designations which I hear on every lip around me. Sanctity! There is none good but One.’

The Empress smiled, for it was new to her to be corrected. Chrysostom had spoken with humility, but his independence was something delightfully unusual. It would make him a powerful friend, and to her Frankish temperament it was infinitely more refreshing than the slavishness with which she was surrounded from morning to night.

‘You shall not be again offended by the title,’ she said. ‘I know that we shall be friends, and that I shall constantly enjoy the privileges of your holy counsel. You will have great demands upon you for the needs of the Church and of the poor; and your friend and my treasurer, Amantius, has my commands to further your benevolence with the largest liberality. Rely on my best assistance in all your good endeavours.’

Chrysostom warmly thanked her; for while he had no personal desires, he had an intense appreciation of almsgiving and munificence to churches. He felt favourably to the Empress, whose avarice and duplicity had not 131 yet revealed themselves, because she had chosen for her chamberlain a man so gentle, blameless and pious as Amantius.

‘You must show your gratitude,’ she said sweetly, ’by coming to our banquet on the 24th. It is Lent, I know, but that day is the Festival of St. Matthias.’

Chrysostom could not refuse; but now he was glad to make his escape into privacy. The Empress asked him to give his blessing to her and to her child; and Amantius conducted him back to the outer hall, where they found the faithful Philip impatiently awaiting them.

No sooner had they left the Palace and entered the Patriarcheion than the youth, who was bubbling over with excitement and gratification, exclaimed:

‘So the secret is out, my father. To tell you the truth, I had guessed, or half-guessed, it might be so some days since. And only to think that you are Archbishop of Constantinople, lord-paramount over bishops innumerable, one of the four great Patriarchs of the world, and with the precedence over all but Rome!’

‘Ah, Philip, Philip! it is natural for youth to be dazzled by honours and externals. I was disenchanted of them all long ago in my mountain cavern. To me they have not the smallest attraction. Life has but one real boon—the blessing and peace of God.’

‘But there is much to do,’ said Philip. ‘Won’t you let me write at once to Phlegon and the other servants at Antioch to come here, and bring with them all you need? They tell me that Osius is the Postmaster-General, and while you were with the Empress I saw him, and he will put vehicles at your disposal. Don’t take any trouble, father—or my Lord Archbishop I must now call you, or your Beatitude, or your Sanctity, or——’

‘Nay,’ said Chrysostom, ‘call me “father” always, Philip. Let me feel that I have still some ties to a past which I already feel will have been far happier than the future can ever be.’

‘Well, I will arrange it all; but won’t you come and look round this enormous palace which is now yours!’

‘Oh, how much I prefer the little house in Singon Street?’ sighed Chrysostom.

They went on their tour of inspection, accompanied by some of the sumptuous slaves whom Nectarius had left. Chrysostom tolerated the great marble hall Thomaites, and the halls of justice for ecclesiastical cases which opened out of it; but he groaned as he passed over the rich carpets and saw the silver vases and superb furniture of the room which the late Patriarch had occupied.

‘Alas!’ he said to Philip, ‘this will never do. I could not live in all this sumptuosity. How can it befit those who ought to wash one another’s feet? I cannot retain these luxuries; they must be sold and given to the poor.’

The slaves of Nectarius, who stood behind Chrysostom as he spoke the words, lifted up their hands and shrugged their shoulders in displeased astonishment.

‘Babai!’ whispered one to another, ‘does he think that the palace of a Patriarch is to be no better than a damp, unpleasant mountain-cave?’

Chrysostom selected for his own use an airy room with an antechamber, in which Philip could sit, and intercept needless chatterers, intruders, and wasters of time. It was the most simply furnished room in this Palace; but he gave orders to remove from it everything approaching to luxury, and he proposed to fill it with the old familiar books and simple surroundings of his former home as soon as they could arrive.

When the slaves had conducted the strangers round the Palace, they took them into the garden which lay between it and the Senate-house, and there, for the first time, Chrysostom was genuinely delighted.

‘Ah!’ he said, ’Philip, most things have their alleviations. Our dear old home would go into this Palace ten times over; and we have not here the snowy mountains, or the river, or the ravines, though we have the sea! But this garden—yes, it will be delightful to me; and perhaps among these palms and cypresses and vines I may sometimes sit in the shadow and forget the crushing burdens of my new life. As for the fine gentlemen behind us, we must dismiss as many as possible of them with all convenient speed.’

There was no difficulty about this, for when Philip ordered the simple meal of bread and vegetables and 133 dates, with the commonest wine, which, thin as it was, Chrysostom scarcely ever touched, the servants, accustomed to the Salian banquets of Nectarius, were utterly disgusted. ‘Why,’ they said to each other, ‘we might as well go into monasteries at once. Only to think of having such a Patriarch! He is banausos!’

But Chrysostom went into the room which he had selected, laid his head on his hands, and fairly sobbed. The day had been to him infinitely trying, and now a revulsion of feeling came over him like a flood, drowning his past excitement in despair. Why, oh! why had he been torn from the old scenes, the old ties, the home of his childhood, the happy and peaceful past? ‘Ah, Lord!’ he cried, ‘how many have wished for this high office, how many would be transported with delight to have it bestowed on them! Thou knowest I sought it not. I love it not. But if Thou hast put me to this work, oh, give me strength for it! I have but one prayer, O Lord; it is, ” Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth Thee, for Thou art my God; let Thy loving Spirit lead me into the land of righteousness.“’

Philip would not interfere with his dark hour; but seeing him given up to uncontrollable sadness, he came with the gentleness of a son, and, laying his hand on his shoulder, he said:

‘Dear father, is it all so dark? Is not God at Constantinople as He was at Antioch? Will not He make your way plain before your face? I wish you many and happy days as Patriarch of the East.’

‘Not many, my Philip—and that, perhaps, is well—and certainly not happy. Mere paraphernalia of rank and wealth are hateful to me. Ever since I heard of this promotion, as they call it, a heaviness has been growing on my spirit. This great, wicked city seems to me like a haunt of the demons. How can I ever do the good which I desire, at which I must aim? My happy days are over, Philip, for ever. I shall have very few to love me. Try to support me with your true affection, my son, my son!’

And again the new Patriarch of the East bent down his head, and wept in his splendid palace, till Philip once more came to him, and said:

‘My father, your meal is ready. Be comforted. Man cannot do the work of Providence, but he can do his best, and await all that God will send.’

‘You are right, my Philip,’ said the Archbishop; ‘I will, by God’s grace, at once shake off this despondency. No cross, no crown.’