CHAPTER XLVII

EUDOXIA’S STATUE

Chaucer, Prologue, Good Women.

Alas! the seeming peace was but the placidi pellacia ponti; it was but

for, on the one hand, Eudoxia was still Eudoxia, and between her and the Patriarch, so antipathetic to her in character and temperament, it was impossible that there should be long-continued amity. What lasting concord could there be between a woman of insane and insatiable pride, whose Court reeked with intrigue and worldliness, and an Archbishop of dauntless courage and inflexible righteousness? And, on the other hand, Theophilus defeated all Chrysostom’s attempts to secure by a competent General Council the reversal of the judgment passed upon him by the hateful Synod of the Oak. Arcadius summoned Theophilus to come to a General Council and answer the charges brought against him. But the Egyptian had not the least intention of again imperilling his sacred Hypocrisy among a populace intoxicated by affection for their Archbishop. He wrote back that, after having been driven out of Constantinople by mobs which threatened to fling him into the sea, he could not visit the city again; and that his own people were so devotedly attached to him that his departure would cause a riot at Alexandria!

So for two months things went on. A multitude of bishops to the number of sixty, as they could not be gathered in formal Council, declared informally their sense of Chrysostom’s innocence, and of the wicked nullity of the proceedings in the Synod of the Oak. Feeling that he had now done everything in his power to obey the laws of the Church and maintain its honour, Chrysostom devoted himself simply to the duties of his office.

But in September, 403, Eudoxia, whose ambition needed the burning of ever-fresh incense, procured for herself an honour of unheard-of extravagance which precipitated the destined catastrophe.

A person ignorant of human nature might have imagined that a half-barbarian lady, daughter of a Frankish soldier, elevated by the intrigue of an eunuch to share the empire of the world, would have been reasonably satisfied. Further than this, she was mated to an indolent weakling, and had asserted over him an immense dominance. If she was not content with the actual autocracy, but wanted all its acknowledged paraphernalia, she had now obtained from her husband the highly coveted title of Augusta, which even the stately wife of the first Augustus had not received till late in life. She had also worried out of Arcadius the privilege of being ‘adored’ as well as himself. This half-pagan adoration was in reality a survival from the days when the emperor, as a sort of incarnation of the people, shared the worship addressed to the goddess Rome. This worship had never yet been accorded to a woman. The wives or other nearest female relatives of emperors were only supposed to gleam with a reflected lustre, and to receive from him any sacro-sanctity which they might possess. The concession of such a distinction to a semi-barbarous nobody like Eudoxia involved the parading of her statue for something barely distinguishable from Divine honours in every city of the Empire. This might be tolerated in the sluggish and servile East, but it so utterly offended the sensitive dignity of the Western world that Honorius made it a subject of energetic remonstrance with his elder brother—a remonstrance which Arcadius treated with his usual masterly inactivity and with sullen contempt.

But even this did not suffice Eudoxia. Working on Simplicius, the Præfect of the City, and on the leading senators, she induced the Senate to vote her a statue of unsurpassed magnificence in the most prominent site of the whole city.

It was in the Augusteum itself, between the Imperial Palace and the Cathedral of St. Sophia, from which it was only separated by the breadth of the grandest thoroughfare in the capital. It was reared on a platform of many-coloured marble, where stood the Rostra, from which on great occasions the Emperor addressed the Senate, the people, and the army.

Here, then, the statue was erected. First there was a massive stylobate. It still exists, for it was dug up in 1848. It preserves, on one side in Latin prose, on the other in Greek hexameters, the fulsome laudations of the upstart and eminently undeserving Empress. On this pedestal was reared a column of porphyry; and on the summit of the column stood a figure of Eudoxia in solid silver, menacing Church and Senate, and populace and city, with her gesture of command.

It was customary, as we learn from a law of Theodosius II., to inaugurate the statues of imperial personages on Sundays or feast-days; and the sort of semi-idolatrous cult bestowed upon them so deeply scandalised the Christian conscience that, in the days of Eudoxia’s son, it was forbidden by edict. Further than this, we learn from the extant discussion between a Christian and Apollonius, a philosopher, that the abject honour paid to such statues made the heathen ask, with indignant scorn, ’Why Christian priests permitted this idolatry of royal images, when they condemned the worship of Pagan statues.’ ’Why,’ they scornfully demanded, ‘do you give to men, and even to women, the honour which you preach should be given to God alone?’

On every ground, then, both the statue and the homage paid to it were inexpressibly distasteful to Chrysostom. These honours, however, were part of the universal custom of the Eastern Empire; and as they had been passively condoned by the Church, he could not interfere with them. But the orgiastic dances, loose mimes, and noisily lewd 412 songs and buffooneries of every kind which attended the unveiling of this hateful memorial of a woman’s pride could not be left without rebuke. The principal day for the inauguration of Eudoxia’s image—the day when the noises were most irreverently loud and most obscenely offensive—was the Sunday. On that day it became impossible adequately to conduct the service and Holy Communion of St. Sophia. The voices of the choir ware drowned in shrill shrieks of amusement and coarse bursts of laughter at the comedies which were going on in the vulgar fair. When Chrysostom attempted to preach his voice was rendered inaudible by the indecent tumult just outside the Cathedral doors. Profoundly irritated, Chrysostom appealed to the Præfect of the city. He, however, being a Manichee, and a foe to the Patriarch, was secretly delighted with the chance of affronting with impunity the Catholic party. So far from taking any step to interfere with the worst developments of the inauguration observances, he carried to the Empress an exaggerated account of Chrysostom’s opposition, and falsely reported that Chrysostom had sworn to deprive the Empress’s statue of all popular observance. Eudoxia was already vexed at the rebuke which Arcadius had received from his younger brother of the West. With Honorius she could not deal; but it was intolerable to her that she should be constantly thwarted and reprehended by the Patriarch in her own capital, and that, while every other official was at her feet, this indomitable prelate should confront her at every turn with the incomparably superior majesty of the moral law. She burst into unmeasured expressions of hatred, anger, and bitterness against him, and, being rapidly made aware of this, ‘the fury-intoxicated phalanx’ (as Palladius calls them) of his enemies soon closed him in on every side. The Marsas, Castricias and Epigraphias were soon joined by Annas, and Caiaphas, and the priests and hypocrites, in the persons of Severian, Cyrinus, Antiochus, and the rest.

Nothing is more probable than that, on the following Sunday, Chrysostom, in his sermon, gave some expression to the profound disgust with which his heart was full; and, judging from what has happened in similar cases in 413 all ages, his thoughts so far coloured his expressions as to lead him into phrases which might easily be distorted into direct personalities. But he was not prepared for the frightful trick played him by his episcopal enemies.

Kallias had, as usual, taken down his master’s sermon, and Chrysostom, when it was written out, read it, and was glad to find that, though he had spoken strongly of idolatrous profanation of the Sabbath, and of the perils of overweening pride and ambition, he lead not been hurried by the fire of oratory into any remarks which exceeded the bounds of duty or of moderation. He had been the more careful because Philip, whose intense love for him he knew, had, in the modesty of fearful duty, ventured to ask him not to show too much wrath at the recent turn of events. ‘My father,’ he had ventured to say, ‘the world cannot be converted at one stroke; and surely we cannot be held responsible for events which we could in no way prevent?’

But the other tachygraph, Phocas, over whose report Kallias had accidentally-on-purpose spilled his inkstand on a previous occasion, had also reported this sermon, and subjected it to the sly manipulations suggested to him by his patron, Severian. He took his report to the house of Epigraphia, where, as he expected, he found Acacius, Severian, Antiochus, and two new foes of Chrysostom—Leontius of Ancyra, a dark intriguer of the Theophilus type, and Ammonius of Burnt-Phrygia, who, as Palladius says, had come from Burnt-up Phrygia to burn up the Church.

Severian glanced at the manuscript, and saw his opportunity to strike a fatal blow.

‘Come with me,’ he said to Leontius. ‘You will, I feel sure, agree with me that this Patriarch, who defies the canons of the Church, and has been condemned by a synod for crimes and misdemeanours, must be got rid of. Until he is, there will be neither peace nor harmony, and the Church of Christ will suffer.’

‘I agree with you,’ said the Syrian metropolitan in his gruff voice.

‘Well, glance at this report of his sermon.’

Leontius glanced at it, and shrugged his shoulders. 414 ’One or two strong expressions,’ he said, ‘but nothing to lay hold of seriously.’

‘Yes,’ said the conspirator; ‘but might we not in this matter exercise a little of ”œconomy,” or management, a little of the wisdom of the serpent, of that deceiving others for their good and the good of the Church—in short, of that falsitas dispensativa—the permissibility of which, as a hallowed instrument of warfare with evil, has been generally admitted by priests?’

The Metropolitan of Ancyra was not shocked. He was quite familiar with the laxity, as regards both untruthfulness and degraded casuistry, which in the East prevailed even among high ecclesiastics—as it has often prevailed also at home, having found deliberate defenders among her canonised casuists. The Church had not yet quite arrived at the moral views of Escobar or ’St.’ Alphonso de Liguori; yet Leontius was far too familiar with the grossly unscrupulous methods which over and over again were adopted, even in episcopal circles, to have the least doubt as to the meaning of the Bishop of Gabala. He knew how many there were who did not regard evil as evil if it were meant to be subservient to their own ends, which they always identified with the good of ‘the Church.’ He could recall scores of instances in which bishops had, with these views, manipulated truth into falsehood, and not disdained to utilise absolute crime for the suppression of the opponents whom they dubbed heretical or dangerous.

‘If you take bits of mosaic and rearrange them,’ he said, ’you can turn the image of a king into that of a reptile or a dog. But I do not see that much can be made of this sermon.’

‘I will manage it,’ said Severian, ‘and John’s doom is sealed.’

He went home to compose his forgery. He headed it with the one sentence which report attributed to Chrysostom:—’Again Herodias maddens, again she dances, again she demands the head of John.’ He appended a number of loose sentences, many of which, in some form or other, Chrysostom may very likely have used on that or other occasions; and then, getting tired of his task, took down a Syriac manuscript of his countryman, Ephræm Syrus, 415 translated half of it into Greek, and tacked it on to the end of his miserable patchwork. Then he had this forgery copied out by Phocas. And this was the manuscript which he submitted to Eudoxia as a verbatim report of Chrysostom’s latest sermon!

It is still extant among the spurious works of St. Chrysostom, and, fortunately, bears on the face of it the proof that it is an unblushing forgery.