CHAPTER VIII

THE THUNDERBOLT AVERTED

Mason, Caractacus.

Next morning the Commissioners, with sad hearts, mounted the horses which stood for them at the palace gate in splendid caparisons, and rode towards the Court in solemn state, accompanied by their bodyguard with drawn swords. Again they rode through a mourning and praying populace, but at one part of the main street they were struck with an unwonted spectacle.

For there a group of men who looked hardly human had taken their stand. Some of them were clad in leather, some in rough skins, some with little more than rags, the remains of robes which had long nearly fallen to pieces. Over their shoulders streamed their unkempt locks. Many of them had not washed far years. Their features were gaunt and grim, their gestures uncouth, repellent, yet commanding. Their faces were for the most part entirely unknown, and many of them had not trodden for many a long year the streets of Antioch or any other city. Yet in the bearing of these wild-looking men there was no timidity or reverence. They did not bow, or kneel, or weep, or supplicate, but stood upright in an attitude almost of menace. They were the hermits whom Macedonius had assembled from all the clefts and dens and booths of Mount Silpius and Mount Amanus and Mount Casius to come to intercede for the guilty city. Among them even Stagirius had come, no longer, indeed, in paroxysms of violence, but with the light of madness still gleaming in his restless eyes.

While the Commissioners were wondering at this strange assemblage Macedonius strode out, and Cæsarius, to his amazement, saw his bridle and his robe seized by a gaunt old man whose goatskin was grimy and tattered, but who, speaking in Syriac—the only language he knew—imperiously ordered both Commissioners to dismount.

‘Who is this madman?’ he exclaimed indignantly, turning to his guard, and raising his hand to strike him away with the flat of his sword.

‘It is Macedonius the barley-eater,’ exclaimed several voices in awestruck tones.

The name filled both the Commissioners with an almost overpowering sense of dread. This, then, was the saint with whose fame the world rang. Here was a man who had given up all for Christ—the Elijah of his age. Surely his mandates must be messages from God? Without a moment’s delay the two great nobles sprang from their horses and knelt on the ground before him, while Cæsarius entreated his pardon for his rude exclamation and intended blow. Of all this Macedonius took no notice.

He was neither impressed nor terrified by the long array of steeds and armed soldiers, and ‘grooms besmeared with gold,’ nor with the supreme jurisdiction of the legates. While all the nobles and rulers of Antioch trembled with the trembling population, he felt his soul dilated with the flame of inspiration.

‘Go, my friends,’ he said, ‘and say to the Emperor “Thou, too, art but a man, ruling over men. Darest thou destroy the image of God? Statues are easily replaced, as thine have already been, but canst thou restore to life the image of God which once thou hast defaced? Canst thou make one hair grow again of the men whom thou hast doomed?”’

‘Yea,’ said the other hermits, ‘and we are all ready to lay down our lives for this city. We will die for those whom you condemn. Some of us will go on an embassy to the Emperor in the name of all the rest, nor will we leave this city till it is pardoned.’

The Commissioners felt that they were powerless to disregard what they accepted as a supernatural intervention. They knew the reverence with which the pious Emperor 55 regarded men whom the current opinion enshrined on the summit of human holiness. They rode on to the gates of the Prætorium to consult together. There all the bishops who were in the city met them, and said that unless they would promise to be merciful they should only pass into the hall over their bodies. They promised, and then the bishops kissed their hands. A poor mother had been holding the bridle of Hellebichus all the way, as the two judges passed through the crowd. Seeing her son among the fettered prisoners, she flew to him, flung her arms round him, covered him with her long, dishevelled locks, and, drawing the youth to Hellebichus, bathed the feet of the Commissioner with her tears, imploring him with cries and sobs not to rob her of the support of her old age, but rather to kill her there and then. The hearts of the two judges were overwhelmed. They could not proceed with their business.

After consultation they decided to check any crude and ill-advised embassy of the hermits to the Emperor, and to postpone all further action until Cæsarius had returned to Constantinople for the further commands of Theodosius, while Hellebichus remained at his post. The decision was announced to the people, and though the accused were left in chains, and the families of those whose property had been confiscated were homeless, yet the respite caused such joy and hope that they broke into acclamations and benedictions. Cæsarius started by night with only two servants. The hermits wished to accompany him, but he declined. ‘The journey,’ he said, ‘is long and difficult; the fatigues will exhaust your age; and its expenses would be beyond your power. But I will gladly be the bearer of your written intercession.’

Few of the hermits could write; most of them could only speak Syriac. But Macedonius drew up a brief epistle, boldly reminding the Emperor of his last day, and of the judgment of God which awaited him, and to this the hermits who could write appended their names and the others their marks. Then Cæsarius set forth. He travelled night and day. He did not once descend from his chariot, either to take food, or to rest, or to change his clothes; and thus he traversed in six days the three hundred 56 leagues which separated Antioch from Constantinople. He reached the palace gate of Theodosius at noon on the Tuesday in the fourth week of Lent. But he found that his task was already accomplished. Eight days before Bishop Flavian had moved the heart of the Emperor to pity, and Antioch had been forgiven.

When the aged Patriarch of Antioch was admitted into the Emperor’s presence he was overwhelmed by the sense of his position. Theodosius did not affect the superficial splendours of Byzantinism, but stood on a dais at the end of the hall, a strong, handsome Spaniard, surrounded by the noble-looking Gothic guard in whom he delighted—white-skinned, majestic Amali and Balts, wearing their golden collars, and with their long fair hair streaming over their shoulders. The shadow of the Empire clung about him in a certain magnificent stateliness of demeanour, showing him to be conscious that ‘the rule of all things’ was in his hands. Weary with age and with hasty travel, and burdened with the responsibilities which he had left behind him and the thought of the dear dying sister who had so long been the companion of his loneliness, and whose eyes he feared would now be closed by a stranger’s hands, Flavian was far more overwhelmed by the thought that he represented in his own person a city which had been guilty of crimes against the imperial majesty such as might well be deemed unpardonable. He could not approach, but stood far off at the end of the hall, his look fixed on the ground, his white head bent, his aged eyes bathed in tears. He could not speak. The heart of Theodosius had been fiercely exacerbated, but he could not brook that spectacle. He descended from his throne, came forward, and taking the old man by the hand, gently pleaded with him, as though he himself were on his defence.

‘Did I,’ he asked, ‘deserve such treatment at the hands of Antioch? Had I not always been generous to the city, and was it not my intention to visit it in person? Or, if they had any cause of offence against me, why did they insult my noble father, the defender of the Empire? Why did they insult my young and harmless boys? Above all, why did they heap their outrages on the sweet Empress whom I loved so tenderly, and have so recently lost? 57 Was she not gentleness and goodness itself? Were not the poor and the sick her peculiar charge? Did she not go, Empress as she was, alone and unattended to the sick and the poor? Was not her voice raised to me day by day in favour of all that was gentle and kind? It is too much, father, it is too much! How can I forgive the brutal multitude who would hack to pieces the image of my Flaccilla, and drag it with foul insults through the streets?’

‘We have sinned, we have sinned,’ said the weeping bishop when at last he found words to speak. ‘We acknowledge all your generosity; we owe you nothing but love; we do not deserve your compassion or your forgiveness. It was a fraud and malice of the devil which led the multitude astray. But oh! forgive, forgive them! Thus can you best frustrate the malignity of those evil demons. When the devil had robbed man of Paradise, did not God open heaven to the ruined race? Oh! be thou like God. The eyes of all, Jews and Pagans, Greeks and barbarians, in Antioch are on you. If they see mercy prevailing over judgment, and forgiveness dispelling wrath, will they not exclaim with one voice, “Heavens! how great is the power of Christianity!” And oh, Emperor! bethink thee of the magnanimity of the wise Constantine when his statues were pelted, and he only smiled, and, raising his hand to his cheek, said that he felt no hurt. Bethink thee too of thine own gentleness, and thine exclamation in setting the captives free in the great pardon: “Would that I could also recall the dead!” Worse to us than our earthquakes, worse than our conflagrations, has been our crime and thy anger. Oh! bethink thee of the day when thou too shall stand before the bar of Him who said, ” If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive you your trespasses.“ Forgive the insults inflicted on thee, as Eternal God daily forgives the insults which men heap on Him, and, in spite of them, still causes His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. Thou art kind and gentle: prove thyself nobler than our ill-deserts. Otherwise, I myself will never return to my native city, but will hide my shame in some far place of exile.’

Theodosius was so deeply moved by these words that, like Joseph before his brethren, he could scarcely refrain from giving way in the presence of his courtiers, and he had to turn aside to hide his tears. He had been struck most of all by the plea that he stood to men in the place of God, and must forgive even as God forgives.

‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, ‘was not Christ crucified by the very men whom He came to save? Yet He forgave them! And must not I forgive my fellow-men?’ When once his wrath was calmed he gave free scope to his emotion. ’Return,’ he said to Flavian; ‘return with all speed. Say that I forgive. I rescind the decrees which I sent by Cæsarius and Hellebichus. Antioch shall not be degraded; the accused shall be amnestied.’

On hearing the words the revulsion of unlooked-for joy in the heart of Flavian was so strong that he sank back fainting into the arms of the attendants. When he recovered he hid his face in his hands, and could only murmur in broken words his gratitude to God and to the Emperor. As a last favour he begged that he might take back with him the boy-Emperor Arcadius, as a pledge of mercy and love to the rejoicing city.

‘Nay,’ said Theodosius, ‘I cannot send him, but offer up all your prayers for me, that my war with Maximus may be successful, and after that I will visit Antioch in person. Speed! speed! and deliver the people from the agony of their suspense.’

But the weariness and infirmities of age prevented Flavian from travelling back without rest as he had come, and a swift courier was despatched with the entrancing news. Nay, more, Theodosius even sent with him an autograph letter, brief, but full of kindness and dignity, in which, less in the tone of a wrathful emperor, or even of an offended father, than of a friend who wishes to be reconciled, he gently reproached them only for having forgotten what they owed and what the world owed to his beloved Flaccilla.

Meanwhile, before this news could reach Antioch, Chrysostom had not been idle. He continued to pour forth his impassioned harangues in the Cathedral. Might he not justifiably glory in the fact that the only gleam of 59 hope, the only intervention on behalf of pity, had come to Antioch from Christians? No Pagan magnate or orator had gone to intercede, but Flavian, ready like a good shepherd to lay down his life for the sheep. It was not the long-bearded, large-cloaked, self-exalting Pagan cynics who had bestirred themselves for the city. They had hurried away, anxious only to save their goods and to save themselves; but the monks, descending like angels from their mountain solitudes, had overawed the majesty of the sword and sceptre with the glory of holiness. ‘And now, why,’ he asked, ‘are you so ungrateful and so womanish as to plunge into pusillanimous murmurs about your punishment, though it is so far less severe than what you dreaded? Ought you not rather to burst with praises, and to sing, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, Who hath visited and redeemed His people”? Like children you are crying, ‘Oh, unhappy Antioch! how art thou dishonoured?” Dishonoured! What dishonours a city? Its vice, its squalor, its greed, its cruelty, its drunkenness, not the forfeiture of a nominal prerogative. “But Antioch has lost her glory!” Children that you are! What is her glory? Not her palaces, not her statues and marble streets and bright colonnades, not her Grove of Daphne, nor her fountains, and cypresses, and soft air, and multitudinous population; nay, but such virtues as Christianity has brought forth in her, and the glory which not even Rome can equal, that here the disciples were first called Christians.’

Nor did John’s labours end with his sermon. The words rang in his ears, ’ I was in prison, and ye visited me,’ and he made his way to the crowded city jail to console the captives, and above all to tend the hapless boy over whom his heart yearned in pity. He was conducted into the place where Philip lay. It was crowded with other victims, chiefly of the poorest rank. The air was poisonously foul; the misery and anguish were intense; there was a total lack of all decency, or tendance, or wholesome food. Here in a corner the poor lad lay like an image moulded in wax, faint and sore, scarcely able to speak, and seemingly almost at the point to die. The soul of Chrysostom was moved by mingled pity and indignation as he witnessed his condition.

Murmuring in his ear a few words of prayer and comfort, he went straight to Hellebichus, and, promising to become surety for Philip, entreated the Commissioner to allow the boy to be removed. The heart of Hellebichus had been greatly softened by all that he had witnessed, and he wrote the requisite order. The sick lad was gently placed in a soft litter and carried to the house of Chrysostom. There Anthusa tended him with womanly solicitude as lovingly as if he had been her own son; and under her gentle nursing the young life began to take colour and fragrance again, like a flower which has been beaten by storm, and revives in the dew and sunlight.

During the fifth week of Lent the express courier from Constantinople arrived. He was wreathed with olive and myrtle, and carried a branch of olive in his hand, and the people knew that he must be the bearer of good news. When Hellebichus without delay announced the free forgiveness of the Emperor, not even the rules of Lent could check the outburst of general joy. Tables were spread in the public ways, and all feasted at the lectisternia. Hellebichus himself, with a garland on his brow, promenaded the principal streets, amid the acclamations of the multitude. Libanius was by his side, pausing now and then to deliver some florid euphuistic passage from one or other of his orations, written to move or to thank Theodosius, or in praise of Hellebichus and Cæsarius. Antioch, with a great rebound, felt that she was herself again. The people even begged Hellebichus to stop and partake in their festivity. They made him sit down, and were delighted to see him graciously eat a little fish at one of their tables.

On Easter eve Flavian himself arrived. He was followed, he was borne along by great floods of the populace, who broke into shouts of gratitude and welcome. The public baths were opened. Banquets were spread in the open air, and every house was gay with garlands and festoons. That night the streets of the city were bright as day with universal illumination; and the tender heart of the old bishop was further gladdened because he found his sister still alive.

Never did Easter morn rise more brightly over Antioch. 61 It seemed to many of the people as though that day they too had risen with Christ from the dead. The church was wholly unable to accommodate the thousands who thronged to it. The sun shone in on a mass of garlands and myrtle boughs. It was on this occasion that Chrysostom delivered the famous harangue in which he described the mission of Flavian. In speaking of the demonstrations of joy—the Forum hung with wreaths, the many lamps, the couches strewn in the streets for banquet—he bade them join with these another and a purer festival—to crown themselves with the roses of virtue, to kindle in pure souls the lamps of wisdom and holiness. Then Flavian himself stood before the holy table, and stepped forth with the consecrated elements in his hands. The choir broke out into thunders of glad psalmody; sons flung their arms round the necks of fathers whose lives were saved, and happy mothers clasped their laughing children to their breasts.

And when Chrysostom returned and broke the glad news to Philip a wan smile for the first time flickered over the boy’s pale features. He grasped the hand of the Presbyter in a pressure of speechless gratitude when he was told that the peril was passed for ever, and that henceforth the house of Chrysostom and Anthusa should be his home.