CHAPTER LV

A BURNING, FIERY FURNACE

The examination of the two good bishops, Eulysius and Cyriacus, who had gone forth with Chrysostom, had fallen to Studius, the Præfect of the city. It was impossible for the vilest of tribunals to condemn men whose innocence was alike transparent and demonstrable; so, after their bonds and imprisonment, they were gratuitously banished from the city. Apparently their escape was not to the liking of the heroes of the Synod of the Oak. They thought that Studius was not half cruel or unscrupulous enough in the violation of the law. Eudoxia agreed with them. Studius was cashiered, and Optatus, a Pagan—the Judge Jeffreys of the fourth century—was put in his place. He was sufficiently brutal and tyrannous to satisfy even Bishops Severian and Antiochus.

One of the first to be brought before this villainous tribunal was the presbyter Tigrius. His history was a touching one. He had been a barbarian, a slave, and a eunuch, whose fidelity had been rewarded by manumission. When he became free, piety and charity had marked him out for the diaconate, and he had ultimately been ordained presbyter. He had been one of Chrysostom’s most faithful friends, and had become universally known as a man who was gentle, generous, and kind to the poor. Charged with being one of the authors of the conflagration, he of course declared his innocence; but the vengeance of his enemies was not to be baulked by such a trifle. He was a ‘Johannite,’ and that was enough. He was stripped of his clothing, and laid face downwards. Then he was beaten with scourges of leaded hide. Next—for every method of ‘the Holy Office’ was anticipated with all the 462 that her amateur remedies were often more efficacious than their own. She, too, in her simplicity, had to go through the same horrors to which Pentadia had been subjected. The loud murmurs of the poor, who loved her, restrained Optatus from the severest measures; but he tyrannously enforced upon her a mulct of nearly all her property. The court liked money. Arcadius was by no means indifferent to the enjoyment of huge fines. The extravagances of Eudoxia required unlimited supplies. So the wealth of Nicarete, which for so many years had ‘wandered, Heaven-directed, to the poor,’ was now forfeited to Byzantine ostentation. Yet she would not be baulked of her charity. Reducing the expenditure of herself and of her once large household to the barest minimum, she was still enabled to enjoy that luxury of doing good which was the only pleasure towards which she had the smallest inclination. Even so she excited the small jealousies of Arsacius and his ecclesiastics. They knew that in her heart she had not the least respect for any one of them, and remained faithful to the memory of Chrysostom. Subject to incessant annoyances, she too left the scene of her bountiful liberalities, and retired to end her days in her native Bithynia.

So the reign of terror went on, and not only multitudes of men, but of women also—many a monk, and many a virgin, and many a deaconess—were fined, scourged, imprisoned, tortured under eyes that gloated on their sufferings, in order that the dumb dotage of Arsacius might have some shadow of a congregation to listen to his inane platitudes. It was in vain. Men like Severian and Arsacius and Optatus, women like Eudoxia and her loose-minded entourage of widows intriguing with sham monks and bad priests, may wield all the powers of an empire, and may arm themselves with the snakes and torches of the Furies, but they cannot subjugate free souls by burning and torturing frail bodies. The friends of Chrysostom would have nothing to do with services rendered abhorrent by guilt and congregations assembled under dread of confiscation, anguish, and ruin. They gathered secretly in unknown houses and distant fields, and worshipped the God of their fathers in solitude, where the feet of wicked priests and more wicked bishops could not intrude.