CHAPTER LII

CONFLAGRATION

Meanwhile, as though things were not black enough already, an event had happened which was fraught with unutterable disaster to the guilty city.

As the little boat which carried Chrysostom to the Bithynian shore furrowed its way through the starlit waves the rowers and soldiers raised a sudden exclamation of curiosity and amazement. Startled from his moody grief, the Patriarch looked up, and saw a huge blaze shooting up into the air, broadening in area, deepening in vividness and intensity, and at last reddening the evening sky with terrible illumination. What could it mean? What had caused it? That the Cathedral should be in flames seemed inconceivable; but was it possible that there could have been a revolution at Constantinople? Had the populace, in wild grief at the loss of their Archbishop, risen against the Emperor, and burnt to ashes the buildings on either side of the superb oblong forum known as the Augusteum, and the Imperial Palace itself? They learnt too soon the fatal truth, but meanwhile they had to repress their devouring anxiety and press forward on their way.

No sooner had the crowd outside St. Sophia begun to suspect that treachery was intended, and that their beloved Patriarch was being forced away from them, than they endeavoured to force their way into the church, of which they found that the western gates had now been locked and barred. Rushing round the cloisters to find some other entrance, they found the eastern ingress defended by soldiers of the Court, who opposed their ingress. A 444 fight began, and though many were killed, the crowd succeeded in bursting in. Meanwhile, the multitudes who thronged the western Galilee, ignorant of what was taking place, and imagining that their bishop was being seized by violence, began to batter furiously upon the principal gates, which at last they partly burst open, and partly shattered to fragments. Rushing in, they again found themselves confronted by the soldiery, who, alarmed by the fury of the mob, drew their swords. The Jews and Pagans whom curiosity had attracted to the scene looked on with sneers and bitter ridicule while the mob and the soldiers stood face to face. Maddened by their insults, the crowd rushed forward, another bloody fight ensued, and the many-coloured marbles of the sacred pavement were soon heaped with corpses and incarnadined with blood. To add to the general horror, a storm had rolled in from the Euxine, whirling before it so dense a mass of clouds as to cause a blackness which, to the excited minds of the spectators, seemed inexplicable and miraculous. Stunned by the sudden roar of the hurricane, soldiers and populace alike stood silent in a co-instantaneous pause of horror which had in it something sublime. The fighting ceased, and the multitude, haunted by supernatural awe, began to steal out of the sacred edifice; when suddenly, as though a thunderbolt from heaven had smitten the roof, a crack was heard, and from the Patriarch’s throne a jet of fire leaped upwards with inconceivable fury. The cry of ‘Fire! Fire!’ had scarcely been raised when it seemed too late to check the strangely precipitous ravages of the conflagration. The timbers of the building were dry with the scorching heat of many summers. The spout of fire leaped up as high as the roof, and, spreading among beams and rafters, presented the aspect of a colossal tree of red flame. Then, from the boughs and the leaves of this awful tree it seemed as if myriads of fiery serpents darted in every direction, wreathing about pillars and architraves, melting the iron of the roofs and the chains of the great lamps, which fell with crash after crash and shattered themselves to pieces on the tessellated floors. The crowd and the soldiers alike, seized by the same panic, rushed promiscuously into the open air, reduced to peace by 445 common terror. Many were crushed to death or had their limbs broken in the wild effort to escape, and barely had they emerged into safety when the whole cathedral seemed to be blazing like a furnace of demons, beyond all hope of preservation. Of the metropolitan edifice, one of the stateliest churches in the world, nothing was left but a heap of blackened ruins, half-calcined by the fierce heat, and one little side-chapel, which had not been so much as scathed by the flames.

But this was not the whole extent of the mischief. Driven before the fierce wind great flakes of fire and of burning material were swept southward to the adjacent buildings. Strange to say, they did not light on the Patriarcheion, which stood nearest to the church. For this—though it was not known—thanks were due to Philip, who, roused by the awful spectacle from the stupor of his grief, employed the servants in deluging the roof with bucket after bucket of water, extinguishing each flake and brand as it fell. There was no one to take similar care of the two next buildings, the Senate-house and the Baths of Zeuxippus. The consequence was that they too were speedily raging like huge furnaces of inextinguishable fire. The flames shot high into the air and, beaten along by the wind, they met in gigantic burning arches overhead; while beneath them, as between two labouring volcanoes, streamed the myriads of the people, whose hearts were swept by strange extremes of emotion. Every citizen who had any patriotism mourned for the loss of the two loveliest edifices in the Imperial City. If the Christians felt inclined to taunt the Pagans with the destruction of their idols, the Pagans could sneer at the Christians for the reduction to ashes of the huge basilica where they worshipped ‘the pale Galilean.’ But Pagans and Christians alike felt that the Church, indeed, could be rebuilt—as it was soon rebuilt, with even greater magnificence—but that nothing could replace the choicest works of Greek sculpture. The famous statues of the Nine Muses, which Constantine had carried from Helicon to adorn his new capital, were calcined into dust. ‘What wonder!’ exclaimed the æsthetic Pagans. ‘What did the Muses care for the new religion, with its uncultured barbarism?’ But 446 the Zeus of Dodona, the Athene of Lindus, the Amphitrite of Rhodes, the Pan which the Greeks had consecrated in memory of the battle of Salamis—all perished indiscriminately; and the skill which had produced them had vanished from the world. They had sunk amid the lava streams of molten metal, or had been crushed by the masses of superincumbent ruin. The Zeus and the Athene had been preserved, though desperately injured, by the melted lead which had streamed over and encased them; and the Pagan historian, Zosimus, consoles himself with the inference that Zeus and Athene had determined under no circumstances of Christian provocation to abandon for ever the city which was the New Rome. But his consolation is soon overshadowed by the no less strong conviction that the share of these deities in human affairs is unaccountable; that they do whatever pleases them, and for the most part

Thus all the inhabitants of the great city had cause to mourn, and cause far deeper than any of which they were aware; for when Chrysostom went forth, not only had the Angel of the Church gone forth with him, but gone forth never to return. The golden candlestick of the Patriarchate was removed out of its place. There was, indeed, a long succession of archbishops, but the majority of them were nullities, who raised no voice against religious folly and worldly iniquity. The Patriarcheion became for all practical purposes a mere appanage of the Imperial Palace; Christians took their religion—orthodox or heretical as the chance might be—from the dictate of emperors, and set before themselves no loftier ideal of morals than they saw in the tyranny, the corruption, and the boundless luxury of the Palace and its despicable little human gods.

Who kindled that thrice-disastrous conflagration? The 447 answer to that question will never be known till the great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.

Some, in their excited imagination, declared that it had been supernatural. They said that they had heard the crash, and seen the rush of a descending thunderbolt, which had shattered the Archiepiscopal throne as a sign of God’s wrath and judgment, and in order that no bad or mean successor should defile with his presence the seat on which the holy John had sat.

Others laid the blame on the Jews and Pagans, who, they said, had with fiendish malignity seized the moment when the Christians were distracted with anguish to destroy their famous church, and, if possible, to consume some of the worshippers in its ashes.

Others fomented the preposterous calumny that Chrysostom himself was the guilty incendiary. But even the rage of Eudoxia, even the stolidity of Arcadius, found that charge too wickedly absurd. Every fact of the case, as well as the testimony of hundreds of witnesses and the holy character of the Patriarch, rendered the charge as ridiculous as it was infamous. The brutal Pagan præfect and magistrates, eager as they were to seize every weapon of destruction against men whom they detested, abandoned this pretence from the first. They left it to be cherished exclusively by the venomous falsity of the hostile bishops, who had the effrontery to assert it in their letter to Pope Innocent as though it were an indisputable fact.

The commonest view—though there was no tittle of evidence produced in its favour—was that it was the work of ‘the Johannites.’ It may be regarded as certain that this was not the case. Had any such plot existed, it cannot be doubted that in the tortures and persecutions which followed it would have become known.

The conflagration may have been due to accident pure and simple, so that not one person in Constantinople was aware how it arose. Or, again, it may have been the work of some one wild partisan of the Patriarch, driven half-mad by despair and a sense of injustice. If so, the secret remained locked in his own bosom. How vast a forest that first tiny spark enkindled!

There was only one alleviation of the calamity caused 448 by the fire. A small chapel had marvellously escaped when the rest of the great cathedral had been consumed to ashes. It was the Sacristy, and in it were contained the precious gold and silver vessels and other treasures of the church. In this circumstance the friends of Chrysostom saw a Divine interposition. For one of the charges brought against him was that he had sold, alienated, embezzled, and diverted to his own purposes the possessions of the church. Had the Sacristy and its contents been consumed in the conflagration, it would not only have been impossible to scatter this calumny to the winds, but it would have been urged that John had consumed the building to conceal the evidence of his own defalcations. As it was, all the treasures could be produced intact. An accurate inventory of them existed; this was placed in the hands of the Præfect Studius and a committee of high official assessors. Two friends of Chrysostom—the presbyters Germanus and Cassian—went through it before the legal authorities, handed over the sacred vessels, were furnished with a receipt in full, and carried this receipt with them to Pope Innocent at Rome, as a triumphant vindication of the Patriarch’s integrity. The providential preservation of the Sacristy robbed unscrupulous slanderers of what would otherwise have been their most fatal weapon.

The resultant anguish fell first, and most heavily, on Chrysostom himself. Accompanied by the Bishops Eulysius and Cyriacus and a few presbyters, he was making his sad journey to Nicæa, where he was to be informed of his ultimate destination. Their hearts were full of heaviness at the news that St. Sophia had been reduced to heaps of ruins, when they were thunderstruck by the arrival of an officer, despatched under the orders of the Court by Studius, the præfect, to charge the two bishops with incendiarism, to throw them and the presbyters into chains, and to conduct them back to prison in the city. Chrysostom, indignant at the wicked charge, said that they were as innocent as himself—that he could not separate his cause from theirs. As a matter of the barest justice, he demanded to be heard in his own defence and that of his friends. But not even the Empress had dared to 449 include the Patriarch in the odious accusation. The emissaries could only act on their orders. They fettered Eulysius, Cyriacus, and their companions, and they were carried off to prison, first to Chalcedon, then to Constantinople. The trial showed that there was not a tittle of evidence to inculpate them; but even under these circumstances they were banished from Constantinople, and forbidden ever again to enter its precincts.

Chrysostom, almost crushed with grief, continued his journey. He had not been allowed to take with him a single personal attendant. But God was merciful to him. The hearts of the rough soldiers were touched by his dignity and his misfortunes, and they and their officers treated him with affectionate respect, and did what they could to supply his needs.

They reached Nicæa, and there for a while they rested till the will of the Emperor was known. Chrysostom was a little refreshed by the comforts of the city and the soft breezes of Lake Ascanius, and he ventured to hope, in his innocence, that some tolerable place of exile like Sebaste, in Armenia, would be appointed for him as a residence, where he could spend in peace the rest of his days—those années plus pâles et moins courannées, which would not seem dim to a soul which had never been enchanted by the ambitions of the world. But it was a bitter blow to him to hear that he was to be banished—thanks to Eudoxia—to the half-desert town of Cucusus, at the end of a wild valley of the Taurus range. It was a place of wretched climate, liable to incessant assaults of Isaurian marauders, into which, as though he were dead already, he was to be flung aside as into a living tomb. In vain had his friends pleaded for a less intolerable place of banishment. Notorious criminals constantly secured for themselves a comfortable abode; but the hate of the Empress was as an axe whose edge could not be turned, and the paltry Armenian hamlet, whose only boast was the tomb of a former Archbishop of Constantinople—Paulus, who had been martyred by the Arians—was now to be immortalised by furnishing a rude shelter to the last years of the best saint and greatest Father of the fourth century.