CHAPTER LXVII

THE EXILE AT CUCUSUS

Dante, Inf. ii. 86–90.

And now a prospect of the utmost peace and happiness seemed to open itself before the path of Philip. There was something about him which conciliated the regard of honest men, and Count Anthemius was attracted by his character, as the Præfect Aurelian had been, and so many others, including the Emperor himself. To be able to recognise capable and trustworthy men is one of the most valuable gifts which rulers can possess, and Anthemius possessed it in an eminent degree. He appointed Philip to a responsible and lucrative office in the Prætorium which placed him near his own person, gave him great influence, and offered opportunities for winning still higher distinction. To this public good fortune was added the singular happiness of Philip’s home. He was surrounded by the household of Chrysostom, who were all Christians, and were of tried fidelity. Miriam, trained in refined simplicity which wealth had never tempted into luxury, not only proved herself an excellent manager of his domestic affairs, but also undertook with ardour those kindly offices among the poor which enabled her throughout life to realise how true it is that

In due time a little son was born to them. Haunted by the memories of the past, and unwilling that prosperity 550 should make him forget them, Philip called his boy Eutyches, and the health and beauty of the infant seemed of good promise for the years to come. When the child was born Philip made his way to the cavern in which Macedonius, the barley-eater, still held his dim and dreary abode. Worn and ill, and often weighed down by unspeakable fits of sadness, the white-haired old man welcomed him with eagerness, and gladly assented to his request that he would come down and stand as godfather at the baptismal font for the firstborn of the young man whose life in his early boyhood he had made a brave effort to save. The kind consent of Macedonius was fertile of further consequences, for, now that years and infirmities were increasing upon him like a flood, he was persuaded to leave his cavern, only visiting it occasionally, and to make his home in a cell which they built for him in the valley hard by. Here he was close beside their home, and here Miriam could provide for him some of the alleviations necessitated by his state of health.

But never for a single day was Chrysostom absent from the thought of his foster-son. In one of the letters which they interchanged on every opportunity Philip had asked him always to be with him in spirit at five o’clock on every afternoon, that their mutual prayers might mingle, like incense in the golden censer of the great High Priest. Letters were often lost en route, for the brigands who infested every mountain-path frequently robbed the messengers, and made all communication precarious. Still, Chrysostom had been kept informed by Philip of his recovery, his travels, his marriage, his settlement in Antioch, his domestic felicity; and had again and again, with firm consideration, forbidden Philip to sacrifice his own young life—as he had been eager to do—by coming to Cucusus. Even this loving prohibition might have been unavailing if Philip had not been convinced that the difficulties of the Patriarch’s situation were in some respects enhanced by the presence of every new visitor who came to see him in that far-away and afflicted town. Two devoted friends performed for him every office which a watchful love could suggest. One was his aunt, the Deaconess Sabiniana, his father’s sister, a lady of exalted 551 saintliness; the other was the good presbyter Evethius, who had accompanied him on his journey. A rich citizen of Cucusus, named Dioscorus, had given up to his use his own house, which was the best in the town, and had himself retired to a neighbouring villa. Adelphius, the excellent bishop of this out-of-the-way retreat, thought no kindness burdensome which he could extend to the illustrious exile. Sopater, the governor, waited on him like a son. At first it seemed as if the tranquillity of his new home and the absence of tumults and enemies would be better for his health and happiness than Constantinople, with its measureless insults and cruel persecutions. But when the snows began to cover the peaks of Mount Taurus, and winter clutched the whole region in its icy grasp, the Patriarch’s sufferings were cruel. He was shaken by a severe cough. If he kept up large fires, the smoke nearly suffocated him; if he let the fire sink low, he was perishing with cold. Accustomed to the soft climate of Antioch and Constantinople, he was compelled to take to his bed, where, tormented with insomnia, and filled with disgust for every kind of food, he lay covered with blankets and only just enough alive to feel life’s miseries. His woes were alleviated when spring returned. He could enjoy the beauty of the opening flowers and the balmy vernal breeze; above all, communication with the outer world became possible once more, and he could receive the letters despatched by Olympias and Philip. Yet all the while death was at his door. The Isaurians were a constant terror. They plundered the villas, they harried the cattle, they burnt the farmhouses on every side, they slew all who offered resistance. To take a walk outside the walls was to run the risk of being captured and carried off to the mountains, only to be redeemed, if at all, by an exorbitant ransom. At times the alarm was so acute that numbers fled for refuge to the dense woods which clothed the mountain-sides, and took shelter in what dens or caves they could find. On one occasion even Chrysostom and his little household were driven to this miserable resource.

This state of things became so intolerable that it was necessary to fly for shelter to Arabissus, a lonely fortress 552 on the hills twenty leagues distant, built on the summit of almost inaccessible rocks. There, too, Chrysostom met with kindness from the governor, and from Otreius, the bishop, or, as we should call him, the vicar of the hamlet; but the place was worse than a prison. He was now unable to take the daily exercise which was essential for his health, and could only gaze with indescribable sadness on the dreary prospect of icy mountain-peaks and leagues of unbroken snow. Soon, too, the fortress was overcrowded by the numbers of hapless fugitives who fled to it for safety, and famine and pestilence added to the accumulated forms of anguish. Nor even here were they safe from the hungry and ruthless bandits. Some of the more active—especially the young men—in sheer despair wandered into the forests, and tried to make their escape into more hospitable regions; but they paid the forfeit with their lives, and their bodies were found frozen to death. One night three hundred Isaurians attacked Arabissus itself, and were only repelled after a desperate fight. Of this peril Chrysostom was, happily, unconscious. He was asleep, and as they did not awake him, he did not hear of the averted peril till the morning had brought safety.

It can easily be understood that, under circumstances so deplorable, it was undesirable for Chrysostom’s own sake that he should be burdened with the anxiety of extra visitors, whose difficulties would deepen his distress. A young reader named Theodotus came to him from Antioch. His father was a man of noble birth, from whom the youth had wrung a reluctant consent to visit the exile. He made his way to Arabissus in spite of many dangers, and brought with him splendid presents from his father. These Chrysostom returned with a courteous letter, and sent back with it the young Theodotus. How could he be of any real use in training the young man in a scene so harassed with massacre and tumult, brigandage and conflagration?

In spite of these difficulties, and the Patriarch’s obvious reluctance to entangle others in his own calamities, so many flocked to him, and he occupied so exalted a position in the eyes of the Christian world, that he at last 553 rekindled the undying embers of jealousy and hatred in the mind of Atticus, the Patriarch who had succeeded Arsacius at Constantinople, and still more in the cankered hearts of Severian and Porphyry. ‘All Antioch is at Cucusus,’ wrote Porphyry in savage ill-temper to Severian. ’This man, disgraced, banished, condemned, is directing missions to Persia and Phœnicia; preventing me from acquiring my just authority at Antioch; uniting the Pope of Rome and all the bishops of the West in a conspiracy against the Patriarch of Alexandria, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and myself. This dead man continues to be a hindrance and a terror to the living; this conquered heretic is getting the upper hand of us victorious Catholics. You must leave no stone unturned to frighten or cajole the Emperor to remove him to some still more distant and desolate spot of the Empire—the farther, the better; and if he dies, or disappears on the way, or falls into the hands of Huns or Isaurians, so much the better for the Christian world.’

Armed with this precious missive, Severian paid a visit to Atticus, and, with soft murmurs of regret and ready tears of crocodilian magnanimity, implored him, for the sake of that peace which is so dear to all Christian hearts, to procure from Arcadius an edict for the farther banishment of the ex-Patriarch John. When the bishops had taken on their own heads the responsibility of Chrysostom’s expulsion, Arcadius would fain have been rid of the matter, and the deaths, miseries, and earthquakes which had ensued made him still more desirous to meddle with it no further. But Atticus knew on which string to harp. He persuaded the Emperor that the name of John was being used as a nucleus of conspiracy of the Western against the Eastern Church, and that Honorius and Stilico—these were the two names which would most surely rouse the Emperor to sullen wrath—would make these ecclesiastical matters an excuse for the most dangerous political interference. With little difficulty, by the use of this weapon, he procured an edict for the removal of Chrysostom to the remotest corner of the entire Empire. Severian’s malignity had already hit upon the place. It was the desperately repellent and ruined town of Pityus, on the 554 Euxine. There he would find no Christians at all, and in the midst of Heniochs, Lazes and Huns, might eat away his heart in vain.

The management of the affair was entrusted to Atticus and Severian. The two officers who had accompanied Chrysostom to his exile at Cucusus—young Anatolius and Theodotus—had by accident been kind-hearted men, who had treated the sufferer with consideration, and availed themselves of every alleviation of his journey which circumstances allowed. The bishops took care that this mistake should not be made a second time. The two officers selected were men in whom no capability for compassion was to be suspected. They had been given secretly to understand that the bishops would give them a handsome recompense and secure their early promotion if they acquitted themselves satisfactorily of their task. By still darker innuendoes it was made plain, even to their obtuseness, that it was of no great consequence whether Chrysostom even arrived at Pityus or no. If he ‘happened’ to die by the way, then reward and promotion would be equally, and perhaps even more, secure, while at the same time much annoyance and difficulty would be prevented.—The names of these two officers were Secundus and Cythegius.

‘Pretty plain that!’ said Cythegius to his comrade as he left the Thomaites, where the bishops had given them instructions.

‘Yes,’ said Secundus, with a broad grin on his hard features. ‘It is only the roundabout way which their Religiosities have, and it means “murder him,” only do it so slowly that people won’t call it by the ugly name of murder.’

‘He is worth the whole lot of them put together,’ said Cythegius.

‘That is no affair of ours,’ replied the other, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It isn’t we who will have to go to hell for it.’