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| Introduction.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE TWO HOMILIES ON
EUTROPIUS.
The interest of the two
following discourses depends not only on their intrinsic value as
specimens of Chrysostom’s eloquence, but also on the singular and
dramatic character of the incidents which gave occasion to
them.
Arcadius the Emperor of the East like his
brother Honorius the Emperor of the West was a man of feeble
intellect. The history of the Empire under his reign is a
melancholy record of imbecility on the part of the nominal rulers:
of faithlessness and unscrupulous ambition on the part of their
ministers. The chief administrator of affairs in the beginning of
the reign of Arcadius was Rufinus, an Aquitanian Gaul; the very
model of an accomplished adventurer. His intrigues, his arrogance,
his rapacious avarice excited the indignation of the people, and he
was at last assassinated by the troops to whom he was making an
oration in the presence of the Emperor. His place in the favour and
confidence of Arcadius was soon occupied by the eunuch Eutropius.
The career of this person was a strange one. Born a slave, in the
region of Mesopotamia, he had passed in boyhood and youth through
the hands of many owners, performing the most menial offices
incident to his position. At length Arnithus, an old military
officer who had become his master, presented him to his daughter on
her marriage; and in the words of the poet Claudian, “the future
consul of the East was made over as part of a marriage dowry.”798
| 798 In Eutrop. i. 104, 105. | But the
young lady after a time grew tired of the slave who was becoming
elderly and wrinkled, and without trying to sell him turned him out
of her household. He picked up a precarious living in
Constantinople and was often in great want until an officer of the
court took pity on him, and procured him a situation in the lower
ranks of the imperial chamberlains. This was the beginning of his
rise. By the diligence with which he discharged his humble duties,
by occasional witty sayings, and the semblance of a fervent piety
he attracted the notice of the great Emperor Theodosius (the father
of Arcadius), and gradually won his confidence so as to be employed
on difficult and delicate missions. On the death of Theodosius he
became in the capacity of grand chamberlain the intimate adviser
and constant attendant of Arcadius and the most subtle and
determined rival of Rufinus. It was by his contrivance that the
scheme of Rufinus for marrying his own daughter to the Emperor was
defeated: and that Eudoxia the daughter of a Frankish general was
substituted for her. After the murder of Rufinus the government was
practically in his hands; but he exercised his power more craftily
than the vain and boastful Gaul. He contrived at first to discharge
all the duties which fell to his lot as chamberlain with humble
assiduity, and sought no other title than he already possessed.
Slowly but surely however he climbed to the summit of power by the
simple process of putting out of the way on various pretexts all
dangerous competitors. He deprived his victims of their last hope
of escape by abolishing the right of the Church to afford shelter
to fugitives. He sold the chief offices of the State, and the
command of the provinces to the highest bidders. By surrounding the
Emperor with a crowd of frivolous companions, by dissipating his
mind with a perpetual round of amusements, by taking him every
spring to Ancyra in Phrygia where he was subjected to the
enervating influence of a soft climate and
luxurious style of living he made the naturally feeble intellect of
Arcadius more feeble still and withdrew it from the power of every
superior mind but his own. From the pettiest detail of domestic
life to the most important affairs of state, the wily minister at
length ruled supreme. Arcadius was little more than a magnificently
dressed puppet, and the eunuch slave was the real master of half
the Roman world. It was by his advice that on the death of
Nectarius in 397 that Chrysostom had been appointed, very much
against his own will, to the vacant See of Constantinople. If
Eutropius expected to find a complaisant courtier in the new
Archbishop he certainly sustained a severe disappointment. Some
little pretences which he made of assisting the work of the Church
by patronising Chrysostom’s missionary projects could not blind
the Archbishop to the gross venality of his administration, or
exempt him from the censure and warning of one who was too honest
and bold to be any respecter of persons. In fact when the
Archbishop declaimed against the cupidity and oppressions of the
rich it was obvious to all that Eutropius was the most signal
example of these vices. At last the minister, not content to remain
as he was—enjoying the reality of power without the
name—prepared the way for his own ruin by inducing the Emperor to
bestow on him the titles of Patrician and Consul. The acquisition
of these venerable names by the eunuch slave caused a profound
sensation of shame and indignation throughout the Empire, but
especially in the Western capital, where they were bound up with
all the noblest and most glorious memories in the history of the
Roman people. The name of Eutropius was omitted from the Fasti or
catalogue of consuls inscribed in the Capitol at Rome. Amidst the
general decadence and degeneracy of public spirit in the Empire the
West did not descend, could not have descended, to those depths of
servile adulation to which the Byzantines stooped at the
inauguration of Eutropius as Consul. The senate, and all the great
officials military and civil poured into the palace of the Cæsars
to offer their homage, and emulated each other in the honor of
kissing the hand and even the wrinkled visage of the eunuch. They
saluted him as the bulwark of the laws, and the second father of
the Emperor. Statues of bronze or marble were placed in various
parts of the city representing him in the costume of warrior or
judge, and the inscriptions on them styled him third founder of the
city, after Byzas, and Constantine. No wonder that Claudian
declaimed with bitter sarcasm against “a Byzantine nobility and
Greek divinities” and invokes Neptune by a stroke of his trident
to unseat and submerge the degenerate city which had inflicted such
a deep disgrace on the Empire.799
| 799 In Eutrop. ii. 39, 136. | A blow indeed was about to fall
upon the eastern capital, directed not by the hand of a mythic
deity, but of a stout barbarian soldier. The consequences of it
were averted from the city only by the sacrifice of the new consul
upon whom it fell with crushing effect. He sank never to rise
again. Tribigild, a distinguished gothic soldier who had been
raised to the rank of Tribune in the Roman army, had demanded
higher promotion for himself and higher pay for a body of military
colonists in Phrygia of which he had the command. His petition had
been coldly dismissed by Eutropius; Tribigild resent the affront
and with the troops which he commanded broke into revolt. Eutropius
entrusted the conduct of an expedition against him to one of his
favorites, who suffered a most ignominious defeat in which he
perished, and the greater part of his army was cut to pieces.
Constantinople was convulsed with terror and indignation. Gäinas
another Goth in command of the city troops declared that he could
do nothing to check the progress of the revolt unless Eutropius was
banished, the principal author of all the evils of the State. His
demand was backed by the Empress Eudoxia, who had experienced much
insolence from the minister. Eutropius was deprived of his official
dignity, his property was declared confiscated, and he was
commanded to quit the palace instantly under pain of death. Whither
could the poor wretch fly who was thus in a moment hurled from the
pinnacle of power into the lowest depths of degradation and
destitution. There
was but one place to which he could naturally turn in his
distress—the sanctuary of the Church; but by the cruel irony of
his fate, a law of his own devising here barred his entrance. Yet
he knew that the law prohibiting asylum had been resented and
resisted by the Church and it might be that the Archbishop would
connive at the violation of the obnoxious measure by the very
person who had passed it. He resolved to make the experiment. In
the humblest guise of a suppliant, tears streaming down his
puckered cheeks, his scant grey hairs smeared with dust, he crept
into the Cathedral, drew aside the curtain in front of the altar
and clung to one of the columns which supported it. Here he was
found by Chrysostom in a state of pitiable and abject terror, for
soldiers in search of him had entered the Church, and the
clattering of their arms could be heard on the other side of the
thin partition which concealed the fugitive. With quivering lips he
craved the asylum of the church, and he was not repulsed as the
destroyer of the refuge which he now sought.800
Chrysostom rejoiced in the
opportunity afforded to the church of taking a noble revenge on her
adversary.801
He concealed
Eutropius in the sacristy, confronted his pursuers, and refused to
surrender him. “None shall violate the sanctuary save over my
body: the church is the bride of Christ who has entrusted her honor
to me and I will never betray it.” He desired to be conducted to
the Emperor and taken like a prisoner between two rows of spearmen
from the Cathedral to the palace802
where he boldly vindicated the
church’s right of asylum in the presence of the Emperor. Arcadius
promised to respect the retreat of the fallen minister, and with
difficulty persuaded the angry troops to accept his decision. The
next day was Sunday, and the Cathedral was thronged with a vast
multitude eager to hear what the golden mouth of the Archbishop
would utter who had dared in defence of the Church’s right to
defy the law, and confront the tide of popular feeling. But few
probably were prepared to witness such a dramatic scene as was
actually presented. The Archbishop had just taken his seat in the
“Ambon” or high reading desk a little westward of the chancel
from which he was wont to preach on the account of his diminutive
stature, and a sea of faces was upturned to him waiting for the
stream of golden eloquence when the curtain of the sanctuary was
drawn aside and disclosed the cowering form of the miserable
Eutropius clinging to one of the columns of the Holy Table. Many a
time had the Archbishop preached to unheeding ears on the vain and
fleeting character of worldly honor, prosperity, luxury, and
wealth: now he would force attention, and drive home his lesson to
the hearts of his vast congregation by pointing to a visible
example of fallen grandeur in the poor wretch who lay grovelling
behind him.
Eutropius remained for some days within the
precincts of the Church and then suddenly departed. Whether he
mistrusted the security of his shelter and hoped to make his escape
in disguise, or whether he surrendered himself on the understanding
that exile would be substituted for capital punishment cannot be
certainly known. Chrysostom declared that if he had not abandoned
the Church, the Church would never have given him up.803
Anyhow he
was captured and conveyed to Cyprus, but soon afterwards he was
tried at Constantinople on various charges of high crimes and
misdemeanors against the State, and condemned to suffer capital
punishment. He was taken to Chalcedon and there beheaded.804
| 804 For a fuller account of all these events, see Life
of St. John Chrysostom by W. R. W. Stephens (pp. 298–356, 3d
edition). | The second
of the two following discourses was delivered a few days after
Eutropius had quitted the sanctuary of the Church.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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