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| Unlawful Expulsion of John from his Bishopric. The Trouble which followed. Conflagration of the Church by Fire from Heaven. Exile of John to Cucusus.
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Chapter XXII.—Unlawful
Expulsion of John from his Bishopric. The Trouble which followed.
Conflagration of the Church by Fire from Heaven. Exile of John to
Cucusus.
From this period the most
zealous of the people guarded John alternately, stationing themselves
about the episcopal residence by night and by day.1612
| 1612Soc. vi. 18; Pallad. ibid. and Chrys. Ep.
ad Inn.; Theodoret, H. E. v. 34. Soz. has distinct material.
Cf. Zos. v. 24.
|
The bishops who had condemned him complained of this conduct as a
violation of the laws of the Church, declared that they could answer
for the justice of the sentence that had been enacted against him, and
asserted that tranquillity would never be restored among the people
until he had been expelled from the city. A messenger having conveyed
to him a mandate from the emperor enjoining his immediate departure,
John obeyed, and escaped from the city, unnoticed by those who had been
appointed to guard him. He made no other censure than that, in being
sent into banishment without a legal trial or any of the forms of the
law, he was treated more severely than murderers, sorcerers, and
adulterers. He was conveyed in a little bark to Bithynia, and thence
immediately continued his journey. Some of his enemies were
apprehensive lest the people, on hearing of his departure, should
pursue him, and bring him back by force, and therefore commanded the
gates of the church to be closed. When the people who were in the
public places of the city heard of what had occurred, great confusion
ensued; for some ran to the seashore as if they would follow him, and
others fled hither and thither, and were in great terror since the
wrath of the emperor was expected to visit them for creating so much
disturbance and tumult. Those who were within the church barred the
exits still further by rushing together upon them, and by pressing upon
one another. With difficulty they forced the doors open by the use of
great violence; one party shattered them with stones, another was
pulling them toward themselves, and was thus forcing the crowd backward
into the building. Meanwhile the church was suddenly consumed on all
sides with fire. The flames extended in all directions, and the grand
house of the senatorial council, adjacent to the church on the south,
was doomed. The two parties mutually accused each other of
incendiarism. The enemies of John asserted that his partisans had been
guilty of the deed from revenge, on account of the vote that had been
passed against him by the council. These latter, on the other hand,
maintained that they had been calumniated, and that the deed was
perpetrated by their enemies, with the intention of burning them in the
church. While the fire was spreading from late afternoon until the
morning, and creeping forward to the material which was still standing,
the officers who held John in custody conveyed him to Cucusus, a city
of Armenia, which the emperor by letter had appointed as the place of
residence for the condemned man. Other officers were commissioned to
arrest all the bishops and clerics who had favored the cause of John,
and to imprison them in Chalcedon. Those citizens who were suspected of
attachment to John were sought out and cast into prison, and compelled
to pronounce anathema against him.
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