Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/83

 Along with the idle love of vain show and amusement in the capital there must have been genuine religious feeling. By the lower orders Chrysostom was honoured and respected. He had been raised to the archbishopric by the eunuch-minister Eutropius, who had heard him at Antioch, and had much admired his preaching. Base as the man was, Chrysostom thought it his duty to protect him when the rebel Gothic chief, an Arian and a heretic, demanded his life. The archbishop's eloquence saved him at the moment, though, as we have seen, he soon afterwards got his deserts. Chrysostom's great merit was that he did not spare rank and wealth. There was no taint of worldly-mindedness about him, and in such a city as Constantinople this was quite enough to bring him a host of enemies. Of these the chief and leader was the Empress Eudoxia, whose feeble husband was now wholly under her control. Chrysostom's denunciations of luxury might easily be construed into pointed reflections on the emperor, and be regarded as almost treasonable. But, as with John the Baptist, all men counted him a prophet, and with the mass of the population he was a great favourite. A furious riot would have been the result of any openly hostile proceedings against him. The empress endeavoured to crush him by the instrumentality of another ecclesiastic, Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, who seems to have feared that Chrysostom's fame would depress his own rank among the bishops of the Church. To this fear was added a bitter feeling which had grown out of some theological controversy between them, and, on the