Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/394

 374 THE DECLINE AND FALL Eudoxia ; who has sullied her fame by the pei-seeution of St. John Chrj'sostom. K°ofc^.^^^^'**'^^ death of the indolent Nectarius, the successor of ml-ei,.^*- ^^egoiy Nazianzen, the church of Constantinople was distracted [397] by the ambition of rival candidates, Avho were not ashamed to solicit, with gold or Hattery, the suffrage of the people, or of the favourite. On this occasion, Eutropius seems to have deviated from his ordinary maxims ; and his uncoirupted judgment was determined only by the superior merit of a stranger. In a late journey into the East, he had admired the sermons of John, a native and presbyter of Antioch, whose name has been dis- tinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth.^i A private order was dispatched to the governor of Syria ; and, as the people might be unwillmg to resign their favourite preacher, he was transported with speed and secrecy, in a post- chariot, from Antioch to Constantinople. The unanimous and unsolicited consent of the court, the clergj^ and the people, ratified the choice of the minister ; and, both as a saint and as an orator, the new archbishop surpassed the sanguine expecta- tions of the public. Born of a noble and opulent family, in the capital of Syria, Chrysostom had been educated by the care of a tender mother, under the tuition of the most skilful masters. He studied the art of rhetoric in the school of Libanius ; and that celebrated sophist, who soon discovered the talents of his disciple, ingenuously confessed that John would have deserved to succeed him, had he not been stolen away by the Christians. His piety soon disjwsed him to receive the sacrament of baptism ; to renounce the lucrative and honourable profession of the law '; and to bury himself in the adjacent desert, where he subdued the lusts of the flesh by an austere penance of six years. His 41 The sixth book of Socrates, the eighth of Sozomen, and the fifth of Theodoret afford curious and authentic materials for the hfe of John Chrysostom. Besides those general historians. I have taken for my guides the four principal biographers of the saint. I. The author of a partial and passionate Vindication of the Archbishop of Constantinople, composed in the form of a dialogue, and under the name of his zealous partizan Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis (Tillemont, M^m EccWs. tom. XI. p. 500-S33). It is inserted among the works of Chrysostom", torn. xiii. p. I-90, edit. Montfaucon. 2. The moderate Erasmus (torn. iii. epist MCL. p. 1331-1347. edit. Ludg. Bat.). His avacity and good sense were his own; his errors in the uncultivated state of ecclesiastical antiquity, were almost inevitable 3 The learned Tillemont (M^m. Eccl^siastiques. torn. xi. p. 1-40 f 547-626, &c. &c.) ; who compiles the lives of the saints with incredible patience and religious acctu;acy. He has minutely searched the voluminous works of Chrysostom himself. 4. Father Montfaucon, who has perused those works with the curious diligence of an editor, discovered several new homilies, and again reviewed and composed the life of Chrysostom (Opera Chrysostom. torn, xiii! ^ 01-^77) [For modem works see Appendix I.] t ^ /// I'-vi