Homilies and Hymns, Volume 2

bosom the flame of consuming jealousy and undying hatred for the Patriarchal See of Constantinople, which he had inherited from his uncle Patriarch Theophylos—also similarly engineered the expulsion of the predecessor of St. Nestorius, Patriarch St. John Chrysostom, to the Caucasus among the ridges of Mount Taurus.

This order was carried out under Emperor Arcadius, who, according to Gibbon, was under the "absolute dominion of his artful wife Eudoxia." The hatred of the immoral Eudoxia against St. Chrysostom was motivated by the fact that the latter had denounced the honours addressed to her statue placed almost within the precincts of St. Sophia.

But the unprincipled and cruel Theophylos was so unsatisfied even with this inhuman treatment meted out to this saintly man, that after his expulsion he wrote a big volume, says Gibbon, accusing Patriarch Chrysostom, among other things, of "having delivered his soul to the devil (an accusation that even Cyril was unable to level against St. Nestorius) and pleads with the Emperor that some other punishment, adequate (if possible) to the magnitude of his crime be inflicted on him."

Chrysostom, also like Nestorius, was hunted and persecuted by Imperial orders. He was moved from the Caucasus to the extreme desert of Pityus. He died on his way to Comana in 407 A.D.

It was during his exile in the Caucasus that he wrote his famous letter to Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia in which the exiled Patriarch testified that "he can never forget the love of Theodore, so genuine and warm, so sincere and guileless, a love maintained from early years," and thanks him for the efforts that he had made to obtain his release, and ends his correspondence with the memorable sentence: "Exile as I am, I reap no ordinary consolation from having such a treasure, such a mine of wealth within my heart as the love of so vigilant and noble a soul." As the late Dr. Swete points out, says Mingana, higher testimony could not have been borne, or by a more competent judge.

The duplicity of Emperor Theodosius and, indeed, of the prelates who attended these councils and passed these unjust and inhuman verdicts can be gauged from the fact that, despite all the accusations of heresies and of unchristian life leveled against Patriarch Chrysostom and under which he died; yet long after his death, in 437, his relics are brought to Constantinople by the order of the supposedly repentant Theodosius, and Chrysostom is now declared an outstanding orthodox doctor and canonized. This seemingly pious act on the part of Theodosius and the leaders of the Church—who had betrayed their trust by obeying the Imperial command rather than truth and justice which constitute the focal point of the Messianic faith—was clearly motivated not by a pang of conscience, but by political motives.