Chapter 3. The Journey

1.

{246} I LEFT St. John Chrysostom turning his face eastward, leaving the shores of the Propontis for his distant exile. He had been banished on the pretence of his resumption of the episcopal functions before the legitimate reversal of a synodical decree, which had condemned and deposed him; and such an offence, by a recent imperial law, was punished by banishment to a distance of at least a hundred miles. In consequence, he might have been simply told to vanish from Constantinople, and make his way to the prescribed limit as best he could; but a definite place having been assigned to him, Cucusus, on the eastern slope of the Taurus, it was necessary, and even considerate, to send guides and protectors with him. Two soldiers seem to have been named by the Prefect for this purpose; and, as we have seen, he speaks well of them. They might have been better, perhaps; but they certainly might have been worse. He might have suffered ill-treatment at their hands, as he did from his guards on his second journey; and without their aid and countenance it is probable he never would have reached his destination. They had their share, of course, in many of the hardships to which {247} he was exposed, yet they seem to have borne their share with temper, if not with spirit; and the Saint appears to have liked them at the end of his expedition as well as at the beginning. This was no slight merit in them or in him, for many a time it happens, as all must know who have experience of travelling, that the persons we fall in with in what may be called an official capacity, or the acquaintance we make, are much more amiable and satisfactory at first, and can more easily be got on with, than when our relations have continued with them through a certain space of time. Such persons often do not excite pleasant memories in the retrospect. It is worth recording, then, that, writing back, some time after his arrival at Cucusus, to a friend at Constantinople, the Saint speaks of one of them as "my honoured lord Theodorus, of the prefecture, who took me to Cucusus;" and he implies that he had talked confidently with him.

He must have left the beautiful Nicæa with regret, except as rejoicing to suffer in the cause of religion. Rich in marble edifices and works which were carried even into the Ascanian lake, it lay on an eminence in the midst of a well-wooded, flower-embellished country, with the clear bright waters at its foot, and successive tiers of mountains behind, which terminated in the snow-capped Olympus. He took a last look of the last fair place which he was to see on earth; and, as he passed out by the south-eastern gate to begin a pilgrimage which was to end in the gate of heaven, the scene at once changed. He entered a valley, which, as travellers tell us, rose and fell again through a succession of wild crags and distant peaks, till at length he reached a cultivated track, and then a forest region. Let him enjoy it while it lasts, for signs of volcanic action are multiplying on every side of him; and even though he travels in the evening or at {248} night, the bare lava and limestone rock, like some vast oven, retain the intolerable heat of the July day. Nor is the traveller's prospect much better when he has reached the high table-land of the Asian peninsula, nearly 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, which stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction. Fertile as this vast plateau may be, and verdant and well watered, at an earlier season, it presents from June to the end of October an arid and scorched surface; and on it lies the road of St. Chrysostom for months, till he comes to the spurs of the Taurus, on the farther side of Cæsarea. Perhaps on the third or fourth night after starting he rested at Dorylæum.

2.

Well had it been for him if the Emperor, or any of his great officers, had allowed him the use of the cursus publicus, or government conveyance. It would have carried him on with fair speed, and without expense of his own. This privilege, indeed, could hardly have been expected by one who was in the place of a criminal; yet the same sanguine spirit which led him to hope for a sojourn at Cyzicus or Nicomedia, easily might, when a distant exile was decreed, have contemplated such an alleviation. He had had trial of that "public course," at an earlier date, on one of the few real journeys which he had ever made in his life,—and, ah, under what opposite circumstances!—on that memorable occasion, I mean, when an imperial summons impetuously hurried him away from his dear Antioch. The splendid circumstances of that journey seem to have impressed themselves on his imagination; and in one of his works, speaking of the merit of Abraham's pilgrimage from Mesopotamia to Palestine, he contrasts with it the {249} facility with which travelling was performed along the military lines of road in his own day. "The distance," he says, "between place and place is what it was; but the condition of the roads is very different. For now the line passes through stations placed at intervals, and through cities and farms, and is crowded with wayfarers, who avail for the security of travel not less than farms, towns, and stations. Moreover, by order of the city magistrates, a provincial police is raised,—picked men, as well skilled in the javelin and sling as bowmen are adepts in the arrow, and the heavy-armed in the lance,—with commanders over them, and that for the express purpose of protecting the roads. Further still, as an additional security, buildings are placed a mile from each other, as guard-houses; this watch and ward being the most complete defence against the attacks of plunderers. In the time of Abraham there were none of these." [Note 1] And so he proceeds, rejoicing, as it were, in his picture of a state of convenience and security, which the Roman empire alone could boast, but which in the event was to be so strikingly reversed in every particular in the melancholy journey which was to close his labours.

Left, then, to himself to find his own conveyance, he chose the basterna, which answered pretty nearly to the Sicilian lettiga, being a sort of car or palanquin carried between two mules, one before and one behind. Such, at least, was his style of carriage at a later part of his journey; and he would advance by means of it at the rate of from three to four miles an hour. The distance between Dorylæum and Ancyra he may be supposed to have accomplished within eight days; at least, such is the time which a caravan employs upon it. If Tournefort's account is to be taken, the route has few {250} attractions, even at a better season. He speaks of a beautiful plain, of villages, streams, gentle undulations of surface, but with a notable absence of wood. It was the ancient Phrygia, and celebrated as a corn country. Mount Dindymus, famous for the fanatical worship of Cybele, rose on his left, an outpost, apparently, of the north Olympic range. At length the temples and public buildings of Ancyra, nobly situated on an elevated terrace, greeted his weary eyes in the distant horizon.

So far his course seems to have been prosperous; nothing, at least, is recorded to the contrary. He would travel at his own hours, and at his own pace; with rumours, indeed, of the evils which were coming upon him, but probably with no foretaste of them. The villages, however, of Phrygia had within a few years been devastated by the insurgent Goth Tribigildus, and this might affect the convenience of his lodging and his halts; and at all times the inns would be a great difficulty to any respectable traveller, not to say a saintly Bishop. They were of the lowest description, and contained the worst of company; and it was usual for those who had good connections to avail themselves of the country houses of their friends, as, indeed, St. Chrysostom did in the sequel.

3.

When he got to Ancyra his troubles began; we have but a confused account of them. Leontius, Bishop of that city, was one of the very foremost of his enemies, and in some way or other nearly brought about his death. The Isaurians, too, had just descended from their mountain-holds, and spread themselves over the country. The interior of Asia Minor was a scene of disorder: the country people were flying, the cities {251} fortifying themselves, the road-stations deserted, the guards gone. On leaving Ancyra, our traveller had to make for Cæsarea as quickly as he could, in order to avoid the danger of falling into the enemy's hands. He travelled night and day; from fatigue and anxiety he fell ill; a tertian fever seized on him; wholesome food and water could not be obtained; with much difficulty and in the greatest distress he accomplished the 200 miles between the two cities, and found himself in the metropolis of Cappadocia.

It is very observable that, in spite of the indescribable confusion of the populations through which he passed, Christian zeal and charity did not allow their personal sufferings to interfere with the homage and interest due from them to the presence of so illustrious a confessor. They poured out upon his line of road to greet him and condole with him. At this time, as I shall show presently in his own words, he was in extreme weakness and distress of body; but, as the poor people neglected their own temporal troubles, so did he his. It was a triumph of the supernatural on both sides. His sufferings, too, so far from making him selfish, left him at liberty to write. The following letter to Olympias, written as he was approaching Cæsarea, is striking for the sympathy which it breathes both for her and for the generous people he writes about:

"TO OLYMPIAS

"When I see whole populations of men and women, in the highway, at the road-stations, and in the cities, pouring out to see me, and weeping at the sight, I am able to comprehend your grief at home. For if these people, who now see me for the first time, are thus broken with sorrow (so that they could not be comforted, but when I besought them, and exhorted, and admonished them, their hot tears did but stream the more), most certainly on you the {252} storm is beating more violently still. But the greater also will be your reward, if you persevere under it with thanksgiving and with becoming fortitude, as you do. You know this well, my religious lady; therefore beware of surrendering yourself to the tyranny of sorrow. You can command yourself; the tempest is not beyond your skill. And send me a letter to tell me this; that, though I live in a strange land, I may enjoy much cheerfulness from the assurance that you bear your trials with the understanding and wisdom which becomes you. I write this when not far from Cæsarea."—Ep. 9.

In a second letter, written apparently about the same time, he again complains of her silence, which seemed to him a token of excessive grief; and he adds, in like manner: "I see that not even my removal from Constantinople can release me from distress; for those who meet me on my journey, some from the east, some from Armenia, some from other parts, are drowned in tears at the sight of me, and follow me with piercing laments as I travel onwards."—Ep. 8. Not a word about his own sufferings.

He seems to have had a special fear of frightening Olympias, and takes care to write when he has good news to communicate, either about himself or about things around him. Accordingly, he selects the most favourable moment of his sojourn at Cæsarea to send her an account of his state and circumstances. This, too, I will submit to the reader, before addressing myself to those of a more painful character belonging to the very same days. It runs as follows:

"TO OLYMPIAS

"Now that I have got rid of the ailment which I suffered on my journey, the remains of which I carried with me into Cæsarea, and am already restored to perfect health, I write to you from that place. I have had the advantage here of much careful treatment {253} at the hands of the first and most celebrated physicians, who nevertheless did even more for me by their sympathy and soothing kindness than by their skill. One of them went so far as to promise to accompany me on my journey; so, indeed, did also many other persons of consideration. Now I am often writing to you of my own matters; and you, as I have already complained, are very remiss in that respect yourself. I can prove to you that it is your own neglect, and not the want of letter-carriers; for my honoured lord, the brother of Bishop Maximus of blessed memory, arrived here two days since, and, on my asking him if he brought me letters, he made answer that there was no one who had any to send by him, nay, that when he expressly applied to Tigrius, the presbyter, the latter brought him none. I wish you would inflict this upon him, and upon that true and warm friend of mine, and on all the rest who are about Bishop Cyriacus. As to my changing my place of abode, do not trouble him or any one else about it. I accept their kindness: perhaps they wished, and could not effect it. Glory be to God for all things. I will never cease saying this, whatever befalls me. But suppose they could not effect it, still could they not at least write? Thank in my name my ladies, the sisters of my most honoured lord Bishop Pergamius, for the great trouble they have taken about me. For yourself, write me word frequently how you are, and about my friends; but as for me, have no anxiety about me, for I am in health and in good spirits, and in the enjoyment of much repose up to this day."—Ep. 12.

It is the case with most people who leave home, even in this day, when the arrangements of the letter-post are so complete, that the friends whom they have left seem never to write to them, and they get impatient at the supposed neglect. St. John Chrysostom, who lived in his friends, and knew what persecution they were enduring, was especially open to this misconception during his journey; and he shows his sense of it much more openly in the following letter to Theodora, to whom he does not think it necessary to show the tender consideration which Olympias required. He writes to her, when at the worst, on his first arrival at Cæsarea, and takes no pains {254} to hide a distress which he did hide from others, and which perhaps he found a relief in expressing:

"TO THEODORA

He goes on to bring out the feelings which are obscurely intimated in his letter to Olympias. For the moment he certainly thought his friends unkind, because, rich and powerful as they were, they could do nothing towards securing him the cheap indulgence, which even convicts obtained, of some place of banishment more tolerable and nearer home, some place where there would be nothing to try so severely his bodily strength, or to inflict the terrors which he experienced from the Isaurians. However, he adds, "Even for this, glory be to God: I will not cease glorifying Him for all things; blessed be His Name for ever." And then he goes on to complain of Theodora herself for not writing. "I am astonished at you," he says; "this is the fourth, if not the fifth, letter I have sent you; and you have sent me but {255} one. It pains me much to think that you have so soon forgotten me."

Poor Theodora had doubtless been in continual prayers and tears, and could give her own account of her silence, as the others could also. Tigrius, for instance, whose silence he wonders at in his letter to Olympias, had, in spite of his informant, been scourged and racked, and lay probably between life and death. His martyrdom is commemorated in the Martyrology on January 12. However, we are not concerned here with any confessors but St. John Chrysostom; so I go on to explain who the Isaurians were, and how it was that the fear of them made him travel night and day for two hundred miles at midsummer, when a fever lay upon him, and death seemed to threaten. In fact, the country through which his route lay was the theatre of war, for the outbreak of the barbarians could be called nothing less; in the very month, almost in the very days, when he was passing through Cæsarea, a battle had taken place, perhaps in the neighbourhood, between the Romans and the insurgent forces; and I shall require a page or two to set before the reader how things came to this pass.

4.

In truth, the Isaurians were not insurgents, unless that name can be given to a people who had never fairly been conquered. The passes of Mount Taurus had ever sheltered a wild independent people, whom the student of history naturally connects with those Cilician pirates who so audaciously insulted the Roman republic, and were at last punished and suppressed by Pompey. Even after the lapse of four centuries, however, the Isaurians had not given up their old craft; and we find them in the reign of Constantius seizing and plundering {256} the vessels which passed along their coast. However, the direction of their rapacity was on the whole turned landwards after Pompey's time; and the whole continent, from the Egean almost to Egypt, was kept in a state of unsettlement and insecurity down to the time of Justinian by the fitful devastations of these freebooters. After a time of nominal subjection to the Roman power, in the middle of the third century they placed themselves under the rule of Trebellian, one of the Thirty Tyrants, as they are called; proclaimed independence, coined money, and when Trebellian was killed in battle, worshipped him as a god. For a time they formed, together with Galatia, part of the empire of Zenobia. After her fall they returned, under various bold and skilful leaders, to their raids and depredations; till the imperial government, despairing of carrying the war into their mountainous recesses with effect, contented themselves with surrounding them with a cordon of forts, while they kept a large force in the interior, and a stronghold on the coast to secure communication with the sea. In the reign of Probus they had extended themselves along Pamphylia and Lycia. Under Constantius, besides their piracy, which I have already noticed, they had overrun the plains of the interior towards Pontus. Under Valens, they cut to pieces a Roman force commanded by the Vicar of Asia, and were only stemmed in their onward course by the local militia. Within a dozen years after, they appear to have poured down again, if St. Basil speaks of them when he describes the country as being full of plunderers, and the roads unsafe from Cappadocia to Constantinople. If we may take in evidence the Canons, which are contained in one of the epistles of the same Father, they forced their captives to renounce the faith and to take part in idolatrous rites. {257} At another time their raid extended as far as the Euxine on the north, and as far south as Damascus.

One of their most formidable outbreaks was precisely at the time when Chrysostom was sent into the countries bordering on them; and it would greatly increase the guilt of his persecutors, if they knowingly exposed him to this additional misery. But the movements of barbarian mountaineers are ordinarily sudden, and the imperial court was probably as much taken by surprise by the Isaurians as by the contemporary irruption of the Huns. On this occasion they spread themselves along the coast from Caria to Phœnicia, so as even to threaten Jerusalem; and, what is more to our purpose to observe, they poured over the interior of the country till they found themselves in the neighbourhood of the river Kur and the Caspian. In spite of partial successes, two Roman generals failed before them; and this terrible scourge continued till the year after the Saint's death. His years of exile were spent in the very scene, almost in the heart, of these horrors.

I have said it was doubtless the neighbourhood of these freebooters which forced St. John Chrysostom to hurry over the ground between Ancyra and Cæsarea when he was so little able to bear it. He looked forward to Cæsarea as a harbour after the storm, as he says in his letter to Theodora; and at first he found it so; but troubles arose of another kind. The Bishop of Cæsarea, though pretending to be his friend, really wished to get rid of him. Chrysostom became a centre of attraction to all the religious feeling of the place, and the prelate did not relish this; he did not like the Saint's lingering in his own city; he determined to send him on his journey without delay, at all costs; and, when he could not do so peaceably, he did not scruple, as we shall see, at violent {258} measures. He forgot somehow the text about receiving Angels unawares, and the promise attached to those who welcome a prophet in the name of a prophet, and the just in the name of the just. I shall draw out the account of what took place chiefly in the Saint's own words, as contained in letters from him to Olympias after he had arrived at Cucusus, his destination. It will be recollected that in his last letter to her from Cæsarea he spoke of his health and good spirits and repose, his only trouble being that he had no news how she and his other friends were getting on at Constantinople. Now that he was safe at Cucusus, we shall find him writing about his condition at that same date in far different terms.

"TO OLYMPIAS

After this introduction, and more of the same character, he resumes the subject in a second letter:

"When I got rid of our Galatian friend [the Bishop of Ancyra] (who, indeed, almost threatened me with death), and was on the point of entering Cappadocia, I met many persons on the road {259} who said, 'My lord Pharetrius [Bishop of Cæsarea] is expecting to see you, and is going here and there in his fear of missing you; and is taking great pains to see and embrace you, and show you all love. He has even set in motion the monasteries and nunneries.' I, however, did not anticipate any thing of the kind; rather I formed just the contrary surmises in my own breast: however, I did not say a word to that effect to those who brought me the news.

5.

Chrysostom had been eager to proceed, wishing to get his journey over, and to be at last at rest at Cucusus; and scarcely was he better when he thought of moving. Then came the news that the Isaurians were approaching, and made him hesitate.

"While I was in this state, suddenly the tidings came that the Isaurians are overrunning the neighbourhood of Cæsarea in great force; that they have burned a large village, inflicting every evil on the people. On receipt of the news, the city commander, with such soldiers as he had with him, went out to meet them; for they were even apprehensive of an attack on the city. Indeed, all persons were in a state of great alarm, in great excitement, their native soil being in jeopardy; so that even aged men took part in guarding the walls. Things were in this state when on a sudden, at the break of dawn, down comes a battalion of monks (I can use {260} no better word to express their fury), beset the house where I was, and threaten to set fire to it, to burn it down, to do me all possible mischiefs, unless I took myself off; and neither did the danger from the Isaurians, nor my own serious state of body, no, nor anything else, avail to disarm their violence."

Here I interpose a word of explanation. Nothing which has been hitherto said of the monastic bodies would lead one to expect such a sudden movement as this. The monks, as we have seen, generally treated the Saint with great consideration and reverence, as he passed in their neighbourhood. But at this time, it must be confessed, they were a very rude and excitable set of men, at least in certain places; they were not under the strict discipline which afterwards prevailed; and they were sometimes, as here, at the command of their Bishop, sometimes actuated by strong local or national feelings. Moreover there was a vast number of fanatical monks at that day, whom the Church did not recognise, and who were exposed to the influence of any wild calumnies or absurd tales which might be circulated to the prejudice of Chrysostom. However, be the explanation of this incident what it may, this monastic troop played a chief part in worrying the Saint out of Cæsarea. He continues:

"Nor did any thing avail to disarm their violence; but they urged their point with such an explosion of wrath as even to frighten my companions, the soldiers of the prefecture. For they threatened to beat even them; and they boasted that many were the Prefect's soldiers before now whom they had badly beaten. When my soldiers heard this, they came to me, and begged and prayed that, though they should in consequence fall into the hands of the Isaurians, I would rid them of these wild beasts. The mayor of the city also heard what was going on, and he hastened to my house with the wish to assist me; but the monks would not listen to his entreaties, and he too was unsuccessful. Upon this, feeling {261} the dilemma in which matters were, not daring to advise me either to go out of the city to certain death, or to remain within it, exposed as I was to the fury of the monks, he sent to Pharetrius, entreating him to give me a few days' grace, both by reason of my illness, and of the danger which lay in my way. However, he was not able to obtain even this, for on the next day the monks came with still greater violence; and no one of the presbyters ventured to stand by me or succour me; but with shame and a blush on their faces (for they said they acted on the orders of Pharetrius), they shuffled away and kept out of sight, and refused to answer when I appealed to them. Why many words? Though such dangers threatened me, and death was almost in sight, and my fever was preying on me, I threw myself into my lectica, noontide as it was, and set off amid the wailings and laments of the whole people."

However, he had one more chance: at this moment Seleucia, the wife of one of the principal persons of Cæsarea, sent to offer him the use of her surburban villa, at a distance of five miles from the city; a kindness which he joyfully accepted. This good lady, moreover, gave orders to her steward to gather together the labourers on her farms round about, if the monks showed any disposition to repeat their violence, and fairly to give them battle. Nay, she had a fortified building on her ground, where she wished to place him; where neither the monks nor the Bishop could reach him. However, the Bishop was too much both for her and St. Chrysostom. He terrified her by threats into submission to his will; and a priest, one of his creatures, was sent to the Saint. The sequel shall be told in his own words:

"At midnight Evethius, the presbyter, came into my room when I was asleep; he woke me, and cried out loudly, 'Up, I pray you, the barbarians are coming; they are close at hand.' Fancy what my perplexity was at these words. I said to him, 'What is to be {262} done? It is impossible to make for the city; for I should fare worse there than at the hands of the Isaurians.' He began to urge me to set off on my journey. There was no moon; it was midnight; it was dark, pitch dark: this, again, was a great perplexity. I had no one to aid me; they all had deserted me. However, compelled by the danger, and expecting instant death, I rose from my bed, overwhelmed with misery as I was, and ordered torches. Evethius insisted they should be put out again: he said, 'The barbarians will be attracted by the light, and will fall upon us;' so put out the torches were. The way was broken, steep, and stony. The mule, which was carrying my litter, fell; down came the litter, and I in it; and I had near been killed. I jumped out of it, and began to crawl along. Evethius dismounted, and got hold of me; and thus I was assisted or rather dragged forward; for I could not possibly walk on such difficult ground, amid formidable mountains, and in the middle of the night."

The Saint's military friends do not play a specially brilliant part in this affair; and their conduct tempts one to think that his praise of them is rather owing to his cheerful forgiving spirit, sanguine before trouble, and buoyant after it, than to any merit of theirs. We may suppose they did not go to Seleucia's villa with him; if they did, it is strange he does not mention them in the last scene. After this we know nothing more of his adventures before he reached Cucusus, though he had still much heavy travelling over the mountains; he proceeds thus:

"However, let no one know these matters from you; and stop {263} the mouths of those who talk about them. And if you are pained at this memorial of my hardships, know for certain that I am now clean rid of them all; and I am stronger in health than I was in Constantinople. Why are you anxious about the cold? My dwelling is most comfortably built, and my lord Dioscorus busies himself in every way that I may not have the very slightest feeling of the cold. If I may conjecture from the trial I have had of it, the climate seems to me quite oriental, just like that of Antioch; such is the temperature, such the character of the air. Nor need you fear the Isaurians from this time; they have returned to their country: the Prefect has left nothing undone to effect this. I am much safer here than I was at Cæsarea. Henceforth I fear no one but the Bishops; a few of them excepted. How is it that you say, you have received no letters from me? I have sent you three; one by the soldiers of the prefecture, one by Antony, one by your domestic Anatolius: they were long ones."

It is curious to see, that while he was complaining of the silence of his friends at home, they were complaining of his [Note 2]. But now we may fairly stop, having brought the great confessor, whose trials we are tracing, to his place of exile.

Chapter 4

Top | Contents | Volume contents | Works | Home

Notes

1. Ad Stag. ii. 6.
Return to text

2. Vid. also Ep. 137.
Return to text

Top | Contents | Volume contents | Works | Home

Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman
Copyright © 2007 by The National Institute for Newman Studies. All rights reserved.