Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/397

OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 377 at least, to nourish the infirmity of a morose and unsocial humom*. Separated from that familiar intercourse which facili- tates the knowledge and the dispatch of business, he reposed an unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion ; and seldom applied his speculative knowledge of human nature to the par- ticular characters either of his dependents or of his equals. Conscious of the purity of his intentions, and perhaps of the supe- riority of his genius, the archbishop of Constantinople extended the jurisdiction of the Imperial city that he might enlai-ge the sphere of his pastoral labours ; and the conduct which the pro- fane imputed to an ambitious motive appeared to Chrj'sostom himself in the light of a sacred and indispensable duty. In his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia ; and indiscreetly declared that a deep corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected the whole episcopal order.^^ If those bishops were innocent, such a rash and unjust condemnation must excite a well-grounded dis- content. If they were guilty, the numerous associates of their guilt would soon discover that their own safety depended on the ruin of the archbishop ; whom they studied to represent as the tyrant of the Eastern church. This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by Theophilus,*^ chrygoetom u archbishop of Alexandria, an active and ambitious prelate, who the empress displayed the fruits of rapine in monuments of ostentation. His a.d. 403 national dislike to the rising greatness of a city which degraded hira from the second to the third rank in the Christian world was exasperated by some personal disputes with Chiysostom himself ^^ By the private invitation of the empress, Theophilus landed at Constantinople, with a stout body of Egyptian mari- ners, to encounter the populace; and a train of attendant bishops, to secure, by their voices, the majority of a synod. The synod ^'■' was convened in the suburb of Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak, 'iS Chrysostom declares his free opinion (torn. ix. horn. iii. in Act. Apostol. p. 29) that the number of bishops who might be saved bore a very small proportion to those who would be damned. •'■'SeeTillemont, M^m. Eccl^s. tom. xi. p. 441-500. "^s I have purposely omitted the controversy which arose among the monks of Eg)'pt concerning Origenism and Anthropomorphism ; the dissimulation and vio- lence of Theophilus ; his artful management of the simplicity of Epiphanius ; the persecution and flight of the long, or tall, brothers ; the ambiguous support which they received at Constantinople from Chrysostom, &c. &c. ■^9 Photius (p. 53-60) has preserved the original acts of the synod of the Oak [Mansi, Concil. iii. p. 1148]; which destroy the false assertion [of Palladius; see Mansi, ConciL iii. 1153] that Chrysostom was condemned by no more than thirty-six bishops, of whom twenty-nine were Egyptians. Forty-five bishops subscribed his sentence. See Tillemont, M6m. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 595.