St. John Chrysostom asked to rest. The soldiers said no.

COMANA, Pontus, September 14, 407 AD — This morning, in a small chapel outside the town of Comana, an old man asked the two soldiers guarding him for a few more hours. He was ill. They said no, and marched him out onto the road. A few hours later they were carrying him back into that chapel, and he died inside it.

He was Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, and he was about sixty. For nearly three years and three months he had not been allowed to live in his own city. The soldiers were walking him to Pityus, an empty spot on the shore of the Black Sea at the edge of the empire.

Why an emperor sent a bishop away

In 401 AD some bishops in Asia invited St. John Chrysostom to the city of Ephesus. While he was there he threw six bishops out of their jobs, because those six had paid money for them. After that he was accused of going further than his job allowed, and more complaints came easily.

Theophilus, the Bishop of Alexandria, had charges of his own to answer. He was ordered to Constantinople, to a meeting of bishops that St. John Chrysostom was going to run. Instead of going, Theophilus gathered thirty-six bishops at a place near Chalcedon called the Oak. There they declared that St. John Chrysostom was no longer Bishop of Constantinople, on charges that were not true.

The Emperor Arcadius agreed. In June 404 AD the Emperor signed the order that sent St. John Chrysostom out of his city.

He was sent to Cucusus, a village up in the mountains near the border of Armenia. Three years up there did not silence him. In exile his influence grew instead of fading. So bishops in Syria began pushing to get him sent even further away.

In the middle of June this year his enemies wrote to the capital again. The order that came back was harsher than the first. It sent him to Pityus. The soldiers were given a date to get him there, and a fine if they were late. The two of them were told to hurry, and promised a better job if he died on the way. The walking began three months ago.

Last night the soldiers walked him past Comana without stopping in the town. They put him up in a chapel outside the town wall, built over a martyr’s grave. The martyr was St. Basiliscus, who had been bishop of Comana and was put to death at Nicomedia. According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, the martyr stood beside him in the night and said: “Be of good cheer, brother; to-morrow we shall be together.”

The morning they said no

In the morning he asked the two soldiers to let him stay in the chapel until eleven o’clock, because he was ill. They refused, and pushed on.

One of the two soldiers had been quietly helping him along the road. The other set the pace. That man had set out in a downpour rather than wait for it to stop, and the rain ran down the bishop’s neck and chest. When travellers asked him to go easier on the bishop, he took it as an insult.

Under four miles along the road — about thirty furlongs — the illness hit St. John Chrysostom too hard to go on. The two soldiers turned round. They carried him back to the chapel they had made him leave that morning.

Inside the chapel he asked for white clothes. He changed into them, down to his shoes, and gave the clothes he took off to the people standing round him. Then he received the Eucharist and said a few words of goodbye. He prayed out loud in front of them all, in the words he had used his whole life, and made the sign of the cross at the last Amen: “Glory be to God for all things, Amen.”

He died there, on the day the Church keeps the Triumph of the Holy Cross. Monks and nuns came out to the chapel for the burial. So did women and men known for their devout lives, in from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus and Armenia. So many came that people thought someone must have called them in with a signal. St. John Chrysostom was buried in the chapel, next to the martyr.