Noisy games at the empress's statue reach St. John Chrysostom's church

CONSTANTINOPLE, September 403 AD — A silver statue of the Empress Eudoxia went up this month outside the cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople. It stood on top of a tall column on a high base, on a stone platform in the middle of the square. Only half the width of a street lay between the statue and the church.

Games went on at the foot of the column again and again. The noise of the crowd carried through the church doors while the services were going on inside.

On the day the statue was set up, people followed the custom for every new statue of an emperor. They clapped, they danced and they watched mimes. Music and dancing in front of the emperor’s picture or statue were an old pagan way of honouring him. Christian emperors had kept the custom to hold on to the people’s loyalty.

The empress wanted her statue given the same honour as the statues of the emperors. Saint John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople, wanted the noise at his doors stopped.

An earthquake in the empress’s bedroom

St. John Chrysostom had been back in the city for only two months. Late last year, the emperor had called Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria to Constantinople to answer charges against him. St. John Chrysostom was to lead the meeting of bishops that would hear them. Bishop Theophilus arrived in June, but he didn’t answer the charges. Instead he gathered thirty-six bishops of his own at a place called the Oak, across the water from the city. Those bishops removed St. John Chrysostom as archbishop on false charges and sent him away.

The night after he was taken away, an earthquake shook the city. It was felt hardest in the empress’s bedroom. Eudoxia was frightened and ordered him brought back. Crowds met him with candles and hymns.

Since then the archbishop and the empress had praised each other in public. But Eudoxia had been offended by his preaching before. She had been told that one of his sermons, against women’s vanity and love of luxury, was aimed at her.

Noise through the church doors

St. John Chrysostom was preaching as boldly as ever. A historian named Socrates wrote that he had “regained his ordinary freedom and keenness of tongue.” Socrates also wrote that the archbishop saw the games as “an insult offered to the church.”

Socrates thought the right thing to do was to send a written request, called a petition, asking those in charge to stop the games. St. John Chrysostom chose to speak in church instead. In a sermon, he told the people that what was going on at the statue brought shame on the Church. He also made fun of the people who had ordered the games.

St. John Chrysostom complained to the prefect of the city as well. The prefect was no friend of the archbishop, and he took the complaint to the empress.

Eudoxia took the archbishop’s words as an insult aimed at her. The sermon brought back the grudges she already held against him. Only two months after she had ordered him brought home, she set about getting him tried again. She decided to have a council of bishops called against him, for the second time this year.

St. John Chrysostom knew what she intended, and he did not give way. He went on speaking against her in church, more openly than before.