Thrown from his litter at night, St. John Chrysostom reaches exile

CONSTANTINOPLE, October 6, 404 AD — In the summer of 404 AD, Saint John Chrysostom, the archbishop of Constantinople, was sent into exile by the emperor’s order. The Empress Eudoxia had chosen where he would go. It was Cucusus, a mountain village on the borders of Cilicia and Armenia. He was taken east through the heat of July and August. When he reached the city of Caesarea, he had a burning fever.

The city’s officials and its people came to see him every day while he lay ill. But the bishop of Caesarea never came. St. John Chrysostom thought the bishop had grown jealous because so many people had visited him. One morning towards dawn, a crowd of monks came to the house where he lay. They threatened to set it on fire unless he left.

At noon, still feverish, he left in his litter. A woman of the city who was his friend took him to her villa five miles outside the walls. The bishop threatened her until she gave in. She was too ashamed to tell him about the threats, so at midnight she sent word that Isaurian raiders were close.

A priest travelling with him woke him and hurried him onto the mountain road. The torches were put out. On the stones, the mule carrying his litter fell to its knees, and he was thrown out. The priest dragged him on by the hand.

St. John Chrysostom reached Cucusus at the end of August, nearly seventy days after leaving Constantinople. The bishop of Cucusus welcomed him warmly. He was given a house ready for the winter. A man who looked after him there made sure he would not feel the cold.

A statue in front of the cathedral

More than a year before, a meeting of bishops had declared him deposed on charges that were not true. It meant he was no longer to be the archbishop. Then a silver statue of the empress went up in the square in front of his cathedral. The dancing and shows held around it disturbed the church services. He preached against the games, and the empress took his sermon as an insult.

The empress worked to have a second council called against him. Two councils had now declared him deposed. That let her husband, the emperor, keep him out of the city’s churches. The empress wanted him out of her city. The bishops who had condemned him wanted their sentence to stand.

On Easter Eve, April 16, 404 AD, hundreds of people were being baptised in his cathedral. Soldiers broke in, scattered the people and dragged the archbishop out. The priests who had been baptising were thrown out, and the persecution of his followers began. In June he left the city quietly by a side door.

Hailstones over the city

At the end of September, huge hailstones fell on Constantinople and the districts around it. Days later, in early October, the empress died after losing the baby she was expecting. People in the city said the hail was God’s anger, because their archbishop had been unjustly removed. Her death made them surer of it.

With the empress dead, it looked as if the persecution of his followers would end. It did not. The men who had worked to get him condemned still controlled the emperor’s court. They kept the persecution going. No order came to call St. John Chrysostom back to his city.

That autumn, St. John Chrysostom wrote from Cucusus to his friend Saint Olympias. She had tried to have him moved from the village and had failed. Her letters showed how upset she was. He told her she had no reason to grieve over it: “Is it the desolation of this place which grieves you? Yet what can be pleasanter than my sojourn here? I have quietness, and tranquillity, plenty of leisure and good bodily health. For although the town has neither market-place nor market that is nothing to me.”

He told her the Isaurian raiders had gone home and would stay there once winter set in. “For in future,” he told her, “I have no one to fear so much as the bishops, with a few exceptions.”