G. A. Henty - "Forest & Frontiers"

Margaret Alice Murray - "The Witch cult in Western Europe"

Mrs. Humphry Ward - "Delia Blanchflower"

J. Endell Tyler - "Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1"

Editorial
This article examines the wide range of anonymous and pseudonymous naming practices to be found in West African newspapers between the 1880s and 1930s, and asks about the shape of a West African history of anonymity as compared with recent histories of anonymity in European literature. The article also discusses the ways in which colonial West African uses of anonymity and pseudonyms challenge postcolonial scholarship on agency, subjectivity, resistance, authenticity and identity.

The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints

A >> Alban Butler >> The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints




This same year, 400, St. Chrysostom held a council of bishops in
Constantinople; one of whom had preferred a complaint against his
metropolitan Antoninus, the archbishop of Ephesus, which consisted of
several heads, but that chiefly insisted on was simony.[27] All our
saint's endeavors to discuss this affair being frustrated by the
distance of places, he found it necessary, at the solicitation of the
clergy and people of Ephesus, to go in person to that city, though the
severity of the winter season, and the ill state of health he was then
in, might be sufficient motives for retarding this journey. In this and
the neighboring cities several councils were held, in which the
archbishop of Ephesus and several other bishops in Asia, Lycia, and
Phrygia, were deposed for simony. Upon his return after Easter, in 401,
having been absent a hundred days, he preached the next morning,[28]
calling his people, in the transports of tender joy, his crown, his
glory, his paradise planted with flourishing trees; but if any bad
shrubs should be found in it, he promised that no pains should be spared
to change them into good. He bid them consider if they rejoiced so much
as they testified, to see him again who was only one, how great his joy
must be which was multiplied in every one of them: he calls himself
their bond-slave, chained to their service, but says, that slavery was
his delight, and that during his absence he ever had them present to his
mind, offering up his prayers for their temporal and spiritual welfare.

It remained that our saint should glorify God by his sufferings, as he
had already done by his labors: and if we contemplate the mystery of the
cross with the eyes of faith, we shall find him greater in the
persecutions he sustained than in all the other occurrences of his life.
At the same time we cannot sufficiently deplore the blindness of envy
and pride in his enemies, as in the Pharisees against Christ himself. We
ought to tremble for ourselves: if that passion does not make us
persecute a Chrysostom, it may often betray us into rash judgments,
aversions, and other sins, even under a cloak of virtue. The first open
adversary of our saint was Severianus, bishop of Gabala, in Syria, to
whom the saint had left the care of his church during his absence. This
mart had acquired the reputation of a preacher, was a favorite of the
empress Eudoxia, and had employed all his talents and dexterity to
establish himself in the good opinion of the court and people, to the
prejudice of the saint, against whom he had preached in his own city.
Severianus being obliged to leave Constantinople at the saint's return,
he made an excellent discourse to his flock on the peace Christ came to
establish on earth, and begged they would receive again Severianus, whom
they {246} had expelled the city. Another enemy of the saint was
Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, whom Sozomen, Socrates, Palladius,
St. Isidore of Pelusium, and Synesius, accuse of avarice and oppressions
to gratify his vanity in building stately churches; of pride, envy,
revenge, dissimulation, and an incontrollable love of power and rule, by
which he treated other bishops as his slaves, and made his will the rule
of justice. His three paschal letters, which have reached us, show that
he wrote without method, and that his reflections and reasonings were
neither just nor apposite: whence the loss of his other writings is not
much to be regretted. These spiritual vices sullied his zeal against the
Anthropomorphites, and his other virtues. He died in 412, wishing that
he had lived always in a desert, honoring the name of the holy
Chrysostom, whose picture he caused to be brought to his bedside, and by
reverencing it, showed his desire to make atonement for his past ill
conduct towards our saint.[29] This turbulent man had driven from their
retreat four abbots of Nitria, called the tall brothers, on a groundless
suspicion of Origenism, as appears from Palladius, though it was
believed by St. Jerom, which is maintained by Baronius. St. Chrysostom
admitted them to communion, but not till they had juridically cleared
themselves of it in an ample manner.[30] This however was grievously
resented by Theophilus: but the empress Eudoxia, who, after the disgrace
of Eutropius, governed her husband and the empire, was the main spring
which moved the whole conspiracy against the saint. Zozimus, a heathen
historian, says, that her flagrant avarice, her extortions and
injustices, knew no bounds, and that the court was filled with
informers, calumniators, and harpies, who, being always on the watch for
prey, found means to seize the estates of such as died rich, and to
disinherit their children or other heirs. No wonder that a saint should
displease such a court while he discharged his duty to God. He had
preached a sermon against the extravagance and vanity of women in dress
and pomp. This was pretended by some to have been levelled at the
empress; and Severianus was not wanting to blow the coals. Knowing
Theophilus was no friend to the saint, the empress, to be revenged of
the supposed affront, sent to desire his presence at Constantinople, in
order to depose him. He obeyed the summons with pleasure, and landed at
Constantinople in June, 403, with several Egyptian bishops his
creatures, refused to see or lodge with John, and got together a packed
cabal of thirty-six bishops, the saint's enemies, in a church at
Chalcedon, calling themselves the synod at the Oak, from a great tree
which gave name to that quarter of the town. The heads of the
impeachment drawn up against the holy bishop were: that he had deposed a
deacon for beating a servant; that he had called several of his clergy
base men; had deposed bishops out of his province; had ordained priests
in his domestic chapel, instead of the cathedral; had sold things
belonging to the church; that nobody knew what became of his revenues;
that he ate alone; and that he gave the holy communion to persons who
were not fasting: all which were false or frivolous. The saint held a
legal council of forty bishops in the city at the same time; and refused
to appear before that at the Oak, alleging most notorious infractions of
the canons in their pretended council. The cabal proceeded to a sentence
of deposition, which they sent to the city and to the emperor, to whom
they also accused him of treason, for having called the empress Jezabel,
a false assertion, as Palladius testifies. The emperor hereupon issued
out an order for his banishment, but the execution of it was opposed by
the people, who assembled about the great church to guard their pastor.
{247} He made them a farewell sermon,[31] in which he spoke as follows:
"Violent storms encompass me on all sides; yet I am without fear,
because I stand upon a rock. Though the sea roar, and the waves rise
high, they cannot sink the vessel of Jesus. I fear not death, which is
my gain: not banishment, for the whole earth is the Lord's: nor the loss
of goods; for I came naked into the world, and must leave it in the same
condition. I despise all the terrors of the world and trample upon its
smiles and favor. Nor do I desire to live unless for your service.
Christ is with me: whom shall I fear? Though waves rise against me:
though the sea, though the fury of princes threaten me, all these are to
me more contemptible than a spider's web. I always say: O Lord, may thy
will be done: not what this or that creature wills, but what it shall
please thee to appoint, that shall I do and suffer with joy. This is my
strong tower: this is my unshaken rock: this is my staff that can never
fail. If God be pleased that it be done, let it be so. Wheresoever his
will is that I be, I return him thanks." He declared that he was ready
to lay down a thousand lives for them, if at his disposal, and that he
suffered only because he had neglected nothing to save their souls. On
the third day after the unjust sentence given against him, having
received repeated orders from the emperor to go into banishment, and
taking all possible care to prevent a sedition, he surrendered himself,
unknown to the people, to the count, who conducted him to Praenetum in
Bithynia. After his departure his enemies entered the city with guards,
and Severianus mounted the pulpit, and began to preach, pretending to
show the deposition of the saint to have been legal and just. But the
people would not suffer him to proceed, and ran about as if distracted,
loudly demanding in a body the restoration of their holy pastor. The
next night the city was shook with an earthquake. This brought the
empress to reflect with remorse on what she had done against the holy
bishop. She applied immediately to the emperor, under the greatest
consternation, for his being recalled; crying out: "Unless John be
recalled, our empire is undone:" and with his consent she dispatched
letters the same night, inviting him home with tender expressions of
affection and esteem, and protesting her ignorance of his banishment.
Almost all the city went out to meet him, and great numbers of lighted
torches were carried before him. He stopped to the suburbs, refusing to
enter the city till he had been declared innocent by a more numerous
assembly of bishops. But the people would suffer no delay: the enemies
of the saint fled, and he resumed his functions, and preached to his
flock. He pressed the emperor to call Theophilus to a legal synod: but
that obstinate persecutor alleged that he could not return without
danger of his life. However, Sozomen relates that threescore bishops
ratified his return: but the fair weather did not last long. A silver
statue of the empress having been erected on a pillar before the great
church of St. Sophia, the dedication of it was celebrated with public
games, which, besides disturbing the divine service, engaged the
spectators in extravagances and superstition. St. Chrysostom had often
preached against licentious shows; and the very place rendered these the
more criminal. On this occasion, fearing lest his silence should be
construed as an approbation of the thing, he, with his usual freedom and
courage, spoke loudly against it. Though this could only affect the
Manichaean overseer of those games, the vanity of the empress made her
take the affront to herself, and her desires of revenge were
implacable.[32] His enemies were invited back: Theophilus {248} durst
not come, but sent three deputies. Though St. John had forty-two bishops
with him, this second cabal urged to the emperor certain canons of an
Arian council of Antioch, made only to exclude St. Athanasius, by which
it was ordained that no bishop who had been deposed by a synod, should
return to his see till he was restored by another synod. This false plea
overruled the justice of the saint's cause, and Arcadius sent him an
order to withdraw. He refused to forsake a church committed to him by
God, unless forcibly compelled to leave it. The emperor sent troops to
drive the people out of the churches on Holy-Saturday, and the holy
places were polluted with blood and all manner of outrages. The saint
wrote to pope Innocent, begging him to declare void all that had been
done; for no injustice could be more notorious.[33] He also wrote to beg
the concurrence of certain other holy bishops of the West. The pope
having received from Theophilus the acts of the false council at the
Oak, even by them saw the glaring injustice of its proceedings, and
wrote to him, exhorting him to appear in another council, where sentence
should be given according to the canons of Nice, meaning by those words
to condemn the Arian canons of Antioch. He also wrote to St. Chrysostom,
to his flock, and several of his friends: and endeavored to redress
these evils by a new council: as did also the emperor Honorius. But
Arcadius and Eudoxia found means to prevent its assembling, the very
dread of which made Theophilus, Severianus, and other ringleaders of the
faction to tremble.

St. Chrysostom was suffered to remain at Constantinople two months after
Easter. On Thursday, in Whitsun-week, the emperor sent him an order for
his banishment. The holy man, who received it in the church, said to
those about him, "Come, let us pray, and take leave of the angel of the
church." He took leave of the bishops, and, stepping into the
baptistery, also of St. Olympias and the other deaconesses, who were
overwhelmed with grief and bathed in tears. He then retired privately
out of the church, to prevent a sedition, and was conducted by Lucius, a
brutish captain, into Bithynia, and arrived at Nice on the 20th of June,
404. After his departure, a fire breaking out, burnt down the great
church and the senate-house, two buildings which were the glory of the
city: but the baptistery was spared by the flames, as it were to justify
the saint against his calumniators; for not one of the rich vessels was
found wanting. In this senate-house perished the incomparable statues of
the muses from Helicon, and other like ornaments, the most valuable then
known: so that Zozimus looks upon this conflagration as the greatest
misfortune that had ever befallen that city. Palladius ascribes the fire
to the anger of heaven. Many of the saint's friends were put to the most
exquisite tortures on this account, but no discovery could be made. The
Isaurians plundered Asia, and the Huns several other provinces. Eudoxia
ended her life and crimes in childbed on the 6th of October following,
five days after a furious hail-storm had made a dreadful havoc in the
city. The emperor wrote to St. Nilus, to recommend himself and his
empire to his prayers. The hermit answered him with a liberty of speech
which became one who neither hoped nor feared any thing from the world.
"How do you hope," said he, "to see Constantinople delivered from the
destroying angel of God, after such enormities authorized by laws? after
having banished the most blessed John, the pillar of the church, the
lamp of truth, the trumpet of Jesus Christ!"[34] And again: "You have
banished John, the greatest light of the earth:--At least, {249} do not
persevere in your crime."[35] His brother, the emperor Honorius, wrote
still in stronger terms,[36] and several others. But in vain; for
certain implacable court ladies and sycophants, hardened against all
admonitions and remorse, had much too powerful an ascendant over the
unhappy emperor, for these efforts of the saint's friends to meet with
success. Arsacius, his enemy and persecutor, though naturally a soft and
weak man, was by the emperor's authority intruded into his see. The
saint enjoyed himself comfortably at Nice: but Cucusus was pitched upon
by Eudoxia for the place of his banishment. He set out from Nice in
July, 404, and suffered incredible hardships from heats, fatigues,
severity of guards, almost perpetual watchings, and a fever which soon
seized him with pains in his breast. He was forced to travel almost all
night, deprived of every necessary of life, and was wonderfully
refreshed if he got a little clear water to drink, fresh bread to eat,
or a bed to take a little rest upon. All he lamented was the impenitence
of his enemies, for their own sake: calling impunity in sin, and honor
conferred by men on that account, the most dreadful of all
judgments.[37] About the end of August, after a seventy days' journey,
he arrived at Cucusus, a poor town in Armenia, in the deserts of Mount
Taurus. The good bishop of the place vied with his people in showing the
man of God the greatest marks of veneration and civility, and many
friends met him there, both from Constantinople and Antioch. In this
place, by sending missionaries and succors, he promoted the conversion
of many heathen countries, especially among the Goths, in Persia and
Phoenicia. He appointed Constantius, his friend, a priest of Antioch,
superior of the apostolic missions in Phoenicia and Arabia. The letters
of Constantius are added to those of St. Chrysostom. The seventeen
letters of our saint to St. Olympias might be styled treatises. He tells
her,[38] "I daily exult and am transported with joy in my heart under my
sufferings, in which I find a hidden treasure: and I beg that you
rejoice on the same account, and that you bless and praise God, by whose
mercy we obtain to such a degree the grace of suffering." He often
enlarges on the great evils and most pernicious consequences of sadness
and dejection of spirit, which he calls[39] "the worst of human evils, a
perpetual domestic rack, a darkness and tempest of the mind, an interior
war, a distemper which consumes the vigor of the soul, and impairs all
her faculties." He shows[40] that sickness is the greatest of trials, a
time not of inaction, but of the greatest merit, the school of all
virtues, and a true martyrdom. He advises her to use physic, and says it
would be a criminal impatience to wish for death to be freed from
sufferings. He laments the fall of Pelagius, whose heresies he abhorred.
He wrote to this lady his excellent treatise, That no one can hurt him
who does not hurt himself. Arsacius dying in 405, many ambitiously
aspired to that dignity, whose very seeking it was sufficient to prove
them unworthy. Atticus, one of this number, a violent enemy to St.
Chrysostom, was preferred by the court, and placed in his chair. The
pope refused to hold communion with Theophilus or any of the abettors of
the persecution of our saint.[41] He and the emperor Honorius sent five
bishops to Constantinople to insist on a council, and that, in the mean
time, St. Chrysostom should be restored to his see, his deposition
having been notoriously unjust.[42] But the deputies were cast into prison
in Thrace, because they refused to communicate with Atticus. The
persecutors saw that, if the council was held, they would be inevitably
condemned and deposed by it, therefore they stuck at nothing to prevent
its meeting. The incursions of the Isaurian plunderers obliged St.
Chrysostom to take shelter in the castle of Arabissus, on{250} Mount
Taurus. He enjoyed a tolerable state of health during the year 406 and
the winter following, though it was extremely cold in those mountains,
so that the Armenians were surprised to see how his thin, weak body was
able to support it. When the Isaurians had quitted the neighborhood, he
returned to Cucusus. But his impious enemies, seeing the whole Christian
world both honor and defend him, resolved to rid the world of him. With
this view they procured an order from the emperor that he should be
removed to Arabissus, and thence to Pytius, a town situated on the
Euxine sea, near Colchis, at the extremity of the empire, on the
frontiers of the Sarmatians, the most barbarous of the Scythians. Two
officers were ordered to convey him thither in a limited number of days,
through very rough roads, with a promise of promotion, if, by hard
usage, he should die in their hands. One of these was not altogether
destitute of humanity, but the other could not bear to hear a mild word
spoken to him. They often travelled amidst scorching heats, from which
his head, that was bald, suffered exceedingly. In the most violent rains
they forced him out of doors, obliging him to travel till the water ran
in streams down his back and bosom. When they arrived at Comana Pontica,
in Cappadocia, he was very sick; yet was hurried five or six miles to
the martyrium or chapel in which lay the relics of the martyr St.
Basiliscus.[43] The saint was lodged in the oratory of the priest. In
the night, that holy martyr appearing to him, said, "Be of good courage,
brother John; to-morrow we shall be together." The confessor was filled
with joy at this news, and begged that he might stay there till eleven
o'clock. This made the guards drag him out the more violently; but when
they had travelled four miles, perceiving him in a dying condition, they
brought him back to the oratory. He there changed all his clothes to his
very shoes, putting on his best attire, which was all white, as if he
meant it for his heavenly nuptials. He was yet fasting, and having
received the holy sacrament, poured forth his last prayer, which he
closed with his usual doxology: Glory be to God for all things. Having
said Amen, and signed himself with the sign of the cross, he sweetly
gave up his soul to God on the feast of the exaltation of the holy
cross, the 14th of September, as appears from the Menaea, in 407, having
been bishop nine years and almost seven months.[44]

His remains were interred by the body of St. Basiliscus, a great
concourse of holy virgins, monks, and persons of all ranks from a great
distance flocking to his funeral. The pope refused all communion with
those who would not allow his name a place in the Dyptics or registers
of Catholic bishops deceased. It was inserted at Constantinople by
Atticus, in 417, and at Alexandria, by St. Cyril, in 419: for Nestorius
tells him that he then venerated the ashes of John against his will.[45]
His body was translated to Constantinople in 434, by St. Proclus, with
the utmost pomp, the emperor Theodosius and his sister Pulcheria
accompanying St. Proclus in the procession, and begging pardon for the
sins of their parents, who had unadvisedly persecuted this servant of
God. The precious remains were laid in the church of the apostles, the
burying-place of the emperors and bishops, on the 27th of January, 438;
on which day he is honored by the Latins: {251} but the Greeks keep his
festival on the 13th of November.[46] His ashes were afterwards carried
to Rome, and rest under an altar which bears his name in the Vatican
church. The saint was low in stature; and his thin, mortified
countenance bespoke the severity of his life. The austerities of his
youth, his cold solitary abode in the mountains, and the fatigues of
continual preaching, had weakened his breast, which occasioned his
frequent distempers. But the hardships of his exile were such as must
have destroyed a person of the most robust constitution. Pope Celestine,
St. Austin, St. Nilus, St. Isidore of Pelusium, and others, call him the
illustrious doctor of churches, whose glory shines on every side, who
fills the earth with the light of his profound sacred learning, and who
instructs by his works the remotest corners of the world, preaching
everywhere, even where his voice could not reach. They style him the
wise interpreter of the secrets of God, the sun of the whole universe,
the lamp of virtue, and the most shining star of the earth. The
incomparable writings of this glorious saint, make his standing and most
authentic eulogium.

In the character which St. Chrysostom has in several places drawn of
divine and fraternal charity and holy zeal, we have a true portraiture
of his holy soul. He excellently shows, from the words of our Lord to
St. Peter,[47] that the primary and essential disposition of a pastor of
souls is a pure and most ardent love of God, whose love for these souls
is so great, that he has delivered his Son to death for them. Jesus
Christ shed his blood to save this flock, which he commits to the care
of St. Peter. Nothing can be stronger or more tender than the manner in
which this saint frequently expresses his charity and solicitude for his
spiritual children.[48] When he touches this topic, his words are all
fire and flame, and seem to breathe the fervor of St. Peter, the zeal of
St. Paul, and the charity of Moses. This favorite of God was not afraid,
for the salvation of his people, to desire to be separated from the
company of the saints, provided this could have been done without
falling from the love of God; though he knew that nothing would more
closely unite him forever to God, than this extraordinary effort of his
love. The apostle of nations desired to be an anathema for his brethren,
and for their salvation;[49] and the prince of the apostles gave the
strongest proof of the ardor of his love for Christ, by the floods of
tears which he shed for his flock. From the same furnace of divine love,
St. Chrysostom drew the like sentiments towards his flock, joined with a
sovereign contempt of all earthly things; another distinguishing
property of charity, which he describes in the following words:[50]
"Those who burn with a spiritual love, consider as nothing all that is
shining or precious on earth. We are not to be surprised if we
understand not this language, who have no experience of this sublime
virtue. For whoever should be inflamed with the fire of the perfect love
of Jesus Christ, would be in such dispositions with regard to the earth,
that he would be indifferent both to its honors and to its disgrace, and
would be no more concerned about its trifles than if he was alone in the
world. He would despise sufferings, scourges, and dungeons, as if they
were endured in another's body, not in his own; and would be as
insensible to the pleasures and enjoyments of the world; as we are to
the bodies of the dead, or as the dead are to their own bodies. He would
be as pure from the stain of any inordinate passions, as gold perfectly
refined is from all rust or spot. And as flies beware of falling into
the flames, and keep at a distance, so irregular passions dare not
approach him."

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