Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom 16–17

Deacon: Forgive me, Father, but such things go beyond drunkenness and madness and child's play. For madmen and drunkards and children disown what they have done or said shamefully or in disorder, the first when they come to their senses, the second when they have slept it off, the others when they reach the age of discretion, being ashamed of it; but these men, who did these things at full age and in apparent sobriety, not only do not repent of what was done, but even pray that their misdeeds may remain unshaken and firm. For those who did not shudder to lay the Gospel on a polluted head, over which savage women have danced, with whom will they be numbered except with those who put the crown of thorns on the Son of God? But tell us, if you know, the manner of the appointment of Porphyrius of Antioch, or who appointed him, or the man's former life, whether obscure or notable, and his doctrines, whether true or false; especially since he has written to the Church of the Romans and has not been deemed worthy of a reply.

Bishop: My word will be the same, a word of truth; for I will not forget the Master's voice that says, ‘For every idle word men speak they will give account on the day of judgement.’ And I would boldly add: for every idle hearing too. So you too must secure yourself, if you do not see that I am speaking the truth, being won over not by my grey hairs but by the nature of the facts. For what profit would there be to me from what has been said today or yesterday, if I lied, [when I must stand] for ever before the exact [Judge], with the millstone of slander on the neck of my mind, dragged down into the depth of Gehenna on account of those scandalized by my lies?

This Porphyrius spent a long time in the Church, but bore a character out of keeping with his years …; always working against the devout bishops in the surrounding districts, since he belonged to a very great city and had the officials in his power, he made a trade of the business, [drawing] the bishops of the day by the cleverness of his ways, even against their will, so to speak, and leading them to ordinations blown about by the wind. For flattery is a terrible thing; as the comic poet Menander says, ‘[It is hard, Pamphile,] for a free woman to fight with a harlot.’ [Such a man] knows more, does more mischief, is ashamed before no one, and flatters the more; and as the wise Solomon says, ‘the storerooms of the belly’. For he is not only a stranger to self-control in fleshly pleasures but its enemy, as the vulture is of perfume, so that the report prevails about him of the madness of Sodom too. For though nature has set laws, measures and walls around pleasures, as most people say, he trampled the wall, broke the measure, outraged the law, and gave birth to this reputation, … sorcerers and charioteers and those who [act out] the old stories through shameful [mime], and to dine with them. For he was not ashamed to take the side of sorcerers and associate with them as a friend, so that [his name] appears in the minutes of various officials, … not having read the maxim, ‘What one ought not to do, one ought not even to be suspected of doing.’ On his account the go-between was killed by blows, and the one who found [him] out was exiled, and the …. In his evil doings, after his ordination, he melted down the church treasures to spend them on the officials, so that he might be seen to rule not by the word but by tyranny over those who had the misfortune to fall into his hands.

Now the death of Flavian, the bishop of the Antiochenes, coincided with John's exile to Armenia. Porphyrius saw both the men's and the women's sides of the church hanging in longing on the neck of Constantius the presbyter, a man, as the book of Judges says, ambidextrous; for what passed for his left hand was better than other men's right. He first served as a secretary and was found blameless of shameful gain and gifts; then, having risen to reader and deacon, he easily mastered the pleasure of women, which reigns among men, as the Proverbialist says, ‘The hand of the elect will prevail easily.’ For to master oneself belongs perhaps even to most of the wicked, who restrain bodily action from fear or shame under great compulsion; but not to be overcome by things below, through love of things above, belongs only to those who love God, whom Scripture called the elect when it said, ‘The hand of the elect will prevail easily.’ For he is gentle, if anyone is, an ascetic, discerning, quick to perceive, slow to punish, thoughtful, always showing a reflective mind, merciful, free from the love of money, just in his judgements, patient under insults, vigorous in persuading, often continuing to fast until evening to free the oppressed, venerable to look at, keen of glance, quick of step, unmarried, as was fitting, and keeping a smiling bloom on his face even in illness. Such a man, then, Porphyrius contrives, by means of money, to have banished, in this way: he sends to the capital, to the bishops in power, and has him [banished] by imperial letter to the Oasis as a disturber of the people. Constantius, learning of it at once, is rescued by his friends and taken to Cyprus. Porphyrius himself, having placed the presbyters Cyriacus and Diophantus and other clergy under the [prefect's] guard, watches for a time when the whole city had moved out to the suburbs, having Acacius, Severian and Antiochus hidden with him. It was during one of the famous festivals of the pagans, held every four years, the Heraclean games called the Olympia, in which, so to speak, even the vagrant women with … are fanned out to Daphne to watch the contestants. Leaping into the church with the aforesaid bishops and a few clergy, he is ordained secretly, behind shut doors, in great haste, so that they did not even manage to finish the prayer, for fear of being caught. Such is adultery: it begets bastards and acts [by stealth]. Severian and his party, having taken their fill, [fled] through the mountains and [pathless places, escaping the fear of men], but were pierced by the divine [fear], of which they took no account. When the public theatre broke up and the people came into the city, they were told of the affair of Porphyrius and the drama of Acacius. They held out that evening until the next day, [and came] as to the chambers of adultery, intending [to burn them]. Porphyrius, not unaware of the hatred with which he is hated, abandoning God, flees to the commander of the troops, fills his hands, and turning him away from the Isaurian wars, makes war on the hearers of the Saviour. And [the Isaurians ravaged] …; while Porphyrius and Valentinus the count, with the soldiers, plundered the church of the orthodox, [trampling] the most awesome sign of the cross, which [the faithful] carried on their shoulders instead of a teacher [as they prayed] on the unsown ground. After some days he sends urgently to the capital and arranges with such officials that a creature of his own, a savage old man, ill-tempered and crooked, be appointed prefect of the night watch, so that, having licence to slander the zealous, he might subdue the city, imitating the ways of Nero, the fighter against God. For he cannot persuade by the word, but oppresses by unreason and hostility, his aim being not to please God by bringing back straying souls, but to fill a serpent's belly that goes upon its breast. So the people are present against their will, gathering in the church in appearance for fear of tortures, but in truth cursing their life and waiting for the help that will come from God.

At this Theodore said in amazement: Father, I see deeds that are contrary to the nature of words. For as a rule the vainglorious, being men-pleasers, are also flatterers, for the sake of being loved and well spoken of, often putting up even with being spat on. How then Porphyrius, or anyone else, came to practise threats and punishments and exiles, I am at a loss to say.

[Bishop:] That is the wonder, Theodore: they have reached such a measure of wickedness that they not only do not hurry to please men, but do not care at all about the shame of what they do; for wickedness leads wickedness on in wickedness. Wickedness puts forward vainglory when it hopes to prevail by flattering the foolish; but when those it is hunting prove superior both to flattery and to the table, it brings out threats and punishments, so that those whom it could not [catch by flattery it may catch by violence] and fear, as in the case of the martyrs. For there both were devised: the trap contrived through gifts and honours, hunting those who care for petty glory, and the threat of punishments, frying pans and racks and wild beasts and whatever is suited to violent pain, made ready, revealing the brave and those who love God. However, the clergy of the Antiochenes [meet apart, not] within the walls of the church, and so do all the distinguished women, because of whom especially the money-grubbing leaders have gone out of their minds. And as for the people of Constantinople, what need is there even to say how great a multitude withdrew from the church, gathering in the open air, as I said before, so that even those in control of the church's affairs do not have so many hearers of their silence? For there is no preaching at all among them.

Deacon: You have freed my mind from doubt, Father, by setting the facts before my eyes. For the agreement of your words and the unfeigned narrative have assured me that what happened is true; for it is impossible for a false account to [agree] with itself. So, if it is no trouble, tell us also about Olympias, if you have any knowledge of her.

Bishop: Which one? For there are others.

Deacon: The deaconess of Constantinople, who was once the bride of Nebridius, the former prefect.

Bishop: I know her very well.

Deacon: What sort of woman is she?

Bishop: Do not say woman, but what sort of human being; for she is a man, apart from the shape of her body.

Deacon: In what way?

Bishop: In her life, her labours, her knowledge and her endurance of trials.

Deacon: Then how did Theophilus come to revile her?

Bishop: Which Theophilus?

Deacon: The leader of the Alexandrians.

Bishop: You seem to me, Theodore, to have buried so many laps of our discussion in forgetfulness.

Deacon: In what way?

Bishop: He who did not spare the truth but trampled on it, as the preceding words have shown, and who did not honour but outraged by his conduct the Church under heaven, for which the Only-begotten, as the saying goes, suffered, in order to unite it, will he spare a widow spending her life in prayer? Look round and see whether he ever reviled any of the wicked, since he has always hated piety. And why do you not infer from his letters too how they contradict one another? For he defamed the blessed Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, who governed his Church for thirty-six years, as a heretic or schismatic in the time of Damasus or the blessed Siricius; and later, in his letter to Pope Innocent reviling the blessed John, he is found calling Epiphanius most holy. And how many times, do you suppose, did he kiss the knees of this woman whom he now reviles, in hope of silver, while she fell to the ground at the sight and shed tears, a bishop doing such things? But in what did he revile her?

Deacon: For having received the monks whom he had thrown out.

Bishop: Is it permitted to a bishop, or fitting at all, to throw out an ordinary disciple, let alone a monk?

Deacon: What if they had provoked him or spoken ill of him?

Bishop: And ought he to satisfy his own anger, concerned about the evil-speaking? How will such a man still avenge the insults done to Christ, when he is busy with his own reputation? And why did he not imitate the Teacher who said, ‘[Being reviled, we bless]’? … He ought by all means to have corrected and persuaded them, not thrown them out.

Deacon: What if he did that too, but they were not persuaded, being contentious?

Bishop: He should have done what the Apostle says: ‘Reject a heretical man after a first and second admonition, knowing that such a one is perverted’; not throw them out, plunder them and drive them out of the country that bred them with threats from the officials.

Deacon: You speak of the standards of a perfect man, one who loves God and bears wrongs.

Bishop: And yet it is no great praise to bear with the weaker. But if he is not perfect, as far as is possible, how is such a man even a bishop? For the imperfect will never care for the imperfect. And how is he called Theophilus, ‘lover of God’, when he does not love God, for whose sake he ought to bear men's insults easily? And if he does not love God, clearly he does not love himself either; and one who is his own enemy, how will he love others? So it is nothing strange if he blamed Olympias on this account, for having received the monks.

[Deacon:] It is admitted that Theophilus did an angry thing in throwing them out, whoever they were, orthodox or heretics. But ought the deaconess not to have refused to receive them?

Bishop: What did you think, then: that she did well or badly?

Deacon: I said, badly.

Bishop: Is doing good ever judged bad?

[Deacon:] Certainly, when it is done to the wicked, and to those who ought not to be treated well.

Bishop: Who, then, were the five thousand whom the Saviour fed from five barley loaves, good or wicked?

Deacon: Good, clearly, since they were fed by the Saviour.

Bishop: Then why were they fed with barley loaves, if they were good?

Deacon: Perhaps from a lack of wheaten loaves, and famine.

Bishop: How then are they reproached for unbelief, as good or as wicked?

Deacon: If they are reproached, then clearly as wicked.

[Bishop:] And can the same people be both good and wicked?

Deacon: Certainly.

Bishop: How?

[Deacon:] Good in comparison with the worse, wicked in comparison with the better.

Bishop: Wonderfully said. In this way, then, the monks too were both good and wicked; and the most faithful woman [received] them as good, [while our wonderful bishop expelled them as wicked]; which he ought not [to have done].

Deacon: But he will say to you: ‘You received my enemies, to my grief.’

Bishop: It is a complete defeat for him even to call them enemies, when as an imitator of Christ he owes it to bear insults.

[Deacon: Where were the five thousand reproached by] the Saviour, as you said? For it is not recorded.

Bishop: When they had gathered and came to Jesus a second time, and heard: ‘You seek me, not because you saw signs and wonders, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.’

Theodore said: [That is clear.]

[Bishop: Then by] this standard [one who is reproached is] wicked too.

Deacon: Indeed.

[Bishop:] Did the Saviour, then, feed the wicked or the good?

[Deacon:] It is admitted that he fed the wicked; for ‘those who are well have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick.’

Bishop: What then? Did Olympias do wrong in imitating her own Lord, who sends rain and makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust, even if the Pharisees reproach … that he eats and drinks with [tax collectors] and sinners?

[Deacon:] It seems that, contrary to the understanding of the many, holy things are spoken ill of and shameful things are loved.

Bishop: What do you mean by this remark, most truth-loving Theodore?

Deacon: That if you had not laid the argument bare for me, making it clear by syllogism, I would have been carried away into a senseless opinion, attending not to the purpose of her freedom but to Theophilus's rumours.

Bishop: So then, on the contrary, if those holy men are shown to be not only not wicked, but to have brought many back from wickedness to virtue, it will be clear that their persecutor deserves not to be persecuted but to be pitied, as one who always harms the good and accepts the wicked.

Deacon: It is as you say. For even if those men are not shown to be wise and holy, as most people say, Olympias will be beyond reproach by the preceding syllogisms, since she showed herself an imitator of the Saviour.

[Bishop:] And which do you see as the greater testimony to her actions, that of the Gospel or that of Theophilus?

Deacon: Away with the thought, I beg you; for it is admitted by all that he threw those men out from anger and ambition, and reviled her from superstition and enmity. For having [failed] with his servile flatteries, since he received nothing from her except food or gifts of hospitality, he turned to reviling her; for this is his habit in everything.

Bishop: Listen, then, best of deacons; for I see that you are useful to the community, since the zeal in your mind is a pledge that you will be honoured in old age. These men, from their tender years and of Christian parents, subjected themselves to God and did not [allow] themselves, even when quite young, to serve vanity or to mix with crowds; but they went to the uninhabited [desert] to the south, lying somewhere far from the inhabited world, and put up huts, enough to escape the oppression of the sun's torch and the dew of the night air. Living in them, [they spent] their time in prayers and readings, wearing out the palms of their hands in bodily work only so far as [was needed] for cheap food, [thinking it better to live among wild creatures than to feast with] people who do not know God. Of these, the eldest, who had passed about ninety years and had lived with the blessed Antony, was called Hierax, his proper name …; another was Ammonius, sixty years old, with two brothers who were ascetics and one who was a bishop; they had worn the iron collar under Valens and were exiled, as all Alexandria knows. They were such in knowledge that nothing in the Scriptures that puzzles most people escaped them. Two of them have fallen asleep, dying in Constantinople. Ammonius, as Aurelius and Sisinnius related, prophesied at his death that, after a great [storm] and schism had come upon the Churches, those responsible would come to a most shameful end, and so the Churches would be united; and this has partly come about, and will come about. For from that time the disease took hold of the bodies of some, bishops and laymen, and was divided among various afflictions: with fever … [and itching], digging up the whole surface of the body with the nails; continual pains of the colon. In one man … about the four limbs; hot and cold shivers seized the fingers that had wickedly signed; inflammation of the abdomen, and through a certain part a putrefaction that spread a stench far, [breeding] worms; and distension of all the limbs; nightly phantoms took the shape of raging dogs and of barbarians armed with swords, making sleep sleepless. Another fell from his horse, and [broke] his thigh …; another, his voice shut off, lay like a mummy on his bed for eight months, unable even to bring his hands to his own mouth. Another, while still alive, had his legs eaten away little by little up to the knees for three years, erysipelas supposedly being the cause; another's tongue swelled, as they say, with a violent fever, so that it lay like a barrier in his mouth, pressing against his teeth, since the tongue would not fit in the place nature had appointed for it, and he made his confession by writing on a tablet. One could see God's wrath leading the attack with various punishments. For those who had removed the physician and charmer of souls, the interpreter of that workshop of salvation, [were handed over to be tortured by] the physicians of bodies, … with their supposed remedies, which did not produce health. For who will heal one punished by God? As the prophet says, ‘Will physicians raise them up?’ So all who worked against the peace of your Church, O Lord, were perishing. They say that the tomb of the monk Ammonius [heals] diseases of shivering. He is buried in the shrine of the Apostles across the sea. Bishop Dioscorus, as they say, prayed very often either to see peace in the Churches or to reach his own end, and was granted the end, since the world was not worthy of peace. He was buried in the martyr's shrine before the gate, [and is so honoured] that most of the women have given up swearing by the martyr and swear by the prayers of Dioscorus. To tell of the rest of the ascetics would take much speech, perhaps when you are in a hurry, man well named.

Deacon: And who is so thrice-wretched as not to make room for stories of virtue? Speak, I beg you, and by any reasonable word draw my mind away from worldly thoughts.

Bishop: There is another Hierax, called by a pagan name but adorned with spiritual ways. First he withdrew alone, beyond all Egypt and the Thebaid, into the Porphyrite mountain, where no human breath was, and held out there for four years, content with the virtues alone for comfort; then he lived in the desert of Nitria for twenty-five years with the aforesaid Fathers. Demons came upon him, as he himself told us, [transformed into angels] of light, suggesting a long life [to shake him] from the hope set before him: ‘You have fifty years to live,’ they said; ‘how will you endure in the desert?’ He, with understanding through faith, answered: ‘You have grieved me by naming a time shorter than my purpose; for I prepared myself for two hundred years in the desert.’ Hearing this they went off wailing. And this man, whom the demons could not shake, [Theophilus] reduced to such necessity that he went to the capital; and now, after the falling asleep of Ammonius, he has again gone to the utter desert, [mindful of the plough]. Then there is the presbyter Isaac, a disciple of Macarius, [fifty] years old, keeping the whole of Scripture by heart, handling horned vipers without danger, … the desert; after forty years he was [driven out] with the aforesaid by Pope Theophilus. Another Isaac, a presbyter, himself the disciple and successor of Cronius the presbyter, who was in turn a disciple of Antony, learned like the others in the Scriptures … exceedingly, hospitable if anyone ever was, so that [he built] in the utter desert [a guest-house] for the refreshment of sick monks and of strangers who came to see the blessed Fathers; free from anger, they say, and in the thirtieth year of his withdrawal, he was ill-treated together with them. Of these, the first Isaac had a hundred and fifty ascetics under him, and Theophilus made up to seven or eight of his disciples bishops, back when he was a ‘lover of God’; the other had two hundred and ten, and many of his disciples too were numbered among the bishops. These are the men of whom I told you the day before yesterday that they were driven out by Pope Theophilus on account of Isidore, the presbyter of the desert. These are the men whom priests and Levites passed by, and whom, to the shame of men, a manly woman received, and, to the condemnation of bishops, a woman deacon entertained, whose praise is a citizen of the Churches for many reasons. She imitated that Samaritan, whoever he is, who found the man crushed by robbers and half dead on the way down to Jericho, [set him] on his own [beast], and mixing the oil of kindness with astringent wine, healed his swellings. So much for this.

How great a wealth of money and possessions she distributed to the needy is not for me to tell, but for those who received her kindness; for, being from abroad, I was kept without being a burden to her. But hear of her greater virtue. Married to a husband when an orphan, she was not allowed by the foreknowing God, who foresees the outcomes of human lives, to serve even twenty months the pleasure of the flesh that rules over all, since her husband was soon required to pay the debt of nature. She is said to be a virgin, as report teaches. For though she could have served the apostolic law, ‘I want younger widows to marry and manage their households’, she would not, although she was adorned with family, wealth, an expensive education, natural gifts and the bloom of youth; like a gazelle she leapt clear over the trap of a second marriage. ‘For the law is not laid down for the righteous’ … corruption. It happened that through some satanic envy her untimely widowhood was reported to [the emperor Theodosius, who was urged] to join her in marriage to a certain Elpidius, a Spaniard, a relative of his. He pressed the woman hard, and when he failed, he was grieved; for she declared: ‘If my King had wished me to live with a man, he would not have taken away my first; but since he knew me to be unsuited to the mingled life and unable to please a husband, he freed him from the bond and released me from the heaviest yoke of servitude to a husband, laying on my mind his own kind yoke of continence.’ After this answer he orders the prefect of the city to keep her property under guard until she reached thirty years of age. The prefect at once received the emperor's commission and, [urged on] by Elpidius, so oppressed her that she had no freedom even to meet the distinguished bishops or to go to church, so that, straitened by weariness, she might fall into choosing marriage. But she, [rejoicing the more and giving thanks to God, the guardian] of souls, wrote this to the emperor: ‘You have shown toward me, lowly as I am, a virtue fitting for an emperor and suitable for a bishop, master, in ordering my heaviest burden to be kept under guard, for I was anxious about how it should be managed. You will do still better if you order it to be distributed to the poor and to the Churches. For I have long prayed to be rid of the vainglory of giving it away myself, lest, entangled with matter, I neglect the wealth of [the soul].’ He, returning from the war against Maximus, ordered that she should have control of her property, having heard of the intensity of her asceticism.

Deacon: Rightly, then, did [John] honour her.

[Bishop: Yes indeed; she abstains from the flesh] of living things, and for the most part she does not bathe; but if it becomes necessary through illness (for she suffers continually in her stomach), she goes down into the water in her shift, from modesty even toward herself, as they say.

[Deacon:] It is said that she too looked after the blessed John a great deal.

Bishop: And what did she do for him worthy of his virtue? Unless it was [to free him from] distraction, which is no small thing for the workers of Christ, who night and day are anxious for the things of Christ; as Paul says when greeting Persis, who did the same as Olympias, perhaps, with her labours: ‘Greet,’ he writes, ‘Persis the beloved, who laboured much in the Lord.’ For all seek their own interests, not those of Christ. I know that she looked after the blessed Nectarius even more, so that he obeyed her even in church affairs. And what need is there to speak of Amphilochius, Optimus, Gregory, Peter the brother of Basil, and Epiphanius of Cyprus, the saints, to whom she gave estates of land and money? When Optimus died in Constantinople she closed his eyes with her own hands. Besides, she refreshed generously in everything even those pitiable men, Antiochus, Acacius and Severian, and, in short, to some degree all the clergy who visited the city, and countless ascetics and virgins. John, however, since he had judged it right to be, so to speak, a pattern sent to the bishops after him of how they ought to live, preaching repentance, like Paul, in his own hired house and touching nothing of the Church's property, received [from her] only what he needed for each day. It is said that he even seemed ashamed when taking bodily food. For as apples, when they are fully ripe, will not stay on the branch but seek the master's hand, so too the saints, when they have fallen deeply in love with the beauty of heavenly things, hasten before the appointed departure to obtain the promise; as children of a household do: for they often [refuse] the food set before them in expectation of the honey-cakes, saving their appetite, so that they may be filled with the sweetness they expect. Let those recognize these words who have set foot on the same track of the spiritual journey; ‘For if a wise man hears a sensible word, he will praise it and add to it.’