Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom

[Bishop:] Of the gifts of God, most excellent brother Theodore, some, it seems, are common and undivided, others common and divided. A third kind are those that are neither common nor divided [nor undivided], but are given as a special privilege, as their own, to those to whom they are given.

Deacon: Come then, explain to us [the difference] of each kind.

Bishop: The things good by nature, without which life would be wretched, are common and undivided.

Deacon: Such as what, Father?

Bishop: First, the God of the universe, together with his only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, is common and undivided; for anyone who wishes may receive him whole in contemplation, without having to deal with material things. Then, after God, the divine Scriptures and the powers above the world. Besides these, heaven, sun, moon, the whole chorus of the stars, and the air itself: common and undivided, all of them belonging wholly to all. Let the class of undivided things end there for us. Once the earth too was common and undivided, together with the streams of the waters; but from the time the gadfly of greed was roused in the souls of the pleasure-lovers, the heavier elements, earth and water, became divided.

Deacon: What you have said is perfectly clear. Now complete the account of the second class, the divided.

Bishop: I must not leave the web of the argument unfinished. Gold, then, and silver and every kind of metal, and timber besides, and, in a word, all the things in between, are common but nonetheless divided; for they are not wholly at the disposal of everyone who wishes.

Deacon: This account too is plain. But I suspect you may falter over the proofs of the third class, the special gifts, since you promised that there are some things that are neither common nor divided but are the special and peculiar privilege of those worthy of the gift. So put the finishing touch to the argument, and then tell us where you have come from, and the truth about the things we long to learn.

Bishop: If it lies with me, and I have knowledge of the things you wish to learn about, I will not shrink back or hide anything; but the debt of the argument, as I understand it, I will pay as best I can. Of virginity, then, and of the rest of the unmarried life you will find no division; for they do not belong to the class of common or divided things, since not everyone who longs for the thing actually lives as a virgin, but only the one who is able. Many of the married long for it, but do not attain it, because they have already been bound in marriage. Just as at the Olympic games the herald calls whoever wishes, but crowns the one who won, so it is with chastity, as the Gospel says. For when Peter objected to the Saviour, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry,’ the Saviour answered him, ‘Not all can receive this saying, but those to whom it is given.’ Do you see that it is not to all, but to those to whom it is given?

Deacon: I thought you would be at a loss over the proof of the special gifts; but, it seems, you have persuaded us both from Scripture and with force.

Bishop: If this is clear to you, I will enrich the argument with further testimonies, so that those of evil intent may be persuaded by them and stop snatching at what they have not been able to receive. For we find in the divine Scriptures that the priesthood too is neither common nor divided, but the special privilege of the worthy, as the great-souled Paul says when admonishing the Hebrews: ‘For no one takes the honour on himself, but he who is called by God. So too Aaron,’ he says, ‘did not glorify himself to become high priest.’ For though there were six hundred thousand men, and many among them were zealous, Aaron alone was proclaimed, … [persuading] the many that the priest was one chosen by God. But some, [seeking] glory and treating the thing as common or divided, met the end their madness deserved, making the very earth … witness of their own rashness. For Dathan and Abiram, enamoured of the dignity with a lustful eye, perished underground with those who followed them, finding their own congregation a self-chosen grave. After them Uzzah, not remembering those who had gone before, was dragged along by the passion … of the thing; and one day, when the ark was on a cart on the road, he took hold of it with his hand, not allowing the vessel to be overturned. When God saw it, it did not please him, because from this a habit would arise for the rash; and he restrained it by striking Uzzah dead, teaching those who came after to cease from such madness. Long afterwards, after the coming of Christ, Simon Magus, from the village of Gitta, a sophist of doctrines contrary to the truth and a villain in wickedness, … the passion, fearing no doubt the punishment of those of old, lest, having sown the like, he should reap the same. So he approaches the apostles with flattery, hiding the wolf in the fleece, [bringing] gold and money, so as not to seem to seize what he was eager to buy by wicked means, and saying what suited him and all who imitate him: ‘Take this money,’ he says, ‘and give me the authority of your dignity, so that whoever I lay hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.’ He had been baptized in the name of Jesus. The band of the apostles answers him: ‘Away with you, man; the grace of God does not suffer itself to be sold.’ When he kept knocking at the door with words, they said a second time: ‘Why buy what you can find freely by living worthily?’ But when he thought of the labours of that life, and the sluggishness of his own mind, and the uncertainty of the thing, he again bared the gold from his purse, thinking to entice the disciples of the Saviour by deceit. At this he who ‘catches the wise in their craftiness’ was indignant, and spoke through Peter, saying: ‘Your silver perish with you, because you thought to obtain the gift of God with money.’ To this he added the medicine of repentance, anointing him with patience: ‘Repent,’ he said, ‘if perhaps the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.’ For God, being a lover of souls, does not wish the destruction of those who sin. Now that what I undertook has been proved as best I could, Theodore of great name, deacon of the mysteries of the truth, ask of us what you wish to learn.

Deacon: Where have you come from now, that we have you here?

Bishop: From the East, of course; for I have now seen Rome for the first time.

Deacon: What brought you most of all?

Bishop: Longing for your peace.

Deacon: Is there some other peace besides yours?

Bishop: There is no other; there is only one, which the Saviour gave from heaven when he said to the apostles, ‘My peace I give you.’ And to make the grace firm he repeated it: ‘My peace I leave you,’ setting ‘I give’ with reference to himself and ‘I leave’ with reference to the Holy Spirit, so that in the Spirit, through Christ, they might reveal the knowledge of the Father to the nations. But just as, when limbs are paralysed, the energies of the soul turn back toward the healthier limbs, so has the wretched East fared. For its limbs are paralysed and cannot perform their proper functions because concord has fled; and most of those who are unencumbered and who long for it have become exiles from the country, since we cannot live safely and undisturbed in the land that bred us because of our adherence to the truth, in the hope that, finding you, we may live according to the Gospel these few days that remain of life.

Deacon: It seems, wonderful Father, that you were sent to us by Providence; for I find your grief in tune with our sorrows. For I take it you are of the fellowship of John, the bishop of Constantinople.

Bishop: It is as you say.

Deacon: Then I urge you, with God as witness, to tell us with all truth the things we are eager to learn in detail, knowing this, that if you report anything to us contrary to the truth, you will have God as judge and assessor, and you will also be refuted by us, who have learned otherwise. For it is not one or two or three or ten, or chance comers, who have told us of what happened in Constantinople, but many more, among them bishops and presbyters and members of the order of monks. And if you wish to learn briefly how matters stand in the Church of the Romans, I will give you the knowledge. First of all there came to us a reader from Alexandria with letters of [Theo]philus to the pope, in which he reported [that he had deposed] John. When the blessed pope Innocent read the letter he was somewhat taken aback, condemning Theophilus for rashness and arrogance, because he had written alone and had not sent clear information either of the reason for which he had deposed him or of those with whom he had deposed him. Perplexed by this he waited, unwilling to reply because of the levity of the matter. Meanwhile a certain Eusebius, a deacon of [the church of Constantinople], who was staying in Rome on [its business], came to the pope [and begged] him to wait a little while, and he would see the plot uncovered. And three days later there arrived four bishops of John's party, [Pansophius of Pisidia, Pappus of] Syria, Demetrius of Galatia Secunda, Eugenius of [Phry]gia, delivering three letters, one besides the other two: one from John the bishop, one from forty other bishops in communion with John, and the third from John's clergy. The three agreed, and told of the tumult caused by ignorant men. The letter of Bishop John ran as follows:

To my lord, the most reverend and most holy bishop Innocent, John sends greeting in the Lord.

I think that even before our letter your piety has heard of the lawlessness that has been dared here. For the magnitude of the evils has left no part of the world without hearing of this grievous tragedy; report has carried what happened to the very ends of the earth and has caused great lamentation and mourning everywhere. But since one must not only lament these things but also set them right, and consider how this grievous [storm might be stilled, we thought it necessary] to persuade my most honoured lords [the bishops Demetrius, Pansophius,] Pappus and Eugenius to leave their own churches, to venture on so great a sea, to undertake a long journey abroad, to hasten to your love and to inform you clearly of everything. With them we have also sent our most honoured and beloved deacons Paul and Cyriacus. They too, as though they were a letter, will briefly teach your love what has happened.

For he who has been entrusted with the presidency of the Church of Alexandria [Theophilus, when certain persons had brought charges to the most pious] emperor against him, was ordered to come alone. But he arrives bringing with him no small crowd of Egyptians, as if wishing to show from the very outset that he was coming to war and battle. Then, having set foot in the great and God-loving city of Constantinople, he did not go to church according to the rule that has prevailed from of old; he did not meet with us, he did not share with us in word, in prayer, in communion; but stepping off the ship and running past the doors of the church, he went off somewhere outside the city and lodged there. And though we earnestly begged both him and those who came with him to stay with us (for everything had been made ready, lodgings and whatever was fitting), neither they nor he would consent. Seeing this we were in great perplexity, unable even to find the cause of this unjust hostility. Nevertheless we did our part, doing what befitted us, and continually urging him to meet with us and to say why he had fanned so great a war from the very outset and had scandalized so great a city. But when even so he would not state the reason, and his accusers were pressing, the most pious emperor summoned us [and ordered us to go across to where he was] and hear the case against him. For they charged him with assault and murders and countless other things. But we, from reverence and honour for the laws of the fathers and for the man, and holding his own letter, which says that cases must not be dragged beyond the borders, but that the affairs of the provinces must be tried within the provinces, would not consent to judge, but declined with great vehemence.

But he, as though trying to outdo his former acts, summoned my archdeacon with great high-handedness, as if the Church were already widowed and had no bishop, and through him drew the whole clergy over to himself. And the churches were thrown into confusion, the clergy of each being drawn away, prepared to give [evidence] against us, and anointed for accusation. Having done this, he sent and summoned us to trial, though he had not yet cleared himself of the charges against him, which was contrary above all to the canons and to all laws. But we, knowing that we were not going before a judge (for then we would have come ten thousand times) but before an enemy and foe, as both his earlier and his later acts have shown, sent to him bishops, [Demetrius of] Pessinus …, and [the presbyters Germanus and] Severus, answering with the moderation that befitted us, and saying that we did not decline judgement, but an enemy and open foe. For a man who has not yet received a single petition, and has done such things from the outset, and has broken himself off from Church and communion and prayer, who anoints accusers, transfers clergy and empties churches, how could he justly mount the judge's throne, which in no way belongs to him? It was not consistent that one from Egypt should judge in Thrace, and one himself under charges at that, and an enemy and foe. Yet he respected none of this, but hastened to accomplish what he wished; and when we declared that we were ready, in the presence of a hundred or a thousand bishops, to clear ourselves of the charges and to show ourselves innocent, as indeed we are, he would not allow it. Instead, in our absence, while we were appealing to a synod, asking for a trial, and shunning not a hearing but open hostility, he received accusers, released those whom I had bound, and, before they had cleared themselves of the charges against them, accepted [their petitions] and drew up minutes, all of which was contrary to rule and canon and order. And (why should I say much?) he did not stop doing and contriving everything until, with all power and high-handedness, he drove us out of both the city and the Church. Late in the evening, while the whole people was thronging after us, I was dragged through the middle of the city by the curiosus of the city and … and by night I sailed away, because I was calling for a synod and a just trial. Who could hear this without tears, even if he had a heart of stone? But since, as I said before, one must not only lament but also set things right, I beg your love to rouse yourself, to share our pain, and to do everything so that these evils may be stopped.

For they did not end their lawlessness even there, but afterwards went on to outdo their former acts. When the most pious emperor had driven out those who had shamelessly and unjustly leapt upon the Church, and many of the bishops, seeing their lawlessness, withdrew to their own sees, fleeing their onslaught like a fire, we were recalled to the city and to the Church from which we had been unjustly expelled, with more than thirty bishops [bringing] us in, and the most God-fearing emperor sending a notary for the purpose. But he at once ran away, why and for what reason we do not know. Having entered, then, we begged the most God-fearing emperor to convene a synod to give redress for what had happened. Conscious [of his guilt], then, he fled; fearing exposure, when [letters] were gathering everyone from everywhere, he secretly threw himself into a small boat in the middle of the night and so ran away, taking all his people with him. But not even then did we desist, trusting in our conscience, and we urged the same requests again on the most pious emperor; and he, acting as befitted his piety, sent to him again, telling him to come up quickly from Egypt with all his people to give an account of what had happened, and not to think that what had been dared so unjustly, by one side alone, in our absence and against so many canons, was enough for his defence. But he would not obey even the imperial letter. He stayed at home, pleading a riot of the people and the untimely zeal of some who were supposedly attached to him; and yet before the imperial letter this same people had washed him with countless insults. But we are not concerning ourselves with this now; we have said it wishing to show that he was caught in wrongdoing.

Nevertheless, not even after this did we keep quiet, but pressed on, asking that a court be held, with trial, [question] and answer; for we were ready to show that we were blameless and that they had committed the worst lawlessness. There were also some Syrians left behind here of those who had been with him at the time, who had staged the whole drama jointly with him. With these too we were ready to stand trial, and very often we pressed for this, asking that either the minutes be given us, or the petitions of the accusers, or that the nature of the charges be made known, or the accusers themselves; and we obtained none of these, but were thrust out of the church again. How could any words present what followed? What ear could receive it without shuddering? For while we were pressing these very requests that I have mentioned, a crowd of soldiers suddenly, on the Great Sabbath itself, as the day was already hastening toward evening, burst into the churches and drove out by force all the clergy who were with us, and surrounded the sanctuary with arms. And women of the houses of prayer, who had undressed for baptism at that very moment, fled naked for fear of this grievous assault, not even [permitted] the decency [fitting to women]; and they were driven out after receiving wounds, and the fonts were filled with blood, and the sacred waters were reddened from such wounds. Nor did the horror stop there: the soldiers came where the holy things were kept (some of whom, as we learned, were not even baptized) and saw everything inside, and the most holy blood of Christ, in such great tumult, was spilled on the clothes of those I have mentioned, and everything was dared as in a barbarian captivity. And the people were driven into the wilderness, and the whole congregation fled outside the city, and on such a feast the churches were emptied of their people; and more than forty bishops in communion with us were driven out with the people for no reason and to no purpose. Wailing everywhere, groans, laments, dirges and fountains of tears filled the market-places and the houses and the deserted places and every part of the city with these calamities. Because of the excess of the lawlessness, not only those who suffered but also those who endured nothing of the kind grieved with us; not only those of our faith, but also heretics and Jews and pagans; and as though the city had been taken by storm, everything was in tumult and confusion and wailing. And these things were dared against the will of the most pious emperor, as night came on, with bishops contriving them, who were not ashamed to have military officers going before them instead of deacons. When day came, the whole city moved outside the walls, under trees and in the glens, … For the rest, consider everything that followed for yourselves; for, as I said before, it is impossible to go through in words everything that happened in detail. And the grievous thing is that such great evils have not yet found an end, nor even a hope of an end, but grow worse every day … the horror, and we have become a laughing-stock to many; or rather no one laughs, even if he has broken the law ten thousand times, but all lament, as I said, this crown of evils, this new lawlessness.

Who could describe the disturbances of the other churches? For the trouble did not stop here, but reached as far as the East. Just as when an evil humour pours down from the head the remaining limbs are corrupted, so now too, the evils having begun as from a source in this great city, … rose up against bishops, and the peoples are some of them split already, others about to be, and everywhere there are birth-pangs of evils and the overturning of the whole world. Having learned all this, then, most honoured and most reverend lords, [show] the [zeal and courage] fitting to you, and we beg you to check [the lawlessness] that has invaded the churches. For if this custom should prevail, and it becomes permissible for anyone who wishes to go into other people's provinces from such distances and expel whomever they please, doing by their own authority whatever they please, know that everything will be ruined and an undeclared war will overrun the whole world, all striking and being struck by all. So, that so great a confusion may not overtake the whole world under the sun, I beg you to write that what has been done so lawlessly, in our absence and by one side, when we did not decline judgement, has no force, as indeed by its own nature it has none; and that those who have acted so lawlessly [are subject to the penalty of the ecclesiastical] law; and grant us, who have not been convicted, not refuted, not shown guilty, to enjoy your letters continually, and your love and everything else, as before. And if even now those who have committed such lawlessness wish to try the charges on which they unjustly expelled us, then, once the minutes have been given us and the petitions of the accusers have been produced and an impartial court has been seated, we will stand trial and make our defence and show ourselves innocent of what is alleged against us, as indeed we are. For what they have now done is outside all order, all law and every ecclesiastical canon. Even in the courts outside the Church such things were never dared; or rather not even in a barbarian court. Not even Scythians and Sarmatians would ever have given judgement after hearing one side only, in the absence of the accused, when he declined not judgement but enmity, called for ten thousand judges, declared himself blameless, and was ready, before the whole world, to clear himself of the charges and to show himself guiltless in everything. Considering all this, then, and having learned everything more clearly from my lords, our most reverend brothers the bishops, be pleased to contribute your own zeal. For so you will do a kindness not only to us but also to the whole body of the churches, and you will receive from God the reward of one who does everything for the peace of the churches. … [The same letter] was also written to Venerius, bishop [of Milan, and to Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia]. Farewell in the Lord.

[Deacon:] Upon this the blessed pope Innocent sent letters of communion to both parties alike, setting aside the supposed judgement passed by Theophilus, and saying that another synod beyond reproach, of Westerners and Easterners, must be convened, with friends withdrawing from the court first, and then enemies as well; for a verdict given by either side is, as a rule, not upright. A few days later there arrived again a certain Peter, [a presbyter] of Theophilus, together with Martyrius, a deacon of the Church of Constantinople, delivering letters from the same Theophilus and some so-called minutes, in which John appeared to have been condemned by thirty-six bishops, twenty-nine of them Egyptians and seven from other regions. Pope Innocent read the minutes and found both that the charges were not grave and that John had not been present and convicted face to face; and he continued to deride the madness of Theophilus, who had so boldly cast so severe a vote against an absent man. … beseeching God with fasting that the dissension of the Church might be dissolved and brotherly love be knit together again. The substance of the letter was this: ‘Brother Theophilus, we hold both you and our brother John in communion, as we made our mind plain in our former letter too; and now, not departing from the same resolve, we write the same to you again, and will do so as often as you write: that unless … shows …, it is impossible for us to withdraw from John's communion without reason. So then, if you are confident in your verdict, present yourself before the synod that is to be held according to Christ, and there, having examined the charges with the canons of Nicaea as witnesses (for the Church of the Romans accepts no other canon), you will gain a security that cannot be contested.’

After a short time had gone by, there arrived [the] presbyter [Theotecnus] with letters of John's synod, from twenty-five bishops or a few more, in which they reported that John had been expelled from the city with military help and sent into exile at Cucusus, and that the church had been burned. Giving him too letters of communion for Bishop John and for those in communion with him, [the pope] urged them with tears to be patient, since he could not help, because some who had power for evil were working against him. A little later there arrived … of the Church of [Constantinople]; he too was wholly carried away, showing his enmity by his manner and pouring out many insults against Bishop John; he delivered letters from a few bishops, Acacius, Paul, Antiochus, Cyrinus, Severian and some others, in which they slander John as having burned the church. The story seemed to us so false that [we judged that] John need not even make a defence on this count at a formal synod …

Bishop: Then be so good as to lend me your ear, so that I may tell you everything in detail; for [I am] full, as he says who hints that the mind is a belly filled with words.

[Deacon:] Father, [first hear] the exact account of what reached us, so that I may then begin my questions to you. Again, then, some days later the bishop of Synnada arrived, without letters, but able to give a consistent account. He said he had fled because of the threat in the imperial decree, which ran: ‘If anyone is not in communion with Arsacius and Porphyrius, let such a one be excluded from the episcopate, and let him lose besides whatever property he is thought to have, in money or estates.’ After Cyriacus [came Eulysius, with letters of] … of John's synod and of the venerable Anysius [of Thessalonica], which report the plundering that was taking place throughout Constantinople; and Anysius [declared] that he abides by the judgement of the Romans. Eulysius too related the same, in agreement with Cyriacus. After a month of days had passed, Palladius the bishop of Helenopolis arrived, without letters; he said that he too had fled the madness of the officials, … [bi]shop or clergyman, or [any] who received [one of John's] communion in his house. [Then came] devout men delivering letters from all John's clergy, in which they write that their Church had suffered violence and tyranny, their bishop having been expelled with military help and sent into exile through the plotting of Acacius of Beroea, Theophilus of Alexandria, Antiochus of Ptolemais and Severian of Gabala. In these letters the aforesaid clergy also produced an inventory, in which they hand over the church's treasures in the presence of the judges as witnesses, Studius the prefect of the city and …, in gold and silver and vestments, so wiping away the slander against Bishop John. After them Demetrius the bishop of Pessinus came a second time, having gone round the East proclaiming the communion of the Romans with Bishop John, with letters of Pope Innocent; he brought also letters from the bishops of Caria, in which they embrace John's communion, and from the presbyters of Antioch, in which they appeal to the good order of the Romans and lament the ordination of Porphyrius, which had been carried out lawlessly and impiously. After all these came the presbyter … relating … of the monasteries in Mesopotamia(?) …, how respectable women of consular family, deaconesses of the Church of Constantinople, are brought in public view before [the prefect], being forced either to communicate with Arsacius or to pay as much as two hundred pounds of gold under the fiscal verdicts. And what need is there even to speak of ascetics and virgins? They showed sides torn on the rack and mutilated ears … so that Pope Innocent, no longer able to bear it, sent to the pious emperor Honorius, setting out in detail the substance of the letters. Moved by them, his piety orders a synod of the Westerners to be convened, and that they should bring forth one common vote and refer it to his piety. The bishops of Italy assembled and begged the emperor to write to his brother and co-emperor Arcadius to order a synod to be held at Thessalonica, so that both parts, East and West, might easily come together, and a complete synod, complete not in quantity of number but in quality of judgement, might bring forth an undisputed verdict. Fired by this, his piety writes to the bishop of Rome to send five bishops, two presbyters of Rome and one deacon, to convey his letter to his brother. The letter contained this substance:

‘This is the third time I write to your Gentleness, asking that the affair of the plot against John, bishop of the Constantinopolitans, be set right; and, it seems, nothing has been achieved. Therefore I have written again by the bishops and presbyters, being much concerned for the peace of the Church, through which our empire too is at peace, that you may deign to order the bishops of the East to meet at Thessalonica. For the bishops of our West, having chosen men unbending toward wickedness and falsehood, have sent five bishops, two presbyters and one deacon of the greatest Church of the Romans. Deign to treat them with every honour, so that, if they are persuaded that Bishop John has been justly expelled, they may teach me to withdraw from his communion; or, if they convict the bishops of the East of wilful malice, they may turn you away from their communion. As to what the Westerners think about Bishop John, of all the letters written to me I have appended two, which are equal in weight to all the rest: the letter of the bishop of Rome and that of the bishop of Aquileia. And this above all I beg of your Gentleness: that Theophilus of Alexandria be made to appear, even against his will, since he above all is said to be the cause of all the evils; so that the synod of the bishops who come, being hindered in nothing, may award the peace that befits our times.’

[Deacon:] So the [legates], having received the letters of Innocent and of Venerius of Milan and the rest, and the memorandum of the synod of the whole West, were sent with public warrants to Constantinople, together with the bishops Cyriacus, Demetrius, Palladius and Eulysius. The memorandum said that John should not enter into judgement unless his Church and communion were first restored to him, so that, having no ground for delay, he might come into the council of his own free will. They went off, then, to Constantinople, and came back after four months, recounting Babylonian doings: ‘We were detained … most wretched …, who at once attached a centurion to us and would not allow us to put in at [Thessalo]nica; for their aim there was first to deliver the letters to Bishop Anysius. Putting us on two ships,’ he says, ‘he sent us off. A violent south wind arose, and after sailing for three days without food across the Aegean Sea and the straits, we anchored on the third day at the twelfth hour before the city, near the suburb of Victor. In that place we were detained by those who collect the harbour dues, and taken back, on whose orders we do not know, and shut up in a fortress on the coast of Thrace called Athyra. There we were maltreated, the Romans in one small room, Cyriacus and his companions in separate ones, so that we did not even have a servant to wait on us. When the letters were demanded of us, we did not hand them over, saying: “How is it possible that we, who are envoys, should not deliver the emperor's letters and those of the bishops to the emperor himself?” As we persisted in not handing them over, first Patricius the notary came to us, then some others, and finally there came a man who commanded a regiment, Valerian by name, a Cappadocian, and breaking … [took] the emperor's letter along with the other letters. On the next day they sent to us (whether the people of the emperor's court or Atticus's party we do not know; for he was said to have leapt upon the throne of the Church) offering us three thousand gold coins and asking us to be persuaded to communicate with Atticus and [say nothing of] John's case. We were not persuaded by them, … seeing such savagery. This God the Saviour also made plain by various revelations: to Paul, the deacon of the holy Aemilius, a very gentle and sober man, the blessed apostle Paul appeared on the ship, saying to him, “Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, knowing that the days are evil”; the dream hinted at their many-sided deceit, by gifts and by flattery, aimed at counterfeiting the truth. Then the same Valerian the tribune came and put us on a most rotten ship, as was rumoured, having paid the shipmaster a price, [at the instance] of bishops, for the destruction of those aboard, together with twenty soldiers from various units … Having sailed a good many stades, then, and being about to perish, [we changed] the vessel, and on the twentieth day we landed at Hydruntum in Calabria.’ They could no longer tell us where the blessed bishop John was, nor where the bishops Demetrius, Cyriacus, Eulysius and Palladius are now, who had undertaken the embassy with our bishops.

Bishop: Come now, most holy man, give me your mind and attend closely to what is said, and I will make known to you in order where their drunkenness began, and up to what point it seemed to stop, though it has not yet stopped. The source, one might say, or beginning of all the evils is the demon who hates the good, who always works like a wolf against the rational flocks of Christ, destroying unsparingly [the experienced shepherds] …, as the king of the Egyptians did the male children of the Jews, and fattening the impostures of the false shepherds with the deceits of earthly pleasures. The channels of that evil source after him, as the whole earth knows, are Acacius, Antiochus, Theophilus and Severian, who are called what they are not, and are what they cannot bear to be called; and of the order of the clergy, two presbyters and five deacons, collected some from an unclean, others from a vicious company (and I do not know whether it is safe to call such men presbyters or deacons); and of the emperor's court only two or three, who also put sinew into Theophilus's party, joining the fight with military help; and of women, besides those who are notorious, three widows rich from their husbands, who, to the ruin of their own salvation, [spent] money got by plunder: [Marsa], the wife of Promotus, Castricia the wife of Saturninus, and Eugraphia, a raving woman; the rest I am ashamed even to mention. These women and these men, sluggish of heart in the faith, like a phalanx mad with wine, brought together into one purpose of hatred of teaching, worked a torrent of destruction against the peace of the Church.

Deacon: Then, Father, be good enough to tell us, with God as witness, where their hatred for him came from, and what quarrel of Bishop John's grieved so many dignitaries; and at the same time make known to us where his life began, how he was brought to the episcopate of Constantinople, how long he held it, what his character was, and what the end of his life was, if indeed he has fallen asleep, as we hear. For even if the memory of the man runs through all as wonderful and virtuous, still it is my habit not to believe reports readily, until I learn [for certain] from those who know how to blame and to praise rightly.

Bishop: … but I do not accept the distinction, most truth-loving man and man of God, Theodore. You should have been satisfied by my very grey hairs, if I may speak of myself, and by my rank, as proof of the truth. But since you have not done this, and you condemn me twice over, at least now promise me an attentive hearing without excuses, so that the laps of my words may not be run for nothing. For I know what is written in the divine law: ‘The Lord will destroy all who speak lies’; and in the apostle John: ‘He who speaks a lie is not of God’; and again in David: ‘For the mouth of those who speak unjust things has been stopped.’ For truly the liar wrongs the one he persuades; and the one who is persuaded by the liar, believing too easily, also does wrong. Since both, then, sin equally, let neither of us wrong his neighbour. For this is virtue: for the speaker to speak the truth, and for the hearer to test what is wrong. ‘Become,’ says Scripture, ‘approved money-changers, throwing the counterfeit away from the genuine’; not that we should receive a sound because it is loud, but that, having weighed what is said or written …, we should receive it on the testimony of the facts. Great is the danger of ears and tongue. That is why God, the master craftsman, made the [tongue] to be guarded under two lips, and fixed the rampart of the teeth further in, so that the fortress, being secure, might restrain its looseness, as it is written: ‘Set, O Lord, a guard on my mouth, and a door of enclosure about my lips, that I may not sin with my tongue.’ And [the ears he bored] with a spiral passage, hinting by their shape that a word should not slip in too quickly, so that, winding for a longer time, it may [leave behind] the stuff of falsehood with the dregs of wickedness. Nor did he care for these organs only, as though they alone could stumble; he also set curtains over the pupils, the windows of the body, so that they might not let in the death of licentiousness, to which the prophet [bears witness] …

Deacon: If the inquiry concerned ordinary matters, most holy Father, the dignity of your appearance would have been enough to make your words credible; but since it brings no small reproach now, and condemnation hereafter, when rulers and peoples are gathered before the fearful judgement seat, and since it is the truth that is being sought, forgive me, excellent man, for not accepting grey hairs as witnesses. For bad men too have grown old, not having whitened their souls with virtue but having wrinkled their bodies with length of time; such were the [elders] in Babylon …, of whom the word cries out in reproach: ‘Ephraim is a silly dove, without heart; grey hairs have broken out on him, and he did not know it.’ And repeating it, it says more sharply: ‘Ephraim became a cake not turned, and strangers devoured his strength.’ I will add this too, even if I lengthen my speech: who was greyer, or more seemly in appearance, than Acacius of Beroea, whom you now blame as a wrongdoer? Even his nostrils trailed white hairs when he came to Rome bringing the decree of Bishop John's ordination.

Bishop: Now I know clearly that you are an approved money-changer, not trusting the tent of skin but seeking the knowledge of the one who dwells in it. For the temples of the Egyptians too, very large and boasting the beauty of their stones, have inside them monkeys and ibises and dogs instead of gods; but our Lord and God, when he gave his answer to Samuel about the appointment of a ruler of Israel, charged him not to look at the bearing and shape of a body of clay, saying: ‘God does not see as man sees; for man looks on the face, but God on the heart.’ Therefore the imitators of God search out the deeper side of everything. So I readily give myself up, having hallowed your balance, which never tips to one side. The Babylonian elders, old in body but in their souls utter infants from [boorishness], if they had believed in the resurrection of the dead, would first, being sound in wisdom, not have lusted after Susanna, another man's wife; and then, if they had had the fear of God, they would not have woven slander into their licentiousness. For a dishonoured old age is proof of the youthful …

[Bishop:] This John was an Antiochene by birth (he has fallen asleep), the son of parents of good family who held distinguished posts on the staff of the general of Syria; he was born to his father with only a sister besides. Being of quick understanding, he was trained in rhetoric for the ministry of the divine oracles. Then, at eighteen years of bodily age, he rebelled against the sophists of verbiage, and, grown to manhood in mind, he came to love sacred learning. At that time the blessed Meletius the confessor, an Armenian by birth, governed the Church at Antioch. Noticing the gifted young man, he let him be continually in his company, loving the beauty of his heart, and with a prophetic eye foreseeing the young man's [future]. … the bath of regeneration; [and after attending the bishop] about three years, he is promoted [reader]. … to be content with labours in the city, and while his youth was in its vigour, though his mind was sound, he goes to the nearby mountains. There he met an old Syrian and stayed with him four years, fighting against the reefs of pleasure. When he had overcome these more easily, not so much by toil as by reason, he withdrew alone into a cave, longing to be unknown; and there he spent twenty-four months, mostly without sleep, learning the covenants of Christ by heart to drive out ignorance. Since for two years he did not lie down, neither by night nor by day, the parts below his stomach were deadened and the functions of his kidneys were injured by the cold. No longer able to look after himself, he returns to the harbour of the Church. This too was [the work] of the Saviour's providence, [drawing him away] for the benefit of the Church, through his illness, from the [labours] of asceticism. … [He is ordained] deacon by Meletius, after serving the altar for five years. Then, as his excellence as a teacher was already shining out, and the people were being sweetened from the brine of life by contact with him, he is ordained presbyter by Flavian the bishop. Distinguishing himself for twelve years in the Church of the Antiochenes, he gave dignity to the priesthood there by the strictness of his life, salting some with sobriety, enlightening others with teaching, watering others with the streams of the Spirit.

While these things were thus running before a fair wind under Christ's steering, the blessed Nectarius [bishop of Constantinople] falls asleep. Thereupon some who were not wanted came running together, courting the presidency, men who were no men, presbyters in rank but unworthy of the priesthood, some besieging the praetorium, others offering bribes, others going down on their knees before the populace. At this the people of the orthodox were in turmoil, [asking for a man worthy] of the priesthood. At that time Eutropius held power … Wishing, then, to give him to the city (for he had experience of John's virtue, when imperial business had taken him into the inner East), he gets the emperor to write to the count of Antioch, telling him to send John off quietly, without disturbing the city of the Antiochenes. The count received the letter and at once asked John to come out of the city to the Martyria near the …; [then, putting him into a carriage] of the public post, he hands him over to the eunuch who had been sent, together with the soldier of the magister. Thus brought [to Constantinople, he was ordained bishop] of the Church.

From the start, then, Theophilus, the bishop of the Alexandrians, noting his character and the irreproachable freedom of his speech, set himself against the ordination. For he is clever at reading from a man's outward look his hidden will and mind.

Deacon: Wait, Father, let me raise a small objection.

Bishop: What is it?

Deacon: If Theophilus is the kind of man who sees so sharply, how did he not know that by driving him out he would throw the world into confusion?

Bishop: That is not surprising, my good friend. The demons too recognized the Saviour's coming, and yet did not know that by a single breath of those who believed in him [they would be overthrown] …

[Deacon: How did they recognize] the Saviour's coming?

Bishop: When they cried out, ‘We know who you are, the Holy One of God; why have you come before the time to torment us?’ You see that they foresaw not only that he is holy but also that he is judge. But why do I speak of demons? The wretched courtesans recognize chaste men from the look of their eyes, and turn away, as a diseased eye turns from the brightness of the sun and the vulture from perfume. Where does the saying ‘Godliness is an abomination to sinners’ come from, if they did not recognize it? So Theophilus too, since he did not find in John's look what answered to or pleased his own eye, guessed the opposite by conjecture, not by sure knowledge.

Deacon: You have spoken wonderfully, Father. But why did he oppose the ordination?

Bishop: It was his habit not to ordain good and sensible men except by mistake, since he wished to rule everyone as though they were fools; he thought it better to rule fools than to listen to the wise. Nevertheless he is overcome by saving Providence, willing and unwilling. So John was ordained, and he begins his care of affairs with the pipe of reason. Seldom using the staff of reproof, he directs a sermon against the [feigned] cohabitation of brothers and sisters, in truth against licentiousness, showing that, in a choice of evils, brothel-keepers are better. For they, living far from the house of healing, keep their disease to themselves, for those who want it; but these men, living inside the workshop of salvation, call even the healthy into disease. From this the godless part of the clergy, fevered by passion, is vexed.

After that sermon he begins on injustice, overturning greed, the metropolis of evils, to build up righteousness. For this is the mark of wise master builders: first to pull down the building of falsehood, and afterwards to lay the foundation of truth, as is said in the prophet: ‘I have set you over nations and kingdoms, to root up and to plant, and to dig down and to build up’; the one as a farmer, the other as a builder. From this the … part [of the clergy] is disturbed again, … their way of living, as he urged them to be content with their own allowances and not to chase the cooking smells of the rich, lest, having smoke for their torch-bearer, they be handed over to the flame of licentiousness; [for they were] flatterers and parasites even more than gluttons, and were in league with the sophists of accusation.

After this he examines the steward's accounts and finds expenditure that did not benefit the Church; he orders such outlays to cease. He comes to the part covering the bishop's expenditure and finds a lavishness that was not fitting, and orders the extravagance to be transferred to [the hospital]. … [Since there was more] need, he builds more hospitals, [setting over them] two devout presbyters, as well as doctors and cooks and good unmarried workers to serve them, so that strangers coming to the city who fell ill might receive care, both for the sake of the good deed itself and for the glory of the Saviour. After this he calls together the order of widows, … going round among them [to examine] those who did not [live] rightly … [urging them to abstain from the baths and] from extravagant clothes, or else to marry again quickly, so that the law of the Lord might not be outraged. After this he urged the people to persevere in the night litanies, and their wives to stay at home, urging them to pray in the daytime, since their husbands have no leisure in the daytime. All this grieved the more sluggish of the clergy, who were used to sleeping all night. After this he took up the sword of reproof against the rich, lancing the abscesses of the soul and teaching them to be without pride and modest toward other people, obeying the apostolic word written to Timothy: ‘Charge the rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches.’ Things being so, and the Church growing better every day, souls being led to sobriety and psalmody, the demon who hates the good could not bear the desertion of those he held, whom the word of the Lord had drawn away through John's teaching, so that, [leaving] the courts of the devil, they ran to the fold of the Saviour, in love with the pipe of the …

[Bishop:] From this envy seized beforehand the minds of the hireling shepherds, who were shown up by the comparison. Unable to get the better of him, because they did not call on the Saviour, who destroys envy, they weave slanders against John, [representing his sermons as aimed] … against the empress and to others in the emperor's court. It happened at that time that Acacius, bishop of Beroea, having come to the city, failed, as he said, to get good lodging; and, aggrieved at this, … Overcome by unrestrained thoughts, he brings out a senseless word from the abundance of his heart, worthy of his own mind, saying before some of John's clergy: ‘I am cooking a pot for him.’ At once [he joined] … a man forever worn away with evil-speaking against bishops, and they plan to arm themselves, ostensibly against John, but in truth against the glory of the Saviour. First they send to the city of the Antiochenes, looking for faults from his youth. But when ‘the searchers failed in their searching’, and they found nothing, they send to Alexandria, to the ready Theophilus, who is called ‘the Turncoat’, a clever master builder of such things; and he at once unrolled the books of his mind with much …, [looking for] any pretext whatever.

Deacon: Stop the rush of your words, Father, before I forget, so that I may tell you the reason that came across to us from Alexandria and was noised about. For they say that John received into communion clergy deposed by Theophilus, so grieving Theophilus, which he ought not to have done; and that, having fallen out with him for this reason, Theophilus moved against John.

Bishop: Let us grant that the rumour you mention is true. Is it a bishop's part to heal evil with evil? Where is that word of the Gospel that says, ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’? Where is the apostolic word, ‘Overcome evil with good’? Where the prophetic word, ‘If I have repaid those who repaid me with evil’? Would it not have been more honourable to bring the charge before devout bishops and say: ‘Brother John, you have done this or that without realizing it’; and for John, having made his defence, [to say] that he had not known of the matter?

Deacon: What you say is true, if there was any good will in him, and he was not using the case of the clergy as a pretext while gratifying his own anger.

Bishop: By the fear of God, then, which masters all the countless fears, I will tell you nothing but the matter as it actually stands concerning those clergy you mentioned. There was a certain Isidore, a presbyter who had been ordained as long ago as the blessed Athanasius the Great, now in his eightieth year. Most of the Romans know him, since he came to Rome on church business, being the guestmaster of Alexandria; and you yourself know the man, from when he came with Acacius and brought Flavian's communion to Theophilus, which had been broken off for twenty years on account of the blessed Evagrius, who had fought many fights in the labours of the Church. To this Isidore a certain widow, one of the great ones, gives a thousand gold coins, making him swear by the Saviour's table to buy clothing and clothe the poorer women of Alexandria without letting Theophilus know, lest he take the money and spend it on stones; for a Pharaoh-like mania for stones possesses him, for buildings of which the Church has no need at all. But let such things stand in second place; hear what presses about Isidore. Isidore took the coins and spends them on the needy women and the widows. Theophilus learned of it somehow (for nothing escaped him that was done or said anywhere, since he had spies of deeds and spies of words, not to put it otherwise), and summons Isidore, asking him mildly whether this was so. Isidore did not deny it, but admitted that he had performed the service. When Theophilus heard this he changed his mask: he who before the turn had been gentle and kindly-seeming in his questioning swelled up all over after it, … Isidore's … For a little while he kept quiet; then, like a dog that bites by stealth, after two months he produces a paper, having assembled the body of presbyters, and says in Isidore's presence: ‘I received this against you eighteen years ago, Isidore, and since I was very busy I let the matter slip from my mind; but now, while looking for other papers, I have found this paper about you. Answer it.’ The paper contained the charge of Sodom. In his defence Isidore says to Theophilus: ‘Let us grant that it is true that you received the paper and that it was mislaid. Was not the man who gave the petition here, so that it could be demanded of him a second time?’ To this Theophilus: ‘But the young man was not here; he was at sea.’ And Isidore: ‘He was not here at once, as you say, pope; was he not here after the voyage? Was he not here in the second year, or the third? And now, if he is here, order the man to stand forward.’ At this Theophilus, about to be made contemptible by the truth itself, puts it off to another day. Then he won over a certain young man with many promises … and anointed him for an accusation against Isidore, giving him, as they say, fifteen gold coins; and the young man at once confides it to his mother. She, partly not accepting it because her eye was unswerving, partly overcome by fear of the laws, lest Isidore, if slandered, should appeal to the governor of the people, came and confessed the [bribe, showing the gold coins], which she said she had received from Theophilus's sister, as the fee for an accusation against an innocent man. And she, having paid a fitting penalty for many things, but especially for this, dies under surgery on her breasts. Upon this Isidore stayed at home, beseeching God. But the young man, partly fearing the laws, and partly thinking Theophilus more dangerous now that he had missed his aim, flees to the wall that profits, the church, taking refuge at the altar. So Theophilus [declared Isidore cast out] … [hiding] his injustice with a dumb [show]. Upon this Isidore, fearing that he might plot an ambush against his very life (for he goes even that far, they say), hurries to the mountain of Nitria, to the order of monks, where he had spent his youth; and sitting in his cell he prayed, appealing to the long-suffering God.

Upon this Theophilus, conscious that his victory was unseemly and uncertain, sends letters to the nearby bishops and orders certain of the leading men to be expelled from the mountain and from the inner desert, the monks who were at their head, without stating the charge. These monks came down to Alexandria with the presbyters and asked Theophilus to state the reason for which they had been condemned to be expelled. He, with bloodshot eyes, now livid, now pale, now sneering, [seized] a man of his own age by the omophorion around his neck with his own hands and struck him blows on the cheeks …, though nothing was at issue except their petition on Isidore's behalf. For tempers, like dogs, bring forth blind things, both deeds and words. [Returning] to their monasteries, they kept to the asceticism they had set themselves, sharpening their nature by learning, the means by which salvation comes, and caring little for his madness, since they were conscious of no evil in themselves.

[Bishop:] Theophilus did not keep quiet after this. He sends to the neighbouring bishops and convenes a council against the monks; and, without calling them to make a defence or giving them a hearing, he excommunicates three men, the most eminent, being afraid to pronounce [sentence] against the whole multitude at once, … And those whom he had often honoured above bishops as teachers, for their life, their learning and their age, he was not ashamed to call sorcerers because of their attachment to Isidore. After excommunicating them, he anoints five little fellows from the mountain itself, men who had never stood in an assembly of the elders of the desert, unworthy (I hesitate to say it) even of the porter's lodge. One he ordains bishop, placing him in a hamlet that was no city (for he made innovations without fear, calling himself another Moses); another presbyter; and the three deacons, who were not Egyptians but from various places: one was a Libyan, one an Alexandrian, one from Pharan, one from Paralus. That is why they lent themselves to his idle labour, having no hope of the pledges of their homeland. And he gets them to give petitions against those three, weaving the words of the slander himself, while they contributed only this, their signatures. After this he takes the petitions from them in the church, goes in to the Augustal prefect, and lodges a complaint against them in his own name as high priest of the Egyptian diocese, attaching also the slanderous petitions, and asks that the men be expelled from the whole of Egypt with military help. Taking the soldier as a cover, together with [a crowd who cared nothing] about rank, he swoops on the monasteries suddenly by night, having made the servants with him drunk; and first he orders their holy [Dioscorus], who was bishop of the mountain, to be thrown from his throne, dragged by Ethiopian slaves, and these perhaps still unbaptized; taking his [see], which the city of Dioscorus had held since the coming of Christ. After this he plunders the mountain, giving the monks' few belongings to the young men as pay. Having despoiled the cells, he looks for those three, whom [the monks] had let down into a well, putting a mat over its mouth; not finding them, he burns their [cells, with the books] … of the Scriptures and the serious works, and a child, as eyewitnesses said, and the symbols of the mysteries. Having thus slaked his irrational wrath, he goes back to Alexandria, giving those holy men room to flee. They at once took their sheepskins and went out to Palestine, [and came to] Aelia [with … and] deacons, three hundred of the zealous monks of the mountain, while the rest were scattered in various places.

Not bearing their independence, the serpent who is crooked in his course stirs up Theophilus against them again; and he, boiling over with anger, writes letters to the bishops of Palestine, saying: ‘You ought not to have received these men in your cities against my judgement; but since you did not know, I grant you pardon. In future, then, take care not to receive them in any place, whether church or private house’; not only saying this, but imagining himself to be a god in the excess of his conceit. They, driven by great necessity from changing from place to place, reach the capital, where Bishop John had been enthroned by the divine hand for the care of those in power; and falling at his knees they begged him to help souls slandered and plundered by men more used to doing this than to doing good. John stood and saw fifty chosen men, grey-haired from holy labours, [and moved] with feeling, like Joseph, he was overcome by tears, and asked them what boar out of the wood or what solitary wild beast had ravaged this fruitful vine. They say: ‘Sit down, Father, [and dress] our wound, for we have been wounded not lightly by the madness of Pope Theophilus, if perhaps you can heal the swellings of our wounds. For if you too pass us over, out of respect or fear for Theophilus like the other bishops, nothing is left for us but to go to the emperor and inform him of his [deeds] … to allow us to live in Egypt, since we have done no wrong either against the law of the Saviour or against him himself.’

Upon this John, thinking he could easily change Theophilus's grudge against them, gladly took up the matter. He asked the men, with God-loving silence, to tell no one the reason for their coming, ‘until I send to brother Theophilus’; and he gave them lodgings for their rest in the church called Anastasia. He did not himself provide for their needs, but God-loving women supplied their food, while they themselves contributed in part by the work of their hands. It happened at that time that there were clergy of Theophilus in Constantinople, buying in advance the promotions of the officials being appointed in the Egyptian diocese, [for Theophilus] was gaining their goodwill toward himself, to the ruin of those who vexed him. John summoned them and asked whether they knew the ascetics who were present. They, loving the truth, bore witness for the men, saying to John: ‘We know them, and they have suffered great violence. If you will, master, do not give them spiritual communion, so as not to grieve the pope; but show them kindness in other respects; for that befits you as bishop.’ So John did not receive them into communion, but writes to Theophilus, entreating him: ‘Grant me this favour, as your son and brother: take the men back into your embrace.’

Upon this Theophilus did not grant the favour to John, but sends certain men practised in contests of words, of whom we spoke above, and gets them to submit petitions which, as usual, he had dictated himself, containing an avowed falsehood dressed up in a many-sided slander about invisible things, since he had nothing in their life to slander; and he arranges for them to be pointed at in the palace as sorcerers. When the ascetics saw that not only were they failing to bring him to a better mind, but were even moving him to greater anger, though they brought many to plead with him, and anathematized every false doctrine, they submit [a petition setting out] the forms of his tyranny, with certain charges, which I am ashamed to tell for now before the less mature, lest I drive them away from faith too, and perhaps I would not be believed even by the more perfect. Again John, both himself and through other bishops, urges them to drop their accusation against him because of the hardship a lawsuit brings, and writes to Theophilus: ‘They have been driven to such grief that they are now even accusing you in writing. Send what reply seems good to you; for they will not consent to leave the capital.’ At this Theophilus, all on fire, excludes from his own Church also the brother of the monks, Dioscorus the bishop, who had grown old in the Church; and to Bishop John he writes: ‘I think you are not unaware of the ordinance of the canons of Nicaea, in which they decree that a bishop must not judge a case outside his own borders. If you are unaware of it, learn it, and keep away from the petitions against me. For if I must be judged, it should be by the Egyptians and not by you, who are seventy-five days' journey away.’

[Bishop:] John received the letter, read it and kept it by him; and he spoke with the ascetics of both parties about peace. On hearing it, both parties [were exasperated], the one as having suffered tyranny, the other as having no power to make peace without Theophilus, since they had submitted their slanderous petitions at his order. So John gave them an answer and dismissed the matter from his mind. Upon this the monks of the [other] party withdrew … [and drew up petitions], against the monks as slanderers, and against Theophilus, setting out the doings of Theophilus, not to put it otherwise, as much as each knew. And having appealed to the Augusti, they approach the empress at the shrine of Saint John, begging that the petition of the opposing monks be examined before the prefects, and that Theophilus be made to appear, even against his will, and be tried before John. The petition was granted, with this decision: that Theophilus should be brought by the magister, willing or unwilling, to stand trial before John; and that Theophilus's monks should prove the charges they had brought against the holy elders, or suffer the penalty of slanderers. So Elaphius, now one of the principes, was sent to Alexandria to bring Theophilus, and the prefects carried out the rest of the decision. When the case was being tried and was coming to a dead end, the laws pressed hard, sharpening the sword; and those wretches, fearing the outcome, had the case deferred until Theophilus came, saying that he had put them up to it and dictated the petitions. So the court put them in prison until Theophilus arrived, refusing to accept sureties in a case of this kind. Some of them died in prison after spending a long time there because of Theophilus's slowness; the others, after Theophilus had arrived and smoothed the matter with money, were condemned by the laws at the final examination to live on Proconnesus as slanderers.

So Theophilus arrived, like a dung beetle loaded with the dung of the finest things of Egypt and of India itself, [spreading] perfume over his stinking envy, on the fifth day of the week, [cheered] by the crowd of sailors, carrying off that dishonourable glory of which the Apostle spoke beforehand, ‘whose glory is in their shame’, adding, ‘who set their minds on earthly things’. He is entertained in tents not of the righteous, having avoided the church, forgetting that saying of David, ‘I have chosen to be cast aside in the house of my God rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners’; he was kept away from the church by his own conscience. He spent three weeks there and neither met Bishop John, as is the custom of bishops, nor came near the church at all, but stayed working night and day, joining the new enmity to the old, to drive Bishop John out not only from the Church but from life itself: on the one hand buying the superstitious among the powerful against the truth by lavishing gold, on the other enslaving the gluttons with an expensive table, and again drawing to himself his fellow impostors among the clergy by flattery and the promise of higher rank. Having bound all these without a rope, by pleasures, like some deceiving demon, bewitching the judgement of souls, he looked for a demon-like face to serve the drama, and indeed he found one. Two [deacons], [deposed] by Bishop John for unlawful offences, he made use of for their levity, and persuades them to submit petitions against John, promising to restore them to their place in the ministry. Their offences were, for one murder, for the other adultery. And he did indeed do this: after John's exile he restored them to their places, [as having presented the memorials which] he himself [dictated]; they contained nothing true, except this, that he urged everyone after communion to take a little water or a lozenge, so that they might not involuntarily … ; he himself was first to do it, teaching devoutness to those who wished. After receiving [the petitions, he held a meeting at the house of Eugraphia with] Severian, Antiochus, Acacius and the rest who bore a grudge against John because of his exhortations to modesty. For the blessed man was accustomed, like Paul, to teach decorum both in public and from house to house, charging women of that kind above all and continually: ‘Though you are old women by your years, [why do you behave like girls] … and [lead astray] the other free women, to deceive those you meet, and that as widows?’

Gathered together, they looked for a way to begin the trial. One of those present suggested giving petitions to the emperor and dragging him to the council against his will. This then is done, as among the Jews, gold smoothing everything for them. We were forty bishops sitting with Bishop John in … [and wondering how he who, though] summoned as a defendant and ordered to appear alone in the capital on unholy charges, had come with so many bishops; and how he had suddenly changed the minds of the powerful, perverting most of the clergy to the worse. While we were at a loss, John, inspired by the Spirit, says to us all: ‘Pray, brothers; and if you love Christ, let no one leave his own church on my account. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come, as he said who [wrote it]; and after undergoing many afflictions I shall leave this life, as I see. For I know the scheming of Satan, that he can no longer bear the burden of the words spoken against him. So may you find mercy: remember me in your prayers.’ Seized with unbearable dejection, some of us wept, while others left the assembly, [having kissed] the eyes and the holy head and the well-aimed and blessed mouth. He urged them to come back into the assembly, as they flew about here and there like bees, [saying: ‘Sit down, brothers,] and do not weep and break me down further. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. … your memories, that I always told you: The present life is a road, and its good and painful things pass by; and the present is a fair: we have bought, we have sold, we break up. Are we better than the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, that this life should remain to us undying?’ One of those present, lamenting aloud, said: ‘But we mourn our orphanhood, the widowhood of the Church, the confusion of its ordinances, the ambition of those who do not fear the Lord and leap upon the offices of leadership, the poor left without a protector, the [famine] of teaching.’ [Then the Christ-loving John, tapping] with [the forefinger of his right hand] the palm of his left (for he used to do this when deep in thought), said to the one speaking with him: ‘Enough, brother; do not say much; but, as I said, do not leave your churches. For neither did the office of teaching begin with me, nor has it ended with me. Did Moses not die? Was not Joshua found? Did not Samuel die? Was not David anointed? Jeremiah left this life: was there not Baruch? Elijah was taken up: [did not Elisha prophesy? Paul was beheaded:] did he not leave Timothy, Titus, Apollos and countless others?’ After these words Eulysius of Apamea in Bithynia says: ‘We who hold our churches will inevitably be forced both to communicate and to sign.’ The holy John said: ‘Communicate, so that you do not split the Church; but do not sign; for I am not conscious of anything in myself that deserves deposition.’

While matters stood thus, those sent by Theophilus were announced. He orders them to come in; when they had come in he asked them what rank they held. They say: ‘Bishops.’ He invites them to sit and say why they have come. They say: ‘We have only a summons; have it read.’ John orders it to be read. They tell Theophilus's servant to read out the dictated text, and he read it. Its tenor was this: ‘The holy synod assembled at the Oak’ (the place is called so …) ‘[to John]’ [without adding] ‘bishop’; for somehow a darkened soul is apt to see things not as they follow, but to imagine what passion dictates) ‘: We have received petitions against you containing countless evils. Appear, then, [and bring with you] the presbyters …; for they are needed.’ Those who came to him were Dioscorus and Paul, lately made [bishops] in Libya, young men. After the document had been read, the bishops with Bishop John reply, informing Theophilus through three bishops, Lupicinus, Demetrius and Eulysius, and two presbyters, Germanus and Severus, all holy and notable men: ‘Do not overturn the order of the Church, and do not split the Church, for whose sake God came down in the flesh. But if, disregarding the canons of the three hundred and eighteen bishops at Nicaea, you overturn them and judge a case outside your borders, come over to us in the city that lives under law, and do not, like Cain, call Abel out into the field, so that we may hear you first. For we have petitions against you of seventy heads, containing manifest crimes; and we are more numerous than your synod, gathered by the grace of God not for the overthrow of the Church but in peace. You are thirty-six from one province; we are forty from various provinces, among whom are seven metropolitans; and it is consistent with the canons that the lesser be judged by the more numerous and more eminent. For we also have your letter, in which you instruct our fellow minister John that cases from beyond the borders must not be accepted. Obey the laws of the Church, then, and urge your accusers to give up either their accusation against you or their approach to him.’

Moved by this, John said to his bishops: ‘State what seems good to you; but it is fitting for me [to reply] to what has been [stated to me].’ And he sent back this answer: ‘Up to now I have never known that anyone had anything to say against me. But if someone has accused me and you want me to come, put out of your assembly my manifest enemies, who became hostile to me on account of [what they took as] neglect; and I do not dispute the place where I must be judged, though it ought above all to be in the city. Those whom I object to are these: Theophilus, whom I prove to have said both in Alexandria and in Lycia, “I am going to court to depose John”; and this is true, for after arriving he neither met me nor communicated with me. He who carried out the acts of an enemy before the hearing, what will he do after the trial? Likewise I prove that Acacius said, “I am cooking a pot for him.” As for Severian and Antiochus, whom divine justice will soon overtake, what need is there even to speak, since the worldly theatres sing of their seditious doings? I ask you, then, if you truly want me to come: as for these four, if they sit as judges, put them out of the council; if as accusers, set them up for the trial, so that I may know how to prepare for the contest, as against adversaries or as before judges. And I will certainly come, not only before your love but before a synod of the whole world. So know this: even if you send to me ten thousand times, you will hear nothing more from me.’

When these had gone out, a notary came hard on their heels with an imperial letter, in which [they] had asked beforehand that he be made to appear at the trial even against his will, and he pressed him to come to the trial. After the reply, [two of John's own clergy came: Eugenius, who was given a see as his wage] for the plot against Bishop John, and [Isaac, the monk] …, not to put it otherwise, saying: ‘The synod informs you: come over to us to answer the charges.’ To this John replied through other bishops: ‘By what due order will you judge, you who have not expelled my enemies, and who summon me through my own clergy?’ They seized the bishops: one they beat, another's clothes they tore off, on another they put round his neck the irons which they had prepared for the saint, so that he might be thrown into a ship like that and sent to some unknown place; for the demon had made them savage as lions. The holy man, knowing their shameless purpose, held himself back. They, [compiling dockets frailer than a spider's web] for form's sake, pronounce sentence against the blessed man, whose face they had not seen and whose voice they had not heard, in a single day [accomplishing what they had long been forging]; [such is] the demonic impulse, which does not wait for reflection. And sending a report to the emperor, they put at its head: ‘Since John, accused of certain evils and conscious of his guilt, would not appear, the laws depose such a man, and this he has now undergone. The petitions also contain a charge of treason. Let your piety, then, order that he be expelled, even against his will, and pay the penalty for treason, since it is not lawful for us to inquire into such matters.’ O thrice-wretched men, what you think and what you do! Be ashamed of doing such things, you who respect or fear not God but men. The treason was the insult to the empress, as they reported it, that he had called her Jezebel. These wonderful men reported thus, longing to see his death by the sword; but God revealed the malice lurking in them too, and softened the hearts of the rulers, as happened in Daniel's case in Babylon. For there the lions were tamed and spared Daniel, while the men … God showed up those who had become savage against nature by those who had been tamed against nature.

[Bishop:] So John was thrust out of the Church, a count being sent with military help, as if against a barbarian battle line. After his expulsion he reached the [estate] near Praenetus [in Bithynia]; [and after a single day] some disaster took place in the [imperial] bedchamber. Frightened by this, they [recall] John a few days later through a notary of their own, restoring him to his own throne. So Theophilus, with the Egyptians, found safety in flight; for the city was seeking to throw him into the sea. Two months later they [stirred up war] against John again; and, finding no plausible starting point, they send to the sophist of [such things] at Alexandria, informing him: ‘Either come again to lead the campaign against John, or, if you are afraid of this because of the people, suggest some way to us by which we may make a beginning.’ To this Theophilus did not come himself, knowing how he had escaped, but sent three wretched bishops, Paul, Poemen and another newly ordained, sending along with them also certain canons which [the Arians] had made against the blessed Athanasius, so that, using these canons, they might weave a case against John as having re-entered [his see] on his own authority after his deposition. For he is impetuous by nature, rash, bold and quarrelsome beyond measure: there is nothing that strikes his sight toward which he does not rush uncontrollably faster than he should, waiting neither for judgement nor for reflection about it. Driven by an irrational impulse, he moves in disorder to assent to it, always eager to show his own judgement and vote victorious and prevailing. And they do this knowing his character. For they summoned whole [bodies of] metropolitans and bishops from Syria, Cappadocia, the Pontic diocese and Phrygia and gathered them in Constantinople. When these arrived, they communicated with John according to the order of the canons, so as not to do the same as the first group. On learning this, the powerful were indignant at their communion. Theodore, the bishop of Tyana, a man of dignity, understanding the plot from what came to his ears, and not wishing, by deserting everyone, to abandon his own Church, bade a long farewell to the court and made his province secure with the wall of piety, remaining to the end in the communion of the faithful Romans, to whom Paul bears witness when he says, ‘Your faith [is proclaimed] in the whole world.’ Pharetrius of Caesarea near Argaeus, frightened out of his wits, as small children are of bogeys, did not even leave his own city, but sides with the opponents by letter, though he had not even been called into the dispute, behaving boorishly about his primacy through ignorance of better things. Leontius of Ancyra in Galatia, in league with Ammonius …, … the Church. Not only overcome by the threats of the powerful, but deceived, on the contrary, by the hope of imperial gifts, they bring forward at the second synod a wicked opinion to Acacius and [Antiochus] and their party: that Theophilus's verdict, given without trial, should stand, and that John should be given no opportunity at all to defend himself, on the plea of the canons sent by Theophilus, which the forty bishops of the [Arian] communion had decreed, writing: ‘If any bishop or presbyter, deposed justly or unjustly, enters the Church on his own authority without a synod, such a one shall no longer have any opportunity of defence, but shall be wholly thrust out.’ This canon, as lawless and laid down by lawless men, was ostracized at Sardica by Romans, Italians, Illyrians, Macedonians and Greeks, as you know better than I, Theodore of great name, when Liberius or Julius, under the emperor Constans, received Athanasius into communion, and Marcellus the Galatian, on whose account that canon had been laid down.

The pair of those wonderful men, Ammonius and Leontius, [joining Acacius, Antiochus and Cyrinus of Chalce]don and Severian, went in to the emperor and informed him that ten bishops of John's party should be summoned (they were more than forty) to settle the matter of the canons, the one side insisting that they were canons of the orthodox, the other proving that they were Arian. Elpidius of Laodicea in Syria, old in soul and in grey hairs, and Tranquillus, with their party, went in and urged the emperor that John must not be expelled without reason: ‘For neither was he deposed the first time, but thrust out by the count; nor did he return on his own authority, but by command of your piety, a notary having been sent. And now the canons they bring forward we show to be canons of heretics.’ When those opposed to John persisted in their disorderly wrangling, some with louder voices, others agitated, with heaving chests, rising boldly up before the emperor, the most law-abiding Elpidius, when a little calm had come, gently said to the emperor: ‘Emperor, let us not trouble your gentleness much longer; let this be done: let our brother Acacius and Antiochus and their party sign that the canons they put forward are canons of the orthodox, [and that they are] of the [same faith as those who issued them]; [then] our dispute [is over].’ The emperor, noting the simplicity of the proposal, said with a slight smile to Antiochus: ‘Nothing could be more useful than this.’ In all that happened the emperor was not to blame; it was others who did the opposite of what had been well laid down. Bewildered, then, and whirling against one another like disordered water, Severian's party, at what had been so wisely said and at the emperor's decision, were held … their colour turning livid; yet, constrained by the necessity of the place, they promised to sign, unwilling though they were. Having gone out thus, they do not fulfil the promise, but [consider] how John might be thrust out.

While matters were being carried on in various ways, nine or ten months went by, Bishop John holding services with the forty-two bishops, and the people enjoying his teaching with great cheerfulness. For somehow a mind free of vainglory [speaks] more gracefully and more powerfully in hard times. [Then the] fast [came], like spring, arriving after a year. Antiochus and his party went in privately again and informed the emperor that John had lost his case, so that he might order him to be expelled, since Easter was at hand; and the emperor, harassed by them and under necessity, believed them, as bishops. For one who is truly a presbyter or bishop knows no falsehood; for these names belong to the higher realm, since nothing is more ‘elder’ (presbyteros) than God, nor more ‘overseeing’ (episkopos); for God is the one who oversees, that is beholds, all things. The bishop or presbyter, then, as he shares the names, so ought he to share the realities. And [the emperor] informs John: ‘Go out of the Church.’ He replies: ‘I received this Church from God the Saviour, for the care of the people's salvation, and I cannot abandon it. But if you wish this (for the city belongs to you), thrust me out by force, so that I may have your authority as my defence against the charge of desertion.’ So, with a certain respect, they sent from the palace and thrust him out, ordering him to stay meanwhile in the bishop's house, since they were looking out for a possible sign of God's wrath: if anything grievous happened to them, they would quickly bring him back into the Church and propitiate the Divine; if not, they would attack him again, as Pharaoh did Moses.

Meanwhile the day of the Great Sabbath arrived, on which the Saviour, crucified, despoiled Hades. Again they tell him, ‘Go out of the Church.’ He makes the fitting reply. The emperor, then, fearing the sanctity of the day and the commotion of the city, sends for Acacius and Antiochus and says to them: ‘What ought to be done? Take care that you are not giving me wrong counsel.’ Then these noble and over-bold men said to the emperor: ‘Emperor, on our head be John's deposition.’ As a last resort, the bishops who were with John, equal in number to the days of the holy fast, went to the emperor and the empress at the martyrs' shrines, begging with tears that they would spare the Church of Christ, especially because of [Easter and those prepared for baptism] …; so that the holy Paul of Crateia said with fearless freedom: ‘Eudoxia, fear God, and have pity on your children; do not outrage the feast of Christ by the shedding of blood.’ The forty bishops returned and kept vigil in their lodgings, some with tears, some with grief, others overcome in mind by an irresistible stupor, as passion steered each one.

But John's presbyters, who had the fear of God, [gathered the people] in the public bath called [after Constantius], some reading the divine oracles, others baptizing the catechumens, as was fitting [on that night]. … with destruction and deceit of mind, Antiochus, Severian and Acacius and their party [went] to their own patrons, asking that the people be prevented from assembling there. The magister of the time objected, saying: ‘It is night, and there are great crowds; something untoward may happen.’ Acacius and his party retort: ‘No one has stayed in the churches, and we are afraid that the emperor may go into the church, find no one, perceive the people's goodwill toward John, and condemn us as envious, especially since we told him that there is no one at all who gladly attends to him, as an implacable man.’ So the magister gives them a certain Lucius, said to be a pagan, commander of the regiment of shield-bearers, ordering him to go gently and call the people into the church. He went, was not heeded, and returned to Acacius and his party, describing the determination and the density of the people. After this they urgently entreat him, pressing him with golden words and the promise of greater promotion, to obstruct the glory of the Lord, instructing him either to persuade them by word and bring them to the church, or to throw them into confusion by force and stop the feast of the assembly. He at once took along clergy of Acacius's party and went out at the second watch of the night on the errand for which he had been sent. (For in our parts they keep the people [at the vigil] until first cockcrow.) He had with him sword-bearing Thracian recruits, four hundred, like Esau's, utterly shameless; and he leapt on them suddenly in the night with the clergy who showed the way and the soldiers, boldly, like a wolf, cleaving the crowds with flashing steel. He advanced into the blessed waters to stop those who were being initiated into the resurrection of the Saviour, and, violently shoving the deacon, he spills the symbols; and striking on the head with clubs the presbyters, who were already elderly, he mingles the font with blood. Then one could see that angelic night, in which even the demons fall down cowering, turned into a labyrinth. Naked women fled with the men, [afraid of being killed or dishonoured] …; one man, struck on the hand, went off lamenting; another dragged off a virgin, tearing her clothes … So those of the presbyters and deacons who were seized were thrown into prison; and the others … into the church. Decrees were posted one after another from place to place, containing various threats against those who refused [to renounce] John's communion. Nevertheless, though these things were happening, and the so-called bishops were [devising] more from outside, the assembly of those who loved his teaching, or rather who loved God, did not cease; but, as is said in Exodus, the more they killed them, the more they became.

Next day, then, the emperor went out to exercise in the plain nearby and saw the unsown ground around the Pempton clad in white; struck by the sight of the flower of the newly enlightened (there were about three thousand), he asked the guards: ‘What is this gathering of people assembled there?’ They lied and said, ‘Heretics’, to divert the emperor's anger. Learning of this at once, the agents of the business and patrons of envy send back the most ruthless of their followers to scatter the hearers and arrest the teachers. These came and again seized a few of the clergy but more of the laity.

And Theodore said: Most blessed Father, since there were so many of them that the newly baptized alone numbered three thousand, how did those [few] soldiers get the better of them and break up the gathering?

Bishop: That is no sign of fewness, nor proof of lack of zeal, but a gain in piety and a demonstration of the care of the teachers, who constantly corrected any inclination to fight.

Theodore said: Excellently said; for it was not fitting that those who learned prudence and gentleness from the holy John should take his part foolishly and in disorder.

Bishop: I am glad of this, then. I beg you, do not cut short the words born of evil events; for, as a rule, events seem to give birth to words. Along with the clergy and laity who were seized, wives of distinguished men were also arrested. Of some they snatched the veils, of others they tore off the earrings together with the lobe of the ear; so that, seeing this, the wife of a certain Eleutherius, a very wealthy woman, [threw off her veil and, dressed as a slave, ran] through the city for the safety of her chastity; for she was, as it happened, clothed in a blooming form and a comely figure. In this way the prisons of the various magistrates were filled and turned into churches: hymns and offerings of the mysteries [were made] in the prisons, while in the churches [scourgings and tortures and] dreadful oaths vied with one another in anathematizing John, who until death was the enemy of the devil's wickedness.

When Pentecost was over, five days later, Acacius, Severian, Antiochus and Cyrinus and their party went in to the emperor and said to him: ‘Emperor, you are placed by God not under authority but in authority over all, and you may do whatever you wish. Do not be milder than presbyters and holier than bishops. We said to you before everyone: On our head be John's deposition. Do not, then, spare one man and fail to spare all of us.’ With Jewish words, and perhaps Jewish deeds, they won the emperor over. So the emperor sent Patricius the notary and informs John as follows: ‘Acacius, Antiochus, Severian and Cyrinus have taken the judgement against you upon their own heads. Commit your affairs to God, then, and go out of the Church.’

So Bishop John came down from the bishop's house with the bishops, after this clear and unshadowed statement, and says to all: ‘Come, let us pray and take leave of the angel of the Church’; rejoicing at the matter, but grieving at the ill-treatment of the people. At once one of the God-loving men in power sends word to John: ‘Lucius, a reckless man with a shameless face, is waiting in the public bath with the soldiers under him, so that, if you resist or delay, he may drag you out and expel you against your will; and the people of the city are in commotion. Hurry and go out unnoticed, lest the people take your part and join battle with the soldiers.’ Then John kissed some of the bishops with tears (his feelings would not even allow him to kiss the others) and took his leave, saying to the rest, inside the vestry: ‘Stay here for a while, so that I may go and rest a little.’ He went into the baptistery and called Olympias, who never left the Church, with Pentadia and Procla the deaconesses, and Silvina, the wife of the blessed Nebridius, who adorned her widowhood with decorum, and says to them: ‘Come here, daughters, and listen to me. My affairs are at an end, as I see; I have finished my course, and perhaps you will not see my face any more. This is what I beg of you: let none of you be cut off from your accustomed goodwill toward the Church; and whoever is brought to ordination without seeking it, without having striven for the office, and with the consent of all, bow your heads to him as to John; for the Church cannot be without a bishop. And so may you find mercy; remember me in your prayers.’ Overwhelmed with tears they rolled at his feet. Then, beckoning to one of the reverend presbyters, he says: ‘Take them away from here, so that they do not disturb the crowds.’ So, after being held back a little, they seemed to give way to him.

And so he went out by the east side, for there was nothing of the west about him; while on the west side, where the gateway of the church is, he ordered the mount on which he usually rode to stand before the gate, to draw off the people who were expecting him from there. The angel of the Church too went out with him, not bearing the desolation of the Church, which the principalities and powers of wickedness had wrought, making it like a theatre … For as in a theatre, Jews and pagans jeered without measure; as in a prison, there were blows and tortures applied to the body by the soldiers …; [and] distraction of the whole power of the soul, both because the teacher had been taken away and because of the blasphemy against the Divine: for where there was forgiveness of sins, there bloodshed took place.

After that unspeakable and indescribable darkness, a flame appeared from the middle of the throne on which John used to sit, like the heart lying in the middle of the body, to expound the oracles of the Lord to the other members; and it sought the interpreter of the word. Not finding him, it [consumed the room of the vessels, and, spreading] like a tree, crept up through the chains to the roof; and, like a viper that has eaten through the belly, it was carried onto the backs of the church's buildings, God as it were paying the wages of injustice, the punishment appointed for it, for the correction and admonition of those who do not know how to be admonished except by the sight of such evils sent from God; and not only that, but leaving behind a memorial of the savage synod. And it is no wonder about the church, since the fire also wisely ravaged the building called by outsiders the Senate, which lay many paces away opposite the church to the south, passing over the market crowd between them like a bridge; and it did not first catch the part near the church, so that we might not ascribe the disaster to proximity, but the part toward the court of the emperors, so that the wonder of the thing might show that the [punishment] was sent from God. For one could see the people passing unharmed between two mountains of fire about their own business. So the fire flew about, surging like the sea fanned by a violent south wind, advancing as if under orders, seizing unsparingly the surrounding buildings, and spared only the small house in which the mass of the sacred vessels was stored, not out of respect for the gold or the rest of the silver, but so as not to give the slanderers room for a lie against the righteous man, as though he had appropriated some of the finest things. Thus moving, the fire blazed backward, tracking out the envy of those who did these things, to the conviction of the madness of Theophilus, who somewhere makes out that he had expelled him on account of the treasures. And no life was lost by the fire in such crowds, rational or irrational; but the filth of those who lived accursedly there was washed away by the power of the fire, from the sixth hour until the ninth, in three hours of daylight.

Deacon: Then, Father, while these things were being done, where was the blessed John staying, and the rest of the bishops?

Bishop: Of the rest of the bishops, some were shut up, some were even dragged off, others went into hiding. John, with Cyriacus and Eulysius, [was held] by soldiers of the prefect … on the charge of burning the church. Later Cyriacus and Eulysius were brought in chains together [to trial and released]; but the holy John, besides his other bold words, sent them this last one: ‘Even if in other matters you have given me no opportunity to defend myself, at least let me be heard on the matter of the church, whether I was the cause of the burning, as you say.’ Not heard even on this, he is sent by soldiers to a most desolate little town of Armenia, besieged night and day by the Isaurians, to be slaughtered: this is Cucusus. Arsacius, the brother of the blessed Nectarius, was brought in to the place of John, a man who revealed the holy mysteries, though Arsacius was more voiceless than a fish and more inactive than a frog. (For there are times when action too speaks, especially when it is done for the sake of the good itself.) He kept his life for fourteen months and then dies, having perjured himself on the Gospels; for he had sworn to his brother Nectarius never to accept ordination to a bishopric, when Nectarius reproached him for refusing to become bishop in Tarsus, as though he were watching for his brother's death. The causes of his perjury were, first, vainglory, through which he was courting, so to speak, his brother's wife; and afterwards shame, his brother's reproofs having come upon him like a prophecy. After him [came Atticus, one of the presbyters], a craftsman of every device against John. Seeing none of the Eastern bishops in communion with him, nor any of the people of the city, because of what had followed so lawlessly and against all rule, he contrives, ignorant though he is of the divine Scriptures, [to obtain imperial rescripts] … The rescript against the bishops contained this threat: ‘If any of the bishops does not communicate with Theophilus, Porphyrius and Atticus, let him be expelled from the Church and stripped of his own property.’ Thereupon some, weighed down by the burden of their possessions, communicated even against their will; the poorer, and those weaker in sound faith, were drawn into communion by promises of gifts; but others, disregarding family, property, homeland, perishable glory and bodily affliction, preserved the nobility of their souls by flight, keeping in mind the saying of the Gospel, ‘If they persecute you in this city, flee to the other’, and repeating to themselves the word of Proverbs, ‘Possessions will not help in the day of wrath.’ Some reached Rome, others were kept safe in the mountains, others in the retreats of the ascetics, from the Jewish wickedness. The rescript against the laity ran: those in office to lose the rank of their office; soldiers to be deprived of their belts; the rest of the populace and artisans to be fined heavily in gold and sent into exile. Nevertheless, though this was being done, the prayers of the zealous were performed in the open air with much hardship, out of love for the Saviour who said, ‘I am the way and the truth’, and again, ‘Take courage; I have overcome the world.’

The blessed John lived one year at Cucusus, feeding very many of the poor of Armenia not so much with grain as with the word; for a great famine had struck that country at that time. Envious of him for this too, the brother-killers move him to [Arabissus], [hoping] he might leave this life; and there again he shone not a little by his virtues (for a city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor a brightly burning lamp be covered by a wooden bushel); for he roused, as from sleep, toward the ray of the word, those from all the surrounding country who were deeply stupefied by unbelief. Burning more fiercely with the flame of envy, Severian, Porphyrius and certain other bishops of Syria contrive to have him moved from there too. For he was a burden to them not only in what was thought to be his prosperity but far more in his adversity, since they were ill-equipped to understand the nature of trials, and did not remember the divine oracle given to the Apostle in his afflictions: ‘My grace is sufficient for you; for my power is [made perfect in weakness].’ [Seeing people going] from Antioch to Armenia, and from there back to Antioch, and John's grateful philosophy being sung everywhere, they prayed even that he might be cut off from life … first, as though whipped by the reports … (such is envy, that hates the good); so that those of the clergy who followed them, seeing it, said in wonder: ‘Look, a dead man frightening the living, and bogeys too!’ Bah! Men clothed with worldly power, wrapped in the wealth of the Church with authority and with the government of affairs as well, fear the priest who is alone, without a city, weak in the flesh, an exile, and grow pale and writhe. No longer able to keep the serpent hidden in the tent, they send to the capital and obtain another, severer rescript with a penalty: that within a short time he should be moved to Pityus, an utterly desolate place of the Tzani lying on the shore of the Pontic Sea. The soldiers of the praetorian prefect who conducted him hurried him along the road, saying that their orders were such that if he died on the way they would be rewarded with higher rank. One of them, caring less for his present service, showed some kindness in secret; the other was so harsh and surly that he took the courtesies offered him by those they met, who hoped he would spare the saint, as insults, caring only that John should die a hard death. When there was heavy rain he set out regardless, so that streams of water ran down his back and chest; and again he treated the fierce heat of the sun as a luxury, knowing that the blessed man's bald head, like Elisha's, suffered in it. In a city or village where there was the comfort of a bath, the wretch would not allow a moment's halt. Walking that most painful road for three months amid all this, the saint remained like a shining star, his poor body like an apple on the tips of the branches reddened by the sun.

When they came near Comana they passed it as though it were a bridge, and stayed outside the walls at the martyr's shrine, five or six miles away. That night the martyr of that place stood by him, Basiliscus by name, who was martyred at Nicomedia under Maximian while bishop of Comana, together with Lucian, a presbyter of Antioch, in Bithynia; and he said: ‘Take courage, brother John; for tomorrow we shall be together.’ They say that he had told the presbyter of the place beforehand: ‘Prepare the place for brother John; for he is coming.’ John, trusting the oracle, begged them the next day to stay until the fifth hour. They would not be persuaded, and drove on; but after going about thirty stades they turn back again to the place of the shrine from which they had set out, since he was gravely ill. Having come there, he asks for bright garments worthy of his life, takes off his former clothes and puts these on, sober, changing even his shoes; the rest he distributed to those present. And having communicated [in the symbols of the Lord, he made his last] prayer before those present, saying his usual words, ‘Glory [to God for all things]’, and, [signing himself] at the last Amen, he stretched out his feet, which had run beautifully for the salvation of those who chose repentance and for the reproof of those who richly cultivated sin. If his reproofs did not help the wicked, that was not the weakness of the one who spoke freely, but the recklessness of those who would not bear them. Added to his fathers, having wiped off the dust, and having passed over to Christ, as it is written, ‘You will come to your grave like ripe grain [gathered] in its season.’ So great a swarm of virgins and ascetics and of those known for holiness of life was present from Syria, Cilicia, Pontus and Armenia that most people thought they had come by appointment. [After the rites of burial,] his poor body, like a victorious athlete's, is buried with Basiliscus in the same martyr's shrine.

[Chapter 12] [Theodore, amazed at what he had heard,] asked, quoting the Scripture: ‘Since it is written, “Do not miss the discourse of the elders; for they too learned from their fathers”, tell us without hesitation the reason why he ate alone, and whether he really ate alone, as people say.’

[Bishop:] It is admitted that he ate alone. But I did not want you, most excellent Theodore, to inquire into the concerns of gluttonous children. Being a man, you ought to look for the virtues of men: how he stood as to fearlessness, money, self-control, gentleness and justice, almsgiving, prudence and courage, forgetfulness [of wrongs] or remembrance. For food will not commend us to God, neither if we eat nor if we do not eat; but knowledge put to work in action does. He ate alone, as far as I know, for these reasons. First, he did not drink wine, because of the heat in his head, except sometimes in hot weather, when he used [a drink] made with roses. Second, his stomach was out of order from some illness, [so that he often found the food prepared for him distasteful] and asked for what was not available. Then there were times when he forgot to eat, fasting until evening, partly drawn off by the business of the Church, partly absorbed in spiritual contemplation; for he strove to be at a loss over nothing in the divine Scriptures; and such things tend to bring either fasting or light eating. And it is the habit of diners, if [the servant] does not bring them the cup lukewarm on his fingertips …, to turn the friendliness of the table into an accusation. But above all, I think, and more truly, he was sparing toward those who came for the sake of luxury, considering spending on such people sacrilege; at the same time he cut off opportunities for theft from the stewards, so that they could not multiply tenfold the prices of provisions in the accounts and appropriate the portions of the poor. Besides, considering the size of the city, he reflected that as Christ's steward he must either grant this honour to every man of rank or offer it to no one. Looking at the uproar of dinner tables and the number of …, he bade a long farewell to such evil talk, chanting to himself the word of Acts: ‘Men and brothers, it is not right for us to serve tables; but let us appoint devout men for this need; we will devote ourselves to the word and to prayer.’ For as a racehorse … the teacher [who shirks] discourses on virtue puts forward the door of the dining room; and would that it were at least for the hungry and needy, from whom one might gain the Master's blessing, ‘I was hungry and you fed me’; but it is only for the rich, for the sake of good report, or of fading glory, or to be invited back; or, if none of these, so as not to be ill spoken of; not remembering the Lord's woe, which says, ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of you.’ He did not say ‘the poor’, but ‘men’. For so their fathers did to the [false prophets]. Let us not seek, then, [the reputation of false prophets], as the vain[glorious do]. For John [came] neither eating nor drinking, in the way of righteousness, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ [The Son of Man came] eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard.’

[Theodore:] [It was not] as one finding fault with or attacking such asceticism, excellent Father, that I put my question to your precision; for I knew the man's [good sense] both from his fame itself and from his writings that have reached us, homilies or letters; but [I asked] so that, having learned his purpose, I might imitate the practice. For who is so utterly foolish as not to know that the loss from the table is greater than the gain, unless there is need, in necessity, to entertain saints?

Bishop: [Nor did I say this] disparaging the virtue of the fathers, especially hospitality. For it is one of the other virtues that contribute to piety, by which the lords patriarchs too, the one caught the Saviour God at his table, the other entertained the angels, the one finding a son in old age as his wage, the other salvation from Sodom with his daughters; of whom the Apostle too speaks, urging us to imitation: ‘[Do not neglect] hospitality.’ … the hospitable man [must] have the prudence of the serpent and the innocence of the dove, obeying two sayings, ‘Give to everyone who asks you’, and ‘Do not bring every man into your house’, lest, receiving a wolf instead of a sheep, or a bear instead of an ox, he sell his gain for loss. He ought [to consider] first the place where one is stationed, whether a desert or a crowded city; then his own suitability, whether he is able to bear strange manners; then to discern the one who ought to be helped, whether he is rich or poor, healthy or sick, in need of food or of clothing; for in these things practical mercy is accomplished. For the blessed Abraham did not entertain consuls or generals or the eminent men of this earthly world, among whom horses … with bit or bridle … belching out the din of arrogance; but, living in a desert place, he welcomed those who came there. And those crossing the desert came to the patriarch either for virtue's sake or because of extreme beggary and poverty. (For poverty is a mean between the excess of wealth and the deficiency of beggary.) Likewise Lot, living in a city worse than the desert, rightly welcomed the strangers who came there, because of the ways of its inhabitants. But if one lives in a most law-abiding city, such as Constantine's, in which everyone is hospitable, [it is] superfluous …; lest perhaps one of the presbyters, leaving the ministry of the word, …, obliterating pure knowledge with distraction of thoughts, [earn the prophet's reproach, ‘Your innkeepers] mix the wine with water.’ For how far teaching surpasses hospitality! The one benefits those of its own time, the other those who come after as well; the one profits only those present, the other the absent too, those present through the tongue, the absent through writings. Such was the Saviour in the flesh: he fed five thousand with loaves, not in a city but in the desert; he taught those present by his tongue; and he saved the world by the written Gospels. Such above all are the words of those who bear the Spirit. Do not marvel, Theodore, if someone fills the hungry with food, but if someone frees a soul from some ignorance. For one who satisfies the belly, by a gift of silver or bread or vegetables, is easily found to supply the need; but the nourisher of the word is rarely found, and when he is found he is either not believed or believed with difficulty, since the evil spirits always work against the salvation of souls. This famine of the word of teaching the Master God threatened to bring as a punishment, saying through the prophet: ‘I will bring a famine on them, not a famine of bread and water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.’ As for bodily famine, one can leave the city or country in need and be saved in another, as the holy patriarchs went down from Palestine to Egypt; but of the famine of the mind, which [comes from the lack] of teachers, another prophet said: ‘They will run about from east to west seeking the word of the Lord, and they will not find it.’ For what good does not spring from teaching? And what untimely thing is not found to come from untimely food or banqueting? Diseases, quarrels, the outrages below the belly, and all that follows.

When was Eve driven out of paradise? Was it not when she listened to the serpent and ate of the tree, not content with the food appointed? When did Cain commit the pollution of fratricide? Was it not when he tasted the firstfruits first, keeping the first share for his own gluttony? When did Job's children find the table an improvised grave? Was it not when they were eating and drinking? When did [Esau] fall from the blessing? Was it not when he served his belly, deceived by the meal? When did Saul fall from the kingdom? Was it not when he ate the finest of the sheep against the law? When did the people of Israel provoke God? Was it not when they craved the Egyptian table, demanding meat and pots from their teacher? Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, why were they killed in one hour in battle? Was it not because they snatched with forks from the cauldrons the meat that belonged to the sacrifice? And why did Jacob, the blameworthy one, kick? Was it not because he was filled, and grew fat, and grew thick, and grew broad? When did Sodom [perish]? [Was it not when] they corrupted their minds with banquets, [as is said] by Ezekiel: ‘In fullness of wine and abundance of bread they lived in luxury, she’, that is, the city, ‘and her daughters’, that is, the villages, which always share the law of the city? And when was the reasoning of self-control relaxed in the ancient people? Was it not when they likewise grew old on their couches, the prophet lamenting: ‘Those who eat kids from the flocks and suckling calves from the herds, drinking strained wine and anointing themselves with the finest perfumes, living in luxury on their beds, and grieved not at all at the ruin of Joseph’? On whom did Isaiah bring his woe? Was it not on those who rise early for banquets? He says: ‘Woe to those who rise early and pursue strong drink, who wait till evening; for wine will inflame them; for with [lyre and harp] they drink wine, but do not regard the works of the Lord.’ When were the priests of Bel put to shame by Daniel? Was it not when the ashes convicted them, catching them out through food and drink? And what need is there to speak of those who choose to walk the broad way and revile the narrow? The saving word suffices me to refute the chasers of kitchen smells, where it shows the nameless rich man, feasting splendidly every day in this present life, longing for crumbs and a drop from poor Lazarus and missing them. Let us look also at the chorus of the saints of old, and learn fully what stamp of teaching they used: that of a holy life and a straight word, or that of banquets and feasting. First, was Enoch translated by faith or by a banquet? Then Noah preserved the race of the world by faith in the ark, when the [flood came]… : was it … and continual impure works, or by fasting and prayers? [And when] after so great a flood [he took a little relief in wine, do not] the Scriptures proclaim [his disgrace]? Did the blessed Abraham overcome the five kings at Sodom by faith and righteousness, or by food and drink, when he rescued Lot?

And Theodore said: If you bring Abraham into the discussion, then hear from me too: anyone will tell you that he overcame in war by faith, but caught God by a table.

[Bishop:] Bah! Since Abraham caught God by a table, shall we all then abandon faith and the other virtues and love banquets? [We shall then differ in] nothing [from innkeepers and caterers,] who have fortified [the streets with buildings] for this very purpose, for the sake of gain. Then let the virgins too, who strive to be holy in body and spirit for the glory of God, give birth, since Mary bore Christ; but if they do so, they will [differ] in nothing from courtesans. If teachers lay tables because of Abraham, let virgins also give birth because of Mary. Away with that, most honoured man: what was done well in its own time, or is done …, as advantage dictates. Then, did the wrestler [Jacob] carry off Laban's goods by asceticism or by presiding over banquets, when he said, ‘I was burned by the heat and by the frost of the night, and sleep fled from me’, and asked in his prayer for nothing more than bread and a garment, saying, ‘If you give me bread to eat and a garment to wear, of all that you give me I will give you a tenth’? He did not say, ‘I will spend it on tables.’ Moses, the interpreter of God and his faithful servant, what table did he prepare when he assembled the people at the mountain? What bowls of drink did he have? He who struck the rock with his rod because of the people's unbelief, [the leader] of a people of six hundred thousand, [did he provide] bowls clear as air, sows' wombs, birds from the Phasis, fish from the deep sea, strained wine from Tyre and fine washed loaves … for those he taught, or the word?

[Theodore:] But someone will object to this, Father: ‘Give me too manna and that water, and I ask for nothing more.’

Bishop: And who is so tiresome as to prefer bodily manna and running water to spiritual teaching? Then Samuel, the teacher of the people for twenty-five years at Ramathaim: whom did he ever turn from idols by a table and not by the word? When did the king who was also prophet and psalmist set a table of luxury, he who said, ‘I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink [with weeping]’? [The] maker of a [world-wide] fast, who brought the gluttons against their will to three years and six months without food, by what table did he free them from sin, Elijah the Tishbite? What cooks did he have? Did he not receive his daily bread by ravens? The wise Daniel, eyewitness of things to come, by what table did he instruct the Assyrians? Was it not by fasting and prayer that he destroyed the dragon, overturned Bel, muzzled the lions, and persuaded the king to deny his ancestral gods by confessing the truly existing God? What tables, what fine fare did the chorus of the other prophets and apostles enjoy? Were they not teachers? Were they not entrusted with the [world] under heaven? Are we not their successors? Does not the word wish us to be their imitators, attending to their ways, as Paul teaches when he says, ‘Considering the outcome of their way of life, imitate their faith’? What honey-cakes did John the Baptist, the herald of repentance, have in the desert, who not only prepared no banquets for those who came to him, but offered even his company as something bitter, with rebuke? For not only with his sharp look did he [pierce] their defiled conscience, but with his very dress, and much more with his word, cutting the abscesses of their souls as with a sword: ‘Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not rely only on baptism, or on being children of Abraham.’ What of the teacher of the nations, the abolisher of circumcision so as to establish the circumcision of faith, the vessel of election, Paul? Is he ever found with leisure for the table, he who more than all owed this, and who, since he was dealing with unbelieving gentiles, should have made his approach first through the table? And what does he write to Timothy, bishop of Ephesus? ‘Attend to the munificence of the table’, or ‘to reading, to exhortation, to teaching’? In these the blessed John was especially unhesitating and vigorous. ‘Be urgent in season and out of season.’ [Let no one complain of the] Word's charge to him, that two things are bitter and only one gentle, as though [the Apostle] added even that sparingly: ‘Convince, rebuke’ are bitter …, [then comes] ‘exhort’, and not ‘[flatter]’; which, done skilfully, is more bitter to those … than the reproofs. For there, perhaps, the soul resisting from some anger is insensible to the words of reproof; but here it is [worn down] quietly and little by little by gentle words joined with truth. And what does he remind him of? Banquets and feasts, or the noble record of afflictions? He says: ‘For you have followed my conduct, how I was set in purpose to do everything for the glory of God, [my] persecutions.’ In his reproofs of error is there anywhere a mention of a table? And let us see what he writes again to Titus, the bishop of Crete: about food and drink, or about reproofs and teaching? He says: ‘For this reason I left you in Crete, so that you might [set in order what remains] …; not to teach other doctrine, nor to attend to myths and endless genealogies’, adding also the manner of reproof: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.’ Let the belly-worshippers, the table-giants and the women-hawks who blame John's asceticism go through the Old and New Testaments and tell us where they found a banquet praised, except perhaps toward foreigners, and that to make peace by the law of the table among beasts and barbarians. [What banquet has not been the beginning] of sin? Why do I say sin? Perhaps even of the greater sins of idolatry and fratricide, as it is written: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.’ Play is the offspring of drunkenness: ‘Come, let us make gods who will go before us.’ For those who had been shaken by wine sought gods that move, abandoning him who is unshakable and fills all things without walking. And what does the prophet say? ‘The lips of the priest shall study banquets, for they will seek dinners and lunches from him’? Or, ‘The lips of the priest [shall guard] knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord’, and not a cook? And the tower in Chalanne, when was it built? Before wine or after wine? Was it not after wine, when Noah planted the vine and was the first to [suffer] the disgrace [of drunkenness]? If so, it was not because of the drinking or the planting, but because of the excess. When was Joseph sold by his brothers? When they were shepherding the sheep and busy with them, or when, slaughtering the best and eating at leisure, they plotted their envy against him at a banquet? Where did they hand over John the Baptist's head on a platter to the little harlot? In an assembly of wisdom, or in a banquet of lawlessness? Did the blessed Paul prolong his speech until midnight while drinking and eating, or while fasting and teaching and leading to faith those who did not know God? Jesus Christ himself, the corrector of human error, where is he found eating in a city, except at the Passover, which was the fulfilment of the mysteries? And what is he found saying to the disciples when they were anxious: about food or about readings? ‘Work,’ he says, ‘not for the food that perishes, but for that which endures.’ So let the good John too say with the Lord: ‘My banquet is the teaching and distribution of the word, for which I was chosen, for the salvation of the people. For food will not commend us to God, neither if we eat nor if we do not eat.’ For this is the custom of the pagans: to deceive with tables those they entice, since they cannot persuade by word, saying, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ To them the Apostle applies correction more sharply, saying, ‘Do not be deceived; bad company corrupts good morals’, calling ‘bad company’ (literally, ‘bad conversations’) the talk that revolves around such things.

Deacon: What you have said, you have said truly and learnedly, and so it is. For woe to him who calls sweet bitter and bitter sweet; woe to him who puts darkness for light and light for darkness! But someone will say: ‘Nor do we say that he should have given himself over to such tables. For immoderate lavishness is an occasion of love of pleasure, and excessive exclusion is a proof of sluggishness and meanness. He could at least have invited bishops only, and of these especially the more devout; or if not these, at least his own clergy, imitating the Master, who ate with the twelve apostles.’

Bishop: [That would be well said, most truthful] of men, if indeed the clergy would have put up with dining with John, eating out of hours or on the wrong day; but they wanted extravagance, as quickly as possible and with much preparation. It would have been absurd to spend the food of the sick or the poor on the intemperance of the healthy. And what law is this, that the pupils should legislate for the teacher, or the sick for the doctor, or the passengers for the helmsman, when it is always the doctor who cures the sick, the teacher who corrects the pupils, and the helmsman who seeks the advantage of those aboard? Those under a doctor or a helmsman obey them and, for love of life, bear every pain and burden, though even success is uncertain with them; but [they resist] the teacher of better things, [who tries] to drive away their diseases and weaknesses, and confound everything with unwashed feet. And if he had given himself over to tables, how could he have kept up the drinking parties for the men of rank, living in so great a city, where each person wanted to eat with him, either for a blessing, or from poverty, or from gluttony? Where would there have been leisure for the contemplation of God, the care of the people, the study of the Scriptures, the protection of widows, the consolation of virgins, the nursing of the sick, the help of the oppressed, the conversion of the erring, the care of the broken, the visiting of those in prison? How would he have escaped God's reproach, with which he reproaches in Ezekiel: ‘O shepherds who feed yourselves and do not feed the sheep! The strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, the weak you have not visited, the broken you have not bound up; you slaughter the fat ones and eat them’? Of such Paul writes: ‘For you bear it if someone enslaves you, if someone devours you, if someone takes from you’; and, ‘You clothe yourselves with the wool, but do not feed the sheep.’ And in Jeremiah he says of shepherds who feed in idleness: ‘Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard.’

Deacon: He could have looked after these too from time to time, and cared for the affairs of the Church, so as not to seem ill spoken of, great as he was in other respects.

Bishop: That is just what is in question: that he should not be ill spoken of … so that he might supply richly the word, the eagerness, the zeal and the rest of a priest's goodwill. Or do you not know, most honoured Theodore, that a blessing for unreasonable accusation was appointed by the Lord along with the other beatitudes, when he said: ‘Blessed are you when they reproach you and say every evil word against you. But woe to you when all men speak well of you; for so their fathers did to the prophets’? And how could a mouth trained in the divine oracles, and ears [used] to hearing divine pronouncements, bear the chatter of the table, when the Master says, ‘No one can serve two masters’, and then, ‘You cannot serve God and mammon’? Let us inquire, then, what mammon is, lest we be found serving not the two masters but mammon alone. For here he calls mammon not the devil, but the vain labour of this world, from which the Word drew his disciples away.

Deacon: Go back, most holy Father, to the rest of the events, since the argument about the table has been sufficiently proved. And do not be angry with me for my objections; for I questioned your great learning more searchingly because I wished to learn something more.

Bishop: Let me tell you this more plainly, most studious Theodore (for I was once one of those eager to please crowds by a table): a bishop, especially of a great city, who abandons the ministry of the word, who does not have the tablets of the law in his hands night and day, and who carries out the care of the poor not himself but through others, will be far from those who said, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you’; and perhaps he will be numbered with those who said, ‘Lord, did we not do this and that in your name?’, and will hear with them, ‘Depart from me, you cursed; I do not know where you are from.’ For the Word does not recognize workers without reason, since his eye is too pure to look on evil. For many of the so-called bishops, [to cover] the well-deserved hatred with which they are hated for their own ways, and their lack of zeal for spiritual things, through greed and vainglory, with one hand do wrong unsparingly for shameful gain, and with the other contrive dinners and raise the pillars of lofty buildings, so that, seeming good and diligent on this account, they may reap honour instead of dishonour. They do not remember the Preacher, who both built and hated, and clearly renounced such things when he wrote, ‘I made myself houses and gardens’, and so on, ‘and behold, all is vanity; and I hated all my labour with which I labour under the sun.’ He did not say ‘above the sun’, so as not to insult the labours of the mind. I say this not to include those who [build] with good reason and for [necessity], but because of those who spend the goods of the poor on hanging [galleries] … and indecent baths for effeminate men in hidden places, or on amassing more silver, or else on being loved by playthings, repaying the favour of their zeal by this very thing, by yielding to sinners in everything for the sake of pleasure. But may it never be my lot, Theodore of great name, to please the wicked; for I could please them by nothing except what does not please Christ.

Deacon: [Since this has been] well said and admits no reply, if you have any knowledge of what was arranged in Asia by the holy John, about whom we are now speaking, share it with us.

Bishop: Certainly.

Deacon: Did you know it from being present yourself, or did you learn it from another?

Bishop: There was no part of the trial from which I was absent.

Deacon: Then set out for me in detail what happened, what end it had, and where it began; especially since Theophilus, in his treatise, eager to dignify or to cover up his own rashness, said that the blessed John, moved by the passion of ambition, deposed sixteen bishops and ordained his own men in their place.

Bishop: The wonderful man did nothing out of keeping with his own ways in writing against John, and in writing falsehoods. For by the very means by which he thinks to cover his own disgrace, he exposes it the more, and against his will dignifies John's innocence, like that Balaam. For if he had deposed him, there would be no need of a treatise or of exile, the deposition being enough … the virtuous man stands, holding victory in defeat; while envy remains [feeling] the defeat of its irrational victory, puffed up like a bubble and shattered on itself, writing and writing down [against itself] the saying of the prophet Isaiah: ‘Woe to him who draws [sin as with a long rope]’ … to do and say and write nothing but falsehoods: ‘For woe,’ he says, ‘to those who write; for they write wickedness.’ As for those deposed in Asia, they were not sixteen but six bishops, and I will speak as before the divine judgement, neither taking anything from their number nor adding anything to the nature of the facts, but reporting to you just as it happened.

In the thirteenth indiction, those from Asia came to Constantinople on some necessary business, and stayed with us, together with other bishops who were present, from Scythia (I mean Theotimus), from Thrace Ammon the Egyptian, and from Galatia [Arabianus], all aged metropolitans, amounting to twenty-two bishops. When all were meeting and in communion, a certain Eusebius of [Valentino]polis, watching for his opportunity, appeared before the assembled synod on the first … [and presented a petition against Antoni]nus, the bishop of the Ephesians, setting out seven charges: first, that he had melted down church treasures and made silver for his son; second, that he had taken the marble from the entrance of the baptistery and added it to his own bath; next, that he had set up in his own dining room church columns that had lain unused for many years; fourth, that his servant had committed a murder and he kept him in his service without bringing charges; fifth, that lands left to the Church by Basilina, the mother of the emperor Julian, [he had sold, keeping the price]; sixth, that having [separated] from his own wife, he had come together with her again and had children by her; seventh, that he held it as a law and a doctrine to sell ordinations of bishops in proportion to their revenues. ‘And those who gave and were ordained are present, and the man who took the money; and I have the proofs of these things.’

Deacon: I beg you, Father, shorten this story; for those present are harmed when bishops tell such things, let alone do them.

Bishop: Alas, wretch that I am, to have been kept alive to these days, in which the priesthood is sold for silver, if indeed it is priesthood! I have become a fool in telling it; but those who slander John have brought us to this. Yet bear with me patiently, so that from this too you may admire John's moderation. He put his zeal to sleep for the time being and said to Eusebius: ‘Brother Eusebius, since charges made out of grievance often lack easy proofs, I beg you to stop accusing brother Antoninus in writing; … [we will settle] the causes of [your grievance].’ He … used harsh words, raging wholly against Antoninus and persisting in his accusation. John asks Paul of Heraclea (for he seemed to favour Antoninus) to bring them together in friendship. Then, rising, he went into the church with the bishops, for it was the time of the liturgy; and having given the people the customary greeting of peace, he sat down with the other bishops. The accuser Eusebius slipped in unnoticed and, before all the people and the bishops, delivers another petition containing the same things, adjuring John with dreadful oaths, in which he involved even the safety of the emperors, with much commotion; so that the people thought [he was in danger of his life and] was begging John to petition the emperor. John, seeing the man's insistence, and concerned for the calm of the people, accepted the document; and after the readings from the divine oracles, he asked Pansophius of Pisidia to bring forward the gifts, while he himself went out with the other bishops; for he declined to celebrate while a charge was pending, according to the Gospel: ‘When you offer your gift’, and so on. After deliberating, and after the dismissal of the people, he sat down in the baptistery with the other bishops, summoned the accuser, and said to him before them all: ‘I tell you the same again: many people, out of grievance or anger, say and write many things, and then fail in the proofs. If, then, you clearly know about the things of which you wish to accuse him (for we neither push away one who is able to prove, nor drag in one who is not), choose what is to your advantage before the petition is read. For once it is read and has come to everyone's ears, and minutes are being taken, it will no longer be open to you, as a bishop, to seek to withdraw.’ At this he persisted in his insistence again. Upon this they order the document to be read; the charges I have mentioned were read. When the elders among the bishops had heard the substance of the document, they said to John: ‘Even if every one of these charges is impious and forbidden everywhere by the sacred laws, yet, so that we may not seem to spend all our time on what has been brought forward, let the examination begin with the most dreadful. For if that is found true, there is no dispute about the other charges, since the root of that charge bears every kind of wickedness as its fruit, as he said who said, “The love of money is the root of all evils.” For he who took gifts against the innocent and thought to sell the distribution of the Holy Spirit for silver, how will he spare the treasures or stones or estates of the Church?’

Then John begins the examination, saying to Antoninus: ‘What do you say to this, brother Antoninus?’ He denied it, of necessity; for how could he confess his own shame at the very outset? Those who had given were questioned; they too denied. Upon this the examination was carried on diligently until the eighth hour, and from certain indications the case began to take shape. At last it came down, as was to be expected, to witnesses, before whom they gave and he took. The witnesses were not present; they had to be produced. John, considering how difficult it would be to produce them, was eager, both to cleanse the Church and to spare the witnesses, to go to Asia himself and complete the examination. When Antoninus saw John's diligence and incorruptibility, being conscious of his guilt, he crept up to one of the powerful men, whose estates in Asia he looked after, and begs him to have John stopped from going to Asia, promising to produce the witnesses. This man at once arranged for the following to be conveyed from the palace to Bishop John: ‘It is an absurd thing that you, our bishop and protector of our souls, should in so great [a crisis leave us and undertake] the journey to Asia, when the witnesses can easily be brought here.’ The expected disturbance was Gainas the barbarian. And (why should I speak at length?) he is persuaded to stay, caring both for the trial and for the [hardship] of the witnesses. But delay over the witnesses was a windfall for the accused, since he could make them flee by silver or by power. Foreseeing this, John deliberates with the synod present about sending some of the bishops there to Asia to question the witnesses. At once three were appointed: [Syncletius] of [Trajano]polis, Hesychius of Parium, and Palladius of Helenopolis; and the synod declared in the minutes that whoever did not appear within two months and stand by his case in [Hypaepa], a city of Asia (since both the accused and the rest of the bishops lived nearby), should be excommunicated. Upon this [Syncletius and Palladius] went down [to Smyrna]; for Hesychius, being a friend of Antoninus, pretended to be ill. At once they wrote, notifying both parties of their arrival, so that they might gather in the appointed city and fulfil their promises. But the two parties came to terms, the one with gold, the other with an oath, and became friends before the judges arrived. They gathered for form's sake at Hypaepa, thinking to mock the judges by again putting off the witnesses, on the plea that they were away on various business. At this the judges ask the accuser: ‘Within how many days [will you produce] them? We will wait.’ Thinking that they would leave, burdened by the oppressive air (for it was the height of summer), he promised in writing either to bring the witnesses within forty days or to undergo the penalty of the canons. So he was released to look for the witnesses, and, abandoning the matter, [went off to Constantinople and stayed there] in hiding. The judges waited the forty days, as was proper; and when he did not appear anywhere, they write to the bishops all over Asia, declaring him excommunicate, either as a deserter or as a slanderer. After this they persevered another thirty days, and when he did not appear anywhere, they withdrew and came to Constantinople; and meeting him there, they charged him with what he had dared. But he again [pleaded ill]ness [and promised the witnesses; and so things dragged on until] Antoninus, with whom Eusebius had the lawsuit, [died].

Then a decree comes from Asia, partly from the clergy of the Church of the Ephesians, partly from the bishops, to John, containing a request with a dreadful oath: ‘Since in former times both the ordinances and we ourselves have been shepherded in confusion, we ask your honour to come down and impose a God-sent order on the Church of the Ephesians, which for a long time has been oppressed, partly by those who think as Arius does, partly by those who boast of our faith with greed and self-love; especially since there are many lying in wait like savage wolves, eager to seize the throne with money.’ John, in such bodily ill-health and in the winter season, putting nothing grievous before his eyes, but braced by eagerness for the settlement above all of the ailing affairs of the whole Asian diocese, which suffered from the inexperience or absence of shepherds, went on board a ship and set out from the city. A violent north wind arose, and the sailors, fearing [to be driven onto] Pro[connesus], ran under the cape of Triton; and there they cast anchor and waited for a south wind, so that [they might reach Apamea; and having lain two days] fasting and tossed about on the ship, on the third day they landed at Apamea, where Paul [and Cyrinus and Palladius] were waiting; [and taking] the road on foot, they enter Ephesus. Gathering the bishops of Lydia [and Asia and Caria, seventy] men, they perform the ordination, many having come of their own free eagerness, especially Phrygians, to enjoy the mouth of wisdom, according to the saying, ‘Wisdom is hymned in the outlets’, that is, in those who speak; ‘and in the streets she has freedom of speech’, that is, in hearts broadened by manifold afflictions, according to the saying, ‘In affliction you have enlarged me.’ For wisdom is cramped in those who cultivate tares, and …

[Bishop:] While matters stood thus, Eusebius, the cause of our long story, the accuser of the six other bishops, came to all the bishops asking to be received into communion. Some of the bishops objected that he ought not to be received, being a slanderer. At this he pleaded, saying: ‘Since the case has been tormented for the greatest part of two years, and the delay has arisen over the witnesses, I beg your God-loving [assembly] to let me produce the witnesses today, at once. For even if Bishop Antoninus, who took the gold and performed the ordinations, has died, [those who gave it and were ordained remain].’ And the present synod judged that the matter should be investigated. The hearing begins with the reading of the minutes made earlier. The witnesses came in; the six who had given money and been ordained came in too. At first they denied it; but when the witnesses persisted (some laymen, some presbyters, in whom they seemed to have confided, and some women), naming the kinds of pledges, the places, the times and the amounts, then, since their conscience was not at all easy, they confessed without much compulsion: ‘We gave money, it is admitted, and became [bishops], thinking this was the proper procedure, so that we might be freed from the city council. And now we ask, if it is lawful, to remain in the ministry of the Church; or else [let us recover] the gold we gave; for some of us gave our wives' plate.’ To this John promised the synod: ‘With God's help I will free them from the council … [and have] them receive what they gave from the heirs of Antoninus.’ The synod decreed that they should receive the gold from Antoninus's heirs and communicate inside the sanctuary, but be removed from the priesthood, lest, if these were pardoned, a Jewish or Egyptian custom should arise of selling and buying the priesthood. For they say that the destructive and falsely named patriarch of the Jews changes the rulers of the synagogues every year or every other year to collect money; and likewise his zealous imitator, the patriarch of the Egyptians; so that the prophetic word is fulfilled: ‘Her priests answered for gifts, and her prophets divined for silver.’ For all this both the minutes and the judges are there. And the examination did not take place in one day, as Theophilus falsely said, but over two years. Those deposed were content, being freed from the judgement to come, so that one of them became a defender of [civic] affairs; and in their places others were brought in, men celibate from childhood, adorned in life and word. And those noble and contentious men, after John's exile, taking what they [took] (for wickedness has no name, as it has no substance), [brought back] the former [bishops and thrust out those lawfully enthroned], for the scattering of the sheep of Christ.

Yet the most laughable thing of all, or rather the thing most worthy of lament, if you hear it, most studious Theodore, ‘both your ears will ring’, as the prophet says; and, as one who loves God, you will lament over the raging bishops who defile the gifts of Christ with darkened hands. For the ordinations which Peter and John and their company performed with fasting and prayer and lawful examination and testing of the clergy, and with fear, these men perform on the contrary with drunkenness and carousing and pitiful bribes, [ordaining] the abortions of humanity, not worthy even of irrational swine or dogs, as Job prophesied about them in the person of the Saviour: ‘Whom I did not count worthy of the dogs of my flocks, who lived under the brushwood.’ These, with mimes and Jews, as friends of the Saviour, are entrusted by the wise men with the secrets of the priesthood; because of them the people of the orthodox flee the houses of prayer. For the novel and most frivolous [act] of their daring has reached even us, in the Church at Ephesus; how could it not, since the city is on the sea and easily ferries rumours across? For into the place, or rather into the [throne] of John who wrote the Gospel, who leaned faithfully on the breast of Wisdom, of whom it is written, ‘whom Jesus loved’; [the throne] of Timothy, Paul's disciple, to whom the two Letters of the Apostle are addressed, there succeeds the abomination of desolation. Having ordained [a eunuch] …, and keeping the man enthroned by seventy bishops wasting away in prison to this day, a man who had been a monk in the desert, trained in general learning, versed in the divine Scriptures, and who had served three years as deacon. And would that the eunuch who was ordained had been known for a holy life; then the evil would be half an evil. But as it is, an earthworm, a slave of the belly, …, servile, money-loving, [a jail-bird] from his very birth, …, who, as I have often heard, [carried] the theatre girls [on his shoulders at drinking parties], his head crowned, and the cup of Dionysus in his hand. And all this he did not before his initiation into Christ, but after his baptism; by these things he hints that he does not even believe in the resurrection. For when he has rotted the foundation of the resurrection, how does he still believe in it? And one who does not believe in the resurrection, how can he become a herald of the resurrection, as he said who said, ‘How shall they preach, unless they believe?’ This man is chaste without reward, by the knife, and mad without fruit, by his own shamelessness.

These are the things that happened in Asia, about which you asked because of Theophilus, who wrote of sixteen bishops [deposed; I testify] before the truth that they are six. The minutes of these proceedings are preserved with us, with the signatures of the twenty-two bishops who heard the beginning, and of the seventy who deposed them and [concluded] the case.

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.’

Deacon: You have comforted me, honoured Father, by telling me about everything with such pains, in agreement with the earlier report, and seasoning what you said with a certain grace. But this I say: the bishop's food would not have burdened the Church at all, if the holy John had taken his share from the Church, as he said who said, ‘For the worker is worthy of his food’; and again, ‘Who shepherds a flock and does not eat of the milk of the flock? Or who plants a vineyard and does not partake of its fruit?’

Are these not words of Scripture, and many like them?

[Bishop: Rightly and intelligently have you sp]oken, Theodore; but add to what has been said the words that follow. For when authority had been given by the sacred law for those who perform the sacred services to eat from the temple, what does Paul, greedy for good things, add? ‘I did not make use of this authority in bodily things, so that I might become a partner in the Gospel in spiritual things’, not becoming a stumbling block to the weak, according to him who said, ‘For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, reclining …, will not his conscience, since he is weak, be built up to imitate what is weak?’ If matters stopped with us, and no one after us were to succeed to the care of the people, one could say, [‘Let us live as we please, making use] of worldly affairs’; but since those who come after us use us as teachers, putting forward our rule and custom, we must live not for ourselves only but for him who died and rose for us, and, [bearing] the weakness of the people, [lead them] to greater self-control and virtue, as he says: ‘Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will give him a law in the way he has chosen.’ For the Master gives laws to the rash and pitiable who sin heedlessly, since they embrace the spirit of slavery, according to David the singer: ‘The Lord will give a law to those who sin in the way’; and he will punish transgressors. But the righteous man, going beyond the measures of the law of slavery because he loves the Master, and hastening to the portion of adoption, becomes his own lawgiver; as Job both did and said: ‘I made a covenant with my eyes, and I will not look upon a virgin.’ What was the covenant? That, if they became disorderly, they should be cut out for the sake of chastity. Likewise David says, ‘I have sworn and confirmed it, to keep the judgements of your righteousness’, fettering with an oath the wavering and doubleness of his mind. John, an imitator of these fathers as their genuine son and no bastard, longing to bring the herd of men, straying in various desires, to the stricter part of life, became his own judge and lawgiver, [withdrawing from banquets and idle company and arming] the eye of his soul with the armour of the Spirit, lest folly, finding a way in through a banquet or an untimely word, should destroy self-control, according to him who said, ‘Bad company corrupts good morals.’ That is why they plotted against him; for he was a burden to them even to look at, like a lamp to diseased eyes.

Such was the compassionate Jeremiah, who lamented with tears the unbelief of the rulers and the priests, adding: ‘Who will give water to my head and fountains of tears to my eyes? And I will weep for this people day and night’; and again: ‘Who will give me a lodging at the far end of the desert? And I will leave my people and go away from them, because they are all adulterers’, calling the gathering of the false prophets and priests a synod of the faithless; as elsewhere too he addresses God, not as though God did not know, but as we ought to imitate: ‘Lord, [I did not sit] in the assembly … before your face; I sat alone, because I was filled with bitterness.’ In agreement with these David says, ‘I did not sit with the council of vanity, and I will not go in with transgressors’; and he adds: ‘and I will not sit with the ungodly; I will wash my hands in innocence’ (that is, the powers of action) ‘and I will go round your altar, O Lord.’ But those who care less for the altar, and turn their backs on it, not only in purpose but in the way they live, trample [it] with feet not only unwashed [and bloody, through bribes and] false writings, but muddy; hinting at whom the prophet Ezekiel says: ‘He brought me to the porch of the court, and I looked, and behold, a hole in the wall. And he said …, and I looked, and behold, a door. And he said to me, Go in and see the evil lawlessness that they are doing here. And I went in, and behold, every likeness of reptile and beast, and vain idols, abominations. And he said to me, Have you seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in …? For they said, The Lord does not see us; the Lord has abandoned the land. And he said to me, You will see still greater lawlessness that these are doing. And he brought me into another place and showed me; and behold …’ And again: ‘He brought me into the inner house of the Lord; and behold, there were twenty-four elders, with their faces turned away and their backs to the altar. And he said to me, Are these small things that the house of Israel is doing?’ We have been compelled to recall the prophet's passage because of the more reckless of those who think themselves something, who confound both themselves and the peace of the Church by turning their backs on the Lord's table; ‘whose condemnation is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber’; ‘who set their minds on earthly things’; of whom Jude, the brother of James, says: ‘These are [blemishes at your love feasts], feasting without fear, shepherding themselves; … wandering stars, for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept for ever.’ Where he called them clouds, he hinted at their evil hail, the enemy of the vine; where he called them wandering stars, he hinted at their treachery to the ship; and the ship and the vine is the Church.

What will of necessity befall such men? Hear again the same prophet Ezekiel: ‘And he showed me, and behold, men came out from the way of the high gate that faces north, and each had an axe in his hand. And one man was in their midst, clothed in a long robe, with a girdle of sapphire on his loins. And [they came in] and stood beside the bronze altar; and the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherubim, where it was over them, to the court of the house. And he called the man clothed in the long robe, who had the girdle on his loins. And the Lord said to him: Go through the midst of the city, Jerusalem, and put the mark on the foreheads of the men who groan and lament over all the lawless deeds done in their midst. And to them he said’ (that is, to the six who had the axes) ‘in my hearing: Go into the city after him’ (that is, after the one putting the marks on the foreheads) ‘and strike, and do not spare; old man, young man and virgin, infants and women, kill them to utter destruction; but do not come near any on whom is the mark; and begin from my holy places. And they began with the elders who were in the house of the Lord.’ If anyone thinks these things were prophesied about events in Judaea, he seems not to know of the Saviour's coming either; for Ezekiel did not serve as priest before the captivity. He was carried into captivity while still a boy, by God's dispensation, with the tribe of Levi, and in the thirtieth year he was granted the vision of things to come, serving as priest in captivity, as he himself explains: ‘And it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth of the month, and I was in the midst of the captivity by the river Chebar.’ And again a little later: ‘The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the son of Buzi, the priest, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar.’ But if someone, hard pressed by this, says to us that the Saviour went first and gave the sign of the cross on the foreheads, and that [the slaughter] followed when the Saviour was disbelieved, when the Roman empire under Vespasian cut down, in the fortieth year, the synagogue that had done the lawless deeds, we accept the one who understands it so; but we urge him, as a son of the New Covenant, to obey Paul, the initiate in such matters, who says of all such books: ‘These things happened to them as types; but they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.’ I say this not praying that an iron sword may come upon the enemies of God (away with the thought!); for the prophet is not speaking of an iron sword, but of some other power of punishment, of which the same Ezekiel says: ‘A land on which I bring a sword’ (‘I bring’ meaning ‘I permit’), ‘and the people of the land take one man and set him as a watchman for themselves, and the watchman sees the sword coming and blows the trumpet and warns the people, and one who hears hears and does not take heed, and the sword comes and takes someone, his blood I will require from him, because he did not heed the sound of the trumpet.’ And again: ‘But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and does not warn the people, and the sword comes and takes someone, his blood I will require from the hand of the watchman, because he saw the sword and did not sound the trumpet.’ Having this danger before his eyes, not sleeping the sleep of unbelief nor sluggish with the sluggishness of love of pleasure, the blessed John cried out louder than a trumpet, giving not an uncertain sound but clear knowledge of the devil's sword, and urged everyone to flee. And all who had a pure conscience, like a mark on the forehead of the soul, were saved by the grace of God together with you, the faithful Romans; while all who had a defiled one inflamed the people and the priests to contend with one another, so that in the common evils they might … their own.

[Deacon:] It is admitted that it is impossible for a man to be found blameless and perfect in this earthly life, since Scripture says in many ways, ‘Who will boast that he has a pure heart? Or who will claim with confidence that he is clean from sin?’ Nevertheless the blessed John did not know how to make use of the occasion; for one ought not to interfere with those in power.

Bishop: You seem to me, good Theodore, to be a cunning man. From the start you showed sympathy to us, as befitted you, with a certain compunction, but little by little you turn out to be fond of mockery; for not even his supposed enemies [speak] so harshly of his affairs.

[Deacon: What did you hear] that is so [shocking, truth-loving] Father? That I said, ‘The blessed John did not pay attention to the occasion’? [Is it not] Scripture's saying, ‘Do not stand in the places of the powerful’; and again, ‘Redeeming the time’, especially in dealing with those who do not accept advice or help?

[Bishop:] Blessed are you who interpret the Scriptures in this way! For ‘Do not stand in the places of the powerful’, in Ecclesiastes, is said to those who are unworthy of the priesthood and incapable of it, so that they may not seize it. For it calls ‘powerful’ the teachers of virtue: first the apostles, who were powerful, clothed with the Spirit of power; then their imitators. And ‘redeeming the time’ means this: not that we should play the hypocrite, running with thieves and putting our portion with adulterers, but that, at the time of sin, we should buy up the time by virtue and not sell it to sin. And he who little by little redeems the time in this way has redeemed his whole life, giving up the pleasures of life to find what is beyond life; as the martyrs did, who gave up the life of blood and properly redeemed the time [for] incorruption. If this is not how these things are understood, then Moses, Elijah, Micaiah, Daniel, John the Baptist, Isaiah, Peter and Paul, not to name more, will all have been ignorant of their own time. For the one secured his safety by flight because of his rebuke of a man, pasturing a pagan's sheep in the mountains; the other, overcome by stupor and grief, fell asleep, finding the shade neither of a wall nor of a rock, but under a juniper, which itself gives only dim shade; another was sawn asunder; another was let down into a den of lions for his piety; another was kept bound in a prison, that is, in some dungeon, condemned to receive bread of affliction and water of distress, so that, wasting away for a long time, he might be forced to break off his life because of his freedom of speech toward a certain king. And what will you tell me about John, who has no equal among those born of women? Did he not know how to use the occasion, since he was beheaded for his unshadowed rebuke of Herod's adultery, caring for Herod as a doctor for a patient with an incurable disease, by cauterizing or cutting? By the same reasoning our John too, out of pity or love, rebuked those who were sick. If the Baptist did not know the time, how did he recognize the craftsman and maker of the ages, saying, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’? And how did Paul and Peter not know the time, the pillars of the Church, who even after death shut and open the times of repentance for those who wish and knock? For the one is crucified feet upward, signifying the journey to heaven, and the other is beheaded for his freedom of speech in Christ, so as not to lose the true head. Do not, then, accept those who [mock the freedom of the saints]; for this is the custom of [pagans] and of those wise in their own eyes, who love their lives and mock the fearlessness of the martyrs. A sword ought not to be blunt, nor freedom of speech ineffective. And as fragrance is inseparable from perfume, so is goodwill from freedom of speech. If the rebukes were made in private before servants or friends or relatives, before whom even blushing is a burden, the one speaking freely might perhaps be to blame, as knowing neither the time nor the place; but if in the Church, as in a market, both the praise of those who do well and the blame of the negligent are given, why are we exasperated by rebukes that are made to us without naming names and for our benefit, feeding our faults, and not obeying him who said, ‘[Eat whatever is sold in the market,] asking no questions’? Otherwise the saints too will be found to have scandalized some cities or countries by their rebukes and made others conceited by their praises. First the holy Job, slandering a certain country, Phoenicia, as he says: ‘The nations of the Phoenicians divide him up.’ Then Moses and the prophets, slandering Egypt and calling it an iron furnace and darkness, and praising Palestine and calling it the land of promise; whereas Egypt is found to be a land of promise to the zealous, and Palestine to the careless not only an iron furnace but outer darkness, through unbelief; since it is not places that are to be blamed or praised, but ways of life. Why should I draw out my speech, and not [take the case] of [Paul], calling the Cretans [liars], the Galatians foolish, the Corinthians puffed up, and others other things: did he know these passions to be in them only, bringing the rebuke on them alone, or on all? Or conversely, when he calls the Romans faithful and the Ephesians initiates, to whom he writes more loftily, [and the Thessalo]nians …, did he confine the praises to them alone? By no means; but, as one who bore the Spirit, he set down both blame and praise, so that the one worthy of praise, recognizing it, might be braced in his zeal, and the other, reading it, might be pained by the reminder and wipe away the cause of the blame. So neither are the Galatians alone foolish, nor the Cretans alone liars, nor the Corinthians alone proud; for all things are found everywhere, since the nature that sins and the nature that does right is one, and both the one and the other occur in it by its own choice. In this way, then, John spoke freely in the Church; or rather he dealt out virtue like meat to the hungry, ostracizing sin by open rebukes, obeying him who said, ‘Rebuke the one who sins before all, so that the rest also may have fear.’ But if some, sick with arrogance or folly in the extreme, want even their pleasures to be praised, the servants of God do not have that custom. For those who are indignant at the blame of greed and sexual immorality and any other foul pleasure are in effect saying nothing else than that these deadly things ought to be accepted.

Deacon: Very great thanks, Father, for the visit of your brotherly love; for it has been a blessing to us and a memorial for life.

After Theodore's many praises, one of those present broke out with a remark, saying: ‘How then, adorned with so many excellences, could he have been proud?’

Bishop: Did you know him to be proud from being present yourself, or did someone else tell you?

He answered: ‘I do not know the man,’ he says; ‘but I heard from a certain tanner, who related that it was seldom possible to be with him apart from church, since he was impatient of spending much time with those who wished it. And this is a sign of arrogance and conceit, to avoid the company of those who wish to be with one.’

Bishop: And whose part was it to find fault with John's philosophy, if not a tanner's, a man who accepts even the stench of his own workshop as his familiar companion? If avoiding crowds is a sign of arrogance, then by your argument John the Baptist too will be arrogant, since he withdrew into the deserts; and then the Saviour as well; for it is written that ‘Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up the mountain; and when he sat down, his disciples came to him’, and not the crowds. And again: ‘Seeing the crowds, he withdrew privately.’ Imitating him as far as he could, the good John too withdrew from the crowds, taking delight in those who wished to learn something in truth.

Deacon: You persuade well with examples from Scripture. But what do you have to say to the charge that he was insulting, and avoided not only the many but even one or two?

Bishop: Above all, even one useless vagabond is a crowd, like the man who said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Did not the Saviour avoid the crowd when he said, ‘The foxes [have holes]’, and the rest? Can you persuade me that John, from the time he was baptized, ever swore, or made another swear, or spoke evil, or lied, or cursed, or put up with buffoons?

Deacon: I do not say any of these things, only that he was insulting.

Bishop: My good friend, how could one who did none of these things be insulting, not sparing his own tongue? For in small things and great the defilement is equal.

Deacon: What then, I beg you, is it that people say, and when will they stop talking?

Bishop: Hear, then, about everything, and no longer follow such nonsense; for you will never come to an end of it. People who do not live rightly do not hold right opinions; they are always talking at random and spending their leisure on it, especially now, when no one dares to say anything else. For even of the Saviour God, who lived, spoke and acted above man and above a prophet, they said strange things, gathering what concerned him like swine or flies; for that is what those times wanted. Some said, ‘He deceives the world’; others, ‘By Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, you cast out the demons’; others, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard’; others, ‘You are a Samaritan and have a demon.’ And why should I collect all the nonsense? The Saviour himself knew this, and said to the apostles, ‘Who do men say that I am?’ The disciples recounted the more favourable opinions about him, saying, ‘Some say Elijah, others Jeremiah, others John the Baptist’, and kept silent about the words of the many wicked. He then questions them in turn, setting them apart from ‘men’ (for they were no longer men in mind, but sons of God; for ‘the Word gave us authority to become children of God’): ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Not all answer, but only Peter, interpreting the mind of all: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Accepting the rightness of this answer, the Saviour declared: ‘You are Peter, and on this rock’ (that is, on the confession) ‘I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.’ With this same stamp you will find the blame and the praise now too, not only in John's case but in everyone's. And just as at that time evil was spoken of Christ and the apostles, when the Ephesians cried, ‘These are the men who have turned the world upside down’, and yet it has ceased now that they are glorified, so you will find after this generation that John is honoured as a martyr, and his opponents destroyed by the praises of him. Those who are like swine or dogs [say], ‘He deceives the world’, and so on; but all who are disciples, seeking him genuinely and with knowledge, [say], ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ If in the case of Christ the Saviour, among so many tens of thousands of men, only twelve were found at the beginning who recognized Jesus, while the many still chatter even now, why do we inquire so precisely about John, a man not worth spittle beside Christ? Why do I say spittle? [Not even] the hem of his garment. For all the nations, according to Isaiah, will be counted as a drop from a bucket and as spittle.

As for the way in which you said he was insulting, it was like this. First of all, it was impossible for him to jest with an ordinary person, let alone insult him. But if he saw any of his genuine disciples, or clergy, or bishops, proud of some abstinence or some achievement of bodily virtue, he would tease them by calling them the opposite, calling the water-drinker a drunkard, the man without possessions greedy, and the merciful man a thief. For this too is a graceful form of teaching toward genuine disciples, confirming what is present through what is not. In truth he honoured a chaste young man above a licentious old one, a studious old man above an ignorant younger one, a layman without possessions above an educated lover of money, and a virtuous man of the world above an idle monk; which perhaps those who hold the honours … call insults. [Yet Scripture has such words]: John says to those who came to him, ‘[Brood of vipers, who] warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’; Paul again says in Acts to the high priest, ‘God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall’; the Saviour says sometimes to the Jews, ‘[An evil] and adulterous [generation] seeks a sign’, sometimes to all the apostles, ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart’, and sometimes calls Peter Satan: ‘Get behind me, Satan, for you are a stumbling block to me’; and there was no grave cause for which these insults were spoken. So let us embrace silence [and] love of learning, since we are not able to judge spiritual men. For [they are] neither [insulting from hatred nor solitary from pride], but practise all that is useful out of love.

For this reason, then, all who have been zealous among us in the sacred writings are found avoiding and turning away from the company of the uneducated, so that with time, through familiarity, they may not lose something of their virtue or draw something of their wickedness. Sarah first advised her husband Abraham to banish the maidservant's son, who was still quite young, from the common hearth; for she did not think him fit to play with her son Isaac, lest through familiarity [Isaac should be drawn] to his practices and ways. And Jacob too secures his safety by flight, taking the road to Mesopotamia. And Lot is urged by the angels to move out of [Sodom]. … [Moses], having grown great and refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, provides for separation from the tyrant and his guards, and urges those of his mind to depart with him and to see to the exodus. And the prophets too, avoiding the crowd of the wicked, mostly spent their lives in deserts; of whom the Apostle says, ‘wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth’, because of the mingling of the lawless; and besides they knew that familiarity is able to deceive, and to drag those who spend their days together down to the same things. Not only that, but association in itself is blameworthy and harmful, and shameful besides. For it is not natural to put up with spending even a short time with someone in whom one takes no pleasure; for like is always dear to like, as is said, ‘Every animal loves its like’, while the unlike is hostile and alien. Who will ever persuade the seed-picking dove or turtle-dove [to feed with] kites or flesh-eating ravens, or the grass-eating goose [to herd with bone-picking vultures]? [What] fellowship has light with darkness, or virtue with vice, or the wicked with the good?

Deacon: How then does the Apostle say, ‘I became all things to all, to the Jews as a Jew, to win Jews; to the weak as weak, to win the weak; to the lawless as lawless, to win the lawless’?

Bishop: This testimony, my good friend, does not support what you say. For Paul did not say, ‘I became careless to the careless’, or [frivolous to the frivolous], or anything else of the kind; but ‘I became as this or that’, not ‘this’; for ‘as this’ is not the same as ‘this’. Such is what the Apostle says and does: his condescension, even if it produced no great gain, at least did no harm; [for he says,] ‘To the Jews as a Jew, to win Jews.’ Though he was of the Jews, being circumcised, why does he say ‘as a Jew’, and not ‘a Jew’? Because he was often found keeping the Sabbath and fasting with them, without corrupting the doctrines of the Saviour, so that through familiarity and walking together [he might lead] them to more perfect knowledge; as doctors do with the sick, who are not always with them, and do not share the same disease, nor rage with the same desires. For this is the fitting conduct for a teacher: not to linger among crowds, but, living in quiet and searching, to seek the diagnosis of manifold habits, as skilled doctors do. For they, mostly from books, both foretell the causes of diseases and hand down their cures, approaching the sick only so far as is needed to find the ailment and supply the medicine, without playing or lunching with them. For what the excellence of medicine professes is not eating together or playing together, but restoring the sick to health. Stop, then, I beg you, and do not torment yourself about these things; [virtue is never overcome by the cavils] …; accept my judgement rather, and set a doorkeeper on your ears, so that they may not announce every word and admit into the inner chamber what will disturb your mind. And allow me to complete what remains of the story; for I am in a hurry to be on my way.

And Theodore said: Where are the bishops who were sent with ours, Eulysius, Palladius, Cyriacus and Demetrius? For we have heard dimly that they were exiled.

Bishop: If what I first told you about the blessed John has seemed clear to you, suggesting nothing false, and if you remember it, I will tell you also what you ask about.

[Chapter 20] Deacon: I am as fully assured as if I had been present in those places myself. Let my attention to what was said be sufficient proof of my conviction; with the memory of it fresh, perhaps I will even commit it to writing, inscribing it in ink on fresh parchment, as a memorial for our generation and for the benefit of those who aspire to the episcopate, so that they may become like the holy John, or like you who have [walked] the way of the martyrs for the truth; or else stop bearing a weight beyond their stature, and embrace the lay life, which is free of danger. For it is better [to pay one's fare and reach port safely as a passenger, when skilled pilots are at hand, than to take the helm and be wrecked]. Having told us, then, the story of the blessed John, how he lived as an ascetic and how he distinguished himself in the churches of the Antiochenes and of Constantinople,and how he was brought there, and how he was [expelled], and all the bitter things in between that the offenders have so diligently cultivated, and having told also of Porphyrius and of the eunuch of Ephesus, report to us what remains. Who died in prison? Who of John's communion were exiled? For it is right to make mention of such men, for the encouragement of the living. If in these worldly affairs servants who are shut up or beaten or scraped on behalf of their masters enjoy goodwill and freedom from them, how much more are those punished for Christ worthy of the Church's honour and goodwill? Of them the Apostle says: ‘Remember those in bonds as though bound with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves are also in the body.’ ‘For precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.’

Bishop: You have spoken excellently; listen, then. The bishops, according to the report that ran about at first, were drowned in the sea; but as the true account has it, they were sent into exile beyond the frontiers, in the barbarian borderlands, where they are guarded by executioners even now. For [a deacon who had travelled with them] came [and told us that Cyriacus] of Emesa [is] eighty miles further in, at Palmyra, the fortress toward the Persians; Eulysius of Bostra in Arabia three days' journey further in, likewise to a fortress called Misphas, near the Saracens; Palladius to be guarded near the Blemmyes or Ethiopians, at the place called Syene; Demetrius further in, to the Oasis, the neighbour of the Mazices; for there are other Oases too; [Serapion, accused of countless charges], whose body the cruelty of judges outraged with tortures to the point of knocking out his teeth, as the story goes, [was banished to his homeland; Hilarius, an old man,] was sent off to innermost Pontus after blows given not by a judge but by the clergy, he who for eighteen years has not tasted bread, but lives on bare vegetables or pulse. Antonius exiled himself in the caves of Palestine; Timothy of Maroneia and John of Lydia are said to be in Macedonia; Rhodon of Asia went to Mitylene; [Gregory] of Lydia is said to be in Phrygia; [Brison], the brother of Palladius, having withdrawn of his own accord from his Church, lives on his small farm, [working it with his own hands]; [Lampetius], as they say, [is] in a place in Lydia, supported by a certain Eleutherius, gives himself to reading; Eugenius is in his homeland; the great Elpidius of Laodicea in Syria, together with Pappus, has completed three years without coming down the ladder of his own [upper room], [persevering] in prayers. Of the rest of the bishops in communion [with John], some have been transferred to other churches of Thrace, others are not known; Anatolius, they say, is in Gaul. Of the presbyters, some were banished to Arabia and Palestine; Tigrius was banished to Mesopotamia; Philip died after fleeing to Pontus; Theophilus lives in Paphlagonia; John [son of Aethrius founded a monastery at] Caesarea; Stephen, exiled to Arabia, was snatched from his executioners by the Isaurians, who set him free on the Taurus; Sallustius, they say, is in Crete; Philip, the ascetic and presbyter of the Schools, I have heard [is in Campania; Sophronius the deacon is in] prison in the Thebaid; Paul the deacon, the steward's assistant, is said to be in Africa; another Paul, of the church of the Anastasia, is in Jerusalem; Helladius the presbyter, of the palace, lives on his own small farm in Bithynia. More are hiding in Constantinople, and others have gone back to their homelands. The holy bishop Silvanus is in Troas, [fishing] and living [by it]. Stephen the ascetic, who carried the letters of the Romans, was beaten for this very reason in Constantinople and thrown into prison for ten months. When communion was offered him and he would not be persuaded, he was scraped excessively on the sides and the breast (I was an eyewitness of this), and was saved by Christ's care, perhaps for further contests; after ten months of treatment [was exiled to Pelusium; Provincialus, a soldier] of the Schools around the emperor, accused of being a lover of John, was exiled to Petra after blows of every kind and unsparing scraping. A servant of [Elpidius the presbyter, having been given fifty] coins to murder the holy John treacherously, was caught at it with three swords, and wounded seven of those who held him, one after another; four of them were buried at once, and the other three were saved after being cared for a long time; [yet the murderer was let go. The blessed Eutropius, a singer, they flogged, tearing] his sides together with his forehead, so that even his eyebrows were torn away, and finally, with torches burning his sides, he breathes his last on the rack, and was buried at midnight by the clergy who had done this; and God bore witness to his death by a vision [of singers], because of its likeness to the saving Passion.

The deacon who came back from the bishops related that the prefect's soldiers who conducted them, on the orders of certain persons, oppressed them so much that they prayed for death to come and begged to be let off life. For the money for expenses which they had brought for the journey [they took and divided among themselves], and on bony donkeys they made two days' journey into one, bringing them in late in the evening and leading them out in the dark before dawn, so that their stomachs could not hold even the wretched food. Nor did they refrain from pelting them with shameful and indecent [words]. They even took away Palladius's servant, forcing him to give a written statement. One of the conductors so oppressed Demetrius that [they arrived] even late in the evening; [and he was seized with pains and died] forthwith, so that the devout recognized the penalty for insults; for Palladius had foretold it to him, as the fellow soldier who came related: ‘[You will not travel] another road …’ They would not let them come near [a church] at all, but lodged them either in inns, where there was a crowd of harlots, or in the synagogues of Samaritans or Jews, especially from Tarsus on; and there, distressed as they were, they came to think of something else, which they had not foreseen. One of the bishops says: ‘Why are we grieved about the lodgings? It is not in our power where we stay, so that we should incur a penalty for disgracing ourselves by our own choice. Or do you not know that all these things have happened and will happen, God being glorified through all? How many of these harlots, who had forgotten God or never known him at all, seeing us like this, came to the fear of God and to reflection, perhaps turning to the better, or at least not sliding down to the worse? It is no small thing for a rational soul, ill-treated by passion, to [breathe] a little, which is a spark of self-control; as these things made the revealer of mysteries, Paul, say when he had endured them: “We are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing”, since they had become a spectacle to angels and to men.’

The bishops of Theophilus's communion in the various places throughout the East reached such a pitch of cruelty, as the ascetic who came related, that some of them not only failed to show due moderation, but even persuaded the prefect's soldiers with gifts to drive them out of the cities more quickly. Those who did this most were [the bishop] of Tarsus and [of Antioch, Eulogius of Caesarea in Pale]stine, and above all the bishop of Ancyra, and Ammonius of Pelusium, partly with gifts, partly with threats, making the soldiers who conducted them more savage toward them, so that they would not let them receive [the hospitality] of laymen who wished to offer it; as the blessed John writes in the catholic letters to Gaius against a certain bishop, approving Gaius's hospitality and urging him not to imitate the wicked among the bishops. The passage runs thus: ‘To Gaius the beloved, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that in all things you may prosper and be in health, as your soul prospers. For I rejoiced greatly when brothers came, and at how you refreshed the saints. I have no greater joy than this.’ After this he adds: ‘… prating against us with evil words; and not content with that, he himself does not receive the brothers, and he hinders those who wish to, and [casts them] out of the church.’ Then afterwards he exhorts, saying: ‘Beloved, do not imitate what is evil; he who does good is of God; he who does evil has not seen God.’ We have recalled the whole passage on the wickedness of old so that we might set before you the mind of the Diotrepheses of today. But he praised and admired the bishops of Cappadocia Secunda, since they grieved much, with tears, with the exiled bishops; above all the most gentle Theodore of Tyana, and Bosporius of Colonia, who is in his forty-[eighth] year in the [episcopate, and Serapion of Ostracine, in his forty]-fifth year in the ministry of the episcopate.

Theodore, after being speechless for a long time, said: What then shall we say to this, Father? Is it not the last hour, and is not the apostasy, as Paul says, finding its entrance through these things, so that the son of perdition, the adversary, may be revealed? For that the wicked prosper and accomplish these things, and last and are strong, while the good are oppressed and plundered, makes me shudder at his approach.

Bishop: Indeed, most intelligent man, the end is near, according to him who said, ‘Children, it is the last hour’, and according to the saying, ‘The householder went out about the eleventh hour to hire workers for the vineyard’; and the last is the final one of the twelve. If the Apostle spoke of the last hour four hundred years ago, much more now, for every reason. Then again, these things have been so from the beginning by the Lord's permission, for the training of the saints, when the devil demands them, as the saving word says: ‘Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to have you, to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.’ And Jesus did not pray for Peter alone, but for all who have Peter's faith. The sieve hints at nothing else than the earthly circle, full of pleasures and pains, through which, as through holes, the earthy fall from the nourishing wheat into Hades, as though sifted through the perforations: some run out through the hole of gluttony, ‘whose god is the belly’; others through love of pleasure, of whom the prophet says, ‘By a spirit of sexual immorality they went astray’, and [the Apostle], ‘neither the sexually immoral nor the effeminate will inherit the kingdom of God’; others through love of money, all who have courted the yoke-fellow of idolatry; others through anger and wrath, all who have loved the darkness of beasts, of whom John says, ‘He who hates his brother is in darkness until now’; for ‘anger’, says the Proverbialist, ‘destroys even the prudent’; others through listlessness and forgetfulness, not persevering in the watchfulness of memory, and needing the saying, ‘My soul slumbered from listlessness’, whom the word bewails, saying, ‘Woe to you who have lost endurance; and what will you do when the Lord visits you?’; others through irrational love of glory, of whom the singer proclaimed, ‘For God has scattered the bones of men-pleasers’; others through boastfulness or conceit, that is, arrogance, whom the prophet blames as deserters: ‘The proud transgressed exceedingly, but I did not turn aside from your law.’ Each of these vices brings several others in its train: envy follows conceit; hatred, meanness and falsehood follow greed; wrath, grudges, insults and envies follow anger; forgetfulness, fearlessness, sluggishness, lack of zeal and useless sleeplessness follow sexual immorality; busybodying follows vainglory; folly and heartlessness follow arrogance; … I need not say more and burden the discourse, since what has been said is easy to grasp. To each of these vices God [opposed] a virtue: to lust self-control, to gluttony continence, to greed justice, to anger gentleness, to grief joy, to forgetfulness memory, to listlessness endurance, to folly prudence, to cowardice courage, to vainglory humility, and another to another; and to all of them the divine Scripture. But to conceit alone he gave no opposing virtue, because of its surpassing wickedness, keeping that task for himself, as he has said, ‘God opposes the proud’; as the same prophet prays, saying, ‘Lift up your hands against their arrogance to the end’; and again, ‘Render a recompense to the proud.’And as the tree is known from its fruit, as the Lord said, ‘By their fruits you will know them’, so is each person, whether they are saints or only called so. And so the [prosperity of the wicked] always [lasts long, God bearing with them] patiently. This is fitting for him, and so the saints proclaimed this very thing beforehand in the person of the afflicted, for the comfort of us who suffer now. First Job, the son of endurance; what does he say? Why many words? ‘Is my reproof from man?’, hinting at his blamelessness. ‘Or why should I not [be angry? Look at me and be amazed,] laying your hand on your cheek. For if I remember, I am [troubled], and pains take hold of my flesh. Why do the ungodly live, and grow old in wealth? Their seed is as they desire, and their children before their eyes; their houses prosper, and there is no fear anywhere; the scourge of the Lord is not upon them. Their cow did not miscarry; she was kept safe from the heat; when pregnant she did not [fail; they remain like an everlasting flock], and their children play, [taking up] psaltery and lyre, and they rejoice at the sound of song; they ended their life in good things, and fell asleep in the rest of Hades. And he says to the Lord: Depart from me; I do not want to know your ways.’ In agreement with this the forbearing David, the singer of the divine judgements, as in ‘Of mercy and judgement I will sing to you, O Lord’, says: ‘How good is God to Israel, to the upright in heart! But as for me, my feet almost slipped; my steps had nearly been poured out. Why? Because I was envious of the lawless, seeing the peace of sinners.’ And again elsewhere, disparaging their wealth, he says: ‘Their oxen are fat; [their sheep abound] in their goings out; their storehouses are full, overflowing from one kind to another; their daughters like the likeness of a temple.’ And, marvelling also at their evil concord and peace, he adds: ‘There is no outcry in their streets, nor falling of [a wall] in their houses.’ Then, disparaging the corrupted opinion of the many, he says: ‘They called the people blessed who have these things’, and he adds: ‘Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord; … whose helper is the God of Jacob.’ And lest I stop the testimonies there and make the argument dangerous by leaving it incomplete, listen again to [Habakkuk] with a certain beating of the breast at such things: ‘How long, O Lord, shall I cry out, being wronged, and you will not hear? I will cry out to you, being wronged, and you will not save. Why have you shown me labours and toils, to look on misery and ungodliness? Judgement has gone against me, and the judge takes [bribes]. Therefore the law is scattered, and justice does not go forth to the end, because the ungodly oppresses the righteous.’ In the same spirit Jeremiah, the most compassionate of the saints, perplexed on behalf of others, cries out: ‘You are righteous, O Lord, so that I will make my defence to you; yet I will speak of judgements to you, O Lord. Why does the way of the ungodly prosper? All who deal treacherously have flourished; you planted them, and they took root’ (meaning, they live unhindered), ‘and they bore fruit’ (not at all of the Spirit). ‘You are near their mouth and far from their kidneys.’ Exactly equivalent to these is what the wise prophet Zephaniah says in the person of the Lord, disparaging men as evil-speakers who blame providence and bewail the saints: ‘You have made your words heavy against me, says the Lord, and you said, How have we spoken against you? You said, He who serves God is vain; and what profit is it that we kept his ordinances, and that we went as suppliants before the Lord Almighty? And now we call the strangers blessed, and [those who do] lawless deeds [are built up], and they withstood God and were saved. These things those who fear the Lord spoke against him, each to his neighbour.’ To these Paul, the herald of piety, adds the same: ‘But evil men and impostors will go on to worse, deceiving and being deceived.’ Then he indicates the lowliness of the saints, saying: ‘For I think that God has exhibited us apostles last, as men condemned to death; for we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. To this present hour we both hunger and thirst, we are naked and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands’, listing the bodily hardships; ‘[being reviled, we bless; being persecuted,] we endure; being blasphemed, we entreat; we have become like the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things, until now.’ For the good and just God, for certain unspeakable reasons, has stretched out the world like a stadium and made us free, so that, applying ourselves to deeds by our own choice, we may render just accounts, as the law says: ‘I have set before your face life and death; choose what you will.’ Why he set them there it is not for the present occasion to say, only that he did. For it would not have been wise for us to be made unchangeable, with no contests set before us and no … of the will.

Deacon: Well and philosophically have you answered, Father, opening the eyes of the souls of those present, who always stumble over these things through inexperience of the Scriptures, and [showing] that the Church has undergone training for long ages, displaying her own crowned victors, men and women, who did not eat the flesh of Christ for nothing in times past. But your being without a settled place grieves us, and the ruin of the churches.

Bishop: I wonder at you, Theodore, most honoured of men, who so often confess the benefit and then at once say the opposite. For you call us blessed as crowned victors and bewail us as fallen, because we have been deprived of our church positions. You seem to me to be like the rustics who watch the Olympic games: they gape gladly at the prizes, but weep pitifully at the blows the contestants receive. For me it is better to pursue ravines and glens and seas with the truth than to have a great reputation for what is now thought prosperity and be subject to falsehood. For if I have the truth, I shall have all things, since all things are her slaves; but if I possess falsehood, I shall not have even myself, since I shall not be hers. And having the truth, I do not wish to have her simply as a mistress, or a slave, or a neighbour, but as a sister; and, if possible, as a spouse, enjoying her pleasure, and afterwards inheriting her as my own wife. For she is the daughter of the One who truly is Truth, and the zealous man is her bridegroom. He who has this seal grows young again; he is ageless and unfading, with a zeal hotter than fire, a word sharper than a sword, a life lighter than an eagle. He runs unhesitatingly to the study of the Scriptures as to a mother at home; he blossoms continually with freedom from grief; he is not [carried away] by excitement; he hates no one; he pities those who use life badly; he calls blessed those who mind their own business with contentment; he grieves with the grief of the Spirit over the negligence of the clergy, of which the Apostle said, ‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption’; and he grieves the Spirit who turns his back on him through negligence. And, to sum it all up, he dies with confidence, having grieved no one except the demons and those who are their neighbours … time is left over for him; he did not traffic away his days in wrongdoing; he doubled the talent he was given, and sent ahead the interest of good works, filling long years in a short time. He writes no will disposing of matter, for he wrestled it down while living and in his right mind. Death knocked at the door of his flesh before he saw it standing outside; he cries out, ‘Let us go hence’, singing, ‘Woe is me, that my sojourning has been prolonged’; and [were it not for the One who sent him, he would have taken death to law for coming late; gladly he leaves the flesh as he would a lodging] that is rotten and threatening to fall; he pricked up his ear toward him who says, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’, about to hear the rest as well. Let the abundance of my words be proof of what I say; ‘for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’ But one who lives with falsehood has a troubled life. Sometimes he rejoices beyond measure at an increase of silver, or a little glory, or a harlot's friendship, or the misfortune of his enemies; sometimes he grieves to the point of death at the reversals …, [suspecting plots even from his] genuine [friends], not confident even in himself, and distrusting everyone as liars. Being such a man himself, he is cowardly as a hare, bold as a pig, deceitful as a chameleon, cheating as a partridge, merciless as a wolf, savage as a mouse; his own enemy, ceaselessly envious, he punishes himself of necessity without perceiving it; for while he plots evil against another, he first suffers evil from himself. When death pricks him, he gives everything to stay a little longer, so much does he love life; the time given him he has trafficked away to no purpose; the denarius he neither doubled nor kept safe. He trembles continually like a leaf; he does not wish to grow old, yet in his babbling he suffers the troubles of old men; he fears death as a god, and the visible world is a god to him. What then? He grows pale, shudders, is in agony; anticipating the judgement of God, he punishes himself, his conscience torturing him mercilessly and [reminding him of each deed], and he suffers [in his soul] as those who are scourged suffer in their bodies under the blows. He submits slavishly to the powers of the day, flatters the world shamefully; instead of one Lord he has countless masters, so as not to be a slave of the truth; he takes pains to be feared, and fears everyone. Let this be said to you by me as best I can. And if anyone, speaking more truly and more elegantly, corrects my weakness, I will gladly accept him too as a corrector and a brother, and will give thanks to the Saviour for all things. But do you in turn give me knowledge of the purpose of the Western synod, and set your seal on my words, if they pleased you as spoken to good purpose.

When the narrator had stopped, Theodore said: To you who have told these things, may the Lord grant that you find mercy on that day, both because you withdrew from the communion of such men and because you have told us everything clearly; and may the Lord remember every sacrifice of John, because until death he did not betray his freedom of speech. The purpose of the Church of the Romans is this: to the end not to communicate with the Eastern bishops, especially Theophilus, until the Lord grants [an ecumenical synod to heal the putrefied] limbs of those who did these things. For even if the blessed John has fallen asleep, the truth is awake, and on its account the inquiry will be made. I would gladly meet face to face those who did these things in the Church and say: Where is the priesthood? Where is holiness? Where is gentleness, and the common bond of nature? Where are the commandments of the Saviour: ‘If you are offering your gift and remember that your brother has something against you, [go, first be reconciled to your brother,] and then offer your gift’? Where is ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also’? Where is the study of the Scriptures: ‘Behold, what is so good or so pleasant as for brothers to dwell together?’ Where is ‘Let brothers be useful in times of need’? Why have you turned ‘A brother helped by a brother is like a strong city’ around into ‘A brother [harmed] by a brother is pitiable and unwalled’? Why did you undertake to pursue the matter as something irreconcilable, thrice and not once wretched as you are? On what reasoning did you not shrink from thirsting for his blood as an enemy's? How did it come over you to grow so savage against one another? From where did you show such a change, as from [gentleness to savagery]? I marvel, and, marvelling at the perversion, I am astonished, seeing everything thrown into such commotion by this. Why, attacking with such great boldness the Church of God, the nurse and rearer of children, is the prophetic word fulfilled in you: ‘Because they pursued their brother with the sword, and destroyed the womb upon the earth’? Being one with that womb, the divine and saving Word sowed both you and him, and [planted you for good works without number]. Instead of helping one another, as was your duty, what possessed you that you did not even judge it right to keep quiet and be at peace among yourselves, at least for the future? Created for the purpose of helping one another, why did you squander the grace, not only not lightening one another's labours, but thrusting one another away and cutting them off from your own kin, while the prophet cries out to you, ‘Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?’ But you will say to me, ‘He has sinned against the law.’ What law? The one which you trampled on and scattered by your wickedness. Where, then, [is the law of nature, which bids us set wrongs right with gentleness]? Or are you, applying the law of enemies, persecuting in your counsels, and doing things contrary to nature and worthy of enmity? How much better it would have been for those who live together and share the same way of life to share with one another common and good counsels, for the [honour] and pleasure of our Father! For the virtue and harmony of children are a joy, and very pleasing to parents, who need nothing else from their own offspring but this. Know this too: the bond of friendship and goodwill is nothing else than to be eager and to do everything in a way pleasing to the Father, [the cause] of our birth and nurture and [preservation]. [But you, despising him,] kindled [wars] in the Church, according to the prophet who said, ‘They fixed madness in the house of the Lord’, instead of encouraging and exhorting one another; and then, against the mind and will of the Father, you waged irreconcilable wars on one another. I add that this greatly disturbs and moves God, and all who belong to him, his sons and your brothers, and does not allow them to keep silent; for he is neither negligent nor careless of his children's good. He is grieved, then, both at your damaged minds and at the oppression of the wronged; that is why he does not judge it right to let you go unpunished, as he has begun; for that would be neither seemly for him nor safe for you. Your disease is not [to be borne], and needs no ordinary care, … and the bruises of correction past counting, he sees you worse. For a great and most unbending insensibility floats on the surface of your minds: brothers, genuine and of the same way of life, and moreover sharers in the same libations, … chosen together, [children] of one and the same [mother], you have [driven] away, so that they are sent out of their own borders and from the common hearth and driven far off, without city or home, and fugitives besides, as far as it lay with you; and this not for some fixed time, but, as far as you could, for ever, because of your savage temper and your utter derangement. Whetting your tongue against them and against the blessed John like a sharpened sword even to this day, you embrace your grudge instead of profitable teaching, pouring out accusation in the church to the defilement of the hearers.

So much for them; the Lord will repay them according to their works, in mercy and love for mankind. But for you, blessed John, what unfading crown of words shall I weave and bring, now that you have left the stadium, not fearing [to borrow] those blessings of Moses which he gave in blessing Joseph the active and Levi the contemplative priest? For in you I see both. ‘His land is from the blessing of the Lord, from the seasons of heaven and the dew, and from the springs of the deep below, and from the seasons of the produce of the sun's turnings, and from the meetings of the months, from the top of the ancient mountains, and from the top of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph’ (and of anyone who is like Joseph) ‘and on the crown of him who led his brothers, glorified among his brothers; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he shall gore the nations together, even from the end of the earth.’ And to Levi he said (and to anyone who has imitated him): ‘Give to Levi his manifest ones and his truth, to the holy man, whom they tested with testing and reviled at the water of contradiction; who said to his father and mother, “I have not seen you”, and did not acknowledge his own; he kept your oracles and preserved your covenant; he made known your ordinances to Jacob and your law to Israel. He shall put incense continually at your festival upon your altar. Bless his strength, [O Lord], and accept the works of his hands; strike the brow of the enemies who have risen against him, and let those who hate him not rise up.’ And I would add: Let those who love him, Jesus Christ, not be put to shame; for yours is the power for ever. Amen.

Bishop: This too is the practice of your understanding, Theodore, hunter of thoughts: to bring out of the treasure of your mind, as the Saviour said, things new and old; old, the teachings of human wisdom; new, the oracles of the Holy Spirit; and from these treasures you have given to each side what was fitting: from your own prudence, telling the wrongdoers what suited them; from the blessing of Moses, weaving for John too the crown that was his due. He served as priest without passion, and truly knew neither father nor mother nor kin by blood, through the excess of his righteousness, but only the lovers and workers of the word. But the would-be bishops of our time have settled their kin of clay in profits and military posts and dignities, transgressing the law that says, ‘The priests shall not give their sons to be rulers and runners for the king’; and the things of the Spirit they spend on plots and …, having drunk ignorance undiluted, and thinking by these means to dishonour the friends of virtue, of whom the Saviour foretold: ‘[The] days [are coming] in which those who kill you will think they are offering service to God.’ And surely he did not say this of pagans, for then he would have said ‘to the gods’, since they recognize many besides the one. By naming the one and only God, he indicated those who now plunder us under the pretext of the Church. For, [hiding their own wickedness and envy,] they pretend in word to care for [the Church], which they have ruined in deed. But however they sophisticate, the outcome of events will convict them of having served him who boasted, ‘I shall not be shaken from generation [to generation].’ [Unable to devise] a form of newer heresy, the inventor of lawlessness and cultivator of the worst desire, the serpent, drove the leaders of the Church to the madness of killing one another, by the passion of love of seats and of first seats, through which they wrought the schism. For if there had been the harmony of God's Spirit among the bishops, and John ought to have been excluded as guilty of wrongdoing, or unworthy of the priesthood, or, as Theophilus says, for arrogance, the almighty wisdom of God could lawfully have kept him from the priesthood, or found a way by which he would have been removed without disturbance and without tears, by death, or paralysis, or loss of voice, as we know some of those who opposed him have suffered, and some will suffer. But since so many works unworthy of the Saviour followed, and he was not deposed but exiled, it is plain that the drama was the devil's, whose kingdom was being destroyed by John's teaching. I know that John deposed six men, and deservedly, as purchasers of the priestly dignity, of whom I spoke above. Who wept? Whose nose dripped blood? What spider's web was torn? Who left his house? Who was fined an obol? What vagabond of Asia, or craftsman, or farmer, or cobbler, or commoner did not welcome what was done to vindicate the sacred laws, applauding, ‘How great are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have made them all’? For where God works, everything happens in wisdom; but where the demon who hates the good works, everything likewise happens without wisdom. And strange things follow on unwisdom: envies, murders, strife, [jealousy, …, breaches of] divine ordinances, contempt of laws, rejection of self-control, schism of the world, watches set by land and [sea], and the hindering of those who go abroad for the truth. How then do they dare to say, ‘John was thrown out by the dispensation of God’? Let those who invent these things tell me: was the almighty wisdom of God at a loss, as I said before, to stop John by invisible power, if he was unworthy? Or to persuade those who disputed with him to bear the matter calmly, without much compulsion from officials? For if he is the same God who worked with Moses for the freedom and obedience of Israel, when Pharaoh openly cried out, ‘I do not know God, and [I will not let] Israel [go]’, [did he need the help] of earthly rulers in John's case, as though he had grown old, or weak, or were at a loss? Then he who brought to light the adulteries of some, the pederasty of others and the sorceries of others, was he at a loss to convict John? Or again, he who swelled one man's tongue with quinsy, so that he made his confession in writing, and allowed another to fall into a fatal crisis, or who embalmed another voiceless on his bed for almost a whole year while worms bred in him, or who brought forbidden terrors on another together with his familiar gout, or who [burned] the legs [of another, or snatched away another] swiftly, as everyone knows, was he too weak in John's case, if he was a temple-robber as you say, to bring about one of these things, but needed this man and that to dishonour John and thrust him out, thereby glorifying him the more? They are deceived, then, not [knowing] the commandment of the word. For a temple-robber, properly speaking, is not one who distributes gold or silver or silk threads, the food of moths, to the poor, but one who sells for silver and flattery and a good table the doctrines and ordinances of the Saviour; and then one who ruins a holy man, adorned in life and word, through whom the Saviour, as through a bowl or treasure, [pours out] for the lovers of the word what is suited to their [needs]; [Rather, temple-robbers are those who have plundered] the apostolic Church, depriving it of such teachers and selling ordinations for silver. Divine justice will soon pursue them, to correct their misdeeds. For if those who counterfeited the law of Moses by their excessive dishonesty were driven out of the temple by the Saviour with a whip, and that a whip of cords, for selling [doves] inside, what will those suffer who traffic in the priesthood of the New Covenant, except to be broken with a rod by the chief Shepherd? As the Apostle says: ‘Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will he deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, and regarded as common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. [It is a fearful thing to fall] into the hands of the living God.’ May God, who glorified this holy and saintly shepherd and luminary of righteousness, grant us to find a part or lot with him on the fearful day of his righteous judgement; to whom belong glory, honour, majesty and magnificence, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.