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Dialogue on the Life of St John Chrysostom

Palladius, tr. Moore, 1921

15. Six Bishops Deposed — Chrysostom’s Work Undone

Eusebius’ Request for Immediate Procedure

This was the state of things when the man who caused us all this long story, Eusebius, the accuser of the six other bishops, presented himself to the whole body of bishops, claiming to be admitted to communion with them. Some of the bishops objected, maintaining that as a false accuser he ought not to be admitted. Upon this he played the suppliant, saying, “As the main part of the case has been under investigation for two years, and the adjournment was made to enable the witnesses to be examined, I beseech your love of God, to let me produce the witnesses this very day. For although Bishop Antoninus, who accepted the money, and performed the act of ordination, is dead, there yet remain those who gave the money, and received ordination.”

Confession of the Accused Bishops

The assembled synod resolved that the inquiry should be held, and the proceedings began with the reading of the minutes of the previous transactions. Then the witnesses were introduced, and also six of those who had given bribes and received ordination. At first they denied the charge; but the witnesses, some of whom were laymen, others priests, in whom they had evidently trusted, others again women, held to their assertions, and stated the nature of the pledges exchanged, the places, the dates, and the amount. At last, their consciences so much troubled them, that with very little pressure they confessed of their own free will. “We have given bribes,” they said; “the thing is admitted, and we have been made bishops, in the expectation that we should be regarded as exempt from civil duties.¹ And now we beg to be allowed to continue in the ministry of this Church, if there is no impiety in our doing so; or, if that is impossible, that we may receive back the money we have paid. For some of us have given furniture belonging to our wives.”

The Sentence

John in answer promised the synod, that with the help of God he would present a petition to the king, and get them freed from civil duties; and bade them order the accused to recover what they had paid from the heirs of Antoninus. So the synod ordered, that they should recover from the heirs of Antoninus, and should communicate within the sanctuary,² but not be reckoned as priests, for fear that if their doings were condoned, a custom might arise worthy of Jews or Egyptians, of selling and buying the priesthood. They say that the pestilential patriarch ³ of the Jews, whose acts belied his title, used to change the rulers of the synagogues every year, or every other year, as a means of raising money; and that the Patriarch of Egypt emulated him by doing the same, that the word of prophecy might be fulfilled, “Her priests made answer for gifts, and her prophets divined for money.” ⁴

Re-introduction of the Condemned Bishops

The minutes of all those proceedings, and the names of the judges, are on record. Further, the investigation was not a matter of a single day, as Theophilus falsely asserted, but of two years. Moreover, those who were deposed acquiesced, thankful to be delivered from the judgment to come; indeed, one of them was appointed solicitor for dealing with public affairs.⁵ In their places six others were instituted, unmarried men, adorned by graces both of life and speech. And the noble and quarrelsome gentlemen, after John had been exiled, got what they did get (for their villainy has no name,⁶ any more than it has a substantial existence),⁷ and brought back into the Churches those who had four years before been expelled, while those who had been enthroned with due order they thrust out, scattering the sheep of Christ.

A Vile Person enthroned at Ephesus

Yet the most ridiculous thing of all, though it calls for lamentation rather than laughter, Theodorus, best friend of learning, is yet to follow. As the prophet says, “Both thine ears shall tingle,” ⁸ if you hear it, but as a lover of God you will mourn for the bishops who are behaving as madmen, and with darkened ⁹ hands outraging the gifts of Christ. The ordinations which Peter and John and their brethren administered with fasting and prayer, and with careful testing by lot, and fear, they administered with revelry and drunkenness, and lamentable bribes, to abortions ¹⁰ of men, not worthy to be set with pigs or dogs, creatures without reason; as Job prophesied, impersonating the Saviour, “Whom I thought not worthy of the dogs of my flocks, who lived beneath the nettles.” ¹¹

So these companions of actors and Jews are entrusted by our clever friends with the secrets ¹² of the priesthood, as if they were friends ¹³ of the Saviour, and in consequence the orthodox laity avoid the houses of prayer. For this new and most contemptible form of audacity has actually spread from the Church of Ephesus as far as to us; and it is not to be wondered at, as Ephesus stands upon the sea, and exports its news as easily as its cargoes. For in the place of ¹⁴—no, I will say, in the place of John, the author of the gospel, the loyal disciple who leaned upon the bosom of wisdom, called in Scripture the disciple whom Jesus loved; who was succeeded by Timothy, the disciple of Paul, to whom are addressed the two epistles of the apostle—there succeeds an abomination of desolation.¹⁵ For they consecrated and enthroned the eunuch ¹⁶ Victor the tribune, and cast into prison, where he is still languishing, the bishop enthroned by seventy bishops; a man who had lived a solitary life in the desert, trained in every branch of learning,¹⁷ possessed of a profound knowledge of Holy Scripture, and with three years of service as deacon to his record. Would that the eunuch who was consecrated had been trained by a holy life, for then the evil would have been halved; but as it is, we have a worm of earth, a slave of the belly, lustful, fierce, drunken, profligate, venal, illiberal, covetous, a jail-bird ¹⁸ from his birth, a sexless creature, neither man nor woman, raging mad; a man who (so I have often been told) carried theatre girls upon his shoulders at drinking parties lit for satyrs, his head garlanded with ivy, and a bowl clasped in his hand, playing the rôle of Dionysus ¹⁹ in the fable, as master of libations. All this he did, not before his initiation into the mysteries of Christ, but after his baptism;²⁰ from which it is a plain inference, that he does not even believe in the resurrection. For how can a man believe in the resurrection, who has made rotten the foundation ²¹ of the resurrection? As the apostle says, “How shall they preach, unless they believe?” ²² He is moral, thanks to the knife, as to deeds which bring no reward; but he is mad upon unfruitful works,²³ from his natural depravity.

Now I have answered your inquiry as to events in Asia, which arose from the statement in Theophilus’ letter that John had deposed sixteen bishops. You may be quite sure that the number is six. We have the records preserved, with the signatures of the twenty-two bishops who heard the case from the beginning, and the seventy who effected the deposition, and brought the trial to a conclusion.

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