withstand his threats, the pope's legates
excepted, who protested aloud against these violent proceedings; one of
whom was imprisoned; the other, Hilarius, got off with much difficulty,
and came safe to Rome. St. Flavian, on hearing the sentence read by
Dioscorus, appealed from him to the holy see, and delivered his acts of
appeal in writing to the pope's legates, then present. This so provoked
Dioscorus,[1] that, together with Barsumas and others of their party,[2]
after throwing the holy bishop on the ground, they so kicked and bruised
him, that he died within a few days, in 449, not at Ephesus, as some
have said by mistake, but in his exile at Epipus, two days' journey from
that city, situated near Sardes in Lydia, as Marcellinus testifies in
his chronicle.

The council being over, Dioscorus, with two of his Egyptian bishops, had
the insolence to excommunicate St. Leo. But violence and injustice did
not triumph long. For the emperor's eyes being opened on his sister
Pulcheria's return to court, whom the ambition of Chrysaphius had found
means to remove in the beginning of these disturbances, the eunuch was
disgraced, and soon after put to death; and the empress Eudoxia obliged
to retire to Jerusalem. The next year the emperor died, as Cedrenus
says, penitent; and Pulcheria, ascending the throne in 450, ordered
Saint Flavian's body to be brought with great honor to Constantinople,
and there magnificently interred, among his predecessors in that see.
St. Leo had, upon the first news of these proceedings, written to him to
comfort him, as also to Theodosius, Pulcheria, and the clergy of
Constantinople, in his defence. The general council of Chalcedon
declared him a saint and martyr, and paid great honors to his memory, in
451. The same council honorably restored Eusebius of Dorylaeum to his
see. Pope Hilarius, who had been St. Leo's legate at Ephesus, had so
great a veneration for the saint, that he caused his martyrdom {425} to
be represented in mosaic work, in the church which he built in honor of
the holy Cross. The wicked Dioscorus was condemned by the council of
Chalcedon, in 451, and died obstinate and impenitent, in the Eutychian
heresy, and his other crimes, in his banishment at Gangres, in 454.

* * * * *

It was the glory of St. Flavian to die a martyr of the mystery of the
incarnation of the Son of God. This is the fundamental article of the
Christian religion, and, above all