hrysostom. The Bosphorus was covered with innumerable
vessels; the shores of Europe and Asia were profusely illuminated; and
the acclamations of a victorious people accompanied, from the port to
the cathedral, the triumph of the archbishop; who, too easily, consented
to resume the exercise of his functions, before his sentence had been
legally reversed by the authority of an ecclesiastical synod. Ignorant,
or careless, of the impending danger, Chrysostom indulged his zeal, or
perhaps his resentment; declaimed with peculiar asperity against female
vices; and condemned the profane honors which were addressed, almost
in the precincts of St. Sophia, to the statue of the empress. His
imprudence tempted his enemies to inflame the haughty spirit of Eudoxia,
by reporting, or perhaps inventing, the famous exordium of a sermon,
"Herodias is again furious; Herodias again dances; she once more
requires the head of John;" an insolent allusion, which, as a woman
and a sovereign, it was impossible for her to forgive. [51] The short
interval of a perfidious truce was employed to concert more effectual
measures for the disgrace and ruin of the archbishop. A numerous council
of the Eastern prelates, who were guided from a distance by the advice
of Theophilus, confirmed the validity, without examining the justice, of
the former sentence; and a detachment of Barbarian troops was introduced
into the city, to suppress the emotions of the people. On the vigil of
Easter, the solemn administration of baptism was rudely interrupted
by the soldiers, who alarmed the modesty of the naked catechumens,
and violated, by their presence, the awful mysteries of the Christian
worship. Arsacius occupied the church of St. Sophia, and the
archiepiscopal throne. The Catholics retreated to the baths of
Constantine, and afterwards to the fields; where they were still pursued
and insulted by the guards, the bishops, and the magistrates. The
fatal day of the second and final exile of Chrysostom was marked by the
conflagration of the cathedral, of the senate-house, and of the adjacent
buildings; and this calamity was imputed, without proof, but not without
probability, to the despair of a persecuted faction. [52]

[Footnote 50: Palladius owns (p. 30) that if the people of
Constantinople had found Theophilus, they would certainly have thrown
him into the sea. Socrates mentions (l. vi. c. 17) a battle between the
mob and the sailors of Alexandria, in which many wound