omotion to the
episcopate by a very questionable stratagem--which, however, he defends
in his instructive and eloquent treatise _De Sacerdotio_. As a
presbyter, he won high reputation by his preaching at Antioch, more
especially by his homilies on _The Statues_, a course of sermons
delivered when the citizens were justly alarmed at the prospect of
severe measures being taken against them by the emperor Theodosius,
whose statues had been demolished in a riot.

On the archiepiscopal throne Chrysostom still persevered in the practice
of monastic simplicity. The ample revenues which his predecessors had
consumed in pomp and luxury he diligently applied to the establishment
of hospitals; and the multitudes who were supported by his charity
preferred the eloquent discourses of their benefactor to the amusements
of the theatre or of the circus. His homilies, which are still
preserved, furnish ample apology for the partiality of the people,
exhibiting the free command of a pure and copious vocabulary, an
inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, giving variety and
grace to the most familiar topics, with an almost dramatic exposure of
the folly and turpitude of vice, and a deep moral earnestness. His zeal
as a bishop and eloquence as a preacher, however, gained him enemies
both in the church and at the court. The ecclesiastics who were parted
at his command from the lay-sisters (whom they kept ostensibly as
servants), the thirteen bishops whom he deposed for simony and
licentiousness at a single visitation, the idle monks who thronged the
avenues to the court and found themselves the public object of his
scorn--all conspired against the powerful author of their wrongs. Their
resentment was inflamed by a powerful party, embracing the magistrates,
the ministers, the favourite eunuchs, the ladies of the court, and
Eudoxia the empress herself, against whom the preacher thundered daily
from the pulpit of St Sophia. A favourable pretext for gratifying their
revenge was discovered in the shelter which Chrysostom had given to four
Nitrian monks, known as the tall brothers, who had come to
Constantinople on being excommunicated by their bishop, Theophilus of
Alexandria, a man who had long circulated in the East the charge of
Origenism against Chrysostom. By Theophilus's instrumentality a synod
was called to try or rather to condemn the archbishop; but fearing the
violence of the mob in the metropolis, who idolized him for the
fea